The Body in the Sleigh (17 page)

“No honor among thieves,” Jake said ruefully. Mr. Trask was given to proverbs and this one had stuck in Jake's mind. This and “Give the Devil his due.” He tried to block the image of Mr. Trask from his mind or he'd go nuts and concentrated instead on the people in the house, especially the person Norah was waiting for—and prayed that they would all be denied eternal rest. All get their due.

“He could be there by now. And we can leave soon. Just think, Jake. We'll be together for Christmas.”

“You and your mother can come to my grandparents' for Christmas dinner. There's always plenty of room.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They hurried back through the yard and returned to the house separately. There were even more vehicles than before and Jake hoped the person Norah needed to see had arrived. He grabbed another soda, took a sip, and then left it on the sill while he ducked outside to take a leak. He returned and sat down in a sagging cane rocker near the front door. He knew where Norah was now. All he had to do was wait. He looked at his watch. Funny. It was kind of hard to read in this light. The music—Marilyn Manson now—was louder than before and it seemed as if someone was turning the volume up even higher. The noise was hurting his ears. But he was also getting very tired. He willed his eyes to stay open. He had to be alert for the drive down to Sanpere. He gulped more Coke, eager for the caffeine rush.

And then he saw her. Norah came into the room carrying a can of Sprite. She was smiling. He got to his feet and went out the door.

It was the last thing he remembered.

As Faith crunched across the snow toward the house, she saw that the two little girls had been busy. A snow maiden now stood in front of the house with her back to the sea. Her face sported various shells with the exception of her mouth—a bright red, slightly lopsided grin drawn with a marker. Her earrings were unique—doughnuts, the kind floating from one end of the pot buoy line that sometimes washed up on the shore from lobster traps. Amy and Missy had skewered them to the sides of Ms. Frosty's head with wire borrowed from Tom's workbench. Around her neck a bright pink scarf was fluttering in the breeze. The sight brought a smile to Faith's face. She hurried in to get her camera and congratulate the sculptors.

“Mom!” Ben came running from his room. “You've been gone forever!”

While touched at being missed, Faith had been a mother long enough to know that the sentiment probably meant he was waiting to ask her to do something or go somewhere. It was the latter.

“We've been invited to go over to Walker Pond and watch the
iceboating. Maybe even ride on one! They've all been there for ages already.”

Tom got up from the couch where he'd been reading
The New Yorker.
It always amused Faith that someone who had such mixed feelings about the land of her birth—“Where did you play?”—could be devoted to a magazine so named.

“Hi, honey.” He gave her a kiss. “Freeman called right after you left. He, Willie, and Mark are taking the new boat over. He thought the kids might like to watch. Us too.”

“Sounds like fun. Ben, why don't you go ask your sister and Missy to get ready? Tell them plenty of warm clothing—even though the sun is out, it's very cold. You get yourself set too.”

He raced off and Tom pulled Faith over to where he'd been sitting.

“What did Earl want?”

“Just what I thought. Any first impressions I'd had when I realized it was a body in the sleigh. He mentioned how I'd helped before—”

Tom cut her off, sitting up straight.

“Helped and almost got yourself killed! What can Earl be thinking of?”

Faith put a hand on either side of her husband's face, kissed him, and said emphatically, “I'm not getting involved in the investigation. There's nothing I could do, in any case. He just wanted to use me as a sounding board. They found traces of that date-rape drug Rohypnol during the autopsy. We talked about what that could mean.”

“What else other than rape?”

“No, I should have explained more. She wasn't raped and—despite the rumors flying around about her—she wasn't sexually active. The drug was used to knock her out before she was given a very potent heroin-cocaine combination.”

Tom drew a deep breath.

“So it's definitely murder. She couldn't have done it herself. It's hard to conceive of someone doing this kind of thing. She was just a child.”

Faith sighed. Norah wasn't a child, but she had been one very recently. It had been tough for the island to cope with her death; now they would have to deal with its new face—and that face, or faces, could be living among them.

She continued to think. From the sound of the circle Norah was traveling in, any drug from A to Z would have been close to hand, so it was hard to say whether her death was premeditated. Bringing the instruments of her death to the party for that express purpose couldn't be ruled out, however.

What did she know? What had she seen?

Faith suddenly wanted to change the subject.

“Since he's iceboating, I'm assuming Freeman either isn't worried about Jake or wants everybody to think he isn't worried about Jake.”

Tom nodded and said, “Most likely both. He told me Jake's back up in Ellsworth with both his parents and his lawyer for more questioning—stress on ‘questioning.' The police are taking his car apart—they have a warrant—and on the advice of counsel, Jake's voluntarily been fingerprinted and everything else they do these days. Nan, Connie, and Dottie are staying put at the house. Before all this, the guys had arranged to meet some other iceboaters today, and in any case, if they didn't get outdoors, I think they'd have exploded.”

“Mom! Dad!” Ben was dressed for a polar expedition. “We're going to miss everything!” His tone of voice suggested he was about to explode himself—from the warmth of the layers and irritation with his parents. “You haven't moved an inch!”

Faith had been more exhausted by her chat with Earl in the cozy ambience of Lily's than she imagined she would have been being grilled under a bright light in an airless, windowless room at
headquarters. Something about the disconnect between the topic at hand and the place. Lily's was for food and friendship, not cat and mouse. While the notion of standing around a frozen pond watching iceboats would not have been appealing ordinarily—a spa massage and facial, maybe followed by some time in a sauna, was more Faith's speed as a way to relax—she decided that the outing was just what she needed today.

“I have to make a quick call, then we'll go. We won't even take time to make coffee and cocoa. Get the empty thermoses out and we'll fill them at The Galley. Pack all those molasses doughnuts too and some apples.” Last summer Faith, swearing secrecy, had convinced Marie McHenan, who had supplied the island with her delectable doughnuts for thirty years, to part with her recipe for the molasses ones, Tom's favorite. They were a toothsome blend of spices and dark molasses. She knew once they appeared, the iceboaters would pause to raise a mug. She'd made a big batch.

She went upstairs and, after dialing, crooked the phone in her neck as she pulled out the European thermolactyl moifroids she'd bought for a Fairchild family ski vacation celebrating Tom's father's birthday a few years ago. The garments' French slogan was
“Moi froid? Jamais!”
—“Me cold? Never!”—hence the name she invariably called them.

Mary answered on the fifth ring.

“Mary? It's Faith. How is everything?”

“Fine. The nannies seem to have taken to little Christopher like a charm. They're producing more milk than usual, and Faith, I think I heard him laughing when I was milking. Do babies do this? He definitely likes to be in that sling I rigged up.”

“If you think he's laughing, he's laughing.” Faith belonged to the maternal school of thought that believed whatever you perceived your baby to do, he or she was doing, no matter what the authorities said about developmental timing.

“It's a beautiful day, isn't it? The sky is so blue. I hope you're enjoying yourself with your family,” Mary said.

Not yet, Faith thought, but soon. “We're going over to watch Freeman and some others iceboat on Walker Pond.”

“Oh, those men are still little boys at heart. Have fun and I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I'm planning on going to Orono. Are you all right for diapers until then? I know there's plenty of formula.”

“Yes—and I can always wash some if need be.”

“Good-bye for now.”

“Good-bye.”

Mary hung up the phone and started to unwrap the baby from the cloth sling. They'd been on their way into the house from the barn when she'd heard the phone and quickened her steps. Faith would go to Orono tomorrow and check out the convenience store. And check out Christopher's mother. But just now the sky was blue and she would have a lovely, uninterrupted day with her Christmas baby.

 

It didn't take long for Faith to realize that iceboaters were a breed unto themselves. The men—and a few women—were completely obsessed, amazingly inventive, ridiculously courageous…and quite likely slightly nuts. Their enthusiasm was contagious and both her husband and son caught the bug immediately. Freeman was describing how he'd built his new boat and giving them a quick overview of the sport.

“You see, we have what we call the ‘cockpit'—some call it the ‘fuselage'—mounted on three runners. Now, my cockpit is built to the dimensions of my La-Z-Boy, which over the years has taken on a certain bodily configuration that I treasure.”

“It looks like a triangle,” Amy piped up.

“Yes, it does, and the triangle goes on top of these steel plate
runners. Now, I have made them myself, but these factory ones hold an edge better. Made the sail from a Hobie Cat mainsail that some summer person left at the dump, found the mast and most of the hardware there too.”

Tom Fairchild's face took on a wistful look. He loved picking the dumps in Aleford and Sanpere. Faith could always lure him to Manhattan with reminders of the great stuff he'd previously found curbside on trash days in her parents' Upper East Side neighborhood.

“How fast can you go in this thing?” Tom asked.

“Heard that one fella did seventy on Sebago last winter, but my top speed is forty-eight point nine. Willie gave me one of those handheld GPSs a while back, so that's how I know so exactly. Only problem with the thing is the batteries don't last long in the cold. I'd like to get up to fifty, but I'm doing pretty respectable for boats built from scratch.”

“Respectable'! That's fantastic. It must be great!” Tom said. Faith looked out at the boats whizzing along the surface of the pond. She couldn't see the end and wondered how it got its name. The pond was actually a good-sized lake, almost 7,600 acres in size. Whoever Walker had been, he or she must have been myopic. The scene in front of her was a treat for any eyes, though. Some of the sails were bright colors—one rainbow striped—and the icy surface of the pond provided a glistening backdrop. Freeman had told them conditions were near perfect today—“Iceboater heaven” he'd said, the ice still pure and clear of much snow and no slush at all. They'd been out checking its thickness since early that morning and from one end of the pond to the other it was well over the five inches they needed to be safe. The cloudless blue sky suggested summer months and, as she'd told Ben earlier, the bright sun gave an illusion of warmth. She was enjoying herself.

“They do seem to be going fast, Freeman,” she said. “How do you stop?”

Willie, Mark, Freeman, Tom, and every other male in her vicinity froze.

“Stop?” Freeman said. “Well, now, that's not the point.”

“You mean there's no way to stop? No brakes?”

“You can head into the wind. That slows her down,” Willie explained. “But pretty much the boats are kind of like turbocharged go-carts with the handling and g-force of a jet.”

They'd drawn straws and Mark had won the privilege of taking
Yellow Fever
out on the ice for her maiden voyage.

Freeman saw Faith eyeing the name on his boat. “Nan wanted her flower boxes painted yellow, then changed her mind, so I had the paint. And the ‘Fever' part is 'cause we get the fever in December, start looking for good ice and don't recover until spring. Last year we took the boats out one final time Easter Sunday and ate our dinners when it got dark. Nan and some of the others were a little miffed, but they're used to us.”

Faith laughed. Mary Bethany's “little boys at heart” description was right on the money.

“Finest kind, Dad,” Willie said as they watched Mark disappear down the lake.

“I'll get my camera and take a picture of him on the way back,” Faith said. She also wanted to get some of the kids who were skating on a patch from which they'd cleared the light snow with a broom Freeman had in the pickup. Amy was teaching Missy how to do a figure eight.

As she walked back to the car, she heard Tom say, “Well, you know, I'm a fair enough sailor when the water's not frozen. Think I could have a try?”

All the Fairchilds had emerged from the womb knowing how to ski and sail. She'd known when they set out for the pond that Tom would never be able to pass up something like this. Some photos of him iceboating would be a shot in the arm for his parents, who had been as worried as she was during their son's illness.

And then there were the eagles. Circling and swooping about the mast tips, they seemed to be racing with the sailors below. It would be fun to use the video feature on the camera to capture the moment. She'd better check how much room there was on the memory stick and possibly delete some shots. Although there might be a blank one in the pocket of the case.

There wasn't. When it came to things like this—spares—there never was. She got into the car and reviewed what was on the camera.

It was going to be hard to pick one of the kids for her post-Christmas card. One of the ones in front of the “tree” made from traps and hung with pot buoys would make them happy—it had remained their favorite and they'd taken Tom to see it too. It was also certain to amuse the recipients. She doubted that any of them had ever seen a similar holiday yard decoration. On the way to Orono tomorrow when she was shopping for little Christopher in Bangor, she should have time to get the prints made. It wasn't taking long to go through the shots. Point and shoot was not infallible—she culled some slightly blurred ones and several that were overexposed.

And then there it was. Or rather, she was.

Faith knew the pictures were there. Had considered stopping her editing before she reached the ones taken by the sleigh. Those photos she'd made impelled by the need to do
something
. She looked up and stared out the front windshield. The pond was surrounded by tall pines that had been limbed up, leaving thick, pencil-straight trunks devoid of branches. She had a clear view and could see flashes of color. The boats. The skaters. A lively scene. Alive.

She looked back down at the camera, at the still figure in the sleigh, and thought angrily of the desecration of human life the act represented. Aside from the murder—humankind's most heinous act—there was the deliberate placement of the body next
to the mannequins. She was sure it was not simply a matter of convenience that the body had been placed where it was. It was meant to indicate that Norah was of no more importance than a plastic doll.