He was the largest person she’d ever seen. Faith took a step backward, awkwardly bumping into Tom before she stopped dead in her tracks. PRESTIGE PAWN—WE BUY EVERYTHING a neon sign flashed over the front door, competing with the bright sunshine, which only served to highlight the dinginess of the strip mall just across the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border. It was the fourth pawnshop the Fairchilds had visited, starting in Lowell, and so far they’d turned up nothing.
“Whadya want? Selling or buying?” the man asked, stubbing out a filtered cigarette in an ashtray brimming with butts. The lower part of his face joined his chin in loose layers of fat, both falling into his neck, straining the collar of his Ban-Lon shirt. Stacks of papers flowed over the desk. Empty Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups and Munchkin boxes teetered on top of an overstuffed wastepaper basket. Faith had the sensation that she and Tom were about to be engulfed in this tide, too. She took a deep breath and went into her number.
“We’re looking for a wedding present”—after all, it was that time of year—“and we wondered if you had any silver—sterling?” She tried to peer behind his desk, which, with his massive girth, effectively blocked entry to the rear, where stock ranging from audio equipment to Beanie Babies filled the shelves. Browsing was apparently not encouraged. “Or a piece of jewelry—something antique. We’re friends of the bride.” Plenty of brides.
He cleared his throat—it was not a pretty sound—reached under the desk, and pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes, all the while looking intently at the two of them. This had been more or less the same kind of reception they’d received at the other places. Faith wasn’t sure whether it meant the proprietors thought she and Tom were undercover cops or jerks. Maybe both.
“I got some silver. No old jewelry.” He rolled his chair back, reached up to one of the shelves to pull a bunch of Ziploc bags down onto his lap, then rolled back. It was a practiced, fluid motion—almost balletic. Faith had wondered how on earth he got around the store. Now all she had to wonder about was how he got in and out. Perhaps he didn’t.
He emptied the contents onto the desk and Faith quickly saw that none of the things belonged to them. She had been so sure of herself. After the debacle with the insurance adjuster that morning, she had reasoned they were owed. Some sign from God, if only a teaspoon.
Most of the larger pieces of silver were pretty banged up—some Paul Revere bowls, a cream and sugar set—but there was a pretty candy dish with fluted edges in perfect condition. It hadn’t seen polish in a long time, but that was easy to remedy. There was an ornate F in Gothic script engraved in the center. They’d had an initialed candy dish. A wedding gift. She picked it up. “How much for this?”
He looked at it, then at her. “Lady. This ain’t Shreve, Crump & Low. You buy the lot. A hundred bucks.”
Faith looked at the silver strewn in front of her. There were several good serving pieces and it might be possible to have the dents removed from the bowls.
“Seventy-five,” Tom said. He loved buying things in lots. When they went to an auction, he waited impatiently until the box lots came up, convinced that the best things were often hastily tossed in at the last moment when an estate was being cleared out. This predilection had paid off rather spectacularly one summer in Maine.
“You seem like nice people.” Later, Tom said the man’s expression had reminded him of a cross between Sydney Greenstreet and Jabba the Hutt. “We’ll split the difference. Ninety. Take it or leave it.”
They took it.
“What are we learning here, Tom?” Faith asked once they were back in the car.
“Let’s see. That there’s a whole world we know absolutely nothing about. That pawnshops—which, incidentally, also seem to run to names suggestive of luxury cars, like Imperial and Regency—often have neat things cheap. That a four-hundred-pound man was able to find a chair on wheels that would support him.”
“Yes, but also I doubt very much that we’re going to find anything of ours.”
“I never thought we would, kiddo, but I know you did. What’s made you change your mind?”
“Most of the things we’ve been seeing are pretty new. We haven’t turned up any antique jewelry. In the first place, when I asked if they had any cameos, the guy thought I was talking about movies. I still want to try these other two shops here by the track, though. They’re on this road. It won’t take long.”
It didn’t. At the first stop, an incredibly tired-looking man sitting in the entryway in a Plexiglas booth, told them through a microphone that the shop was closed when he heard they were looking to buy, not sell.
“He must never get any sun or fresh air,” Faith commented as Tom drove to the next establishment. “The whole thing is pretty creepy. Gamblers pawning their possessions—I don’t even want to think where all these Beanies come from, looting their kids’ toy boxes?—and these parasites sitting inside waiting for the next desperate person to come along. And it would be easy to sell stolen goods. When we bought the necklace in Lowell, nobody asked us for sales tax or gave us a receipt. It looked like a pretty small operation, though. The other place in the center was almost like a regular jewelry store.”
The next pawnshop looked closed, but the door opened when Faith tried it. A man who would have seemed abnormally large, had they not seen the owner of Prestige Pawn, waved them in and turned on some lights. Yes, he had silver. He yanked a few chests out of a showcase and tried to interest them in a complete set of Gorham Chantilly—“a super wedding gift, and I can give you a good deal on it.” He said this a number of times, varying the format only slightly. It was the first time they’d encountered a hard sell, and the man seemed nervous, as well. He kept looking at the door as if expecting company. The Fairchilds didn’t recognize the chests or the patterns as theirs.
“Sorry, we really wanted a bowl or picture frame, smaller items. We are looking for a wedding gift, but we’re not the parents of the bride.” Faith was hoping this attempt at humor might put the man at ease, so that he’d show them whatever else he might have. She was about to ask about jewelry when she looked at his desk. It, too, was buried under papers. With so much paperwork, surely these guys were keeping careful track of what was coming in and going out. Yet, there was a layer of dust on some of the piles, which put flight to that notion.
There wasn’t a layer of dust on one piece of paper in the middle of the desk—a solid white eight-by-ten sheet without a word on it. Her eyes flicked over it and stopped—riveted by what was under it. A gun. A very serviceable-looking, dust-free revolver. Close at hand. Ready for…
“Oh dear, I just remembered the sitter has to be home early. We’ll have to catch you another time. Bye.” Faith dragged Tom out the door, despite his protests.
“I thought Samantha said she didn’t have anything on for tonight. Aren’t we going to catch a movie?”
Faith linked her arm tightly through his.
“Get in the car and drive. A gun. He has a gun. Sitting on his desk. Not even well hidden. Under a sheet of paper. Handy substitute for an in-and-out basket. We are way, way out of our league here.”
Tom blanched. “I would say so.” He did a gangster turn leaving the parking lot and contented himself with that.
“We are going to go to the movies, though, right?”
“After the kind of week we’ve had, I’d go to a revival of Heaven’s Gate.”
They turned onto the interstate, drove straight to Charlestown, ate unfashionably early, as one must to get a table at Olive’s, then parked the car near Harvard Yard and settled into the Brattle Theater. They’d picked an old film after all, the yearly revival of—what else?—Casablanca.
“I don’t want to get in the way of your other job, Faith, but I promised Tricia I’d take her to her mother’s today. I could meet you now, but I wouldn’t want you to be late for church or anything.” It was Scott Phelan on the phone, and, as usual, his voice was slightly mocking. He had figured prominently in Faith’s first foray into murder—or rather, solving it—and they had become good friends. He and his wife, Tricia, worked part-time for Faith. Scott’s full-time job was in Byford at an auto-body shop. Tricia was studying to be a beautician.
Faith was disappointed. She was still in an action mode and wanted to pump Scott for information about the denizens of the world of B and Es. She had wanted to wait until after Friday’s meeting with other victims, so she’d have as much information as possible, and she had hoped he’d be free this afternoon.
As a teenager, Scott had skated very near and sometimes over the letter of the law—truancy, unregistered, uninsured vehicles. He rode a motorcycle, and some of the police in Aleford and Byford still regarded him with suspicion. First impressions died hard, even though he proclaimed now that the love of a good woman, and her volatile temper, would keep him on the straight and narrow forever.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help. We’re mad as hell about what happened to you.” Scott was completely earnest now, the mocking tone gone. Faith pictured his handsome face, Tom Cruise’s good-looking younger brother. The rest of him matched, as well. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.
“We won’t be late, though. How about after supper? You want to meet at the Willow Tree?”
It was going to be a bit difficult explaining to Tom where she was going without actually lying, yet Faith was up to the challenge. She agreed to meet Scott, and Tricia, if she wanted to come along, at eight o’clock at the Concord hangout.
If Tom’s sermon was a bit sketchy, no one seemed to notice, except his wife, who had awakened with him at five to make him breakfast before he finished it. It had been her idea to spend the previous day at pawnshops, and neither had wanted to give up an evening out. After church, Faith threw together a pasta frittata, her old standby. Like zucchini frittata, or other variations, it depended on eggs to bind together the ingredients, which were quickly fried to a golden crisp on both sides in olive oil on the top of the stove. It neatly solved the problem of what to do with leftover pasta. In today’s case, the leftover was fettuccine with onions, tomatoes, and prosciutto. Faith added it to the beaten eggs, a dollop of light cream, pepper, salt, and grated cheese, mixed it well, then poured it, sizzling, into the pan.
“That smells fantastic. When do we eat?”
“Almost immediately. Ben is supposed to be setting the table.” He’d counted out the cutlery, but at the moment he was distracted by what else was in the drawer with the napkins. Amy was sitting in her high chair doing a fine imitation of Buddy Rich.
After lunch, the Fairchilds scattered. Some to nap—“rest quietly,” in Ben’s case; others to tend the garden and read the newspaper. Faith pulled a few weeds. The back door was still nailed shut, an omnipresent reminder of the break-in. The door had arrived from Concord Lumber, but without hinges. Apparently, obtaining these was more difficult than placing a new order for the whole thing all over again. Perhaps the best strategy was to expect everything to go wrong and then be pleasantly surprised by the things that did work out. She frowned and looked at the vegetable garden they’d been planting. Tom had had seedlings all over the house and either the temperature had been below freezing or the backyard awash with torrential rains. Everything was in the ground now, but it didn’t look as if the Fairchilds would be supplying Burpee with their surplus. “We’ll be lucky to have peas on the Fourth of July,” Tom had muttered darkly a few minutes ago, before settling into the hammock with the sports section. Peas on the Fourth—and salmon. Another of those quaint New England customs that started when some observant soul noted the concurrence of three events—early peas, new potatoes, and the run of eastern salmon. It neatly solved the problem of what to serve on the Fourth, the way Saturday-night supper meant baked beans and brown bread. Hinting at a culinary lack of imagination on the part of Tom’s forebears had resulted in an early Fairchild tiff, with husband taking the “What was good enough…” line and wife claiming the “Time to get out of the rut…” higher ground.
“Do you want to get that, or should I?” Tom called. The phone was ringing. Knowing well her husband’s innate dislike, bordering on distrust, of Bell’s invention, Faith sprinted for the front door and picked up the receiver just as the answering machine kicked in. Whoever it was waited patiently at Faith’s instruction to hold on until the message was over. Promptly at the beep, Courtney Cabot Bullock’s voice came over the line. “So sorry to trouble you on a Sunday,” she began. From the confident—and insincere—tone of her voice, Faith knew full well Mrs. Bullock wasn’t sorry at all. But she did have good manners.
“Stephanie said you wanted to meet this week to go over the final arrangements, and I have a fabric swatch for the tablecloth at last, so you can get busy with the flowers.” The implication being that Faith need search no more for something to fill the void of her existence—the Bullock women had come to her rescue.
“What day is good for you?” Faith said. She knew how to play. Any time she suggested would be inconvenient. Any time Courtney suggested would be fine.
“Well, the big day is less than two weeks away, so I do think we had better make it soon. Friday at three?”
Faith was almost positive Courtney had already written the engagement down in her book—in ink. “That will be fine,” she said. She’d have to take the kids. She wasn’t about to hire a sitter for a meeting with the Bullocks, and it would give Stephanie a glimpse into the future, although Stephanie’s maternal involvement would be limited to saying good night after the nanny had done all the work. When Faith had taken over the former Yankee Doodle Kitchens, she’d done extensive remodeling and built a play area with low shelves for books and toys, a soft carpet, beanbag chairs, even a chalkboard at the far end of the room. Ben and Amy loved going to work with Faith and it gave her the flexibility she needed. At three o’clock, Amy might be persuaded to nap in the large playpen Faith had stocked with FAO Schwarz’s best to lure her daughter, and Ben before her, into staying within the pen’s confines long after other children without such magnificent diversions had vocally yearned to be free.
“This is definite then, unless you hear from me otherwise.” No mention of Faith’s possibly canceling. One didn’t cancel the Bullocks.
“I’ll see you then. Thanks for calling.” Faith could be insincere too. “Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye—oh, and one other small matter.” Faith held her breath. Courtney continued. “When Stephanie was out at your place”—Faith pictured her making that coy little quotation marks gesture around the word place—“on Thursday, she mentioned to me afterward that she felt the teensiest bit unwelcome. Of course I assured her she was imagining the whole thing. Bridal jitters. She was imagining it, wasn’t she, Faith? I know what a wedding like this means to someone in your line of work.” Again those intimations—caterer, lady of the evening, whatever—they were all one and the same to Courtney. Tradespeople.
Faith jumped in quickly, not because she felt she had to curry favor with someone as influential as Courtney—although, damn it, the woman was. Have Faith regularly turned down bookings and had events scheduled into the millennium. No, it was the distinctly unpleasant prospect of catering the wedding when she was on the outs with the bride and the bride’s mother. It would be like the last days of a remodeling job, when the contractor and home owner invariably crossed swords over the punch list. It was hard enough working with these two ladies when they were all ostensibly friends. And, like it or not, the catering business depended on word of mouth, as much as what went into it. Courtney Cabot Bullock was not someone Faith wanted to offend.
Faith crossed her fingers. “Stephanie is welcome anytime. We’re always happy to see her—or you. And the wedding is going to be wonderful.” That part was true.
Faith pictured Courtney nodding to herself and crossing off item number seventy-five on her “To Do” list: “Chew out caterer.”
“Fine, that’s settled, then. See you Friday. Good-bye.”
What was settled was that Stephanie could continue to feel free to drop in whenever she wanted for cookies or anything else they were preparing. Mummy had taken care of everything. Clearly, Stephanie was bored being at home. Too many thank-you notes to write? Faith had heard about the avalanche of wedding presents ad nauseam. Or maybe the deb was getting on Courtney’s nerves, as well? “Why don’t you run along to Aleford, dear? Get out of Mummy’s hair?”
Faith waited until early evening to mention that she was going out. Tom was returning from a visit to a parishioner who was recovering from heart surgery. Faith had bathed the kids and put them to bed in the interim, hoping there would be some kind of sporting event to occupy her spouse while she left for her rendezvous with Scott. Tom and his entire family were ardent sports fans, favoring local teams, of course. Faith was still not sure when football was played—it seemed to be on TV all the time—yet she was pretty certain that spring meant baseball, and she was right.
Tom came racing through the front door. “We were watching the game, and I don’t think I missed much.” His kiss grazed her cheek and he went straight to the television, flinging himself into a comfortable, slightly decrepit club chair that had come with the house.
Faith appeared by his side a few minutes later with a bottle of Sam Adams beer and a bowl of pretzels. “If you get hungry, there’s a roast beef and Boursin sandwich in the fridge.” She knew he would be. “And some Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk in the freezer.” She’d planned her strategy well. “I have to talk to Scott and Tricia. I won’t be gone long.” She gave him a kiss, listened to his vague acknowledgment of her remarks, and was out the door before he could surface and voice his misgivings. He’d told her last night that as far as he was concerned, their investigation into their own and any other burglaries was now officially over. He’d said it a number of times—very firmly.
It was a short ride to the Willow Tree Kitchen, the place where Faith had first met Scott Phelan six years ago, after Cindy Shepherd was killed. The Willow Tree hadn’t changed much, nor had Scott, except he might be slightly better-looking. As for herself, Faith fancied that even the birth of a second child hadn’t caused a precipitous decline toward cellulite and silver threads among the gold. It wasn’t that she feared middle or even old age. She simply wanted to take a long time getting there.
Scott was already ensconced in his favorite booth. Before his marriage, he’d eaten at the Willow Tree every night. It was a regulars kind of place, and, in turn, the regulars knew what to order: the chili, beef stew, pea soup, or the nightly special. The clams and lobster in the summertime were surprisingly good and cheap, but the melted margarine killed the experience. The menu never changed. That is, the printed menu never changed. Veal Florentine had been a figment of the first owner’s imagination and there was no Weight Watchers plate.
Scott was nursing a beer, watching the game. The Red Sox were losing. A waitress appeared, putting another mug in front of him, together with a basket of huge baking powder biscuits, another of the reliable offerings. The Willow Tree waitresses bore a striking resemblance to one another. Maybe it was the way they dressed—starched lime green uniforms, pleated pastel hankies fanned out like peacocks’ tails from their pockets. Maybe it was that they all seemed to be the same age, somewhere between forty and sixty.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked Faith, her eyes on Scott. He was a favorite among them and they’d long ago adopted a maternal, protective air concerning the young man. Scott seemed to have brought himself up. His mother had moved to Florida when he was in junior high, leaving him to fend for himself. Tricia told her that Scott had lived in his car one year during high school, crashing at friends’ during the coldest weather and grabbing showers where he could. Faith had never heard him mention his father.
“Your chili will be up in a sec,” the waitress said to Scott while she waited for Faith to answer.
Never having fully recovered from the sight of the white wine she’d ordered arriving with a screw top on her first visit, Faith opted for a diet Coke.
“They’ve spruced the place up since the last time I was here,” Faith commented after Scott had explained that Tricia was home giving herself a facial for practice. “The curtains are new.” Incongruously, the small windows were framed with frilly white Priscilla-style eyelet. The Willow Tree was Ben Fairchild’s favorite place to eat, not for the superlative job they did with his hot dogs, but because of the decor—a taxidermist’s paradise. The long, low building was roughly divided into two rooms, the larger of which contained the bar. Throughout the interior, animals, ranging from a moth-eaten fox to a moth-eaten wild turkey, had all apparently been bagged, surrendering after a last-ditch effort to cling to life. Like the waitresses, they looked remarkably similar, no matter what the species. Scott had summed their expressions up as “Come one step closer and I’ll rip your guts out.” For young Ben Fairchild, the Willow Tree offered hideous, spine-tingling sensations unavailable anywhere else in his little world. Faith tried to position herself away from the glassy stares and snarling lips—or beaks—in favor of a view of the snowshoes, harnesses, and other New England paraphernalia gracing the walls, but it was impossible.
Her Coke arrived and she asked, “Did you have a nice time at Tricia’s mother’s?”
“What do you think?” Scott asked, and laughed. “Come on, Faith, we’ve known each other too long to chitchat. Now, what do you want me to do?”
“Find out who broke into my house—and the other ones, especially Sarah Winslow’s.”
He choked slightly on his draft. “You don’t ask for much, do you, lady!”
“That’s what I really would like you to do. I know it isn’t likely.” She told him about Friday night’s meeting and yesterday’s pawnshop tour. She also mentioned Mr. Monstrous.
“There’s a very special place in hell for those guys, so don’t worry about it—or take it personally. He wants to pay you as little as he can get away with. They get brownie points—or, more likely, bonuses—for that. You want to get as much as you can. Admit it. You’re mad and feel entitled, which you are. The way to go? Your policy probably gives you a lump sum for the silver and the jewelry and replacement value for a bunch of the other stuff. They broke your door. Forget Home Depot. Get a really good door, dead bolt, solid brass hardware, the works. They took a pillowcase, right? Go get a really nice pillowcase. Embroidered by French nuns, whatever. This is the way it works—and it’s how you get back at guys like him, too.”
Faith sighed. Being robbed was fast becoming another full-time job. She knew what Scott was talking about, and it was true. They hadn’t even thought to shop around for a new door, but ordered a quality one—as was the one that had been destroyed. She wasn’t sure about the pillowcase, though. If not fraud, it was getting close to fibbing. But Scott was already proving her hunch correct. Home invasions: This was a world he knew, from all angles.
In her fantasies, she pictured finding a parked van with everything intact, neatly stacked inside. She’d just have to put it all back in place. And, she reasoned, if any of her acquaintances would have an inkling of where such a van might be abandoned, it would be Scott and Scott alone. Pix was the type who returned the change she found on the floor in the Shop ’n Save to the manager.
“Not to cast aspersions on your past, or present, but is there anyone you could ask about who might have done these break-ins?”
“I have no idea what ‘aspersions’ are and don’t want to know, but I get the drift. Yeah, I can ask around. Don’t get your hopes up, though.” Faith was beginning to hate the sound of this expression. Scott elaborated.
“There are a lot of different loops in what you might call ‘the secondary market.’” Aspersions or no aspersions, Scott enjoyed letting people think him barely literate, even Faith, and here he was spouting off about “secondary markets.”
“You have your druggies, who go around the neighborhood at night trying back doors until they find an open one, with somebody’s pocketbook conveniently lying on the kitchen table, counter, or hanging from the back of one of the chairs. This is what most women do, and I can tell from your face that you’re one of them. Bingo! Grab the purse, take off, empty the money out, and throw the thing in some bushes or a Dumpster.”
“I knew I was right to go looking in Dumpsters!” Faith chortled. Tom and Charley MacIsaac had been annoyingly patronizing.
Scott raised an eyebrow and finished his beer. Another one appeared like magic. “Kids break in the same way—trying doors late at night. Fast, in and out with whatever they see that they can sell easily. Some kids like to refine it a little. Only rip off their parents’ friends—kind of killing two birds with one stone.
“Then there are the real pros, who have it down to a state of the art. Someone knows somebody has something they want or have a buyer for. You’re never going to get these stolen goods back or trace them. A lot of this quality merchandise gets sold at airport hotels—jewelry, artwork, antiques. It’s on the way to another continent often before the owner knows it’s gone. ‘Oh dear, what happened to my van Gogh while I was in Aruba?’
“Most B and Es are like yours. Especially the daytime ones. Case a house, wait until you’re sure it’s empty—they don’t want to see you any more than you want to see them—then strip it of the good stuff fast. The problem is that I’m not in this loop. I’m pretty careful to stay away from it, in fact. I could give you a fair idea of whose younger brother or sister might be trying the doorknobs and where you could get a nice stereo that fell off the back of a truck, but that’s about it.”
Faith was disappointed. She’d been sure Scott was going to be her personal guide through this particular underworld.
“What about the fact that in all our cases, they took only old things?”
“This is funny. Not that they took the old things, but that they left the rest. Doesn’t Tom have a new computer at the house?”
“Yes, and I have a laptop, remember? You’ve seen it at work. It was home in the downstairs closet. The closet door was open, so they obviously looked in there. The TV is fairly new, too.”
“Nobody bothers with a TV anymore, unless it’s one of those digital HDTVs, and only the Donald Trumps of the world have them yet. The rest are too cheap to bother with. Kind of like taking the toaster oven.”
“Do you think it’s a waste of time going around to more pawnshops?”
Faith had told Scott about her conversation with John Dunne and now Scott went back to it. “You know that Dunne is right. Whoever broke in has fenced everything good by now and dumped the rest. ‘Up somebody’s nose’ is a good way to put it, but it’s also true that the guy may have used the money for his rent and car payment. His kid’s orthodontia. It’s a living—not yours or mine, but it’s a living. Tax-free, except no benefits and not a steady paycheck.” Scott saw Faith’s look of disappointment and quickly added, “Still, I’d try the places in town; there are a bunch near the Jewelers Building at three thirty-three Washington Street, on Bromfield, the next street.”
“I know where that is,” Faith said, happy to have something more to do.
“Even if you don’t find anything, these guys have quality jewelry. You can pick up some things. But don’t pay what they ask. Maybe I should go with you. Or Tricia can. You’ve got ‘Kick me—I’m from the burbs’ written all over your face.”
Faith resented this. “You forget, I grew up in the Big Apple. Most Bostonians wouldn’t even get off the train in Grand Central for fear of being mugged.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re street-smart. Only, it was the apple, not the core.”
Faith couldn’t argue with that without revealing certain things in her past she’d sworn never to divulge, so she simply smiled enigmatically. The gesture was lost on Scott, who was reaching for the last biscuit. He broke it in half and offered part to Faith. She heard echoes of the day’s earlier church service, “Take and eat this…” It was a vastly different kind of communion, but the gesture still felt ceremonial.
They sat in companionable silence for a while. A spider had constructed an elaborate web between an elk’s antlers, and several dead flies were festooned there. Faith put her Coke down.
“What has our friend Stephanie been up to this week? Decided to change the date, go Hawaiian, what?” Scott and Tricia had never met any of the Bullocks, but they would be working at both the rehearsal dinner and reception. They reveled in the Stephanie stories, and whether there were any new ones had become the first question when they showed up for work.
“She dropped by on Thursday and proposed moving the rehearsal dinner from ‘Daddy’s’ to the Algonquin Club on Commonwealth Avenue in town. It wasn’t vintage Stephanie, not like lobster bisque being ‘too pink.’ Her heart wasn’t really in it. I think she’s running out of things. Niki sent her home to break in her bridal shoes.”
“They do that, you know. Tricia was wearing the damn things all over the apartment the week before we got married.” Tricia Phelan had informed Scott that she intended to get married only once and it was going to be “the whole nine yards,” not the elopement to the Cape that he’d envisioned.
If the Phelan nuptials had been nine yards, then the upcoming Bullock extravaganza would be nine hundred and ninety-nine.
“What do you think this is going to set ‘Daddy’ back?” Scott asked as he dug into a generous wedge of lemon meringue pie. He’d switched to coffee, and Faith followed suit. It never kept her awake.
“Niki and I sat down a couple of months ago when we had nothing better to do, or nothing we wanted to, and tried to figure it out. We know what we’re billing; it will be somewhere around thirty thousand dollars. Could go up to a million, though, now that we’re charging for changes.”
Scott let out a low whistle. Faith smiled. “Hey, that’s nothing. In New York City, a caterer considers a fifty-thousand-dollar wedding midrange. Twenty-five thousand gets you chicken and an old man with an accordion. Of course, the Bullocks don’t have to rent tents or a room, although I’m surprised Stephanie didn’t insist on flying everyone to Bavaria for a weekend at one of Mad Ludwig’s castles—you know, the Sleeping Beauty type. We are providing the tables and chairs, but not the tablecloths. Another savings, and so thoughtful of Courtney Bullock.”
“From everything I’ve heard, she seems to want to stick it to her ex every way she can.”
Faith nodded. “She was so mad at one point when he refused to pay for the kind of roses she wanted for Stephanie’s bouquet—they grow in only one tiny village in Provence—that I thought the whole thing would be put on hold while she sued him for breach of fatherhood, or anything else she could fabricate to cover his ‘maniacal penury’—her words. She was also goading Stephanie to consider a wedding dress embroidered in gold-bullion thread!”
Scott was slowly shaking his head back and forth. “It’s hard to imagine people having that kind of money. They’ll end up dropping more on this wedding than we’ll spend on a house someday.”
“Easily. We haven’t even mentioned clothes, hair, makeup. Then there’s the band, and photographer, limos, and invitations. Binky’s had to cough up for the rings and his expenses. I doubt his morning coat will be rented.”
“And Julian Bullock has this much dough?”
“Apparently. Courtney has her own nest egg, too, I believe. She was amused, not angry, because Julian wouldn’t pay for her mother-of-the-bride dress. ‘Just like old times,’ Stephanie told us she’d said.”
Scott stood up and stretched. “I’ve got to get going. Work tomorrow. I guess I’d better start saving for the ladder I’m going to give any daughter we might have.”
“As if Tricia would ever let you get away with that,” Faith teased.
“You may be right, but Tricia knows what makes sense and what doesn’t. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that’s over in a few hours is nuts.”
They walked out into the parking lot together. It was dark, and Faith realized that she hadn’t been paying attention to the time. The small windows at the Willow Tree didn’t let in much light and, in any case, time didn’t pass so much as crawl once you were inside. The baseball game was long over. She had no idea who had won.
“Well, good night—and thanks, Scott.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Yes, you have. I know a whole lot more than I did two hours ago.”
“Me too.” She could see his broad grin in the warm darkness. Damn, he was good-looking.
She was halfway to her car when she heard him call. She waited for him to come closer.
“Faith.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Faith, you’ve got to let this go. Get on with your life. Tom, the kids. Believe me, you could make yourself crazy, and it will all be for nothing in the end. Let it go.” He dropped his hands and disappeared into the night.
Faith had automatically walked up the back stoop before stopping herself and turning toward the front door. The hall light was on, but the rest of the downstairs was dark. She took her shoes off and crept up the stairs and into the bedroom, feeling like a teenager who has broken curfew.
The light on Tom’s side of the bed went on the moment she crossed the threshold, flooding the room. She froze.
“Tom, I…”
He patted the bed. “Why don’t you come over here and tell me what’s going on?”
She dropped her shoes and padded over to sit on the bed, leaning against him. It was tempting to turn the light off and simply spend the whole night this way. She felt her eyes close.
“I met Scott over at the Willow Tree. I thought he might have some ideas. Not that he’d ever be involved in anything like these break-ins, but he might know someone who might know someone. That kind of thing.”
“And did he?”
“No, but I learned a lot about different kinds of robberies. He told me some pawnshops in Boston I could try and—”
“Okay, but what’s going on, Faith? What’s going on with you? Where are you?”
She knew what her husband was talking about. These were questions she’d been asking herself.
“I feel…it’s hard to describe. I feel very alone, very empty. Every day I wake up and do all the things I’m supposed to do and tell myself how lucky I am to have my life, yet nothing seems real. Sometimes people’s voices seem to be coming from far away or I’ll drive to work and not remember getting in the car, and the trip is over. It’s been like this since I found Sarah, found her tied up like that.”
Tom pulled the covers off and drew his wife close to him. She stretched out and let her head fall onto his shoulder.
“The only times I feel like me are when I’m out there doing something about all this, but then later it seems like a waste of time.”
She’d dropped off a copy of the results of Friday’s meeting, neatly typed up by Pix, at the police station on Saturday afternoon, before they’d headed north. Charley hadn’t turned any cartwheels, even after she’d pointed out the similarity in the days and some of their other conclusions. That night, sleepless as usual, she’d been forced to face the fact that they really hadn’t come up with anything significant.
“Is there some way you could let it go?” Tom asked. “Something I could do to help you get there?” Déjà vu all over again, and what were the odds of having two extremely attractive men offer virtually identical advice within the space of one hour?
“I wish there was. Getting another adjuster will help. And things are busy next week. I doubt I’ll have time to think of anything except radish roses and crystallized violets.”
“Do you want to talk to someone about it all? Maybe get something to help you sleep?”
Faith knew it was the sensible thing to do, but it seemed like an enormous effort at the moment.
“There are other cures for insomnia, darling.”
“Imagine that somebody stole your little electronic organizer or your Filofax—or both.” Faith could hear her sister’s sharp intake of breath over the several hundred miles of telephone wire that separated them. Hope had called Tuesday morning to offer the same advice Faith seemed to be getting from every quarter: Let it go.
“When you put it like that—”
“Exactly,” Faith interrupted. “You’d be doing the same things I’m doing.”
“And the police don’t have any leads?”
“If they do, they aren’t sharing them with us, and I very much doubt they do. The town is filled with rumors. Someone saw a man with a duffel bag in a backyard up on Hastings Hill Saturday night and called the police. The man, if he existed, either disappeared—rumor number one—or gave the police a phony address, which they didn’t realize was wrong until they got back to the station and checked a telephone book—rumor number two.”
“The whole thing makes me absolutely sick, Fay.” Hope was happily the only one who ever used this nickname, and for most of her life Faith had been trying to think of a way to tell her sister how much she disliked it. “How are the kids? Not to change the subject.”
“I’m glad to. You’re not the only one who thinks I’m obsessed. The kids are fine. Amy is right on schedule, chugging along toward two. She gets these sudden fits of wanting something and wanting it now. Ben watches in fascination, and I don’t dare let her get away with anything. It would be the thin end of the wedge for both of them.”
“But that little face! How can you say no?” Hope and Quentin had made it clear that children, unless they came packaged and with a guarantee, would not be forcing them to face down their co-op board for many a moon, if ever. So she could say silly things like this. Faith didn’t bother to respond.
“I have to go. There’s a show house over in Byford that Marian wants to see and I’m going with her. You were terrific to call. Love you.” The two sisters hung up, each relieved that they weren’t in the other’s shoes. Hope’s Bruno Maglis were terrifyingly corporate, as far as Faith was concerned, and her clothes were so boring—a row of dark suits in the closet.
She pulled on an Armani black linen skirt, tucking in a Dana Buchman ivory silk blouse with full sleeves, tight at the cuffs. It had tiny covered buttons, like those on old-fashioned bridal gowns. Stephanie Bullock had firmly rejected white tulle and lace. She and Courtney had both headed for Vera Wang in New York almost before Binky could struggle up from his knees. Faith had seen Stephanie’s dress and it was gorgeous. What Faith would have selected herself had she not worn her mother’s dress. Courtney’s dress had been described as a column of pearl gray silk, pleated like Fortuny silk—no mauve lace or turquoise chiffon for this mother of the bride. The woman had certainly kept her figure. Hats had been in, then out so many times that Faith wasn’t sure what the Bullock women or attendants would have on their heads come the wedding day.
She was about to get the silver necklace she usually wore with this outfit, a curve of sterling made by the craftsman Ronald Hayes Pearson, when she reminded herself that it was gone. Disparu. This happened more times than she would have thought possible. She’d reach for a piece of jewelry, only to come up against the same old wall. She didn’t have any. To speak of, that is. She clasped the gold chain they had bought at the pawnshop in Lowell around her neck. It was very pretty and similar to the one stolen, but it didn’t feel like hers. Not yet anyway. For an instant, she felt a tiny prickling sensation around her neck. Whose was it? The pins and needles went away as she reminded herself of what Tom had said when they bought it: “It’s here. It’s for sale and you’ll give it a good home. And I mean that literally. Nobody has a more beautiful, exquisitely kissable neck than my wife.” He’d whispered the latter part in what was supposed to be a sexy voice, but given that it was Tom, it sounded more like an Eagle Scout swearing allegiance. He came close to sensual when he adopted a French accent, but this had also been known to cause the object of his desire to burst into gales of laughter.
Faith leaned over and brushed her hair, then stood up and let it fall into place. Well-meaning friends had burbled on about what fun it would be to buy new things once the insurance money came through. She felt immensely sorry for herself. They had no idea what they were talking about. The next person to say something like that was going to get a smack. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Maybe it would be Millicent.
Tom had agreed to pick the kids up and give them lunch so the two women in his life could have this time together. Faith liked her mother-in-law—especially once they’d ironed out the question of what Faith should call her. Mother Fairchild, Marian’s suggestion, had been too reminiscent of a convent, and Faith did not consider herself a novice. The use of Mrs. Fairchild took them through most of the engagement, but then Tom’s Dad had stepped in and announced that it would be Marian and Dick. Much better than all the pussyfooting around he’d observed Faith doing, he’d said, and infinitely preferable to “Hey, you.” Ben called them Granny and Gramps, which was what they most cared about at this point.
She grabbed her bag. Marian would be here any minute and she wasn’t a woman you kept waiting, particularly when there was a show house in the vicinity.
Some got their kicks from champagne; Marian Fairchild got hers from viewing the latest trends in balloon shades and the newest staple- and glue-gun tricks. She was unabashed about her passion for seeing other people’s houses—after all, what better pastime for a realtor’s wife? The South Shore was filled with Fairchild enterprises—Fairchild’s Ford, Uncle Bob in Duxbury; Fairchild’s Market, like Fairchild’s Real Estate, also in Norwell and originally owned by Tom’s grandparents. There were no Fairchilds associated with the market now, but the name would go on forever. Any change would elicit an outpouring of wrath and sharp decline in custom on the part of the people who had “always” shopped there.
“Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?”
Faith flew down the stairs, glad she’d left the front door open. Marian was in the dining room, staring at the sideboard in shock.
“I know you said they took the drawer, but I suppose I didn’t believe it until now.” She put her arms around Faith.
Marian Fairchild was in her late fifties and wore outfits that varied only in regard to the fibers—wool or cotton, depending on the season. The cardigan sweaters with grosgrain ribbon matched the A-line or pleated skirts. Today, her round-collared blouse was a bright Liberty print. She carried one of those wooden-handled pocketbooks that had coverings like slipcovers. They buttoned on and off. The tartans of winter had given way to a bright pink linen that picked up the colors of her blouse. Her sweater and skirt were pale green. Her headband matched. Tall, like all the Fairchilds, Marian had great posture and was very fit. Her hair was thick and so white, she looked like the peroxide blonde she never was. Her bright pink Coty lipstick always appeared slightly smudged, bleeding into the tiny wrinkles around her lips—and except for some laugh lines, the only wrinkles Faith had detected.
“We’ll take my car. It’s out front. Lunch first, then the house—or the other way around?”
“Either way is fine with me.”
“Then let’s eat. I was up early and I’m famished.”
The closest thing to a tearoom—which was what Faith thought of as a mother-in-law type of place for lunch, especially her mother-in-law—was in Byford itself, not far from the show house.
Over three kinds of finger sandwiches—cream cheese on date and nut bread, curried chicken salad on buckwheat walnut, and cucumber on white—and the inevitable garden salads, the two women covered everything from the robbery to what to do about Amy’s new habit of getting out of her crib several times a night: “Put her back.” Marian’s sympathy was balm to Faith’s soul; the only fly in the ointment being the elder Mrs. Fairchild’s disconcerting habit of suddenly asking, “Did they get the mother-of-pearl fish-serving pieces the Conklins gave you as a wedding present?” or “Is Great-Aunt Phoebe’s cameo ring gone? You know, the shell cameo with the head of Plato that had her name inscribed inside?” Each time, feeling masses of guilt wash over her, Faith had to say, “Yes, it’s gone. Everything’s gone. Everything.”
When they’d finished their strawberries and clotted cream, Marian summoned the waitress, who bore a striking resemblance to one of the ones at the Willow Tree, asked for the check, and announced to Faith, “Lunch is on me, dear. You need a little treat after what you’ve been through. No, I won’t hear of it.” She put up her hand in an imperious gesture, reminding Faith of Tom’s description: “Mom was the tough one. We could never get around her. She’d do this thing with her hand like a traffic cop, and if you knew what was good for you, you just shut up and obeyed.”
Faith did.
The street the show house was on was lined with cars. Marian found a parking place and they joined several other women walking up the slight hill toward the large Victorian house, site of this year’s event. Faith felt oddly like a pilgrim. Thoughts of cockleshells and the Wife of Bath crossed her mind. Marian had stayed focused. “I think this one is to raise money for hunger. Not for hunger—you know what I mean. Each room is supposed to represent a different historical period, although I don’t know why they just didn’t stick to Victorian to match the exterior. It’s a gorgeous house.”
The perfectly restored stately Victorian had been painted a soft purple, with white trim and black shutters. A large porch wrapped around the front and it was filled with wicker furniture and flowering plants. The front garden was equally spectacular. A hedge of white lilacs separated it from the street and the fragrance brought Faith back to Winslow Street and the day Sarah died. She reached over and looped her arm through Marian’s. Her mother-in-law smiled.
“They totally redid the gardens for this. The house belongs to a young couple. They moved to a condominium for several months while the decorators took over. They don’t get to keep anything except the window treatments—and of course the floors have all been redone, walls painted and papered. And the garden. They keep that. I wish they’d do my house.”
Faith thought of the mountain of objects filling the large Norwell Dutch Colonial. It was not exactly a decorator’s dream; more like a phantasm appearing after too much rich food at bedtime.
They had their tickets. A woman standing beside the front door and dressed exactly like Marian but in different hues took them, dropping the stubs into a beribboned basket.
“Welcome, ladies. You can tour the house in any way you wish, but we think if you start here in the foyer, moving to the dining room, then the living room and kitchen before going upstairs, you’ll get the best effect. Plan to spend a lot of time on the third floor. It’s an old-fashioned girl’s bower. The committee has a few gift items for sale there, which I’m sure you won’t want to miss.” She handed them each a booklet listing the names of the decorators for the various rooms, sponsors, and advertisers. Faith looked at the number of women roaming about on a weekday and realized that show houses meant big money.
“Oh, look, Faith, don’t you like the way they’ve stenciled the floor? For a moment, I thought it was parquet, but it’s paint. Now, that wouldn’t be hard. It’s merely a series of diamond shapes. All you need is masking tape and paint.”
“And someone to do it,” Faith commented. Her idea of do-it-yourself was dialing the phone.
The foyer, which was almost as large as Faith’s dining room, was lovely. The tall windows let in the light and the decorator had wisely left them almost bare, looping some sheer muslin across the top and letting it hang down to the floor on each side. In one corner, there was a small fireplace surrounded by the original Minton tiles in teal blue and white. The walls had been lacquered and glazed in the same blue.
Marian had a little notebook out and was busily jotting down ideas. She was a great one for gluing pinecones she’d sprayed gold onto Styrofoam forms and putting up potpourri from her garden, but Faith had yet to see her mother-in-law carry out anything more complicated. To be fair, it would be hard to find the time. Marian’s volunteer work alone constituted at least two full-time jobs. Then, she was always pitching in at the office, or rushing to help one of her brood. Dick Fairchild had recently taken a partner, Sheila Harding, acknowledging at long last the unlikelihood that any of his children would take over the business. Sheila was a “crackerjack,” according to Dick: “Keeps her ear so close to the ground, I swear she’ll grow roots one of these days!” But Marian still liked to keep her hand in. Faith suspected it was more that she liked to view people’s houses, especially in her own town.
Marian leaned over and lowered her voice. “Pier 1 pots, but they look expensive here. Besides, put anything on a sconce on the wall and people assume it’s worth a lot.”
Faith filed this tip away for much-future reference. She’d be in a parsonage of some sort for most of her life and these usually did not offer up much scope for the imagination. The Fairchilds had built a small house on Sanpere Island in Maine last summer and as far as decorating went, she was thinking IKEA.
“What a wonderful dining room. So big!” Marian exclaimed. “People had larger families in those days; even though the table is set for twelve, it could hold more.”
Here the decorator had stuck to traditional Victoriana—huge mirrors reflected the ornately carved dark furniture. A Boston fern the size of a small shrub stood in the bow window. Heavy fringed damask drapes in the hue known as ashes of roses—Faith had gleaned this from Marian—framed the windows. The tassels of the tiebacks fell in carefully arranged silken heaps on the deep blue and ivory Oriental carpet.
Marian was standing transfixed by the place settings. Faith was glad she had found the time to be with her mother-in-law; she was obviously having such a good time.
Just as Faith was about to trot out her own abundant store of knowledge—the plates were early Spode—she was stunned to see Marian grab one of the crisp white napkins from the table, sending the Tiffany Audubon sterling forks clanging against the fruit-laden epergne centerpiece. Stripping the ring off, Marian Fairchild flung the serviette to the ground and exclaimed, “This napkin ring! It’s Tom’s! As if I wouldn’t know it anywhere. His initials are as plain as day. And here are Ben’s and little Amy’s!” Napkins were flying every which way.
The hostess whose job it was to prevent overfamiliarity with the decor was moving swiftly from her chair by the door to the rescue. Marian put up her hand. The woman froze, stunned by both the gesture and Mrs. Fairchild’s words: “Somebody call the police! These are stolen goods!”