“I thought the lavender ladies always worked in pairs.”
“Not in the old days when there were fewer Pilgrims. To tell you the truth, I have a feeling that rule was put in place because I befriended Susan. I knew who she was before that, of course, since she and her sister were local girls.”
“What about the other Pilgrims? Did Susan ever say where they came from?”
Margaret frowned, trying to remember. After a moment, she rummaged in a drawer for a notepad and pencil and returned with them to the kitchen island. Liss scooted her stool closer so she could see what her aunt was writing.
“Right from the start, they were almost all couples out there. Two by two, like the animals on Noah’s Ark.” Margaret’s mouth puckered into a moue of distaste. “That never made any sense to me, especially after Susan told me that the women all slept in the house while the men bunked in another building.”
“Makes you wonder how they ended up with a child.”
Holding her pencil in midair, Margaret’s hand froze. “There’s a child out there?”
“Only one that I saw. She’s named Kimmy and belongs to Laurel Miller.”
“Solomon Miller. That’s the husband’s name.” She’d written “Hadley and Miranda Spinner” and “Jasper and Susan Spinner” on the first two lines and now added “Solomon and Laurel Miller” on a third.
“Jasper remarried. His widow’s name is Chloe.”
Margaret added her to the list. “The other people Susan talked about were Connie and George Gerard and Diana . . . Carter? No, Collins. I don’t remember her husband’s name.” She added them to her list. “I think that’s everyone who was at Pilgrim Farm twelve years ago.”
“What about Charles Knapp? I thought Hadley, Jasper, George, and Charles were the original four who founded the group.”
“I’d forgotten about Charles.” She added his name. “He was the exception to the rule. He was still single. Susan told me that he fell in love with a Moosetookalook girl, but her family broke it up. She was smart, whoever she was, to let wiser heads prevail.”
Mary Ruskin, Liss thought, but she didn’t enlighten her aunt. Mary’s past was not her secret to share.
“I suppose he’s married by now,” Margaret said.
“His wife is that Anna I told you about, the one who cleans for Audrey.” Liss repeated what Anna had told her about meeting Charles and marrying him, even though he was still a virtual stranger.
Margaret’s expression was grim as she wrote down Anna’s name. “Foolish, foolish girl. I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Who else is out there?”
“Polly Callahan and Denise Fontaine are the other women Mom and I met at Pilgrim Farm this morning. I don’t know their husbands’ names.”
Margaret added them to her list and tallied up the entries. “It looks like we’ve identified all eight couples, but what good does that do us? I don’t buy your theory about blaming me for Susan’s death and I can’t think of any other reason why one of them would try to frame me for murder. I’ve never even met most of them.”
Liss toyed with the pencil Margaret had abandoned. “Why embrace this . . . lifestyle in the first place? I guess I can understand why Miranda and Susan married Hadley and Jasper after they bought the family farm, but why did the others join them? Where did they come from?”
“And were they couples before they arrived at Pilgrim Farm, or did Spinner insist they marry in order to stay?”
The idea of Hadley Spinner as matchmaker made Liss shudder. It wasn’t that arranged marriages were unheard of. She knew of a case or two where the children of the rich and famous had married to combine their families’ fortunes and things hadn’t turned out too badly, but she couldn’t think of a single reason why any sensible woman would agree to wed a stranger when all she’d get out of it was a hardscrabble life on a farm in rural Maine.
“You know,” Margaret said. “If it hadn’t been for the odd clothing and the fact that they established themselves as a religious group, I’d never have thought twice about how peculiar the New Age Pilgrims are. It was flat-out nosiness that made me offer Susan that first cup of tea when she came to work for me. The sympathy only developed after she trusted me enough to share confidences.”
“Did you deliberately try to persuade her to assert herself?”
Margaret shrugged. “I just told her what I thought. As far as I could tell, she was already coming around to my point of view. It was obvious that she’d been brainwashed. She described Spinner’s effect on her. When he spoke, she said she believed every word that came out of his mouth, but when she was away from his influence, away from Pilgrim Farm, doubt started to creep in.”
“Brainwashing? You really think that’s how he controls everyone?”
“I do. After Susan died, I did some reading about cults and why they appeal to people. It’s a complex subject, but the forcefulness of the leader seems to be the key. It doesn’t appear to matter if that leader is a terrible, wrong-headed person. Someone who is charismatic enough, and convinced that he’s in the right, is likely to attract a devoted following. Once they are persuaded that he can do no wrong, it is almost impossible to get them to listen to any other opinion.”
Chapter Fourteen
Liss passed an unquiet evening and a restless night after she left Margaret’s apartment. Dan was filling in at the hotel, so she was alone until after midnight. She jumped at every odd sound, until even the two cats were giving her a wide berth.
The possibility that Connie had killed Jasper nagged at her, but her aunt was right. That theory made no more sense than thinking Margaret was guilty. There was no reason to rush out to Ledge Lake to confront the Pilgrim woman, but Liss did phone her mother twice during the evening. Both times, Vi reported that Connie was asleep.
“Let her be,” she insisted. “Talk to her when she’s rested.”
The next day was Saturday. Just one week had passed since the demonstration . . . and the murder. As Liss walked to the Emporium, she scanned the town square, relieved when she saw not a single picket sign. With Hadley Spinner in jail, someone might show up to take his place, but it was equally possible that the protest would fall apart without its leader.
This proved to be the case, and Liss’s day passed uneventfully.
She had time to brood.
As soon as she closed up shop, she made a quick stop at home before heading for her parents’ cottage. It didn’t bother her that Dan opted to watch a football game on television rather than pay a visit to his mother-in-law. She didn’t need backup. She was just going to have a little chat with Connie Gerard.
The moment she walked in the door, she spotted Connie through the big windows that overlooked the lake. She was bundled up in a wool coat and sat, shoulders hunched, in one of the Adirondack chairs on the deck, a shadowy figure illuminated only by what light spilled out from the living room.
“How’s she doing?” Liss asked.
“She’s settling in,” Vi said, “and I think she’s beginning to feel safe. It helped that Sherri came out earlier today and assured her that Spinner is still in jail.”
“Sherri was here?”
Liss was not surprised that her friend had talked to Connie, but she was a little miffed that she hadn’t stopped by the Emporium afterward to fill her in on that conversation. As chief of police, Sherri had no obligation to keep the general public informed. In fact, the responsibilities of her job usually inclined her to be closemouthed about the situation with everyone . . . but that didn’t ordinarily stop her from using Liss as a sounding board.
“I think that’s why Connie’s so quiet now,” Vi continued. “Sherri asked her a lot of questions. Some of them seemed to confuse her.”
“So nothing new?”
“Only that Benny Callahan is the Pilgrim who can’t spell.”
Liss ran an imaginary finger down the list in her head. She’d met Benny’s wife, Polly Callahan, but try as she might, to call up an image, nothing emerged but t
he blurry memory of a nondescript woman in a floor-length lavender dress.
“Do you think Connie will open up to me?”
Vi shrugged. “All I can tell you is that the motherly approach didn’t work.”
“The . . . motherly approach?” Liss couldn’t help but sound skeptical. “What, exactly, would that be?”
“You know. Interest. Support. Sympathy and . . .” Her voice trailed off as she listened to her own words. “Oh, well, I can see now why that would fail. I haven’t had any practice, have I?”
Liss marveled at the self-deprecating tone in her mother’s voice. Could it be that Vi was more aware of her failings than Liss had realized? She hesitated to say anything, lest it be misinterpreted, but she suddenly found herself in a more cheerful frame of mind. Maybe there was hope for their mother-daughter relationship after all.
“On the other hand,” Vi said, sounding a trifle defensive, “I was a pretty good teacher. I know how to deal with recalcitrant teenagers.”
“Connie’s not that young.”
“She’s closer to your age than mine. She was in her early twenties when she married George Gerard. Go talk to her. With luck, you’ll get better results than I did. If we’re going to prove that Margaret is innocent, we need to know everything Connie does about the people at Pilgrim Farm.”
Liss had taken a step toward the deck when she realized that she hadn’t heard a peep out of her father. “Wait a minute. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s not home yet,” Vi said. “He was invited to a party after the parade with some of his old bagpiping pals. I don’t expect to see him for quite a while yet.”
So it’s just the three of us, Liss thought as she slid the glass door open and stepped outside. After the warmth of the interior, it seemed doubly cold on the deck and she was glad she hadn’t removed her jacket or gloves. Late afternoon in Maine in mid-November, even when the day had been sunny, got downright nippy as soon as the sun set. Since twilight was already past and the moon had not yet risen, she moved cautiously across the wooden planks to make sure she didn’t bump into any of the deck chairs or occasional tables.
Connie must have heard her approaching, but she didn’t look up. Liss sat down in another of the Adirondack chairs. She squirmed a bit, trying to get comfortable. No cushions softened the hard wood and her legs were just the wrong length. To avoid ending up tipped back at an awkward angle, she perched on the front edge of the seat. Connie remained silent during these maneuvers. Liss gave her a few more seconds to say something, but by then it was obvious she didn’t intend to open the conversation.
“I hear Chief Campbell talked to you today.”
Liss’s eyes had begun to adjust to the low level of light. She could see that Connie didn’t shift her gaze from the blackness of lake and sky.
“She did.”
“I hope that didn’t upset you too much.”
“I’ll get over it.”
Impatience, Liss’s besetting sin, quickly vanquished her resolve to be subtle. “I don’t get it, Connie. You seem to be an intelligent woman. How on earth did you end up at Pilgrim Farm?”
Connie’s head turned in Liss’s direction. Her words came out in a rush. “I was lonely. I thought nobody cared if I lived or died. I’d been drinking. A lot. I met George in a bar. He wasn’t drinking.”
No, Liss thought. He was recruiting.
“We talked. He told me about this wonderful place where he was living and invited me to come see for myself. It sounded like heaven.” She gave a short, rueful laugh. “I was so grateful for the attention. So anxious for acceptance. It never dawned on me that Mr. Spinner was taking advantage of my insecurities. When he suggested that George and I marry, I didn’t think twice about it, I just said yes. It wasn’t until after the ceremony that I discovered I’d also vowed to follow all the passages in the Bible that require women to be subservient to men.”
“I expect at least some of those were quoted out of context.”
“They could have been. I had no way of knowing. I didn’t have a religious upbringing and when Mr. Spinner insisted that he was the only one qualified to interpret the word of God, it didn’t seem worth the effort to argue with him.”
Since they appeared to be in agreement about what a mistake that had been, Liss moved on to another question. “How many Pilgrims were there when you joined them?” She wasn’t certain this mattered, but the more she learned about the New Age Pilgrims, the better.
Connie didn’t reply at once. When she did, she used her fingers to count. “Mr. Spinner,” she said, “Mistress Spinner. The other Mr. Spinner. The other Mistress Spinner. Mr. Gerard and Mr. Knapp.”
“Hadley, Miranda, Jasper, Susan, George, and Charles?”
“Yes.”
“When did the others arrive?”
Connie shrugged. “Every once in a while one of the men would bring in someone new. They were all losers, just as I had been. A few of them stuck around, mostly because they didn’t have anyplace better to go. Neither did I.” Bitterness underscored the admission.
Liss tried to probe more deeply into their background, but Connie denied any knowledge of their lives before they came to Pilgrim Farm.
“We abandoned the past in exchange for a fresh start,” she insisted. “If we once had relatives or other close ties, we never spoke of them.”
“What about Chloe?” Aside from Anna, she was the most recent addition to their ranks. “Where did Jasper find her?”
She expected to hear more of the same, but Connie surprised her. “She was a student at the University of Maine’s Fallstown branch. There was a time when Mr. Spinner would go down there and stand outside the student center and sermonize. Most of the students made fun of him, but every once in a while one would stop and listen to what he was saying. Chloe wasn’t happy in college. She was going to drop out. Marrying Jasper gave her a purpose in life.”
Liss sent Connie a sharp look, thinking she’d heard an undercurrent of sarcasm in that comment, but the other woman’s face was in shadow. She found herself wishing that she knew more about the effects of brainwashing. Connie continued to refer to Hadley as Mr. Spinner, although she was less consistent when talking about the others. That form of address must have been drummed into her. Now and again, she showed herself to be a rebel, but just now her entire body drooped, as if all the energy, or perhaps all the hope, had drained out of her. If she was offered the chance to go back, would she take it? Liss didn’t risk asking. Instead she broached another subject.
“Can we talk about your marriage?”
Even Connie’s shrug was listless.
“I’m a little confused. If he’s your husband, why don’t you share a room? For that matter, why don’t you have your own house? Surely there’s room at Pilgrim Farm to build a separate cottage for each couple.”
“That’s not the way we do things.”
We, not they. That was not a good sign. “Why not?”
“Mr. Spinner says sex is only necessary for procreation and we don’t need to procreate right now. We never have, according to him.”
Although Liss couldn’t see Connie’s features, she got the distinct impression that the other woman was smiling. “Did you . . . mind?”
Connie’s reply was sharp and unequivocal. “No.”
“But you and George, you . . . get along okay? He doesn’t. . . mistreat you or anything?”
“We like each other.” Connie voice went back to sounding dull and uninflected. “We always have.” She paused before she added, “I feel bad for him sometimes.”
“Why’s that?”
This time Connie was silent for so long that Liss thought she didn’t intend to answer. She gave a little start when the other woman resumed speaking. What came as an even greater surprise was that Connie’s words came out strong, steady, and underscored with sadness.
“He tries so hard to live up to Mr. Spinner’s teachings, but there are some things he can’t change. At least he has a sense of humor ab
out it. He thought it was pretty funny when Benny made the prevert sign and then boasted about painting that word on the door of the coffee shop. George could have told him the right way to spell it, but he didn’t.”
“Why did he think that was so funny?” Liss asked in confusion. “Did George want Benny to be arrested?”
Connie shifted in her chair until her entire body was turned in Liss’s direction. She reached out with one gloved hand to touch her arm.
“Promise me that you won’t tell Mr. Spinner.”
“Believe me, the last thing I want to do is talk to Hadley Spinner. If I never lay eyes on that man again, it will be too soon.”
Connie spoke in a whisper, even though there was no one else around to hear her. “George has a . . . special friendship with Solomon Miller.”
Liss recalled that Solomon was Laurel’s husband but the significance of Connie’s phrasing wasn’t lost on her. It just took a moment to sink in. “Do you mean they’re lovers?”
She nodded. “They have been for years.”
“But I thought Hadley Spinner was dead set against same-sex relationships.”
“Oh, he is. But he doesn’t know about them. They’ve been careful to keep their relationship a deep, dark secret. I’m the only one George has ever told and it took him years before he dared confide in me.”
“I suppose having a child with his wife made it easier to deceive everyone. Solomon is Kimmy’s father, right?”
Connie gave a snort of laughter. “Who knows? But I can tell you one thing. It didn’t go over well with Mr. Spinner when Laurel fell pregnant. He insisted that she give birth at the farm with only Mistress Spinner in attendance. He said she had to be made to suffer for the sin of Eve.”
“That’s monstrous!” Men like Hadley Spinner deserved to be locked up. If it was up to her, she’d put him in solitary confinement and throw away the key to his cell.
Connie abruptly heaved herself out of the chair and headed for the sliding glass door. She was inside before Liss could get to her feet and had disappeared up the stairs by the time Liss reached her mother’s living room.
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