Faith looked at the screen. The whole thing had been filmed. Would they have captured the moment when Nelson fell and how? She came out and told Dale, who immediately called the police station to have someone get a copy of the tape.
Soon the house was filled with the smell of pancakes on the griddle. The mood lightened. The kids joined them around the table.
“These are delicious! What kind are they?” Sam asked, starting in on a stack.
“I don’t know exactly,” Faith said. “I just threw some things together, but I’ll call them Patriots’ Day Pancakes (see recipe on page 339). They’ve got sour cream in them and that’s white, the blueberries are blue, of course, and the raspberries, red.” She had mixed the two berries together since she didn’t have enough of each. She took a bite, although she didn’t have much of an appetite. Thoughts of whether Nelson was still alive had dulled it—plus, she’d already had one breakfast. The pancakes were good. She ate some more.
Then they waited. Pix was uncharacteristically restless.
“Couldn’t we call the hospital?”
“I doubt they’d give us any information. Especially considering the circumstances.”
“Can’t you call, Dale?” Pix had been his sister’s room mother in fifth grade and she thought the young man ought to be able to find something out, given his position.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you anyway, unless the chief said so. The last thing he told me was he’d be in touch and only to call if there was an emergency.”
A grim reminder, and everyone in the room felt it.
From upstairs, Amy started crying. She was awake and hungry.
It was seven o’clock.
Faith felt as if it should be at least the afternoon and Amy rising from her nap. The hours since they’d first left the house were moving as slowly as the thick maple syrup that the kids coaxed from the jug for their pancakes.
At nine, the phone rang. Faith picked up before the second ring.
“Tom? Is he alive? What’s happened?” But it wasn’t Tom; it was Millicent.
“And how are you, Faith? I understand Pix is at your house and I’d like a word with her, if it’s not too much trouble.” Her tone clearly indicated she did not think much of Faith’s telephone manners.
“Of course, I’ll get her right away.” Faith was tempted to explain, yet it wouldn’t make any difference. Yes, this was a crisis, but that was no excuse for letting standards slip.
Pix went to the phone. “Probably wants to yell at me for not being at the breakfast,” she whispered to Faith.
“She’d better not,” Faith replied. At the moment, she deeply wished Millicent had never asked Pix—or any of the rest of them—to sign that letter. Had never started POW! So what if Joey Madsen wanted to put up a bunch of big houses?
She went into the living room. Dale was reading the latest issue of New York magazine with the appearance of someone who’s bought one of the periodicals Patriot Drug kept behind the counter. Sam was giving a good performance of reading today’s paper, but he was still on the page he’d been on when Faith left the room. He put the paper down. Faith had stopped offering food or coffee an hour ago. Nobody wanted anything—except for the day to be over. Samantha had taken charge of Amy and Ben. She was one of those teenagers who actually liked small children, moving straight from her horse phase to babies. They were in the kitchen, drawing on large sheets of shelf paper.
Danny was watching the Boston Marathon on TV.
“What do you think our friend Millicent wants with my wife?”
“And badly enough to track her down here, although that would be child’s play for Millicent. But I have no idea. The two are involved in just about every activity in town, so it could be POW! business or the Garden Club plant sale. Or Pix could be right and Millicent is calling her on the carpet because you didn’t show up to help at the breakfast.”
“They couldn’t have had much of a turnout. People were leaving town as fast as they could,” Sam commented.
Their speculation was stopped by Pix’s return. She was laughing.
“She’s under house arrest, too, or whatever you call this. Charley won’t let her do anything in public today and she’s furious. She wanted my support to complain to the police. I think she’s planning to call the Middlesex County DA’s office to register a formal complaint.”
“Protective custody,” Dale piped up, “That’s what I’d call it.” He returned to his magazine.
“In a way, I don’t blame her,” Pix continued. “Not that I’m leaving the premises, but Millicent works all year on this day. I think they should at least let her review the parade. That’s her favorite part.” Every year, Millicent, town officials, and other favored individuals—the closest egalitarian Aleford got to royalty—sat on a specially constructed platform near the green and watched the parade pass by, award-ing the prizes for best float, best band, and so forth.
Sat high up, out in the open. With hundreds of people strolling around below, cotton candy and fried dough in hand. But there might be a hand holding something else. Faith shivered. She was with Charley. She didn’t want Millicent to put one foot out of her clapboard house. She fleetingly wondered what Millicent’s bodyguard was doing. Probably helping her wind wool.
“Did you tell her that?” she asked Pix.
“Not exactly. I certainly wouldn’t advise the woman to defy the police. I told her what I was doing, but of course said I could not presume to make up her mind.”
“What did she say?”
“Thanked me and said it was exactly what she wanted to hear.”
“Great,” Faith said. Now she’d have to worry about Millicent, who was probably tying bedsheets together at this very moment while the police officer was trapped downstairs, his hands bound by the skein of wool.
She had an idea. “What about the Scotts? Maybe they could wait together? They’re such sane people.”
“The Scotts, very sane people, have left town. Ted told Charley they’d check in with him to find out when it’s safe to come back,” Sam told her. “I tried to get my wife to do the same, but obviously it was no use.” He shot a somewhat-sour look at Pix.
They settled down to wait again. The kids were in the backyard on the swing set. The yard was fenced, but Dale moved over by the window anyway. He’d finished the magazine. Another half hour passed.
Unaccustomed to inactivity of any sort, Pix was clearly getting restless.
“How about cards? Bridge?” she suggested.
Faith only knew how to play poker and Go Fish and was about to say so when Dale muttered something about being on duty, which immediately limited the choices.
“Double solitaire?” Pix said. Clearly the woman was getting close to the end of her tether.
“Sure,” Sam said. He knew his wife. “Have you got two decks of cards, Faith?”
Looking for cards proved a welcome time killer.
Pix went with Faith as she searched through various junk drawers and boxes of games that Tom was wont to buy at garage sales and auctions. The Fairchild clan were inveterate board game players, and when Tom came across a vintage set of Monopoly or Clue, he acted as if he’d found the Grail.
Triumphantly, Faith held two decks aloft. “I remember these because of the labels.” One was from the Queen Mary, and the other from Caesar’s Palace.
“A widely traveled family with broad tastes and maybe a sense of humor.”
Sam and Pix started to play. Faith, odd woman out, went into the kitchen to think. She sat by the window, idly watching Samantha swinging with Amy on her lap. The toddler laughed uproariously every time they swung gently forward. Faith stopped focusing on the scene outside and tried to sort through the thoughts elbowing one another for space in her mind.
Someone in Aleford wrote those letters. No one else would have known the poison involved. But whoever it was wouldn’t necessarily have had to have lived in town too long. It was only five years ago that Sam had had the affair with Cindy.
Brad’s letter had been obscene, referring to certain sexual acts he may or may not have performed with Lora Deane, although given Lora’s transformation on Saturday, anything was possible. Their relationship was even more recent. Louise Scott’s alcoholic father and his accident dated further back, but it was something that might have come up in a certain kind of conversation about either drinking problems or car crashes. And the Batcheldors’. Faith searched her memory for the exact wording. Their letter had been the least specific—although no one, with the possible exception of Chief MacIsaac, knew what was in Millicent’s. The Batcheldors’ said they should stay out of the woods if they wanted to stay healthy. Almost the same words used on the phone to Lora. It was the only one that contained a direct threat. And now Margaret was dead; Nelson might be. What was in the woods? Why the Batcheldors?
All the POW! letter signers had received both letters, except Margaret, of course. Were there other recipients—too frightened to go to the police? And why the pointed omission of the signature—on Brad’s both times, the others only the second time. It suggested a precise person, someone who said only what he or she meant. A friend the first go-round, now a foe. But enmity toward Brad from the beginning. That could mean one of the Deanes, especially Lora’s grandfather or brothers, but they hadn’t known about the calls when the first letters were received.
The Deanes. Who lived in the apartment on Chandler Street? The letters and Lora seemed to be unconnected, but she kept popping up.
Faith tore a piece of paper from a pad on the counter and wrote: “apartment,” “signature,” “other letters?” and then “Brad.” She paused and after a moment jotted down “Margaret—meeting whom?” This last was a reminder to find out whether the police had located Margaret’s birding companion. Nelson had said she was going to meet someone. Who? She tucked the paper in her pocket. She knew she wouldn’t forget it.
Faith looked at the phone hanging on the wall and willed it to ring. It was one of the ones they hadn’t replaced. A dial phone. Ben viewed it as a priceless an-tique. So did Tom.
She gazed, unseeing, out the window again. The same names kept coming up over and over. A couple of these people were turning up on both her suspect and victim list: Lora Deane, Brad Hallowell. Lora’s family. And they had all been together this morning at the breakfast and on the green.
The phone rang at eleven. Faith was cleaning out the pantry by now and Sam owed Pix two thousand dollars. Dale and the kids were watching the Marathon.
This time it was Tom. He started speaking right away.
“He’s alive. He’s still in danger, but there’s hope.”
“Oh, Tom, thank God! What was it?” All morning she’d held on to the slim possibility that Nelson had had a heart attack or something else natural, however unwelcome. Then the whole affair could be a ghastly coincidence.
It wasn’t.
“He was poisoned. They’ve pumped his stomach and are analyzing the contents.”
“Poison!” A crystal clear picture of her husband giving the victim mouth-to-mouth flashed into Faith’s mind. “Tom, is there any possibility that you . . .” Tom had had his own uneasy moments. “I’m fine.
They won’t even tell me what they think it is, not yet anyway, but the doctor said he didn’t believe I was in any danger. Whatever it was, you had to have had a lot of it.”
“But how could he have been poisoned right before our eyes?”
“Exactly,” Tom said grimly.
“His flask. He was carrying one of those pewter flasks!”
“I’m sure the police are checking it. I’ve been out in the waiting room. I haven’t even seen Charley since we came in. Dunne arrived a couple of hours ago and then left. There have been cops in and out ever since.
They took everything Nelson was wearing or carrying away, including his musket.”
“Maybe Charley will tell you more when you do see him.”
“Possibly. I’m going to stay a bit longer. Nelson’s still unconscious, but he could come around in the next few hours, and I want to be here.” Tom had been feeling a bit incongruous sitting in the hospital in his Minuteman garb, but he didn’t want to take the time to go home to change. It wasn’t important enough for Faith to bring him his clothes, either. They’d been listening to the Marathon at the nurses’ station near the waiting room too. Everyone knew it was Patriots’
Day. He prayed for it to pass swiftly and safely.
Faith hung up the phone and went to tell the others.
How were they ever going to get through this long, long day? Waiting for the call had given them some focus. Now there were only empty hours ahead.
“Poisoned?” Pix said, shocked. “When would someone have had the opportunity? Unless it was extremely long-acting. But he would have been showing some symptoms. Did he look any different to you, Faith?”
Faith thought for a moment. “He looked tired, but not really any different from how he’s looked since Margaret died. I can’t imagine that he’s been sleeping well. Yet he was definitely moving more slowly.” Nelson, and Margaret, too, walked with brisk, purposeful strides—the strides of people who have feeders to fill, bookshelves to build. She remembered watching him leave the hall at St. Theresa’s, and while not exactly dragging his feet, he wasn’t rushing off to battle as were some of his fellow militiamen. She hadn’t been feeling especially perky herself at that hour in the morning, so she’d taken no notice of it until now.
“But he didn’t seem to be in pain, particularly gastric pain?”
“No, I would have noticed that.”
“Did you see him eat anything?”
Faith started to answer, then stopped herself. Who was supposed to be asking the questions here, anyway? After solving two murders, Pix had returned from Sanpere Island last summer ready to tackle anything from the case of Judge Crater to what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. Faith loved her friend dearly, but she wasn’t about to hand over her magnifying glass.
Fortunately, Samantha came into the room, effectively stopping her mother’s persistent line of inquiry.
Faith half-listened to the teenager while thinking about Pix’s question. She had not, in fact, seen Nelson eat or drink anything, but there were several rooms off the main hall and she had been in and out of them. It was possible he’d taken a doughnut, some coffee, or juice, all of which were in the main hall. He wasn’t at St. Theresa’s when she’d arrived and she never saw him with eggs and sausage later, so if the flask wasn’t poisoned, it was most probably one of those three.
Pretty hard to poison a doughnut, particularly one fresh from a box from a national chain. Coffee or juice, but again how, with a cop next to him and Nelson himself presumably keeping a close watch?
“It will be perfectly safe! Anyway, they’re after you, Mom, not me,” Samantha’s voice penetrated Faith’s speculations. Whoever said children were honest was right. Ruthlessly honest.
“I just called Jan and the car will pick me up here or at home. No one will even open a window, and the driver’s an auxiliary policeman anyway,” Samantha was pleading. She turned to her father. “Please, Dad, this is the last parade I’ll ever be in.”
“I certainly hope not,” he said dryly.
“You know what I mean!”
Pix sighed. “The whole thing is so crazy. I can’t imagine that anyone could want to harm us, but we—or, as you aptly point out, sweetheart, I—did get the letter. I’d like to assume Nelson was his or her intended victim and get on with my life, and my family’s, but my correspondent does not strike me as a particularly honorable or trustworthy person. What’s to prevent him from striking tomorrow or the next day or the next? Can we keep living like this—in hiding?” The Scotts could be out of town for quite a while, Faith reflected, because of course Pix was right. Murderers did not follow rules. Honorable, trustworthy—no, these were not words that sprang to mind.
“So you’re saying I can go, right?” Samantha was surprised. She’d expected a lot more opposition, espe
cially from her mother. For a moment, adolescent that she was, she wondered if she ought to go if her mother thought it was okay.
“Sam?” Pix walked over to her husband and took his hand.
“Closed car, comes here, brings her back. A cop at the wheel. Probably as safe as the yard,” he answered.
“But no getting out of the car. Anybody. Go to the bathroom before you leave.”
“Daddy!” Patrolman Dale Warren was in the room again and Samantha was mortified.
Danny came running into the room. “You’re letting Samantha be in the parade and not me! It’s not fair!
You let her do everything!”
It was Sam’s turn to dig his heels in. A closed car was one thing. A three-mile march straight up Main Street, even in the DARE contingent, was another.
Help came from an unexpected source. “Couldn’t he come with me? There’s plenty of room, and one of our class projects was peer counseling with kids at his school. He could even wear his DARE T-shirt.” Everyone looked at Danny to see if he’d accept the compromise. Faith was getting a glimpse of a future she’d just as soon learn about when she got there—many years from now.
“Okay,” he said. “Those cars are cool. Wait till I tell Mark. He’s gonna wish he was here, too.”
“ ‘Going to,’ dear,” Pix said automatically, thanking God her oldest son was safely in New Haven.
“This solves one problem, anyway,” Sam commented as the kids left the room for the phone.
“What?” Pix asked curiously. Something his lawyer’s mind had picked up on that she’d missed?
“Now we have something to do this afternoon.
We’ll be glued to the TV, watching the parade to make sure the kids are all right. Can we stay for lunch, Faith? I think we’re going to need nourishment.
The parade started from East Aleford at about two o’-clock and usually reached the green about three.
Promptly at 1:30, a gleaming turquoise-and-white 1955 Chevy Bel Air picked Samantha and Danny up.
Amy had gone for her nap and Ben was complaining about missing the parade. They usually watched from the front steps of the church.
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