The Body In The Basement ff-6

by Katherine Hall Page

  The argument had begun the night before and had not been resolved by bedtime. Now, the next morning, Samantha was up bright and early, perched at the foot of her mother's bed, picking up where she had left off. Pix hadn't slept wel . She knew Samantha would have to resume her schedule sometime, but why did it have to be today? She'd hoped to keep her close to home for another week at least to make sure she was al right.

  “I'm fine," Samantha argued. "The doctor said I could go back to work when I felt up to it, and I feel great. This is your problem, not mine. Would it make you feel any better to fol ow me around the whole morning?"

  “Yes," Pix answered immediately, "it would."

  “Oh, Mother!" was Samantha's annoyed reply as she noisily stomped off to her room.

  Pix knew she was beaten and she also knew that she had to let her daughter go. Much as she wished to, she could not keep Samantha wrapped in cotton wool for the rest of the summer—or the rest of her life. She fol owed her down the hal .

  “Al right. But I drive you there and back. Plus, if you get tired or feel anything out of the ordinary at al , you cal immediately. I'l be here al morning." Sitting by the phone.

  Samantha flung herself at her mother and gave her a big kiss. "I love you, Mom. Now we'd better hurry. I don't want to be late.”

  Wel , at least it was Mom again.

  Samantha felt like a bird let free from its cage. She darted into the kitchen to say hel o to everyone before meeting her group down by the waterfront.

  “It's great to have you back, Sam. I didn't think your mom would let you out so soon," Arlene said after giving her friend a big hug.

  “Desperate situations cal for desperate measures. I had to get tough. Would you believe at the last minute she wanted me to bring the dogs? Like they would real y protect me. And can you imagine how nuts the kids would be!”

  They laughed and Samantha went down to the waterfront, where she was greeted with enthusiasm, Susannah dramatical y throwing her skinny little body straight into Samantha's arms. "You're okay! I thought I'd never see you again!”

  Susannah could be headed for a career on the stage, and living in Manhattan as she did, this might come to pass, Samantha thought. The little girl seemed constantly to be playing some sort of role. Geoff was hovering nearby.

  Samantha quickly got her group together and they started for the boats. The kids had been quick learners and she was taking them out on the water two at a time while the others practiced knot tying and studied the sailing manual.

  She'd al owed them to pick their own partners, figuring they'd work best with someone they liked. Geoff and Susannah had chosen each other and were the fourth pair to go with Samantha. She kept quiet and let them set sail.

  They started off fine, but soon the sail was luffing and the boat almost at a standstil .

  “Al right now, what do we do?" Samantha asked.

  “We did it on purpose, Samantha," Geoff said. "We have something to tel you." His voice was firm and serious.

  Susannah had less control, or more theatrics. "It's our fault that you got hurt."

  “What!" Samantha said in amazement.

  “Wel , not exactly our fault," Geoff explained, "but we kind of feel that maybe if we'd told you what we'd been doing sooner, then it might not have happened."

  “What have you been doing?" Samantha asked sternly.

  “Your getting hurt was like a punishment to us."

  Susannah was off and running. Geoff interrupted her.

  “Let's just tel her." He turned toward Samantha. "It started because Susannah and I were real y pissed off at coming here. Maybe we kind of hoped we'd get caught and be kicked out”

  Samantha got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. The mice. She looked at the two cherubic faces in front of her.

  “You're not tel ing me you put those dead mice in the kitchen are you?" she gasped.

  “Yuck! No Way!" said Susannah. "Although it did make things more fun.”

  Geoff continued patiently. "We did al the other stuff—

  the short sheeting, the spoiled milk, the salt in the sugar .. "

  “Not the paint!" Again Samantha leapt to the worst.

  “No, not the paint. We like sailing. But," he had the grace to lower his head slightly, "we did screw up the parade"

  “And God punished us," Susannah declared solemnly.

  "He let you get hurt and you're the most decent thing here.

  Besides you, Geoff," she hastened to add.

  “God doesn't work that way, but we'l talk about that some other time. What we have to do now is tel Mr.

  Atherton what's been going on.”

  Geoff and Susannah's expressions clearly indicated they would rather face their Maker.

  “Do you think he'l send us home?" Geoff asked. "I thought that's what you wanted?"

  “Only at first, then doing stuff was fun because everybody was getting so crazed at everything else that was going on. This is the best camp I've ever been to.”

  Susannah nodded agreement.

  The idiots, Samantha thought as she headed the boat back to shore and proceeded to give them a talking-to that would have made her mother proud.

  The rest of the group was waiting for them on the dock with puzzled expressions on their faces.

  “What was taking you guys so long? There's a good wind today. Why couldn't you come about?" one of them asked. "We're going to be late for lunch."

  “You al run along and I'l put everything away. Tel Mr.

  Atherton that Geoff and Susannah are helping me. We'l be there as soon as we can.”

  As they stowed the gear, the two children chattered happily like the reprieved felons they were. Samantha, the godess, didn't hate them. She had barely yel ed.

  Samantha was preoccupied. So it hadn't been Duncan who had spoiled the parade.

  But that stil left everything else.

  After lunch, Samantha cal ed home with the news. Her mother had been surprised, amused, and ultimately sympathetic.

  “So, I'm going to take them to Jim now and then I'd real y like to spend the afternoon here. The counselors can use my help and I hate to leave the kids like this. I won't stay any later than five and you can pick me up at the Athertons'

  house, where I wil stay absolutely put. I left without my paycheck Friday, Jim told me. I didn't know I would be getting one so soon and it's at the office over there."

  “As long as you're not too tired, but swear that you'l get someone to walk you over."

  “Al right, but I'm only doing this to make you happy."

  “Could there be a better reason?"

  “Mother! I've got to go.”

  Jim reacted to Susannah and Geoff's confession almost absentmindedly. Samantha could only assume that his problems with Duncan overshadowed everything else, even the sabotage of the Fourth of July parade, one of Jim's favorite camp events. "The jewel in the crown of summer," he cal ed the fancy formations they dreamed up each year.

  Chastised and chastened, the two children were released to their counselors. They would have to apologize to the whole camp. Jim would also inform their parents and he was firm. He didn't think he could accept them as campers again. Stil , he told them they could write and plead their case this winter.

  “He was real y fair," Samantha told Arlene at the end of the day as her duenna escorted her through the woods to the "Mil ion Dol ar Mansion.”

  “Maybe if he treated Duncan the way he treats the campers, things wouldn't have gotten so messed up"

  “Dream on! The guy is wacko. He's responsible for those stitches in your head, remember."

  “I know." Samantha stopped in the middle of the path.

  "But something has to make someone like that"

  “You are too good. Remind me to cal Mother Teresa and tel her to move over. Duncan is pond scum, pure and simple.”

  Samantha had to laugh at Arlene's choice of imagery, from Mother Teresa to pond scum.

  “Al right, I agre
e.”

  Arlene waved good-bye as Samantha knocked at the front door. Valerie opened it immediately. She was expecting her.

  “Come in. How are you feeling? Are you sure you should be back at work so soon?"

  “You sound like my mother," Samantha said. "I'm fine and I was beginning to get stir-crazy."

  “Come on upstairs. Your check is in my office”

  Samantha fol owed her up the spiral staircase, made by one of the last practitioners of this art in the state.

  The only thing that distinguished the thoroughly feminine boudoir Valerie ushered Samantha into as an office was the Macintosh on a pale green-and-white sponge-painted table underneath one of the windows.

  Beside it was a daybed covered by a bil owy white spread and piled high with pil ows. Samantha imagined how lovely it would feel to lean back into that down sea of rose chintzes and white eyelet. The rug was covered by more roses, woven against a dark green background. In contrast to the rest of the house, the wal s were not painted off-white, but papered in a sage stripe with a Victorian frieze of lilacs above. Two wicker chairs with plump cushions—you wouldn't have marks on the back of your legs from these—

  sat on either side of the French doors leading to a smal secluded balcony overlooking the cove.

  “I like to sunbathe there," Valerie said, fol owing Samantha's eye. "I let myself go in here. I do spend quite a bit of time in this room. Jim hates it. Too much froufrou, he says," and she laughed.

  “Wel , I love it. I'd give anything for one like it!"

  Samantha enthused, forgetting her insistence two years earlier that Pix get rid of any and al vestiges of flowers, dotted swiss, and ribbon from Samantha's bedroom.

  Valerie was rummaging around on the table, pul ing open the drawer in the middle.

  “Your check must be in Jim's study. Why don't you admire the view. I'l be back in a minute.”

  Samantha dutiful y sat in one of the chairs. It was as comfortable as it looked. The phone on Valerie's desk rang, then stopped. She must have answered it downstairs.

  Samantha stood up and walked around the room, admiring the primitive stil lifes that hung on the wal s. Next to a plant stand with an arrangement of wax fruit and flowers never seasonal mates in nature, under a large glass dome, there was a closet door. Feeling slightly guilty, Samantha decided to open it after first listening careful y to make sure Valerie wasn't coming up the stairs. She just had to see what kind of leisure wear Valerie kept here—Victoria's Secret or Laura Ashley? She giggled and wished Arlene was with her. She'd die when Samantha told her.

  She quietly turned the intricately embossed brass doorknob.

  The closet was huge, but instead of the negligees, tea gowns, and whatever that Samantha had expected, there was nothing except a large antique armoire. It had an ornate lock but no key. The closet smel ed strongly of potpourri and Samantha sneezed. She reached into her jeans pocket for a tissue. She didn't have one. Yet, there was something else there. Down at the bottom was the key she'd found over two weeks ago, that sunny day when she and Mom had taken the dogs for a walk to see how the Fairchilds' new house was coming along—a sunny day that seemed to have had its start in another life.

  Al of a sudden, she felt nervous. She held the key in her hand. It had been so warm, she hadn't been wearing jeans much. This was the first time since that long-ago Sunday she'd had this pair on.

  It was an ornate key, like the lock.

  Before she could change her mind, she put it in, turned, and heard the click as the doors opened. When she saw what was inside, she laughed in relief. A whole shelf of plastic Mickey Mouse figures, old ones. There were also some folk art carvings of animals and one of a figure that looked like someone from the Bible. On other shelves were piles of quilts. This was obviously where Valerie kept her finds.

  Samantha closed one of the doors and bent down to make sure the quilts didn't get in the way. She reached under a bunch to ease them farther into the chest and immediately pul ed back, as if she'd put her hand into a blazing fire instead of a stack of linens. She closed the other door, pocketed the key, shut the closet door fast, and sat back down, looking straight out to sea. Her heart was pounding, her cheeks blazing.

  There had been a neat little blue cross stitched on the binding of each of the quilts. They lined up like little soldiers. The crosses again. There had been one on Mitchel Pierce's quilt. There had been one on the quilt her mother had bought, a quilt her mother had told her was a fake. Should she tel Valerie? What should she do? She put her hands up to her cheeks to try to cool them down. They felt ice-cold against her blushes. She took a deep breath.

  Valerie was coming.

  “The view is real y something. I could stay here forever," she said in as normal a tone as she could.

  “I hope you don't have to, dear." Valerie's tone wasn't normal at al . Samantha twisted around in the chair.

  Valerie might have brought the paycheck, but she had also brought an extremely lethal-looking gun, which she was handling with ease, pointing it directly between her employee's big brown eyes.

  “I have to run. I'm already a bit late picking Samantha up, but she's waiting for me at the Athertons' house, and it's certainly no punishment for her to revel in Valerie's company amid Valerie's perfect taste. If anything, she'l probably Òh, Mother' me for getting there too soon.”

  Faith laughed—while she stil could. Amy, happily playing next to her adored Mommy on a water-fil ed mat, complete with floating spongy fish, would no doubt put her through this sometime in the future, as wel .

  “Al right. I just wanted to check in and hear about the funeral, though this one sounds pretty tame." Faith and Pix had attended a more dramatic service on the island several summers ago—one that people were stil talking about.

  “Yes, poor Addie. Poor Rebecca. But I suppose their lives have been happy ones, if not bursting with excitement.

  And Adelaide real y did make a name for herself in the quilt world."

  “Hmmm," Faith was ready to move on back to the living, especial y her own life. "If Tom can get away early, we'l be up Friday night. Do you think Seth wil have started the framing by then?"

  “He said he would, and even though it's been cooler, we haven't had any rain, so the foundation should be dry soon."

  “I can't wait to see it— and you, and Samantha.”

  “Likewise, I'm sure.”

  The two women hung up. Faith reached for Amy. "Your first trip of many to Sanpere Island," she told her child, who listened intently and replied with a string of appropriate nonsense syl ables. Was it just because she was a mother that Faith thought she could discern the words wanna go, wanna go? Wel , I want to go, too, Faith reflected. With the amount she was spending cal ing Pix, it might have been cheaper, and more sensible, to have shut down the company and gone up in July in the first place. Besides, although things seemed to have settled down on the island, she knew she wouldn't feel easy until she saw Pix and especial y Samantha for herself.

  “You'l like it there." She continued to hold a one-sided conversation with her child, a situation she'd eventual y gotten used to with Ben. In his early days, she'd felt as if she was talking to a cat or some other domesticated pet. "It has icy cold water, lots of bugs, no place to eat, no place to shop, nothing much to do." And they were building a house in this Shangri-la.

  Pix knocked loudly at the Athertons' front door and, receiving no reply, knocked again. Perhaps they were on the deck in the front of the house. She walked around, didn't see anyone, and went back to the door. She knocked yet again, then did what she normal y did in Sanpere: walked in. She could hear Valerie's voice coming from upstairs.

  “It's me, Pix," she cal ed from the bottom of the spiral.

  Taking the silence for an invitation, she went on up. She was curious to see more of the house. At the top of the stairs, she saw an open door and through it Valerie's back.

  She entered the room. "Sorry I'm a bit late ..." Her apology was cut short f
irst by her initial impression of the decor—it was fit for a little princess, or an aging romance writer—

  then by the gun.

  “What's going on! Samantha, are you al right?”

  “Shut up and sit down in the other chair.”

  Pix was so stunned that for a moment she couldn't move. It was simply too much to take in al at once. Valerie?

  “Move!”

  She moved.

  Samantha had been similarly turned to stone. She had hardly moved a muscle since Valerie had entered the room; even Pix's arrival did not cause more than a flutter of an eyelash. Every thought she had directed her to keep stil and stay alive. Her mother reached for her hand and she grabbed it, but did not shift her gaze or open her mouth.

  Valerie, however, was talking to herself nonstop. Tap ping her foot in annoyance yet maintaining a steady aim, she sat down on the daybed, incongruously surrounded by lace.

  “Everything was perfect! Mitch was out of the way.

  We'd heard Seth tel his crew that they would be pouring the foundation after they finished the work at the camp.

  Perfect!" She was fuming. "Mitch, the old lush. Couldn't keep his mouth shut and he thought he should get more money. For what? I ask you." Pix correctly assumed this was a purely rhetorical question, especial y since Valerie did not even pause before continuing her tirade. "So he could make things look old. Big deal. There are plenty of people to take his place—or who could have taken his place." If looks could indeed kil , Pix would have been effectively demolished and the gun superfluous. "But you had to start playing Nancy Drew. Stil , that didn't get anywhere, and I was home free. I had even gotten rid of Duncan, so life around here could be a little more peaceful.

  I thought we were al going to have a lot of fun together. You haven't been a good friend at al !" She was pouting now.

  The woman must be absolutely mad, Pix thought. She was talking as if Pix had done her out of an invitation to the Magnolia Bal or some such thing at the same time as she was confessing to murder! What else could the references to Mitch being "out of the way" and "pouring the foundation"