Body in the Bog ff-7

by Katherine Hall Page

  POW! was gaining momentum and they would need to meet more often.

  Faith was waiting for her at the side of the stage.

  “When do you want to meet?” she asked.

  “Meet?” Millicent made it sound like an indecent suggestion.

  “Yes, to draft the letter.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I can’t think about another thing until Patriots’ Day is over. I have a million things to do before Monday.”

  Faith was sure this was not an exaggeration. Apart from organizing the reenactment, Millicent was also in charge of the DAR’s pancake breakfast served afterward to some of the hundreds of spectators who flocked to the green. Then there was the morning youth parade and the big parade later in the day. Millicent had received the Bronze Musket, the town’s highest civic award, twice—the only person in history to do so. In Aleford, this particular plaque was so prized it fell into the category of what-to-save-first-in-the-event-of-disaster. For a couple of the recipients, it might be a hard choice between musket and, say, spouse.

  “How about Tuesday?” Faith was persistent. “The mailing should be well in advance of Town Meeting, and we could read it to the members the next night.”

  “All right, Tuesday. Ten o’clock at my house. I’ll see if Brad can make it. He’s working at home for these two weeks.”

  Just as Faith had hoped. Brad Hallowell. At last a chance to get to know this tempestuous young man, a young man Millicent obviously did know well, even down to his work schedule.

  She left Millicent and went in search of Tom, who was talking to Pix. Faith suggested they walk home together. Sam Miller, while opposing Alefordiana Estates, told his wife he could not belong to any organization that had an exclamation point. He’d taken his son to the movies.

  It wasn’t difficult to find out what Pix knew about POW!’s funding. All Faith had to do was ask.

  “I assume you’re talking about amounts over a hundred, right?”

  “Yes,” Faith answered, this being the rough equivalent of benefactor in New York City, your name to be chiseled in marble or over an archway.

  “The Scotts gave a hundred and fifty and so did the Batcheldors. Brad gave two hundred. The largest donation was five hundred from anonymous.”

  “Anonymous? Come on, you must have some idea of who it is, or Millicent does. The check had to be signed.”

  “Nope.” They were approaching the parsonage and Pix slowed her steps. “The money was in cash. Millicent found it in her mailbox with the donation slip from the flyer inside.”

  “Well, what did that say?”

  “Nothing. Just ‘anonymous’ printed next to ‘Name’—and no other information.”

  “Not too many people in town have that kind of money, or rather, they do, but they don’t give it away.

  Take a guess, Pix. Who do you think it is?”

  “I have given it some thought,” Pix admitted, “and we did talk about it when we met to plan last week’s meeting. It could be Bea Hoffman or one of the other selectmen—someone who can’t publicly support us.”

  “Does Bea have that much money?” Faith asked.

  Bea had never struck her as a lady with much in the way of disposable income. Same coat since Faith had been in Aleford. Same pocketbook, too. Although this frugality should have alerted her.

  “Oh yes, Bea is very wealthy. Her mother’s family.” They were at the gate to the parsonage.

  “I’ll come in and get Samantha,” Pix offered. “No sense in having her walk home alone.”

  “I’m happy to walk her home, but she always laughs at me,” Tom protested.

  “Since it’s only a few steps, I can see why,” her mother said, contradicting herself. But Faith knew Pix wasn’t concerned for Samantha’s safety. She just wanted to store up as much time as possible with her daughter.

  Samantha was curled up in one of the wing chairs, reading. She yawned and stretched.

  “They were perfect,” she told Faith, who believed her. One’s children always were for other people.

  “How was POW! tonight?” She laughed.

  “Fine. And we have enough signatures to reconvene Town Meeting. Poor Joey Madsen better give up now,” Pix said. “By the way, did you see that his lawyer was there again tonight? I think Joey should come himself instead of sending a spy!” The tops of Tom’s ears turned pink. “Maybe he has his reasons. Such as not wanting to cause a riot.” Faith looked at her husband. “I agree with Pix.

  Spies, the very idea.”

  At two o’clock the next afternoon, Faith was looking out the kitchen window, trying to predict the weather.

  They were about to take the kids to the Boston Children’s Museum. Should it be raincoats or not? Pix seemed to have acquired this meteorological knack at about the same time as she had learned to walk, and Faith had noted other Aleford residents who would touch their tongues to index fingers, test the air with great deliberation, then matter-of-factly tell you the temperature, barometric pressure, and the precipitation for the next several days, with an occasional reference to what was rolling in from Canada.

  “Raincoats?” she asked Ben and Amy. Maybe they’d picked it up, too. Ben was already adding r’s to the end of certain words where none existed.

  “It’s not going to rain, Mom. It’s warm. I don’t need a jacket,” Ben said firmly. So firmly, Faith was tempted to believe him, except he never wanted to wear a jacket.

  “We’ll throw them in the car. I wonder what’s keeping Daddy.” Tom had been at the church office since early morning, taking a sandwich with him.

  After her husband had left, she’d reported in to Detective Lieutenant Dunne. It had been a brief conversation and the only item that really seemed to interest him was the anonymous five-hundred-dollar donation. It was the only thing that had interested her the night before, too. She told him that she had volunteered to be on a committee, and he told her to keep in touch, but she could tell his heart wasn’t really in it.

  She returned to peer out the window like Sister Anne, but it wasn’t her brothers she saw. It was Miss Lora. Miss Lora was getting out of a very new, very jazzy bright red Miata convertible—a car Faith herself coveted. Miss Lora? Sports cars? She was carrying a carton and called something back over her shoulder to the driver. Faith strained to see who it was, but he was too far away and the top was up. She quickly grabbed her purse, got out the keys to the extremely practical familial Honda, and prayed for Tom to return quickly. Maybe not prayed as such, but wished hard. It worked. As soon as he was in earshot, halfway across the cemetery, she opened the door and called out, “Tom, could you hurry up? The kids are really eager to get going.” It was true. It was also true that so was she—eager to follow Miss Lora and see who was behind the wheel of the car.

  Reverend Fairchild walked through the door, expecting a hug and a kiss. Instead, Faith pulled him to one side. “Did you see Lora?”

  “Lora? No. Why? Was I supposed to?”

  “No, no,” Faith said impatiently. “But she just got out of that sports car in the church driveway and went inside. Did you recognize who was driving the car?” Tom had finished his sermon. While not a cloudless blue sky, it was a washed-out watercolor approxima-tion. He was on his way home to spend a pleasant afternoon with his wife and children. There was a spring in his step. He’d had a good run that morning.

  He hadn’t, in short, seen the driver—or the car.

  “Car?”

  “Look out the window! That red sports car—you didn’t notice it?”

  “Not really. Is this important?” He loved his wife, yet there were definitely times when their worldviews diverged, and this was one of them.

  “Lora got out of the car, carrying a cardboard box, said something I couldn’t hear, and went into the church.”

  “So long as she wasn’t taking things out of the church in a box, I’d say there’s nothing here to be concerned about. Why don’t we get going? I just need to go—”

  “She’s back! Tom, c
ome on, we’ve got to find out whose car it is. She seemed so edgy yesterday when I picked Ben up, and she looked terrible. You haven’t forgotten how frightened she was that night in the study? I just want to know what’s going on.”

  Tom hadn’t forgotten how terrified the young woman was and he became infected with Faith’s sense of urgency.

  “You’re right. Let’s go.”

  They strapped the kids in their car seats. Tom backed out of the garage and drove down the street to a spot with a clear view of the church.

  “Why are we stopping? I thought we were going to the museum? I want to climb on that big phone and make bubbles. Why—” Ben was puzzled.

  “Hush, sweetie. We need to stay here for a minute and think. Maybe you could think of some other things you want to do in the museum.”

  “I want to play with that computer and—”

  “Think, Ben. Think. Quietly,” Faith said, then patted his sleek blond head affectionately. She was trying very hard to save him a fortune in future therapists’ fees. Amy was taking her shoes and socks off. No problems there.

  Tom started the car.

  “She’s coming out. Good girl. She’s locking up.” The Miata pulled out of the church driveway and turned right along the north side of the green, then left onto Main Street. Tom followed. The Honda was a silver-gray one and he hoped it would be inconspicuous. He’d never done anything like this before, but he’d seen enough movies. He let two cars get between him and the very conspicuous sports car as they passed the library. The Miata was traveling at an overly respectable twenty miles an hour.

  “Not speeding through town. Think that means it’s someone who knows Charley usually has a car on Parker Place?” Chief MacIsaac was proud of this extremely lucrative source of revenue for the town, revenue from nonresidents, of course. Everyone local slowed to a crawl.

  “Lora’s with him, so we can’t assume anything.”

  “True.”

  As soon as the posted speed limit went to 40 mph, the Miata jumped forward. With one car between them, Tom followed suit. They were heading straight down Main Street, away from Aleford and toward Arlington, Cambridge, and Boston.

  “I’ll bet he turns toward Route Two.”

  “Too easy.” Faith only bet when she knew she would win. “Lora lives in the opposite direction, so they’re not going to her place. Why would they be going to Arlington? The car has bright lights, big city written all over it, and the fastest way to get there is on the highway.”

  At the small, treacherous traffic circle down by the Woodrows’ farm stand—a family operation that had mushroomed from bins of tomatoes, lettuce, and corn in season to arugula and jicama—the small red car made a sharp right. The Fairchilds were slowed down by their attempt to enter the circle, something akin to Russian roulette, except with cars, when all the Saturday shoppers were leaving the stand.

  “Don’t worry. We won’t lose them. We were right.

  They have to be going to Route Two.” Tom turned down the ramp and they spotted the car farther along the highway, not too far ahead of them.

  He speeded up.

  “Hey, Dad, this is fun. Go faster!” Ben called out.

  Tom grinned. He had no idea anymore why he was doing this, but it was fun.

  The highway stopped and they followed the car around two more traffic circles, less lethal because of the perpetual construction occurring outside the Alewife Transit Station and Fresh Pond Parkway. It slowed everyone to a crawl. Finally, at the Charles River, the road divided definitively. The left would take them down Memorial Drive past Harvard; the right led to Storrow Drive and Boston.

  “Don’t lose them. Don’t lose them!” Faith cried.

  “Don’t lose them, Daddy!” Ben echoed.

  Tom could just see a patch of red that he assumed was their quarry. Traffic was heavy on this Saturday afternoon and there was no way to stay closer to the car. He tried pulling into the next lane and was rewarded with both an obscene gesture and the blast of a horn. He wished he’d worn his work clothes.

  The light changed and he pulled forward. It was no good. He couldn’t see which way they’d turned.

  “We have a fifty-fifty chance. Quick, tell me what to do,” he said to Faith.

  “Take Storrow. We’re going that way, anyway.” The red car was stopped at the next light. Tom grinned triumphantly and pulled up behind them.

  There were so many cars now that looked like the Fairchilds’ that he felt safe. Besides, he didn’t want to lose them again. Faith put on her dark glasses. She wished she had a scarf to tie around her hair like Garbo or Madonna, but Faith wasn’t the type to tie scarves around her hair. The sunglasses would have to do.

  The light changed and Tom trailed the car to Copley Square.

  “It’s a clear day. Maybe we should take the kids to the top of the John Hancock Building,” Tom suggested as they passed the tallest building in the city, sheer glass jutting up to the sky, and now that the windows had stopped popping out, perfectly safe. He liked going up there. You got a great view of the city, and while you couldn’t see as far down the South Shore as Norwell, where he grew up, he could point in the right direction for the kids.

  South Shore childhood memories receded rapidly, replaced by Boston’s South End. They drove down Clarendon, across Columbus, and then the Miata turned left and pulled into a parking place on Chandler Street, a legal one—something of a minor miracle.

  “Over there! Across the street!” Faith gestured in front of Tom’s nose, causing him to step on the brakes.

  “Honey, there’s a hydrant. We can’t—”

  “We’re not getting out. If we see a—” She had started to say the word cop, then recalled Ben had un-happily reached that age where you could say virtually nothing in front of him—had reached it a long time ago.

  “If we see a person with a notebook in hand, we’ll leave. We’re not getting out of the car. At least not all of us.”

  “This isn’t the museum.” Ben offered the observa-tion as a flat statement of fact.

  “We know that, but we need some more thinking time. You do that, too, sweetheart, and we’ll be at the museum soon.” Amy was attempting to remove her sweater and overalls.

  “Are they waiting for someone, do you think?” Tom asked. No one had moved from the Miata.

  “Possibly.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes more. A young man dressed in black jeans with an A/X T-shirt, spotlessly white except for the logo, came strolling down the block. He paused at the car. Faith rolled her window down. He looked at his watch, glanced at the sports car, and moved on.

  “Some kind of code?” Tom asked.

  Faith reminded herself that Tom read a great many more mysteries than she did. She’d like to humor him, but years of sleuthing, amateur though she was, told her the guy was probably merely stopping to check the time.

  She shook her head, then put her hand on Tom’s arm. The door was opening. She turned around to face the backseat and put her finger to her lips. “It’s a game,” she whispered. “Quiet as mice.” The driver got out, closed his door, and walked around the front of the car to put money in the meter.

  He was a total stranger. She looked over at Tom. He shook his head.

  Whoever it was matched the car well. The look was Louis, not Brooks. This was someone who paid attention to labels. Someone who thought clothes were important and a reflection of self. Someone not unlike Faith herself. For this spring Saturday afternoon, he was wearing a soft cream-colored silk shirt, light brown cotton slacks, tight, but not too tight in the rear—enough to show, not show off—and a cotton sweater the color of perfectly poached salmon, flung casually around his shoulders. No gold chains or an earring, just a simple watch that Faith was pretty sure even at this distance was a Piaget and tasseled loafers for decoration. He was fairly tall, lean, and his blond hair was at a length about halfway between Fabio and Macaulay Culkin.

  Miss Lora with this guy? Faith and Tom didn’t
have to speak. Each face mirrored the other’s surprise.

  Then Lora got out, on her own steam. Whoever he was, he was either too conscious of women’s rights to open the door for her or did not have any manners.

  Faith reminded herself that Lora had struggled with her carton unaided.

  She wasn’t carrying anything now, except one of those funny little knapsacks made of clear vinyl. Faith focused on the bag. It confused her. The whole thing confused her. Where was Lora Deane? Whoever had gotten out of the car did not look anything like the person who had gotten in. Had some sort of switch been made? During the brief time they had lost track of the Miata? But why? And with whom?

  Tom was quicker, although apparently equally stunned. “Just like Betty Grable.” He was smiling.

  “You know, ‘Why, Miss Jones!’ ”

  And Faith did know. The old “take off your glasses, remove the bobby pins, shake out your hair, perch on the desk, and cross your shapely legs” number.

  Like Miss Jones, Lora had ditched her glasses—contacts? She’d also pulled her hair from its habitual ponytail, applied makeup—skillfully—and taken off the loose-fitting jacket she’d had on earlier. Underneath it, she’d been wearing a very short plum-colored jersey dress that showed what the jumpers and overalls had been hiding all this time. Miss Lora had a great body. She was wearing fishnet stockings, and Faith would have been happy to take the bet that they weren’t panty hose. Respect might be the watchword at school, but today’s word was more like garter belt.

  Faith quickly turned around, ready to clamp her hand over Ben’s mouth, yet he very obviously did not recognize the woman who had taught him to make macaroni necklaces and sing “John Jacob Jingle-heimer Schmidt.” It appeared to Faith that as far as Ben was concerned, the Miss Lora across the street had nothing to do with his beloved teacher. This other Miss Lora might just as well be from another planet.

  The second Miss Lora, the faux Miss Lora—or was it the real Lora?—had looped her arm through the driver of the car’s and the two of them walked down the block, turning into one of the old redbrick apartment buildings that lined the street. This part of the South End had gentrified early, so the neighborhoods looked much as they had originally. Trees and other plantings had grown up. The renovations weren’t sparkling with newness. There was a slight patina of age.