“It’s not that I don’t want to help. We’re mad as hell about what happened to you.” Scott was completely earnest now, the mocking tone gone.
Faith pictured his handsome face, Tom Cruise’s good-looking younger brother. The rest of him matched, as well. She forced herself to concentrate on what he was saying.
“We won’t be late, though. How about after supper? You want to meet at the Willow Tree?” It was going to be a bit difficult explaining to Tom where she was going without actually lying, yet Faith was up to the challenge. She agreed to meet Scott, and Tricia, if she wanted to come along, at eight o’clock at the Concord hangout.
If Tom’s sermon was a bit sketchy, no one seemed to notice, except his wife, who had awakened with him at five to make him breakfast before he finished it. It had been her idea to spend the previous day at pawnshops, and neither had wanted to give up an evening out. After church, Faith threw together a pasta frittata, her old standby. Like zucchini frittata, or other variations, it depended on eggs to bind together the ingredients, which were quickly fried to a golden crisp on both sides in olive oil on the top of the stove. It neatly solved the problem of what to do with leftover pasta. In today’s case, the leftover was fet-tuccine with onions, tomatoes, and prosciutto.
Faith added it to the beaten eggs, a dollop of light cream, pepper, salt, and grated cheese, mixed it well, then poured it, sizzling, into the pan.
“That smells fantastic. When do we eat?”
“Almost immediately. Ben is supposed to be setting the table.” He’d counted out the cutlery, but at the moment he was distracted by what else was in the drawer with the napkins. Amy was sitting in her high chair doing a fine imitation of Buddy Rich.
After lunch, the Fairchilds scattered. Some to nap—“rest quietly,” in Ben’s case; others to tend the garden and read the newspaper. Faith pulled a few weeds. The back door was still nailed shut, an omnipresent reminder of the break-in. The door had arrived from Concord Lumber, but without hinges. Apparently, obtaining these was more difficult than placing a new order for the whole thing all over again. Perhaps the best strategy was to expect everything to go wrong and then be pleasantly surprised by the things that did work out. She frowned and looked at the vegetable garden they’d been planting. Tom had had seedlings all over the house and either the temperature had been below freezing or the backyard awash with torrential rains. Everything was in the ground now, but it didn’t look as if the Fairchilds would be supplying Burpee with their surplus. “We’ll be lucky to have peas on the Fourth of July,” Tom had muttered darkly a few minutes ago, before settling into the hammock with the sports section. Peas on the Fourth—and salmon. Another of those quaint New England customs that started when some observant soul noted the concurrence of three events—early peas, new potatoes, and the run of eastern salmon. It neatly solved the problem of what to serve on the Fourth, the way Saturday-night supper meant baked beans and brown bread. Hinting at a culinary lack of imagination on the part of Tom’s forebears had resulted in an early Fairchild tiff, with husband taking the “What was good enough . . .” line and wife claiming the “Time to get out of the rut . . .” higher ground.
“Do you want to get that, or should I?” Tom called. The phone was ringing. Knowing well her husband’s innate dislike, bordering on distrust, of Bell’s invention, Faith sprinted for the front door and picked up the receiver just as the answering machine kicked in. Whoever it was waited patiently at Faith’s instruction to hold on until the message was over. Promptly at the beep, Courtney Cabot Bullock’s voice came over the line. “So sorry to trouble you on a Sunday,” she began.
From the confident—and insincere—tone of her voice, Faith knew full well Mrs. Bullock wasn’t sorry at all. But she did have good manners.
“Stephanie said you wanted to meet this week to go over the final arrangements, and I have a fabric swatch for the tablecloth at last, so you can get busy with the flowers.” The implication being that Faith need search no more for something to fill the void of her existence—the Bullock women had come to her rescue.
“What day is good for you?” Faith said. She knew how to play. Any time she suggested would be inconvenient. Any time Courtney suggested would be fine.
“Well, the big day is less than two weeks away, so I do think we had better make it soon. Friday at three?”
Faith was almost positive Courtney had already written the engagement down in her book—in ink. “That will be fine,” she said. She’d have to take the kids. She wasn’t about to hire a sitter for a meeting with the Bullocks, and it would give Stephanie a glimpse into the future, although Stephanie’s maternal involvement would be limited to saying good night after the nanny had done all the work. When Faith had taken over the former Yankee Doodle Kitchens, she’d done extensive remodeling and built a play area with low shelves for books and toys, a soft carpet, beanbag chairs, even a chalkboard at the far end of the room. Ben and Amy loved going to work with Faith and it gave her the flexibility she needed. At three o’clock, Amy might be persuaded to nap in the large playpen Faith had stocked with FAO Schwarz’s best to lure her daughter, and Ben before her, into staying within the pen’s confines long after other children without such magnificent diversions had vocally yearned to be free.
“This is definite then, unless you hear from me otherwise.” No mention of Faith’s possibly canceling. One didn’t cancel the Bullocks.
“I’ll see you then. Thanks for calling.” Faith could be insincere too. “Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye—oh, and one other small matter.” Faith held her breath. Courtney continued. “When Stephanie was out at your place”—Faith pictured her making that coy little quotation marks gesture around the word place—“on Thursday, she mentioned to me afterward that she felt the teensiest bit unwelcome. Of course I assured her she was imagining the whole thing. Bridal jitters. She was imagining it, wasn’t she, Faith? I know what a wedding like this means to someone in your line of work.” Again those intimations—caterer, lady of the evening, whatever—they were all one and the same to Courtney. Tradespeople.
Faith jumped in quickly, not because she felt she had to curry favor with someone as influential as Courtney—although, damn it, the woman was. Have Faith regularly turned down bookings and had events scheduled into the millennium.
No, it was the distinctly unpleasant prospect of catering the wedding when she was on the outs with the bride and the bride’s mother. It would be like the last days of a remodeling job, when the contractor and home owner invariably crossed swords over the punch list. It was hard enough working with these two ladies when they were all ostensibly friends. And, like it or not, the catering business depended on word of mouth, as much as what went into it. Courtney Cabot Bullock was not someone Faith wanted to offend.
Faith crossed her fingers. “Stephanie is welcome anytime. We’re always happy to see her—or you. And the wedding is going to be wonderful.” That part was true.
Faith pictured Courtney nodding to herself and crossing off item number seventy-five on her “To Do” list: “Chew out caterer.”
“Fine, that’s settled, then. See you Friday. Good-bye.”
What was settled was that Stephanie could continue to feel free to drop in whenever she wanted for cookies or anything else they were preparing. Mummy had taken care of everything.
Clearly, Stephanie was bored being at home. Too many thank-you notes to write? Faith had heard about the avalanche of wedding presents ad nauseam. Or maybe the deb was getting on Courtney’s nerves, as well? “Why don’t you run along to Aleford, dear? Get out of Mummy’s hair?” Faith waited until early evening to mention that she was going out. Tom was returning from a visit to a parishioner who was recovering from heart surgery. Faith had bathed the kids and put them to bed in the interim, hoping there would be some kind of sporting event to occupy her spouse while she left for her rendezvous with Scott. Tom and his entire family were ardent sports fans, favoring local teams, of course
. Faith was still not sure when football was played—it seemed to be on TV all the time—yet she was pretty certain that spring meant baseball, and she was right.
Tom came racing through the front door. “We were watching the game, and I don’t think I missed much.” His kiss grazed her cheek and he went straight to the television, flinging himself into a comfortable, slightly decrepit club chair that had come with the house.
Faith appeared by his side a few minutes later with a bottle of Sam Adams beer and a bowl of pretzels. “If you get hungry, there’s a roast beef and Boursin sandwich in the fridge.” She knew he would be. “And some Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk in the freezer.” She’d planned her strategy well. “I have to talk to Scott and Tricia. I won’t be gone long.” She gave him a kiss, listened to his vague acknowledgment of her remarks, and was out the door before he could surface and voice his misgivings. He’d told her last night that as far as he was concerned, their investigation into their own and any other burglaries was now officially over. He’d said it a number of times—very firmly.
It was a short ride to the Willow Tree Kitchen, the place where Faith had first met Scott Phelan six years ago, after Cindy Shepherd was killed.
The Willow Tree hadn’t changed much, nor had Scott, except he might be slightly better-looking.
As for herself, Faith fancied that even the birth of a second child hadn’t caused a precipitous decline toward cellulite and silver threads among the gold. It wasn’t that she feared middle or even old age. She simply wanted to take a long time getting there.
Scott was already ensconced in his favorite booth. Before his marriage, he’d eaten at the Willow Tree every night. It was a regulars kind of place, and, in turn, the regulars knew what to order: the chili, beef stew, pea soup, or the nightly special. The clams and lobster in the summertime were surprisingly good and cheap, but the melted margarine killed the experience. The menu never changed. That is, the printed menu never changed. Veal Florentine had been a figment of the first owner’s imagination and there was no Weight Watchers plate.
Scott was nursing a beer, watching the game.
The Red Sox were losing. A waitress appeared, putting another mug in front of him, together with a basket of huge baking powder biscuits, another of the reliable offerings. The Willow Tree waitresses bore a striking resemblance to one another. Maybe it was the way they dressed—starched lime green uniforms, pleated pastel hankies fanned out like peacocks’ tails from their pockets. Maybe it was that they all seemed to be the same age, somewhere between forty and sixty.
“Are you ready to order?” she asked Faith, her eyes on Scott. He was a favorite among them and they’d long ago adopted a maternal, protective air concerning the young man. Scott seemed to have brought himself up. His mother had moved to Florida when he was in junior high, leaving him to fend for himself. Tricia told her that Scott had lived in his car one year during high school, crashing at friends’ during the coldest weather and grabbing showers where he could. Faith had never heard him mention his father.
“Your chili will be up in a sec,” the waitress said to Scott while she waited for Faith to answer.
Never having fully recovered from the sight of the white wine she’d ordered arriving with a screw top on her first visit, Faith opted for a diet Coke.
“They’ve spruced the place up since the last time I was here,” Faith commented after Scott had explained that Tricia was home giving herself a facial for practice. “The curtains are new.” Incongruously, the small windows were framed with frilly white Priscilla-style eyelet. The Willow Tree was Ben Fairchild’s favorite place to eat, not for the superlative job they did with his hot dogs, but because of the decor—a taxidermist’s paradise.
The long, low building was roughly divided into two rooms, the larger of which contained the bar.
Throughout the interior, animals, ranging from a moth-eaten fox to a moth-eaten wild turkey, had all apparently been bagged, surrendering after a last-ditch effort to cling to life. Like the waitresses, they looked remarkably similar, no matter what the species. Scott had summed their expressions up as “Come one step closer and I’ll rip your guts out.” For young Ben Fairchild, the Willow Tree offered hideous, spine-tingling sensa-tions unavailable anywhere else in his little world. Faith tried to position herself away from the glassy stares and snarling lips—or beaks—in favor of a view of the snowshoes, harnesses, and other New England paraphernalia gracing the walls, but it was impossible.
Her Coke arrived and she asked, “Did you have a nice time at Tricia’s mother’s?”
“What do you think?” Scott asked, and laughed. “Come on, Faith, we’ve known each other too long to chitchat. Now, what do you want me to do?”
“Find out who broke into my house—and the other ones, especially Sarah Winslow’s.” He choked slightly on his draft. “You don’t ask for much, do you, lady!”
“That’s what I really would like you to do. I know it isn’t likely.” She told him about Friday night’s meeting and yesterday’s pawnshop tour.
She also mentioned Mr. Monstrous.
“There’s a very special place in hell for those guys, so don’t worry about it—or take it personally. He wants to pay you as little as he can get away with. They get brownie points—or, more likely, bonuses—for that. You want to get as much as you can. Admit it. You’re mad and feel entitled, which you are. The way to go? Your policy probably gives you a lump sum for the silver and the jewelry and replacement value for a bunch of the other stuff. They broke your door. Forget Home Depot. Get a really good door, dead bolt, solid brass hardware, the works. They took a pillowcase, right? Go get a really nice pillowcase. Embroidered by French nuns, whatever. This is the way it works—and it’s how you get back at guys like him, too.”
Faith sighed. Being robbed was fast becoming another full-time job. She knew what Scott was talking about, and it was true. They hadn’t even thought to shop around for a new door, but ordered a quality one—as was the one that had been destroyed. She wasn’t sure about the pillowcase, though. If not fraud, it was getting close to fibbing. But Scott was already proving her hunch correct. Home invasions: This was a world he knew, from all angles.
In her fantasies, she pictured finding a parked van with everything intact, neatly stacked inside.
She’d just have to put it all back in place. And, she reasoned, if any of her acquaintances would have an inkling of where such a van might be aban-doned, it would be Scott and Scott alone. Pix was the type who returned the change she found on the floor in the Shop ’n Save to the manager.
“Not to cast aspersions on your past, or present, but is there anyone you could ask about who might have done these break-ins?”
“I have no idea what ‘aspersions’ are and don’t want to know, but I get the drift. Yeah, I can ask around. Don’t get your hopes up, though.” Faith was beginning to hate the sound of this expression. Scott elaborated.
“There are a lot of different loops in what you might call ‘the secondary market.’ ” Aspersions or no aspersions, Scott enjoyed letting people think him barely literate, even Faith, and here he was spouting off about “secondary markets.”
“You have your druggies, who go around the neighborhood at night trying back doors until they find an open one, with somebody’s pocket-book conveniently lying on the kitchen table, counter, or hanging from the back of one of the chairs. This is what most women do, and I can tell from your face that you’re one of them.
Bingo! Grab the purse, take off, empty the money out, and throw the thing in some bushes or a Dumpster.”
“I knew I was right to go looking in Dumpsters!” Faith chortled. Tom and Charley MacIsaac had been annoyingly patronizing.
Scott raised an eyebrow and finished his beer.
Another one appeared like magic. “Kids break in the same way—trying doors late at night. Fast, in and out with whatever they see that they can sell easily. Some kids like to refine it a little. Only rip off their
parents’ friends—kind of killing two birds with one stone.
“Then there are the real pros, who have it down to a state of the art. Someone knows somebody has something they want or have a buyer for.
You’re never going to get these stolen goods back or trace them. A lot of this quality merchandise gets sold at airport hotels—jewelry, artwork, antiques. It’s on the way to another continent often before the owner knows it’s gone. ‘Oh dear, what happened to my van Gogh while I was in Aruba?’
“Most B and Es are like yours. Especially the daytime ones. Case a house, wait until you’re sure it’s empty—they don’t want to see you any more than you want to see them—then strip it of the good stuff fast. The problem is that I’m not in this loop. I’m pretty careful to stay away from it, in fact. I could give you a fair idea of whose younger brother or sister might be trying the doorknobs and where you could get a nice stereo that fell off the back of a truck, but that’s about it.” Faith was disappointed. She’d been sure Scott was going to be her personal guide through this particular underworld.
“What about the fact that in all our cases, they took only old things?”
“This is funny. Not that they took the old things, but that they left the rest. Doesn’t Tom have a new computer at the house?”
“Yes, and I have a laptop, remember? You’ve seen it at work. It was home in the downstairs closet. The closet door was open, so they obviously looked in there. The TV is fairly new, too.”
“Nobody bothers with a TV anymore, unless it’s one of those digital HDTVs, and only the Donald Trumps of the world have them yet. The rest are too cheap to bother with. Kind of like taking the toaster oven.”
“Do you think it’s a waste of time going around to more pawnshops?”
Faith had told Scott about her conversation with John Dunne and now Scott went back to it.
“You know that Dunne is right. Whoever broke in has fenced everything good by now and dumped the rest. ‘Up somebody’s nose’ is a good way to put it, but it’s also true that the guy may have used the money for his rent and car payment. His kid’s orthodontia. It’s a living—not yours or mine, but it’s a living. Tax-free, except no benefits and not a steady paycheck.” Scott saw Faith’s look of disappointment and quickly added, “Still, I’d try the places in town; there are a bunch near the Jewelers Building at three thirty-three Wash-ington Street, on Bromfield, the next street.”
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