The Body in the Cast ff-5

by Katherine Hall Page

  “I agree, but we do have to tell them somehow that something terrible hasn't happened to her. Penny, why don't you write a letter saying you are fine and left be- cause you needed some time to think or something like that? I can say it was in our mailbox, I know not how.”

  Penny was enthusiastic. "I can't thank you enough, and I'm sure they'll find out who did this soon. Maybe they have already. In the meantime, you know where I am. I think I'll stay indoors a bit more and eat at the Y for the time being."

  “What about the election?" asked Pix. "I hope you're not thinking of withdrawing?"

  “It did cross my mind. James would do a fine job, but it doesn't seem right when so many people have worked so hard.”

  She's afraid of Millicent, too, Faith thought.

  “Of course, I can't stay at the Y forever," Penny mused. "I do hope the police will be quick.”

  The police, with a little help from their friend. Faith was sure she would be able to figure out who had killed Alden. The funeral was the next day. People in medieval times believed that the corpse would bleed again if the murderer walked by. She'd have to keep a sharp eye out for red drops on the blue chancel carpet.

  Back in Aleford, Pix dropped Faith off at her front door and slipped Penny's letter in Faith's mailbox. There had been a convenience store across from the Y and Penny had bought some envelopes and a pad. "Such a shame I can't use this time to catch up on my correspondence. I owe so many people letters" She'd brightened at the thought "Why not write them and mail them when I get home?" With that happily decided, Faith and Pix had left her to go home themselves.

  Tom was in his study and miraculously both children were sound asleep, judging from the quiet that reigned. Faith thought it a bit suspect to walk in carrying the letter, so she let it lie where it was. Better for Tom to find it when the mail came.

  “Any luck?”

  On the drive back to Aleford, Faith had agonized over what to say to her husband. Pix had a similar problem with Sam. They had decided to seek refuge in confidentiality.

  “Such a funny word, `luck.' " Faith stalled. "So much of the course of our lives is determined by chance encounters, lucky or otherwise.”

  Tom didn't mince any words. "So you did find Penny.”

  “I can't really talk about all this yet, darling, but the moment I can, you will be the first to know"

  “And I'm supposed to take comfort from that?" He regarded his wife closely. "I hope you and Pix know what you're doing. In fact, I'd like to believe it ..."

  “Here comes the but," Faith interjected.

  “Forget the but—all the buts—and just be careful. Please."

  “I promise," Faith swore. This was certainly the most confusing case she'd ever been involved in, yet she truly believed nothing posed any threat to her personally.

  However, it was a little difficult to maintain objectivity when Tom came into the kitchen with the mail, the letter from Penny, stamp uncanceled, already opened.

  “And what are we supposed to tell Charley about this?"

  “About what?" Faith began, but it was her husband, after all. "Oh, Tom. You tell him you don't know how it got there, and you don't."

  “I tell him. So that's it. if you're not there in person, there hasn't been any subterfuge."

  “Something like that. Now I have to get going. I talked to Niki and everything is ready for tonight, but I want to be there early to check. I hear Amy stirring, and Ben will not be far behind. I'll get the kids up and I've written down what's for dinner. They can watch Winnie-the-Pooh tapes on TV until then, which might not be according to Brazelton, but I'm beginning to think the reach may permanently exceed my grasp."

  “Whoa there. I never thought I'd be saying these words to my spouse, but I'm going to give you twenty-four hours, then we go to the police and you and Pix tell all. I'm assuming there's a very, very, very good reason you're not saying where Penny is, because I'm afraid all this more than qualifies as impeding the course of an investigation.”

  Privately, Faith thought Tom was being a little highhanded with his time limit and three verys, but she agreed.

  “All right, except give us until Saturday. I have the funeral tomorrow, then work. We may need a bit more time."

  “For what?"

  “I'm not sure," she admitted, "but it's not only time for us to try to figure out what's been going on. It's also to allow the police to track down the killer."

  “Very gracious of you.”

  The eulogy must be going extremely slowly. Tom was almost never sarcastic. She gave him a big kiss. "Why don't you run the letter over to the chief while I get the kids up? I love you."

  “I love you, too," he said ruefully.

  One of the occupational hazards of being married to a minister was that one ended up attending a great many funerals. Over time, Faith expected to become inured to 260 the solemn ritual and finality of the service, which always prompted fervent prayers of her own for the wellbeing of everyone she knew, but at the moment she was far from it. Alden Spaulding's obsequies were no exception, and she sat in church the next morning reciting a litany, starting with Tom and the children and extending to Mr. Reilly, who brought fresh eggs from his chickens to the parsonage, along with pumpkins in the fall and pansies in the spring.

  The church was filled to capacity, despite the bad weather. It was cold and a light rain was falling. Faith recognized many Alefordians, but there were also strangers, and she doubted if all were loyal workers from COPYCOPY come to pay their last respects. More likely, they were those odd individuals drawn to the spectacle by their own lurid imaginations, fed by the media. It was ghoulish, like those drivers who slowed down to get a really good look at an accident.

  The organist was playing. Brahms, Faith thought. She was fairly good at classical music after years of listening to it at church and at home—Tom Petty and other heartbreakers of her adolescence had been relegated strictly to her Walkman.

  The slow, sad strains sent her mind wandering pensively to an odd conversation she'd had the night before with Maxwell Reed during one of the breaks in the shooting. She'd been alone in the kitchen, preparing a new tray of sandwiches to take upstairs. He'd come to get a bottle of his Calistoga water. After learning of his penchant from Cornelia, she had stocked plenty for him and anyone else who wanted it. When he'd walked in with his request, Faith had wondered why the PA or someone else wasn't doing the fetching and carrying. He'd answered her unspoken thought.

  “Wanted to get away for a minute and it's too damn cold to go outside.”

  He'd sat down in one of the chairs at the table and Faith had gone about her business as silently as possible. But it was not solitude he'd sought. It was an audience, a small audience. He was in his ubiquitous corduroy pants and a crew-necked sweater over a turtleneck. The sweater had a hole in the sleeve. He hadn't shaved in a while and Faith could see there was a lot of white coming in. It didn't show so much in his blond hair, standing on end now as if he'd been running his hand through it all night. He looked rumpled but full of energy.

  He took off his thick-lensed glasses and polished them on his sleeve. His eyes were fantastic deep pools of blue in which a girl might seriously consider drowning.

  “When I'm making a picture, nothing else matters to me. I don't think about anything else. If I could, I'd have everyone live on the set and shoot around the clock. I suppose this seems pretty callous in light of all that has happened.”

  Faith made an appropriate noncommittal murmur.

  “It will hit me later. When it's in the can. I don't want to think about Sandra now. Or that old guy, whoever he was.”

  He'd gone to the fridge and taken another bottle of water, then returned to the table.

  “Maybe I'm a hypocrite. Pretending what I'm doing is so God Almighty important that I don't have to think about other things. My wife. My kid.”

  The man had clearly been on the couch, and Faith was certain she was a stand-in. She nodded and asked a question.
The role called for it."Your wife?"

  “Yeah, Evelyn. We've been married for years. Goipg public is not good for her image or maybe for mine, either. But everybody knows:' Everybody did not know. Cornelia didn't and Faith was sure Sandra Wilson hadn't known, either.

  “Hypocrisy" Max was continuing to associate freely. "The Scarlet Letter is a story about hypocrisy—maybe that's what drew me to it in the first place. I never read it when I was a kid. I picked it up a couple of years ago and it blew me away. All the phoniness. All those people pretending to be something or someone they weren't. The townspeople. Chillingworth. Even Hester. She put the letter on, but she didn't feel guilty. She'd have done the same thing all over again, even though she was married. And Cappy, I mean Dimmesdale, he didn't get caught, but he was guilty—not so much for the adultery as for the cover-up. He didn't deserve her. Hawthorne knew that. That's why he killed him off. The governor's sister, the witch, is the only truth-teller. I see A as the perfect metaphor for the hypocrisy of our time—the Watergates, the Irangates, the fucking of a whole country.”

  It would be the rain forest soon, Faith was sure.

  “And the environment. Yeah." He'd closed his eyes. "When we move up from Hester and Dimmesdale in the forest, we'll go high enough to show a dump or some nuclear power plant. Something toxic." He'd opened his eyes and focused his gaze on Faith for the first time. "Anything like that around here?" He hadn't waited for an answer, but bolted out the door. "Thanks for making me think of the idea—oh, and the food is great.”

  After he'd left, Faith considered once and for all abandoning her Reed/Chillingworth theory. This was a man who would never have done anything that would get in the way of making his picture—unless, of course, he had an ingenue PA who could replace the star. Maybe Faith wouldn't totally give up on it yet. There was still the strong possibility Evelyn was the intended victim. f there was ever an example of an obsessive personality, it was Maxwell Reed. f he thought Evelyn was having an affair with Cappy, that might have goaded him into thinking the picture would be even more of a masterpiece with Sandra. He might not actually have planned to kill the one he loved, just make her very, very sick.

  Alden's last rites were moving right along. Tom had managed to get Dan Garrison to participate, asking him to read a psalm, Psalm 90. Dan read well and did justice to the beautiful words: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." He continued on, soon reaching "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee; our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.”

  On the other side of the aisle, two rows ahead of Faith, Audrey Heuneman stood up when Dan said " `secret sins.' " She was a petite woman with short light brown hair, always well dressed. She was standing very straight and very still. She looked taller. Dan stopped, momentarily startled, then went on with the reading. Audrey seemed about to speak. Sitting at her side, James's face was an enigma—was it pain, sadness, embarrassment? Perhaps all three. His wife reached for her coat and left the pew, walking rapidly down the aisle. James followed immediately. The front door closed with a bang behind them.

  The thrill-seekers had gotten their thrill.

  Ten

  It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

  Every bone in Faith's body wanted to follow the Heunemans down the aisle, even as her mind was sensibly alerting her to the further scandal that would cause. The funeral was already destined to join such other historic notables as Peter Smyth's—the casket lid fell off when the pallbearers tilted slightly to the left—and Susannah Prebble's—her daughter wore a crimson beaded cocktail dress.

  Faith had a pretty good idea of what Alden Spaulding's "secret sins" might have been in regard to Audrey Heuneman. The Bartletts hadn't been watching as closely as they thought.

  Instead of dashing off to test her theory, Faith had to remain where she was through Tom's eloquently circumspect eulogy, which segued from involvement in civic activities immediately to ah, sweet mystery of life—and death. By the time they all rose for the last hymn, "I Cannot Think of Them as Dead," she was ready to scream, not sing.

  And there was still the burial service to endure before she could talk to Audrey. At least Faith didn't have to work today. The filming the night before had ended much earlier than Tuesday's, but Max had decided not to go on location until the afternoon. Apparently, he was going to spend the morning with Nils, going over the dailies and figuring out where they were. Despite recent events, the picture was on schedule. The producers would be pleased.

  This meant no lunch, only snacks and the craft services table, which Pix and Niki were handling. Faith figured she could pick up Amy at the sitter's and then pay a call on the Heunemans. She'd already arranged for Ben to play at a friend's in case the funeral went past his schooltime.

  The Spaulding family plot was at Mt. Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, thirty minutes from Aleford. The time to be in Mt. Auburn—for the living, that is—was in the spring, when its beautifully landscaped 164 acres were in full bloom. The venerable garden cemetery was the final resting place of many famous people, serving as a pleasant and—of course—educational outing for Cantabrigians and their neighbors. One of Faith's favorite spots was Mary Baker Eddy's grave, complete with an apocryphal story of a telephone to God on the site. Such a device would certainly make life easier, but even with call waiting, it would, no doubt, be impossible to get through. She drove past the impressive monument, following several cars behind the hearse and attendant limousine carrying Daniel Garrison, his wife, and poor Tom. A minister's lot was often not a happy one. Faith had insisted on her own transport and desperately hoped she could get out of going back to the Garrisons' for the baked meats after the service.

  She parked and went over to the new grave. The press had been barred from both services, contenting themselves with exterior shots. And the interest of the ghouls at the church service had apparently not been sufficient for the drive to Cambridge. There were very few people to say the final farewell to Alden. Which made Charley MacIsaac and John Dunne stand out all the more. Faith was not surprised to see them and assumed they must have been sitting in the church balcony earlier, keeping an eye on things. Dunne had told her once that it was amazing how many murderers were unable to resist the temptation to attend their victims' funerals. Whether it was from a fear that they might not have done a thorough enough job, remorse, or simply to gloat, they came. Remembering this, Faith looked at the faces gathered around the elaborate coffin, heaped with mounds of gladioli, presumably by direction of the deceased, as was everything else—save Audrey's performance—at the services. As Faith waited for Tom to find his place, she wondered whether she would like these flowers better if they were not so indelibly associated with headstones. It was one of life's many unanswerable questions—along with who among those gathered here this morning, heads bowed, hands clasped, might have picked up the two-by-four that irretrievably knocked Alden out of the running for selectman.

  Faith eliminated herself, Tom, Charley, and John to start, then slowly examined the others. Most were known to her—parishioners—and it was hard to imagine what possible reasons they could have had for killing Alden. Disliking him, yes, but actually committing a mortal sin, no. Dan Garrison was not a member of First Parish, but again, why would he want to get rid of Alden just when the man might be at the point of attaining a position of power in the town? A position in which he might even be able to throw a little work in the path of his friend's contracting business.

  The person emerging as a distinct possibility was not with them. She'd tried to sit through Alden's funeral rites and couldn't. Still, she hadn't been able to stay home. Faith wished Tom weren't doing such a good job and would speed things up a bit. She wanted to talk to Audrey. Audrey, who just happened to bump a table, sending an urn of hot coffee Alden's way. Audrey, who had publicly declared that if Alden thought he was going to win the election
, he was dead wrong.

  And he was.

  In the end, Faith knew better than to skip the Garrisons' postfuneral gathering. The congregation might think she was neglecting her husband's duties. Once again, John Dunne and Charley Maclsaac were in attendance. They must be seeing a great deal of each other lately, she thought. Their friendship, dating back to Faith's own maiden voyage on the waters of detection, seemed to have increased markedly during subsequent investigations. They were sitting side by side in two chairs by the picture window in the Garrisons' 1950s split-level, which was not the one remodeled on "This Old House" Dunne's head was slightly inclined toward Charley, who seemed to be regaling him with the life histories of everyone in the room. Charley had a tumblerful of something other than fruit juice and Dunne was drinking coffee. A plate stacked high with spongy white-bread finger sandwiches sat on a table between them. The mound was steadily diminishing as each man systematically reached for another as soon as one passed his lips. They reminded Faith of Ben's book Frog and Toad Are Friends. The moment they saw her, they both rose. To save them the trouble—and because they looked so quaint, if that was indeed the right word—she went over and pulled up a chair.

  She figured she could circle the room, thank the Garrisons, whisper something in Tom's ear, and be out in fifteen minutes. She'd kept her coat on, the black one, but unbuttoned it, revealing a dark gray Nipon suit. However, first she knew what was coming.

  “We understand you've been getting some interesting mail lately," John said between mouthfuls.

  Charley gave her a baleful look. "Come on, Faith, the stamp wasn't even canceled. How did you get that letter?"

  “I suppose it must have been delivered by hand. We were certainly relieved to learn Penny was all right." She crossed her legs, considered a sandwich, and then came to her senses.

  “I don't think the lady is telling us everything, Charley. Remind me of this the next time she wants to know something like whose fingerprints we found on the light switch in the Town Hall's basement.”