Body in the Bog ff-7

by Katherine Hall Page

  No such luck.

  “I can’t imagine who would do such a thing.” It sounded as if she’d said this phrase before—and more than once.

  “You don’t think it could have been Brad? You did think he could have made the calls? Or Joey?”

  “Definitely not Joey!” Lora’s cheeks flushed in annoyance. “I told you, I was wrong to accuse him.” Ben came back and the conversation ended, but Faith knew it wouldn’t have gone anyplace. Whatever Lora knew or suspected, she was keeping to herself.

  No show-and-tell, no sharing circle.

  Tom came back around three. He looked wrecked and Faith knew he still had his sermon to finish. She sometimes wished he were a bit less honorable and would either repeat an earlier one or use one of those sermon books—at least as a starting point. But someone in the congregation would be bound to point out the repetition even while vigorously shaking Tom’s hand at the church door at the close of the service. And Tom scorned all aids, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Cliffs Notes, even the computerized Bible, complete with subject search, on CD-ROM, that was being touted by some of his colleagues. Faith thought it sounded great and wondered who did the readings—Charlton Hes-ton? But Tom steadfastly refused, surrounding himself with stacks of books and papers. Whether it was the divinity ordering one’s life or pure chance, somehow he managed to make sense of the chaos, plucking the sources he needed and turning out sermon after sermon each week—intelligent, inspirational, occasionally truly memorable. And never too long.

  The kids were making sugar cookies with their mother in the kitchen. She was tired, too, but after Amy woke up from her nap, Faith had felt a need to do something with family and food for comfort. Margaret’s funeral had continued to stay with her like the cold, soaking rain that had worked its way down the back of her coat collar at the cemetery.

  “Why don’t you lie down before you start working?

  I’ll keep the kids in here with me and maybe you can get a quick nap.”

  “It sounds great, but I know I won’t be able to sleep with this hanging over my head. Maybe I’ll work a little, then take a break.”

  “We’re going to have dinner early. POW!—remember? Samantha is baby-sitting, but if you want to stay home, I’ll call her.”

  “No, I want to go. Who knows what may happen?” Tom attempted a light tone, yet the words were strained.

  Faith agreed. She wasn’t offering to stay home.

  Everything had started with the formation of POW!

  Gus had thundered the other night. And he was right—the letters, the attack on Lora’s apartment, the fire, the murder. The calls had come before, but the calls might be unrelated.

  She grabbed the flour canister just before Amy sent it toppling over the edge of the table, and got out a rolling pin for Ben. She set Amy on the floor with the tin of cookie cutters and let her play with the shapes.

  “At least let me make you a cup of coffee, or some tea? And I hope you didn’t eat any of those sandwiches, did you? You must need something.” Tom had, in fact, mindlessly consumed quite a few of the bite-sized sandwiches before he realized how foul they tasted. He’d avoided the sherry and had been drinking coffee all afternoon. It was the last thing he wanted now.

  “How about a big glass of milk and whatever cookies you guys make?”

  “I’m making rainbow zebra cookies, Daddy. Just for you,” Ben said.

  Faith eyed him warily. He was getting dangerously close to cute. She’d have to read Where the Wild Things Are to him again—soon.

  “When they’re ready, I’ll bring you some. The first batch is going in now.” Faith gave Tom a big hug.

  It was upon this scene of slightly boring domestic tranquillity that the doorbell intruded. Faith wiped her hands on her apron and went to answer it. When she opened the door, she gasped.

  Detective Lieutenant John Dunne of the Massachusetts State Police stood without.

  Five

  Familiarity had not diminished the impact of John Dunne’s presence. As Dunne stepped into the hall, Faith marveled anew at the sheer bulk of the man: six foot seven with an ample frame to match, his head grazed the parsonage’s authentically quaint low ceil-ings. In his late forties, the salt was beginning to over-power the pepper on his head. Otherwise, he was unchanged from Faith’s first encounter—or, as she liked to think of it, partnership—with him five years earlier. He still dressed more like a CEO than a cop, and as she took his Burberry—had to be special order—she noted the well-cut suit he was wearing. Her private theory was that Dunne dressed so impeccably, even down to the French cuffs he favored, to draw attention away from the rest of him—especially his face. It was, in a word, homely. When he was growing up, his mother had probably told him it showed character. It got worse when he smiled, which fortunately was not often. He was not smiling now.

  “I wonder if I could have a word with you and Tom?”

  Detective Lieutenant Dunne had grown up in the Bronx, but his wife was from Maine, and Massachusetts was as far south as she’d go. Fourteen years in New England had not altered his accent. If anything, it had thickened. It was a not-so-subtle statement of regional pride—of egg creams, the Zoo, and Manhattan, a short subway ride away. Faith, who had resisted

  “paahking her carr in Hahvad Yaad” herself, had been drawn to Dunne immediately—and ever since. In turn, she was growing on him, but how, specifically, varied from time to time, depending on the mood he was in. At the moment, he wished he could tell her to stay in the kitchen and keep baking the cookies he smelled. It had as much chance of working as the possibility of his acquiring a rent-controlled West Side apartment with a view of the park as a pied-à-terre.

  “Of course. Tom’s in his study. Go on in and I’ll join you as soon as I get the kids settled. Coffee?

  Something to eat?”

  “No thanks.” Faith expected as much. Dunne seldom accepted refreshment while on the job. For once, she was glad sustenance had been rejected. She didn’t want to miss anything.

  Having quickly opted for that mother’s standby, a video—in this case Winnie the Pooh—Faith walked into the study only a few minutes later.

  “I’ve assumed the whole thing was Millicent’s idea,” Tom was saying.

  “What whole thing?” Faith asked. With Millicent, Tom could be referring to anything from temperance to changing Aleford’s name back to what Millicent believed was its original one, Haleford.

  John Dunne sighed. The papers on Tom’s desk fluttered. She was back. There was no way he was going to get a private chat with the reverend. Once again, he faced the prospect that Faith would get overly involved, get in the way, get in his hair, get . . . He could go on, and did—to his wife.

  Yet, he reminded himself, Faith did know more about what was going on in town than Tom, who the detective presumed was busy concentrating on loftier matters.

  “I want to know about the POW! group,” Dunne explained. “Who started it, anything that comes to mind.” Faith thought it more judicious to answer his questions before asking her own.

  “Tom is right. Millicent started Preserve Our Wetlands! and the core group formed around a letter sent to the Chronicle protesting Joey Madsen’s plans to develop Beecher’s Bog.”

  Dunne nodded.

  “The people who signed the letter were Pix Miller, Louise and Ted Scott, Margaret and Nelson Batcheldor, Brad Hallowell, and Millicent herself. You know about the poison-pen letters they got afterward?”

  “Yes,” Dunne said. “Charley told me. He also described the meeting of POW! that he attended and I understand there’s another one tonight. But what I want to know is whether there have been others you know about, smaller meetings.”

  “I’m sure there have been, although I haven’t been invited to any. They would have had to have met to talk about the big meeting and compose the flyer. Although, I suppose Millicent and Brad could have done that themselves. I can find out from Pix if she’s been at any meetings.” Having offered help, Faith
felt she could slip in a question.

  “Do you think Margaret’s active membership in POW! had something to do with her murder?” Dunne hadn’t rung their doorbell to sell raffle tickets for PAL. The state police would have been called in right away in a town with a police force the size of Aleford’s. The detective might be asking about POW!, but he was definitely investigating Margaret’s death.

  He frowned. It was marginally more grotesque than his smile.

  “I didn’t say anything about the Batcheldor case,” he spoke sternly. “Back off, Faith. All I want to know about is POW!”

  Outwardly chastened, Faith told him everything she knew and described the selectmen’s meetings, as well.

  She had been prepared to tell him about meeting the Batcheldors in the bog, but he’d said stick to POW!, so she did.

  At the end, he nodded again and addressed Tom. “It would be useful if we had someone who could report what goes on at these meetings. Charley’s there, but some extra eyes and ears would help. Obviously we can’t go.”

  “I suppose so,” Tom said. He wasn’t altogether easy with the role of infiltrator, but if Dunne thought there could be a connection between the group and the murder, they had to try to find it.

  Faith was not miffed. She was used to John and knew that even though he was specifically asking Tom, he meant her, too—however much it pained him.

  “You want us to be moles. No problem. Now, if we could disguise ourselves in Carhartt jackets and get jobs with Deane Properties, we’d be all set.” It was exactly what Dunne had been afraid of—Faith was already on the case, at least in her mind.

  “I just want to know about the conservation group. Period.”

  If he had known Faith was taking this to mean that she didn’t have to share whatever else she uncovered, he might have phrased it differently. He might not even have walked in the parsonage door in the first place.

  He snapped shut the Filofax in which he’d been making notes and stood up, narrowly missing a beam.

  The study was in the oldest part of the house.

  “I’ll hear from you tomorrow, then.” It was not a question. Tom showed him out and Faith raced to make sure the tape had not finished. Tigger was about to take Roo’s medicine and Ben had not taken Amy out of the playpen. She was in time.

  Resisting the impulse to dress up as either Boris Badenov or Natasha—she seemed to have an impulse for disguise lately—Faith arrived at POW!’s second meeting early enough to get a place up front. She draped her jacket on the seat beside her to save it for Tom, who was waiting for Samantha. Softball practice had run late. Samantha had still not heard from her last two colleges and was no closer to a decision about the others than she had been a week ago. The whole episode of the poison-pen letter had been over-shadowed by where Samantha was going to go to school, the main topic of conversation at the Miller house once again. Samantha herself seemed quite calm when Faith had spoken to her about her choices.

  It was Pix who was going off the deep end. “I don’t even know what time zone she’s going to be in or how much of a phone bill to expect!” she’d told Faith. The real issue was Samantha’s leaving. Pix was going to miss her terribly, and without a daughter in residence, the whole family constellation would change. “I’ll be outnumbered,” she’d told Faith. “All the blouses in the wash will be mine.” Faith had commiserated without totally understanding. Granted, it was many years away, but she thought it might not be so bad getting back to just the two of them—with lots of visits home, of course. Pix viewed the gradual reduction in size as the loss of limbs from one kind of family tree.

  Millicent strode up onstage just as Tom slid into the seat next to his wife. “No envelopes thick or thin today, and she’s sick of talking about it. So don’t say anything about the C word when we get home,” he told her quickly before Millicent began.

  “Poor Samantha! It’s horrible to be the center of attention sometimes.”

  Millicent didn’t have a gavel. She didn’t need one.

  The room, which was even more crowded than last time, instantly grew quiet.

  “Before we begin, I’d like to have a moment of silence for our member, Margaret Batcheldor, who died so tragically this week. Most of you knew her and of her devotion to our cause. I would like to dedicate all our future efforts in memory of Margaret.” Millicent bowed her head and the only sound was the ticking of the large clock mounted on the wall next to the stage. Sixty seconds later, Millicent’s head snapped up and she was on to the first order of business.

  “We’ll start the meeting with a report from the head of the signature drive, Brad Hallowell. Brad, stand up.”

  Brad stood.

  “We have submitted more than the required number of signatures to the town clerk and after verification, which should be completed by Tuesday, since Monday is a holiday, a special Town Meeting will be called for the following week.” Someone gave a cheer and everyone clapped. Brad sat down.

  Faith tried to think of a way she could question him.

  They still didn’t know who’d made the calls—or thrown the brick. Lora was at her grandparents, but she’d have to go back to her own place sometime. Brad was basking in success at the moment, smiling and happy. He didn’t look threatening, but his scuffle with Gus at the selectmen’s meeting suggested otherwise.

  “Wonderful work! Everyone is to be congratulated, and special thanks to you, Brad, for doing such a fine job coordinating things. I may just have to get one of those computers myself someday!” The audience laughed at the pleasantry. Until they came out with Chippendale or Sheraton models, it was unlikely that high tech would invade Miss McKinley’s parlor.

  “I’m pleased to report that our treasury is in fine shape due to your generous contributions, and we have more than enough for a town-wide mailing to explain what is going to happen at Town Meeting and ask people to call their members to express support for the articles. Pix Miller and Louise Scott have agreed to head up this committee, and they’ll need volunteers to stuff all those envelopes. You can sign up after the meeting. I’ve written an informal environmental-impact statement that we’ll include.”

  “When does the woman sleep?” Faith whispered to Tom. She leaned back in the wooden chair like the kind that used to be in movie theaters, the kind that demanded you sit down quickly and stay seated or it would jackknife on you. It was almost as uncomfortable as the pews at First Parish. So far, there was precious little to report back to headquarters, she thought.

  Signature collection and a hefty treasury. Possibly there was something there. She could ask Pix who the big donors were. Everyone had been asked to kick in at least ten dollars initially to cover the cost of the flyers. But a town-wide mailing was expensive. Millicent herself lived on a very fixed income—or so she said, frequently. Brad certainly made good money, but was he committed to the point where he was assuming the bulk of the cost? Faith wished she could make a note, but she didn’t want to look conspicuous.

  Faith was getting bored. Maybe it was too much to hope for a repeat of the fireworks at the last selectmen’s meeting.

  Millicent was discussing tactics for Town Meeting.

  Someone suggested that all the Town Meeting members in POW! meet separately to talk about how best to present the articles. Millicent thought that was a pretty good idea. Faith didn’t. It meant Tom would find out what was going on before she did. Town Meeting was something the Fairchilds had always done wherever they found themselves, running for election before the boxes were unpacked, although in Tom’s family’s case, this normally meant years. The Fairchilds were savers and everything went with them. On one visit, Faith had been startled to discover some Allied Van cartons in her in-law’s attic marked,

  “Children’s Misc. Schoolwork and Odd Curtains.”

  “Now to be blunt . . .” Faith heard through her thoughts. Millicent might be getting to something interesting at last, she hoped. “We have to be very careful not to tread on any toes between now and
the meeting. A certain family in town has come in for a great deal of criticism and mudslinging is not the way we do things in Aleford. They will have their day in court, just as we will. Town Meeting will decide.” This was pretty decent of Millicent—to call off the hounds and leave the Deanes in peace. But, Faith reflected, it was also very smart. There was nothing to be gained by going after them. It made POW! look bad. Millicent was a great believer in the power of moral superiority.

  Suddenly, Faith began to feel sorry for the Deanes and was glad Millicent wasn’t a mind reader—close to it though she was. What about the Deanes’ rights?

  Faith didn’t want the land developed, but Joey did own it. It belonged to him, and those opposing him would be equally furious if, for instance, Joey told them they couldn’t paint their houses a certain color or add on a bedroom because of some sainted “quality of life in Aleford” article.

  “I’m getting mixed up about which side I’m on,” Faith said in a low voice to her husband.

  “Me, too,” he responded, speaking into her ear. “I don’t like the bedfellows on one side; don’t like the bed on the other.”

  Millicent was asking for someone to help draft the cover letter for the mailing. Faith, finally seeing an opportunity, shot her hand up like an eager “pick me, pick me!” third grader.

  “Why, Faith,” Millicent said, the words tumbling out before she could help herself.

  “Thank you, I’d love to work on this,” she said in acceptance, even though she well knew Millicent was merely voicing surprise. Faith never volunteered for anything. She’d learned from watching Pix that one thing did not lead to another, but to fifty or sixty.

  Tom raised his eyebrows. It gave him an endearing look. Faith smiled. “I simply want to be of service, darling.”

  “Sure you do,” he said, the eyebrows approaching his hairline.

  At the close of the meeting, Ted Scott read a few passages from Thoreau to keep everyone in the mood and Millicent told them they would gather again, same time, same place, the following Wednesday.