The Body in the Sleigh (11 page)

Faith nodded in agreement. “Anyone else?”

“A woman from New York City, but she had to leave after one night. Something about her husband's allergies. Goodness knows he was sneezing enough. Whoever heard of being allergic to goats?” Mary said scornfully.

Faith kept her mouth shut.

Mary pointed to the next name. “Amanda Truman. Her parents were staying over to the Lodge, and since they brought her with them at the last minute, there wasn't room there and she slept here, but they picked her up after breakfast every morning.”

No room at the inn,
Faith thought. There weren't many places to stay on Sanpere unless you owned or rented. Besides Mary's B and B, there was a larger one as you came off the bridge. The owners advertised in the local paper
and
boasted a big sign you couldn't miss. In Granville, there was a motel that had been there forever and was open year-round, as well as two other seasonal ones. Then there was the Lodge. Originally built and run by a professor of botany from the University of Maine as a place for naturalists to gather in the summer—it offered three squares, plenty of hikes, and an abundance of field guides—it had undergone several transformations over the years. Currently it had had a facelift and was geared toward families with hefty disposable incomes.

“Amanda's a college student. About to be a sophomore. Goes to that place Hillary Clinton went to.”

“Wellesley College. You know the Millers over by me. Their daughter, Samantha, graduated from there.”

Mary nodded. “Ursula's granddaughter.” It didn't surprise Faith that Mary knew Pix's octogenarian mother, whose family were original rusticators on Sanpere. The trick on the island would be finding someone who
didn't
know the redoubtable lady.

“Amanda didn't look pregnant, but still it would have been early. Let's see. If Christopher was born a few days before he arrived here—that's what it looks like to me—he'd have been started in March.”

Faith liked Mary's choice of word—“started.” It suggested sowing seeds in little peat pots under Gro lights. Things Mary did. Not other things that Mary did not.

“Kind of mopey, though. She would have been happy to stay here with me and the goats all day. Near the end of the week she
told me her parents had made her come because they didn't approve of her new boyfriend and had nixed her plans to go with him to South America—Colombia—for the summer. I gather he was older than she was.”

“South America! Colombia! Where did her family live?”

“Brunswick.”

“Bingo!” Faith stood up and stretched. “Relatively close by, about two hours away. She would have been heading home for the break. Easy enough to drive here before doubling back to the blazing Yule log or whatever the Trumans had waiting. If she'd been having what so euphemistically are called ‘issues' with her parents, she could have used the situation to explain why she wasn't arriving for the holidays until the last moment—Christmas Eve. The money comes from a drug connection through the boyfriend, or rather manfriend—and maybe that's who soured her on men.” Faith could hardly contain her excitement. “He dumped her when she didn't go with him or when he found out she was pregnant.” By the end of the sentence, Faith had sketched out an entire portrait in her mind, visualizing the young, pregnant student. Not so young as the Virgin, of course, and not a virgin, but the faces in Faith's mind were similar—beautiful Botticelli-like ovals. Amanda Truman was definitely Christopher's mother. Maybe Samantha Miller knew her. They would have overlapped by a year. But how to bring up the question of
enceinte?
She couldn't tell Samantha what was going on. Faith couldn't even tell her own husband. But there were other ways to check out the girl.

“Let's quickly take a look at anyone else, then start making calls, beginning with Miss Amanda.”

“Here's the last one. Miriam Singer. She was here with her husband, but they weren't wearing rings. Or at least he wasn't and her ring didn't look like a wedding ring. It was silver with a dark green stone—not an emerald, maybe malachite.”

Mary certainly noticed people's hands, Faith thought, but then, she would—all that milking. A kind of occupational quirk, much the way a manicurist would notice nails.

“They were young and I started thinking about them right away last night when you said Christopher's mother might be a student. I'd kind of forgotten about Amanda.

“There was a University of Maine Black Bears bumper sticker on their truck—a new one and the sticker was too. They stayed a week, and he was gone almost all the time. Said he was helping a friend, whose sternman was sick, but he didn't get up early enough for fishing and he came back late. Seven o'clock he'd show up, then take her off to get something to eat. Where at that time of night I don't know.”

Even in the summer, Sanpere's culinary offerings were sparse. The best place to eat, Lily's, only offered dinner on Friday nights and even then stopped serving at eight. The Granville Market made pizza and Italian sandwiches, a surprisingly good combination of cold cuts, pickles, and mayo on an oversized hot dog bun. They were open until nine, but the food ran out well before then. There were several restaurants overlooking the harbor in Granville, which served reliably good chowder, lobster rolls, and deep-fried haddock, but people ate even earlier here than in Aleford, and the Singers seemed to be keeping city hours—or something else.

“She spent the day helping me with the goats and the garden,” Mary was recalling, her voice filled with fondness. She had obviously liked Miriam. Miriam must have been very nice to the goats.

“So much that I didn't want to charge them full price, but she insisted she'd just been having fun. That it was a vacation for her. We kind of suited each other. She wasn't much of a talker and that was fine with me. She ran out of the books she'd brought to read and I told her to borrow something from my shelves. She picked
Great Expectations,
which could have been a hint, I suppose.
But she didn't look or seem pregnant. The opposite. Ate as much breakfast as I cooked and then we'd stop for lunch. She liked making it and a few times did that thing with the warm goat cheese and salad you're always talking about.”

Miriam Singer sounded like another possibility. Possibilities. How many times had this word coursed through her mind in the last hour? Faith wondered. The pregnant couples from Vermont and southern Maine. This Miriam. And Amanda Truman. Possibilities.

Christopher chose the moment to wake up and show Mary what a more typical infant could be like. She dashed over to him in alarm and picked him up. His lusty cries continued, his face was bright red, and his eyes scrunched shut with the effort.

“Hungry? Needs changing? Rocking? What?” Mary asked Faith.

“All of the above, and while you're doing it, I'll think what to say to Amanda Truman.” She also made a note to herself to get Mary one of the new swings that were safe for infants; the motion would both soothe and entertain little Christopher. She'd noticed that Mary always put him down to sleep on his back and supported his head when she picked him up. She seemed to know instinctively how to keep him safe, as his mother had written.

A few minutes later Mary returned with the baby and settled into the rocker to feed him. His face was back to normal and his eyes wide open as he sucked at the bottle in blissful content.

“When you finish feeding him, we'll call Amanda. If she answers, that's perfect—and kids of any age in a family usually get to the phone first.” Ben went for the Gold every time the phone rang in the Fairchild household. “If someone else does, you say who you are and why you're calling, then ask to speak to her. The story is that you moved the bed in the room where she stayed and found a bracelet that you recalled seeing her wear, but you wanted to make sure before you mailed it to her. A pretty gold bangle.”

Mary looked up, horrified. “I couldn't possibly tell so many lies!”

Faith sighed. She had been afraid of this, but she couldn't very well call and say she was Mary. It would be all right if one of the parents answered, but not if Amanda did. And what would she do once Amanda herself got on the line?

“We'll write it down. It will be like reading from a script.” Faith paused to let the idea sink in. “If you want to find out whether she's Christopher's mother, you have to do this, Mary. You
have
to get Amanda on the phone and ask her if she perhaps left something other than a bracelet here.”

Fifteen minutes later, Faith was engrossed in rocking Christopher, and Mary was waiting for someone in the Truman household down in Brunswick to answer the phone.

“Hello, is this Mrs. Truman?” Mary said, and did her number, only faltering slightly when she described moving the bed.

“Perhaps I should speak to her,” Mary said.

Faith wished Mary had an extension. It was maddening not hearing the other side of the conversation.

Mary gave Faith a thumbs-up and began an improvisational performance that would have done any Barrymore proud.

“The hospital! Oh, dear. I hope it was nothing serious. There's that dreadful flu going round. And pneumonia.”

The next minute Mary turned her thumb down and the corners of her mouth joined it.

“Please tell her I hope she feels better and, if it is her bracelet, to let me know and I'll mail it to her. Good-bye.”

“Tonsils,” she told Faith mournfully. “They thought the vacation would be a good time for her to have them out. She's needed the surgery for a while, but didn't want to miss any school. Turned out the adenoids had to go too and she had a reaction to the anesthesia. They actually had to keep her two nights and she almost missed Christmas!”

“All right. No, not all right. Darn! I was sure it was Amanda.” Faith knew this wasn't going to be easy, but she always tended to hope.

“She said Amanda enjoyed staying with me and ‘my little goats.'”

Faith had to hide her smile. She gave Mary a moment to mutter, “Little goats, the idea,” a few times, then nudged her attention back to the list.

“Let's look at the two couples you knew were going to be parents,” she suggested, “starting with the Tuttles from Saco. What could be more natural than for you to call and say you'd like to send some of that jelly of yours or whatever to congratulate them on the new baby? You know what I mean. Say how much you're looking forward to seeing them next summer.”

“What if something went wrong with the pregnancy? I had a toxemic doe once. Oh, Faith, I don't think I can keep calling up strangers, even strangers who have stayed here.”

Mary was tough, but she was also shy. Apparently she'd reached her limit with Amanda's mother. Faith sighed, stood up, and handed Christopher over to Mary. “Okay, I'll phone.”

She dialed the number and a woman answered.

“Hello, may I speak to Mrs. Tuttle, please?”

“Speaking.”

“I'm a supporter of the Sanpere Chamber of Commerce and over the holidays we're trying to reach people who visited our island last summer to plan for next summer. Would you mind answering two quick questions?”

“Not at all. We had a lovely time and will be returning next summer.”

“Well, that answers my first question, which was whether you had had a positive experience, and my second as well, would you come again?”

Mrs. Tuttle laughed. “This is the easiest survey I've ever done.”

“Could you tell me if you plan to return to the same accommodations as last year?”

“Why, of course. It was ideal. Bethany Farm Bed and Breakfast. I really should have written to Mary. I'm glad you called. It's reminded me to get to it. We had a baby last month and she said to let her know. Little Cecilia will adore Mary's goats next summer.”

“I'm sure she will. Thank you for your time.”

Faith hung up. “Cross out the Tuttles. Little Cecilia will be here with them next summer toddling around with Dora Two and the rest of the gang.”

“I don't know how you do it,” Mary said.

After a brief time-out for baby worship—he was getting more adorable by the minute—Faith called the couple from Vermont just to be sure and reported that the Warren family now numbered four. Twins. She decided it wasn't necessary to call Norway and reassured Mary that since she hadn't actually said she was from the chamber of commerce, only a “supporter” of it, which she was—the Fairchilds contributed every year—no lies had been told or laws broken.

“I'll phone Miriam Singer and call it a day for now. I have to get home.”

“I've taken too much of your time already,” Mary apologized.

“Nonsense, I'm enjoying myself.”

And she was. It was keeping her mind off Norah Taft, plus Faith was beginning to regard the whole thing as a kind of scavenger hunt.

The number listed in the register for the Singers turned out to belong to a Mr. Ballou in Sebago and when Faith tried information for Calais, the town they listed in the register, there was no Miriam or Bruce Singer. She tried the one Singer the operator gave her, but the woman who answered had never heard of them. She was positive their street address wasn't in Calais either.

Faith felt her spirits rise. A fake register listing. The Singers had something to hide.

“How about we try Orono? Because of the UMaine bumper sticker,” Faith suggested.

But that was a dry well too. The only Singer had never heard of any others in town.

“I've been so stupid!” Faith jumped up from the table where she had been studying the list. “The bag. The bag the money was in. It had the name of a store on it. It wasn't from a Hannaford or any other chain. Must be a pretty small mom-and-pop operation. The name looked hand-stamped. ‘Sammy's Twenty-four Hour Store'—wasn't that it?”