The Body in the Kelp ff-2

by Katherine Hall Page

  Hope scanned the two remaining papers.

  “They're old deeds, all right. What is this `Point' she refers to? Is it big? Because these seem to indicate a large property." And Hope should know, Faith reflected. Before she could answer her sister, Margery broke in.

  “Gorry, the Point! Deeds to the whole thing! We're rich!" She appeared to have forgotten that she was tied up, awaiting the police and charges of murder, attempted murder, and drug trafficking. Faith was also pretty sure that Sonny wouldn't be giving Margery so much as a green stamp once he found out about her passion for Eric.

  The thought must have occurred to Eric, too.

  “What do you mean we're rich?" he spat out. "Sonny and all the rest of those damn Prescotts are rich. And this is what I've been busting my ass to find—a bunch of papers for Sonny? That old witch! She swore she had the gold and was hiding it. I should have made her talk before I ..." He stopped speaking abruptly and clamped his mouth shut.

  “Before you what, Eric? Before you killed her too?" Faith was sure that was what he had intended to say.

  Margery raised her head off the floor. Her cheek was imprinted with the mark of the braided rug she was lying on. It stood out against the rest of her face, which had paled.

  “Eric! You killed Sonny's aunt?" It was one thing to murder strangers and off-islanders, but family?

  As Faith was endeavoring to run this perverted morality through her mind, Sonny came around at last. Either the fact that he could be rich, his aunt's murder, or both had doused him like a faceful of cold water.

  “What's going on? Why are we all tied up?”

  Before Faith could get to the explanations, there was a loud knock on the door and Sergeant Earl Dickinson strode in. He moved his head slowly, taking in the full sweep of the room.

  “Judas Priest, I heard it and I couldn't believe it. I'm seeing it and I still don't.”

  The giant Ferris wheel, crown jewel of Smokey's Greater Shows, rose high above the fairgrounds, silhouetted against Blue Hill. Ben had had several rides on .the merry-go-round. Now it was Faith and Tom's turn for some fun.

  People were still getting into the bottom car, and the Fairchilds were suspended at the top of the wheel. Below them, Pix, holding Ben, was waving and trying to direct his attention skyward. He was more interested in the gears of the machine that moved the wheel.

  “I love Ferris wheels," Faith said, sitting as close as possible to Tom.

  “Me, too. And I've never been on one with such a magnificent view before." He gestured toward the bay, which looked like another fairground, its flat expanse reflecting the moon in tiny spots of white light as the current changed.

  The gondola swayed and the wheel began to turn. Down they swept past the Millers and Ben, past the midway, the animal barns, the 4-H Beef Show, the State of Maine Two Crusted Blueberry Pie Contest goods lined up in the exhibition hall, the John Deere oooth, and the grandstand where people were patiently waiting for Joie Chitwood's Auto Thrill Show to start.

  Faith was content. Pix had sworn there was a concession run by a local grange that served up a perfect lobster stew, and after that there would be fireworks. The last night of the fair. The last night of summer.

  The wheel began to slow and soon they were up at the top again, immobile for a brief moment as people got off. "Hey, honey, wanna neck?" Tom breathed into her ear. "Okay, out I'd better tell you right now. I go all the way.”

  “I'm a lucky guy. Do you want to go 'round again?”

  “Absolutely, but I think we'd better relieve Pix and Sam.

  Maybe after we eat.”

  The wheel lowered them down and they stepped out. Ben oegan to squeal with delight as soon as he saw them.

  “Daddee, Daddee!" Far from having forgotten Tom, as was feared, Ben would barely let him out of his sight.

  “Lead us to that lobster stew, Pix. I'm starving," Tom said as he hoisted Ben up on his shoulders.

  “This way. The Fraziers are meeting us there, but I want to get some french fries first.”

  Pix had been steadily consuming french fries since they arrived. Faith succumbed as well when she saw the sacks of potatoes outside the stands and tasted one of Pix's fries—crisp, fresh, and with a bit of the skin still clinging to it. But douse it with vinegar, as was the local custom, adopted by the Millers, she would not.

  The Fraziers were eating corn on the cob, near the French Fry Queen's stand. Louise's chin was shiny with butter and they looked as if they were having their first good time in a long time.

  They all made their way together to the picnic tables set up by the grange under a tent. The night air was beginning to assume an autumnal character and it was pleasant to walk into the warm tent filled with the smells of fair food.

  They sat down around a big table and ordered lobster stew, biscuits, and coffee. While they were waiting, Jill came in. Jill and Sergeant Dickinson. Faith wasn't surprised. She had expected the full cast of characters to appear—those that were not dead or in jail, that is. They had already seen the Hamiltons at the 3,200-pound six-foot oxen pull and Hope and Quentin were happily wandering the arcades, toting an enormous white bison Quentin had won pitching pennies. This was what "Meet Me at the Fair" was all about. Sooner or later you'd run into everyone you had met all summer.

  Faith waved. "Come join us," she called.

  “Thank you. We'd be glad to," answered Earl, putting a protective arm around Jill and steering her toward the table. So it was like that.

  Jill was the first to bring up what was on everyone's mind.

  "Don't think you have to avoid talking about what has

  happened because of me," she told them. "It's going to take

  a long time to sort it all out and talking is the only way to do it. To say that I didn't know what Eric was like is a major understatement.”

  Faith was relieved. She still had a question or two and the people who could supply some of the answers were sitting right there.

  “I still can't believe I missed the whole thing," Pix said ruefully. "If Arlene's mother had taken proper care of her tires, she wouldn't have had a flat on the way back from Bangor. I spent all my time driving back and forth from the bridge to the Prescotts', sick with worry about Samantha. Of course, if they hadn't been delayed, I would have had her with me and that wouldn't have been good."

  “Or good for you either, sweetheart," Sam said emphatically. "There's no telling what you might have taken it into your head to do.”

  Faith was afraid they were going to get hopelessly sidetracked on one of the famous Miller tangents. She interrupted.

  “You're off duty, Earl, or so it seems." She smiled as she caught him dipping a spoon to taste Jill's chowder. He'd ordered a hamburger. "What were Eric and the Prescotts up to?"

  “Well, I figure you have a better right than most to know, Mrs. Fairchild. Anyway, it's no secret now. Sonny Prescott has turned state's evidence and hasn't stopped talking since we got him to Ellsworth. He's pretty sore about Margery. Never knew she was carrying on like that. Come to mention it, quite a few of us were surprised."

  “Matilda never liked Margery," Louise commented. "Said she used to poke around the house and attic at night. Looking for that gold, I suppose."

  “I think we can forget about the gold. I know it was in that letter in the box you found, but I've been hearing about it since I was a kid, and nobody ever saw it or ever will."

  “Don't forget, Earl, somebody over in Penobscot dug up a vase near the Bagaduce river with more than two thousand gold coins inside. It was believed to be pirate gold," Jill reminded him.

  “Honey, that was more than a hundred years ago! Any gold around these parts has already been found or is just imagined. Anyway, a lot of people believed Matilda had the gold and I have an idea she liked them to. But that didn't get her killed. No, what got her killed was kindness or foolishness or both."

  “What do you mean?" Tom asked. He had a lot of catching up to do and had barely gotten all the peo
ple straight. What he did have straight was that his wife had once more unaccountably landed herself and child in danger and been miraculously spared. He squeezed her hand as he fed Ben some stew.

  “Matilda's people weren't paying a whole lot of mind to her, and those two young fellows were. She was flattered and got to care for them. Genuine niceness on Roger's part, more than likely, but Eric must have always had his eye on the main chance. I thought he might have burned his house down himself to convince her to leave them hers. But Sonny did that and he's been kicking himself ever since."

  “Sonny? Why?" Faith realized she had missed something. "He was trying to get Eric to leave the island. He tried other things too, but nothing worked."

  “So that fight at the dance was real." Faith was beginning to put it all together. "He wanted out of the business, right?"

  “Ayuh. I'm not saying what he did wasn't wrong, very wrong, especially when you see all the drugged-out kids around this area. Right here tonight—kids who would have been showing the sheep they raised or the jams they put up before all this hit. I blamed the bridge that they built to the mainland, but that's neither here nor there and it was bound to happen one of these days. Pretty hard getting across the reach by boat in the winter.”

  Now it was Earl who was off.

  Faith felt like the lady they had seen at the sheepdog trials earlier. She resisted the impulse to say "come on, Laddie.”

  “But you think Sonny did have some excuse for doing what he did?"

  “Not excuse. Reason. He was in big trouble financially. Two summers ago was a bad one for lobsterin' and an especial bad one for Prescott's pound. They had just bought anew six-wheeler when they lost a boat in a storm and then there just weren't any lobsters. That was when Eric came along. Sonny was only going to do it until he got on his feet again, but it was easy money and after a lifetime of strain and struggle, which fishing is, I guess a little easy money was like heaven. They landed the bales on some of the small islands offshore, then loaded them into the front of the trucks at the Old Ferry Cove dock, which hasn't been used for years. Then they'd go back to the lobster pool and fill the rest up with lobsters. If they did get stopped, an inspector looking for shorts would never make them unload the whole truck without a pretty good reason. And they were lucky. The drivers didn't know what they were driving and Eric had it all worked out on the New York end. Sonny didn't even see the stuff. He just provided the transport. Andy and his crew from Camden were doing the heavy work."

  “But then Sonny wanted to stop," Jill picked up the story. "I was so stupid. I should have known what was going on. I heard them arguing one night. It didn't make any sense to me and when everything else began to happen, I forgot about it." Her voice lowered and she looked away. "I guess it was hard for me to believe Eric could be involved with anything illegal."

  “I'm stIll confused. Why did Eric kill his friend Roger? And why did he have my wife at gunpoint?”

  All the pieces had fallen into place and it was Faith who could answer him. "I think Eric was a very selfish person. Enough was never enough. He had a lucrative pottery business, but he started dealing drugs to make more money. Then Matilda left them the house. That would have been fine, so long as it was Roger, but when he found out about Bird and the baby, that was too much. There are so many sad stories here, but Bird's is the saddest. She had finally found Roger after all those years and was looking forward to marriage, motherhood. But Eric couldn't allow that. It also may be that Roger had found out about the drug dealing. Something Eric said the other night suggested that. And Bird probably knew because of Andy. So he sabotaged the boat, no doubt put something stronger in place of what Roger usually smoked, and took off for his friends. He returned grief stricken and oddly enough, I think he was."

  “Roger was the only person Eric ever really cared about or let get close," Jill said softly. "Oh, I never fooled myself into thinking he loved me as much as I did him. There was always a distance between us. But he loved Roger, almost like a part of himself—a better part. I remember when Bird came to the island, he was upset. If she and Roger hadn't gotten together, I'm sure Eric would have given up the dealing rather than lose Roger. But since Roger was already lost to him, he just went ahead taking care of himself."

  “ `Taking care of himself' is an apt expression," Faith continued. "It was going to be so easy too, before things began to go wrong. He had planned a nice tidy little murder.”

  No one seemed about to interrupt her and Faith kept a firm grip on center stage. "He'd get the house—which did obsess him—marry Jill, maybe see Margery on the side, maybe still run the drug business, but basically settle down. Then Bird didn't go out in the boat and he had to tie up that loose end. He may not have intended Margery to kill Bird, just find out what she knew. But the deed was done. He had to plant the evidence on Bill Fox, then Andy got picked up and things began to get even more complicated. At some point he must have decided to cut and run, but he wanted to take the gold with him and the key to the whole thing was in my hands. We know he tried to steal the quilt and did take my bracelet," Faith remembered indignantly before winding up her tour de force. "It looks like Margery was getting secondhand goods all the way around—not that I feel particularly sorry for her. She or Eric must have been the person following me in the woods to see if I was on the track of the gold. They were probably following us all week."

  “I should never have asked you to bring the quilt over that night," Louise apologized. "Then they would never have known."

  “How long have you lived on this island?" her husband demanded. "When does something like a treasure map in a quilt get hushed up?”

  Pix shook her head. "I feel like I'm still on that Tilt-aWhirl ride. The whole summer has been like that. Roger, then Bird, then Bill—and everything finally colliding in your living room, Faith."

  “If he hadn't been afraid Andy would talk, he might have stayed, believing that the police thought Bill had killed Bird and Roger. You didn't, did you?" she asked Earl.

  “No, we weren't too happy with that one, although it all made sense."

  “Sense! Bill would never have killed Bird, never would have killed anybody. Besides, whoever killed Roger had planned to kill Bird at the same time. We were too dense to see what was in front of our faces. Remember? Samantha told us originally Bird was going out in the boat with Roger? And she didn't know how to swim, according to her father. That would have eliminated Bill right away if we had only thought of it."

  “I think once Bird was gone, it was only a question of time for Bill," Elliot said. "We've known him for years and there was a dark side to his nature. You mustn't blame yourself.”

  Tom looked at Faith in annoyance. "You've got the perfect candidate for blame in Eric, and you and your sister, Bat-woman and Robinette, are responsible for his capture. Think about that instead."

  “We all trusted him and liked him so much," Sam mused, "it's hard to understand how so many of us could have been taken in."

  “He would have been some good as a con man—was in the case of Matilda, conned the house right out from under her and the rest of the Prescotts, then killed her once he was sure she had changed her will," Earl pointed out. "No scruples and a lot of self-importance."

  “And what about Sonny? Think how we trusted him! I can't get over someone from the island being involved." Pix looked devastated.

  Earl grinned, "You summer people are all alike. Somehow you've dreamed up this idea that Sanpere is like the Garden of Eden before Eve got hungry. Nobody lies, cheats, or steals.

  We just go along our blameless ways. Every carpenter is a master. Every fisherman gets a good catch. Every woman can make good pie crust and raise prizewinning tuberous begonias. Well, surprise—we're just like other people, good, bad, and mostly in between.”

  The sergeant was getting more interesting by the moment. Faith wondered whether the combination of boyish charm and good looks plus an interesting philosophy of life was working any magic on Jill.
Goodness knew she needed some after Eric.

  Sam looked at his watch. "I hate to break this up, but something tells me we're going to be repeating this conversation with some frequency and if we want a good spot for the fireworks, we've got to get going."

  “I think I can find you a spot," Earl promised. Rank had its privileges.

  Quentin and Hope were waiting by the information booth. Hope was eating cotton candy and feeding it to Quentin. The bison had been joined oy a raccoon, or rather a mutant of the species three feet tall, wearing goggles and a vest. All four of them looked disgustingly smug and blissfully happy.

  Samantha ran over. "Mom, we want to sit in the grandstand. Is it okay if we meet you after?" She pointed back at Arlene and two gangly boys who were stolidly munching fried dough.

  “Why is it always `Mom'?" Sam complained. "Don't I get a vote?"

  “Oh, Daddy, just say yes. They're waiting for me!”

  “Yes. But be here at ten-thirty on the dot.”

  She ran off and Sam looked at Pix. "By the time I get used to having a teenage girl, she'll be in college.”

  Pix took his arm. "Poor you. It's hard when Daddy's little girl takes her hair out of braids."

  “I always liked those braids," Sam muttered.

  The spot Earl found for them turned out to be away from the grandstand, across the track that circled the field where the fireworks would be launched. It was safe, but close to the action and away from the lights of the rest of the fair. Tom fetched blankets from the car and they spread them on thedamp grass. Faith lay back and put Benjamin on her chest. The stars were beautiful.

  “Should start seeing the Northern Lights soon. It's getting to be that time of year," came a familiar voice from the darkness. It was Freeman.

  Faith sat up. "I'm glad you found us."

  “No, deah, you found us," he replied.

  “Hush, Freeman. They're staatin'.”

  They were the best fireworks Faith had ever seen. Even better than the Fourth of July in New York City, though she wasn't about to admit that to anyone.