The Body in the Gazebo (10 page)

“They’re all together in a file in my office at the church. Together with the bank statements, which are in a binder. The ATM card is slipped under the plastic thing that separates the checks from deposit slips in the checkbook wallet.”

“And everything is sitting there in one of your file drawers, clearly labeled? Easy for anyone to access when you’re not there?”

“Not so easy. It’s one of the locked file cabinets and you’d have to know which one, plus have the key.”

“Okay.” Faith felt they were getting somewhere. “You keep the file cabinet keys on your ring with the keys to your office, the church, and the house?”

Tom looked down. “I’m afraid I keep those keys in one of my desk drawers.”

“Unlocked?”

“Unlocked.”

He looked guilty as sin. Faith got up and hugged him from behind, resting her chin on his head. He always smelled so good. A clean, slightly citrus soapy smell and something ineffable that was Tom.

“Obviously, this is a problem that goes with the turf. Trusting humankind.” She wouldn’t have him any other way, but it was going to hurt him now.

She began to think out loud. “Still, although this widens the field of suspects”—adding to herself, The entire congregation plus passersby—“we should focus on people who have been in and out of your office in the past year with some frequency. People who would know where you kept the checkbook and card, as well as the keys.”

She sat back down and picked up the pencil.

Tom looked better. He reached for another cookie—the white lettering on the chocolate icing read,
The Hunch
. Faith took it as an omen.

“Albert, although I can’t imagine—”

Faith interrupted him. “Yes you can. Think Dorothy Sayers, ‘Suspect everyone.’ ” She wrote down, “Albert Trumbull, parish administrative assistant.”

“All right. Next. James came on board as associate minister a year and a half ago when Walter retired.”

For most of his career in the ministry, Walter Pratt had divided his time between First Parish and teaching at Andover Newton. He’d never wanted to assume the top job, telling Tom he was “content to watch from the sidelines.” This was a false description of his active involvement. When Walter died suddenly of a massive coronary, Tom had taken it not only as a personal loss, but a loss of part of the parish’s history. More than once since Saturday’s meeting with the vestry, he’d wished Walter were by his side still.

Faith wrote down, “James Holden, associate minister.”

Quickly Tom ticked off, “Lily Sinclair, our Div School intern—she arrived about a year ago, as I recall, and left in the beginning of this January for her last semester. Eloise Gardner, education director. I suppose we have to include the sexton, Eli Brown, he’s in and out of my office. And the vestry. Some have a more visible presence than others.”

“Sherman, for example.”

“Sherman, for example,” Tom agreed grimly.

It wasn’t a long list, except for the vestry, which was composed of five individuals elected by the congregation plus the senior and junior wardens. Faith put those names on the bottom of the sheet. Meetings weren’t held in Tom’s office, so she’d ask him at another time to take a look and see if any of the names, other than Sherman’s, popped up as people who’d been around more than the others.

She took his mug and made him another cup of tea.

Action was obviously the antidote for this poisonous situation. Yet, Tom couldn’t be directly involved. Which left . . .

“Anyone working directly with you probably knows you keep keys in your desk drawers. Or if they don’t, it would be the first place anyone would look. I think the next step is getting to know Albert, James, Lily, Eloise, and even Mr. Brown”—the sexton was pushing eighty and was usually called “Mr. Brown,” as a sign of respect, Faith supposed—“a whole lot better. I’ll start digging.”

If it weren’t for that fact that this was her beloved who was involved, she’d be greeting the prospect with pleasure. Incurably curious, she had already started to speculate on what might be under the rocks she turned over.

P
ix knew she looked good even before her appreciative husband gave a low whistle when she came out to the patio where he was reading the morning paper. They’d had a leisurely breakfast before she went to get dressed. Faith had nixed Pix’s dubious collection of jeans, many of them hand-me-downs from her boys once they shot up, all of them worn at the knees from gardening. The jeans she put on today were new and fit like a second skin, making her long, shapely legs look even more so. She was wearing a royal-blue tank top with a large, oversized broadly striped shirt in blue and white, the tails tied around her still slim waist. Kind of like Sandra Dee in one of those Tammy movies, Pix had thought when Faith demonstrated the way she believed the outfit worked best.

There was a wonderful place in Brooklin, Maine—Blossom Studio—that made glass beads, which were transformed into exquisite forms of jewelry. Sam had given her a simple gold neck wire with a large frosted Nile-green bead. She’d put that on at the last minute, and some makeup.

She’d only been away from Aleford for three days, but it felt like a month, a very pleasant month.

The Cohens had been coming to Hilton Head since Rebecca was born and Pix recognized kindred spirits in their desire to show off the place they loved. It was the way she felt taking guests around Sanpere for the first time. Today Stephen and Cissy had arranged an ecotour by boat with a captain knowledgeable not only about the Low Country’s natural life but its history as well. The boat was large enough for all of them, but small enough to get close to the osprey, herons, ibis, egrets, and perhaps, away from the inlets and marshlands, dolphins. They’d be on the ocean heading for a picnic lunch on Daufuskie Island, one of South Carolina’s Gullah Sea Islands.

Walking toward Sam, she’d flashed back to another time many, many years earlier when she’d emerged dressed and ready to go. She’d known she looked good that time, too, and the man—a young man, not long out of his teens—had whistled, too.

“Wow,” he’d said. “I thought you were going to be a dog. Brian never said, I mean, excuse me, this is coming out all wrong, sugar. Let me start over.” She’d been instantly charmed by his soft Southern accent, laughed, and taken his arm. His comment didn’t sound all wrong to her, not at all.

When her roommate at Brown had first suggested Pix come with her for Green Key Weekend at Dartmouth, Pix had refused. Mindy was from Savannah, and she’d met Brian when she’d gone home for the holidays. They’d been seeing each other since—or rather “keeping company.”

“You can’t sit and pine for that Sam Miller all weekend. It was time you two went your separate ways. I mean, you’ve known him your whole life, right? Isn’t that kind of like incest? Besides, why should you be the one to mope around the dorm when he’s the one who gave you that sad old line about needing some space? I swear, any man that says that to me is going to see some space—outer space.”

Pix hadn’t been able to contradict her. Everything she’d said was true.

“You need a real man, not one of these ice-cold Yankees. Brian’s roommate, Steve, sounds perfect for you. Real outdoorsy. He said to bring your skis. He’s premed. You’d never starve as a doctor’s wife.”

“Whoa,” Pix had said. “If I do go, and I’m not saying I will, isn’t it a little too soon to be planning a trip down the aisle?”

“It’s never too soon for that, darlin.’ ”

Considering that Mindy was Phi Beta Kappa and applying to law schools, she wasn’t just going for her MRS degree. But she had told Pix the beginning of their sophomore year when they’d started rooming together that although she planned to have a career, a successful one, there was nothing more important in life than being a good wife and mother.

From the Class Notes, Pix knew that Mindy had achieved all three of her goals, or so it seemed on paper. After graduation, they hadn’t stayed in touch.

Several of the girls on her floor had raised an eyebrow when she mentioned she was going to Green Key at Dartmouth—one said something vague about testosterone and be prepared to run—but the more Pix had thought about it the more she’d decided Mindy was right. Sam Miller wasn’t the only fish in the sea. And the more she’d gone over their last conversation when he’d said he wanted some space, wanted to see other people, the madder she got. Yes, they had known each other a long time—not their whole lives, just since middle school. But so what?

Walking toward her Dartmouth date, who was not short, as she’d feared, and very good-looking, she’d been glad she’d gone.

Just as this Hilton Head time was starting to pass in a rapid blur, that weekend had been a blur—except a blur of parties with lots of dancing. There was always plenty of some kind of delicious fruit punch at the fraternity houses, and she’d been amused by traditions like the raucous “chariot” races with fraternity members serving as the chariot horses, charging across the college green while onlookers pelted them with water balloons and eggs.

She never did go skiing, and by Sunday, she’d convinced herself that Steve, not Sam, was the real love of her life. She had a vague recollection of explaining this at length to Mindy Saturday night while sipping a lot of that yummy punch. She’d awakened with a start, and a headache, late Sunday morning in Steve’s room, in Steve’s bed.

They’d talked on the phone a few times and he was supposed to come down to Providence when Brian did. And then she was supposed to go to Hanover for some spring skiing. They never saw each other again and it was a pleasant memory of the kinds of things one does in youth and never again. Pix avoided all and any kinds of punch for many years.

The following summer she was home in Aleford running the tennis program at a local day camp. Early one evening—one of those perfect summer evenings when the light is so long it makes everything look like a stage set—Sam Miller knocked on her door, got down on one knee, held up a ring, and said, “I’ve been a complete idiot. First forgive me, and then marry me.”

Which they did right after graduation the following June at First Parish with the reception at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn.

When she’d seen Stephen Saturday she’d recognized him immediately, despite a receding, and gray, hairline. Mark had always referred to his future father-in-law as “Rebecca’s father” or “Dr. Cohen.” Steve had been premed when Pix knew him, but the country was filled with doctors with that last name. It had simply never occurred to her that the two were one and the same. Yes, her Steve—well, not really hers—was from the South, but in that insular way of her fellow Northeasterners, she tended to think of Dixie as one large cup.

She’d also been afraid she might have been mistaken. Context is everything, and she’d been finding as she grew older that more and more frequently people were looking familiar. She’d thought she saw her mother’s dear Norwegian friend on the subway a month ago. It seemed an impossibility, but she was still about to greet her when she realized it wasn’t Marit at all. Context. People greeted her and she knew she knew them, but from where? PTA days? Volunteering at Rosie’s Place? Sanpere?

Yet, it had only taken a few seconds to be absolutely sure who Stephen Cohen was, and had been.

“I want to call Faith about Mother, since we’ll be gone all day and I doubt our cell phones will work on the water. Would you go down in case they’re already waiting? I won’t be long.”

Sam gave her a kiss, and then another.

“You want to blow this off? Just you and me today?”

Pix smiled. She supposed she was having what people called a “second honeymoon”—with at least one man.

“That would be terribly rude, but I’ll take a rain check.”

As soon as he was out the door, she called Faith, who was at work but said she had a moment to chat.

“Now, tell me everything, Ms. Miller. To think, you have a past I know nothing about! You sly little minx!”

Pix told her everything.

Faith reacted with enthusiasm. “I’m glad you kicked up your heels a little—that time and whenever else in your flaming youth. Clearly Sam was the one, but you needed to find out you could be the one for somebody else, too.”

“It was all a long time ago,” Pix said, “and I’m pretty sure those Dartmouth boys were pouring every known kind of alcohol into the punch bowl, but it happened and I’m not sorry. Not about that weekend.”

“Then what?”

“Oh Faith,” Pix cried. “He doesn’t remember me!”

Chapter 5

D
own East, Faith had occasionally heard someone described as being “sick with secrets,” and while she didn’t think she had reached that point, she definitely felt she was suffering from a surfeit of them as she sat next to Ursula in the early afternoon on Wednesday. There was the missing money at First Parish, which Faith hoped Ursula would not hear about, knowing how upset the former Senior Warden would be. And then there was Niki, whom Ursula knew. The older woman would most certainly think the news of a wife’s pregnancy should be shared with her husband. However, these paled in comparison to the situation Ursula’s daughter found herself in—a situation to be kept from her mother at all costs.

Faith had spoken to Pix the day before at greater length and had tried, in vain, to convince her that she had not aged beyond recognition since college. Yes, her hair was a bit shorter, but it showed no silver threads among the bronze. Nor had she gained weight, and if any cottage-cheese cellulite existed, it wasn’t apparent, even in a bathing suit. A few crow’s-feet at the eyes, but the rest of her face was smooth. Faith only hoped she would look as good as Pix did some years hence. Of course for Faith, there was always a Plan B involving a discreet “vacation.” Pix had not and never would resort to cosmetic surgery. When the wrinkles appeared, as they would, she’d be one of those people who say they’ve earned them. Faith would be one of those people who say they’ve earned erasing them—the result not Joan Rivers or Nancy Reagan, but merely a slightly younger version of her own self.

“Okay, maybe he doesn’t recognize me physically, but he should remember my name. It’s not as if there could have been a lot of other people named Pix in his life, and especially not that weekend.”

From what Faith had heard about the wild Green Key weekends of yore, there would have been a plethora of Muffys, Bunnys, and yes, Pixes from the Seven Sisters, Ivies, and other schools in attendance. But she was also sure this wasn’t why Dr. Cohen didn’t remember her friend’s name. Faith had no doubt as to the reason.

“It’s a guy thing. Think about it. Remembering names, especially female names, is not in their DNA. I’ve caught Tom stumbling over them more than once. Do admit, you’ve seen this with Sam—and your sons.”

“Well . . . yes,” Pix had said, “and my father could never keep people straight, female and male. Mother used to whisper in his ear at parties, she told me, so she wouldn’t be embarrassed when he forgot that the next-door neighbors were Sally and Bob, not Susie and Bill.”

“Okay, feel better now?”

There had been a long pause.

“So, I guess I was just a one-night stand?”

Faith had had to go through it all over again and at the end Pix had still sounded forlorn.

Before she’d hung up, Faith told Pix, “Don’t you dare let this put a damper on everything. Tonight I want you in that strapless number we bought. I guarantee that Stephen Cohen and every other Y chromosome in the place will never forget you in that.”

Pix had sworn her to secrecy and Faith would never violate the trust, but she wished she could tell someone, Niki in particular. Faith could discuss the situation with her, and yes, have a giggle. The person she had absolutely no desire to tell was the woman next to her now. Parents didn’t need to know everything. As she thought this she realized, however, she wasn’t anywhere near this point with her kids.

This was going to be the third installment of Ursula’s tale, and as each chapter was revealed, she seemed to gain strength and look better. “Sick with secrets.” The phrase came back to Faith again. Was this what had been ailing Ursula?

“You are good to come and listen so patiently, Faith dear. I’m sure you have all sorts of better things to do,” Ursula said.

“Please don’t think this—and there’s no rush. Things are very slow at work and I have plenty of time. Being with you is exactly where I want to be,” Faith said, meaning every word and then some. Faith felt honored at having been chosen to hear whatever it was Ursula needed to reveal—and it transported her away from her other worries.

“Throughout life,” Ursula began slowly, “there are times when you read about a terrible tragedy and want to turn time back for an instant. When you want to keep someone from getting on a plane or opening a door. Or you may even want to turn time back many years, granting someone a happier childhood instead of the one that led to misery and worse—that sort of thing. You say to yourself, ‘What if ?’ Since that summer, my turning-back-time ‘what if’ has been, ‘What if Father hadn’t gone to Sanpere that August weekend?’ ”

Faith nodded. She knew the feeling well—and it worked in the other direction, as well. Times you didn’t want to change. What if she hadn’t accepted the catering job at the wedding reception where she’d met Tom? Their paths would never have crossed otherwise.

“As I mentioned, the house in Maine was undergoing major construction. In those days, getting to the island took much longer than five hours and involved train and steamboat travel. Father had hoped to get away from work at the end of July, but there were already rumblings of the crisis that would occur on Black Tuesday and he had to stay in town. He never discussed business with me and all I knew then was that Father was ‘very occupied with work.’ Again, if he had been able to go earlier, would it have changed what happened?”

Ursula looked steadily out the window for a few moments before continuing.

“I rather think not. Naturally Theo thought this would be the perfect time to have the house party he’d been talking about all summer and my mother agreed. He would have picked any time Father was gone for a long stretch. Unlike Father, who thought their music was an assault to the ears and their dress the same to the eyes, Mother liked having the young people around. She seemed very old to me, but she was only just forty. And, in any case, she never denied Theo anything. It was Father who didn’t spare the rod—not literally, but definitely figuratively. I know the Professor didn’t think the party was a very good idea. At the time I thought it was because Theo still had so much math to study if he was going to pass the course in the fall. Later I learned there were other reasons.

“Some of the guests were at their family houses on the island, but Scooter Jessup, Babs Dickson, Charles Winthrop, and Violet Hammond were all staying with us. I think those young women were the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen. I was completely captivated by them—the way they talked, and especially by the way they looked. Years later when I read Fitzgerald’s
Gatsby,
there was a line that has stayed with me about Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker weighing down their white summer dresses ‘like silver idols’ against the breeze a fan was making. When I read it I was back in the living room of the house on the Vineyard watching from a corner as the music played and the breeze from an open window caused those sheer white linen dresses to ripple ever so slightly.”

Ursula was back in the room now, too, and from her description Faith could clearly see the images of the women. Bobbed hair, Clara Bow mouths, and rolled stockings. Flappers. Those “silver idols.”

“Violet Hammond was the most beautiful of all. She truly did have violet eyes. How could her parents have known the name they chose was going to be so apt? I’ve never heard of babies with such dramatic-colored eyes and I’ve never seen such eyes again, except in an Elizabeth Taylor movie. But not on a person I knew. The men were all mad for her. She had a very beautiful voice, too. Husky, not high-pitched, and she spoke softly. Years later I wondered whether this was so people, especially men, would have to lean in closer to hear her.

“And she wore a very distinctive perfume. She said she had it made up for her in Paris. It wasn’t floral. Nothing as mundane as lilacs or roses. Sandalwood, or some other exotic Far Eastern scent.”

“She
does
sound lovely,” Faith murmured.

“Oh yes, exquisite. Her people were from Chicago. She’d been sent to Boston to live with a cousin of her mother’s. I don’t think I ever knew why, although I have an idea that she was taking a painting course at the Museum of Fine Arts. She was just out of school—I think it may have been Miss Porter’s or Dobbs—and she’d been a famous beauty there, too, very popular with the boys at Yale. The cousin lived on Beacon Street across from the Common, and I don’t think Violet received much supervision from her. Mother never said anything directly, but she made it clear that the Hammonds were not, well, people she’d care to know. I heard her talking to her sister, Myrtle, about them. The ‘Chicago Hammonds’ as opposed to ‘our Hammonds.’ It wasn’t about money. Even though Violet had gone to an expensive private boarding school, it was my impression the family wasn’t very wealthy. She never appeared in the same outfit twice, but I think that’s why I have the idea she was doing something artistic—she was very clever with scarves and such. With Mother it wasn’t about money—money wasn’t important to her. Breeding was. This sounds terribly snobbish. It was terribly snobbish.”

Ursula reached for the glass of water on the table next to her and drank.

“Are you hungry?” Faith asked. Ursula’s hands were so thin. When she brought the glass to her lips, Faith fancied she could see the bones under her thin skin like an X-ray against the sunlight from the window. “I brought some of the currant scones you like, and the last of the strawberry preserves we put up in July.” The strawberries in Ursula’s garden at The Pines were the stuff of legend.

“Thank you, no. But could you stay a bit longer?”

“Until five. Tom is working at home today.” Faith didn’t offer any further explanation. After trying to write his sermon in the shadow of his file cabinets at the church yesterday, he had decided to give the parsonage study, neutral territory, a try today.

“As I said, everything hinged on Father’s absence, and then Mother had to leave, too. The second ‘What if ?’ but one that wouldn’t have mattered if Father hadn’t been so far away—and impossible to reach. No cell phones. Not even a landline at The Pines until many years later. She must have sent him a telegram. I wasn’t told. She had received a telegram, though, early that morning. Aunt Myrtle had been rushed to the Massachusetts General Hospital for emergency surgery. Appendicitis. It was a much more perilous diagnosis in those days than now and Mother left for Boston at once, leaving the housekeeper in charge—and the Professor. Although he was only a year or two older than the others, he seemed like an adult. The others were still children, intent on having a good time above all else. Mother did suggest that perhaps the young people staying at the house might want to leave, but Theo said he thought ‘Aunt Myrt’ would be upset to know that her illness had caused anyone an inconvenience.”

Selfish, foolish, or just very immature? Faith wondered to herself about Theo. Ursula obviously had adored him—and did still.

It was as if she had read Faith’s mind, or perhaps her last words had triggered the defense.

“He wasn’t a bad person, Faith. Not at all. Generous to a fault, especially with his friends. But I’m afraid he was weak, easily influenced, and not terribly interested in what Father and the Professor both had mapped out for him as a course of study. In the ordinary way of things, he would have squeaked through Harvard and done very well in business, perhaps with Father. People liked and trusted him. Although the years that followed weren’t good for most of his generation.”

“Those Depression years for young men in their twenties weren’t much different from recent times,” Faith said. “The highest unemployment is in that group.”

Ursula nodded. She was glad her elder grandson was gainfully employed and concerned about Dan, the younger, soon to finish college.

“In any case, Mother left in a rush, reassured me that Aunt Myrtle would be fine, but said I should still add an extra prayer for her before I went to bed. Selfish child that I was—although at that age, sickness and death have little reality—I confess what was really worrying me was not my aunt, but whether I’d be able to go to Illumination Night. Do you know what this is, Faith?”

Faith did, having had the great good fortune to be on the Vineyard some years ago on the second Wednesday in August. She hadn’t known about the Grand Illumination previously. For her, a grand illumination meant the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center at Christmastime.

“It was magical,” she said. “I’ll never forget the moment when all those strings of Japanese lanterns were lighted on the cottages, which are pretty colorful by themselves.”

Faith had immediately coveted one of the little Victorian Carpenter Gothic–style houses. She’d learned the two rooms up and two rooms down with front porches trimmed with froths of lacy gingerbread scrollwork had replaced the tents pitched earlier in the nineteenth century by attendees at the Methodist camp meetings that became popular during the Revival.

The houses were painted in bright peach, rose, turquoise, and yellows with contrasting trim. When she’d expressed her desire, her friend had told her that the houses were passed down from one generation to the next, and even if one did go on sale, it was by word of mouth and gone moments later. This part of the Vineyard was also the setting for one of Faith’s favorite books,
The Wedding
by Dorothy West, a member of the Harlem Renaissance. West had been coming to Oak Bluffs since childhood, her family part of the early African American summer colony who had made Oak Bluffs with its famed Inkwell Beach an ongoing destination.

Illumination Night had obviously captured Ursula’s imagination, too.

“By the summer I was there, Illumination Night was an old tradition and I’d been hearing about it for weeks, especially from the servants. By this time I’d become adept at the Vineyard sign language and considered Mary Smith, who worked in the kitchen, a new friend. She wasn’t much older than I was and was walking out with the gardener. I think I mentioned this the other day.”

Faith nodded. Ursula had mentioned the young woman, but not her name.

“The lanterns sounded like something out of a fairy tale—Mary told me that originally they were plain ones until a Japanese family opened a gift shop in Oak Bluffs in the 1870s when there was such a rage for Asian art. After that the lanterns had to be from Japan or China.