Judgment of the Grave (13 page)

“Did he ever mention the book he was working on?”

“Josiah Whiting?” Quinn nodded. “We all knew he was working on it. He talked about Whiting fairly frequently. I’m from Concord and so I knew a little bit about Whiting. Kenneth was so passionate about the book. He had written other books, but he said that he really thought this one was going to blow a hole in the existing scholarship. That was the way he said it.”

Quinn leaned forward a little and lowered his voice. “He had been spending a lot of time down here doing research. His wife said he stayed at the Minuteman Inn. Was that true?”

“I think so.” But the guy seemed uncomfortable again.

Quinn asked, “Where else did he spend time down here? Where was he doing his research?”

“He’d been visiting graveyards a lot. I know a little bit about stonecutting techniques and the history of some of the cemeteries from the relevant era. So he and I had fun talking about that. I know he’d been spending a lot of time at the Minuteman Museum too. They have a fairly extensive collection of artifacts and historical documents.” He glanced down at the ground and Quinn had the feeling that he was holding something back. He’d have to come back to it.

“Great,” Quinn said. “Tell me everything you can about that weekend. How did he seem? Was he his usual self?”

The guy thought for a minute. “Yeah. He seemed fine. If anything, he seemed kind of hyped-up, happier than usual. He was going off to do some research and I assumed that’s what it was. Maybe he’d found something.”

“Okay, so when’s the last time you remember talking to him that weekend?”

“Let’s see. Saturday, of course, and then Sunday morning, I think. After the encampments, we have a big breakfast cooked over the communal fire. The women prepare it, make things the Minutemen would have eaten. I remember talking to him there and I think that was when he said he was going to stick around and do some research. He said he wanted to spend some more time in graveyards.”

Quinn asked, “Did he say why he wanted to spend time in graveyards?”

“I guess he just wanted to look at Whiting’s handiwork.”

“So, what time was that when you last saw him? On Sunday?” Quinn was writing this all down furiously. This was great. This was the first person he’d talked to who had seen Churchill on Sunday.

“Well, I saw him getting ready to go around nine, I suppose. He said good-bye and we said we’d see each other the next weekend. And then a couple of hours later, I saw him heading out to his car. That was the strange thing, though, I just remembered…”

“Just remembered what?”

“Well, I was across the field and I saw him heading to the parking area and I waved at him. He was getting into his car. He’d changed out of his uniform but he still had his hat on. I think he saw me, because he waved back, but it was really weird.” He looked up at Quinn. “God, I didn’t think of it until just now. He seemed strange, not like himself.” He looked stricken all of a sudden. “God, I didn’t think of it. I would have…it’s just that you know how people sometimes look like that when—” He paused and looked up at Quinn, his eyes wide. “When something awful has happened.”

Sweeney hadn’t been sure what to do with Megan at first. After Quinn left them, Megan had started whimpering and Sweeney’s attempts to soothe her proved fruitless. Finally, she undid the complicated harnesses that held her in the stroller and picked her up, holding her tightly and letting Megan play with her long hair.

When they came to a tent selling reproduction military uniforms, Sweeney left the stroller outside among the racks of coats and brought Megan in to look at the uniforms, running her fingers over the thick wool.

“That’s the very best, double-weight wool,” said a man’s voice from behind her.

She turned around. “Oh, thanks. I was just having fun looking. Do you make them?”

“I do. I’m a tailor by trade. This is my passion, though.” He stuck out a hand. “Bill Carver.”

She shook it. “Sweeney St. George. Your stuff is beautiful. I’m kind of a vintage clothing nut and it’s fun to see such skilled work.”

“Well, let me know if you have any questions.”

“I will.” She looked through the clothes, admiring the fine tailoring, particularly on the British uniforms.

“What would a Concord Minuteman have worn?” Sweeney asked him. She was trying to picture Josiah Whiting and she figured it would help to know what his clothes would have looked like.

“Well, you have to remember that most of the Minutemen were farmers. At Lexington and Concord, they would have worn their regular clothes, usually a white tunic and dark-colored breeches and vest.” He led her over to one of the racks and showed her a beige coat. “This would have been a fairly common overgarment for a Minuteman from this area.”

“Do you make uniforms for all of the reenactors here?”

“No, God no. There wouldn’t be enough time in the day. There are a few tailors around who make them. Lots of people on the Web. And some of the reenactors have learned to make their own.”

“How much would a full uniform cost?”

“A couple of hundred dollars. More than that, depending on what you get. But the guys trade them around sometimes. If someone’s moving away and can no longer be part of his regiment, he might give his uniform to a new member who’s just starting out. Sometimes you can even find uniforms in thrift shops.”

Sweeney hesitated before asking him, “The body in the woods—did anyone ask you about the uniform?” An image of the scarlet-clad body swam in front of her.

“Yeah. The police were around all morning. Showed me some pretty horrible pictures. It wasn’t one of mine, though. I could tell right away.”

“How?” Megan was squirming in Sweeney’s arms, reaching for the clothes and Sweeney stepped back so she wouldn’t pull anything off the racks.

“It wasn’t very well made, for one thing. You could see that even in the photographs. And there were a few inaccuracies. The shape of the coat was wrong and there weren’t enough buttons. The British uniform had brass buttons along the pockets. Things like that. My guess is that it was made by a reenactor. A lot of guys will design something and then have their wives sew it up. It’s fine for a first uniform, but as they get more involved, they tend to like to have someone like me make their gear. A lot of those uniforms end up in dress-up boxes, thrift shops.”

“It seems strange that nobody knows who he is, doesn’t it? I mean, you’re all a pretty tight-knit group and all of the reenactors are part of a regiment, right? Even if he came from somewhere far away from here, wouldn’t the other members of his regiment know who he is?”

“That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” Bill Carver said. “It’s like he, I don’t know, came out of nowhere. Remember the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court? It’s like that.”

Sweeney laughed. “Except that his uniform’s not right.”

Bill Carver smiled. “Except that his uniform’s not right.”

“Thanks. It was great to see your things. And I’ll take one of these.” She held up a little Colonial bonnet made of flowered calico and handed over four dollars. She put it on Megan and tied it under her chin.

“Perfect,” he said. “She looks like a proper Colonial lassie.”

The sun had come up in the sky and it was quite warm out on the field. Sweeney checked her watch. It was almost one.

“Okay,” she said to Megan. “Let’s go find your dad.”

He was standing in front of the surgeon’s tent and Sweeney came up behind him. “Hey,” she said.

He turned around and took Megan from her, kissing her on the side of her head and sniffing her diaper. “Hey.” He laughed and held up a little bonnet identical to the one Sweeney had bought. “She’ll have one to go with every outfit,” he said.

The surgeon was giving a little demonstration for the group of people standing in front of his booth, and Sweeney and Quinn stepped in and watched him demonstrate the various tools that an eighteenth-century surgeon would have had at his disposal.

“This is a long saw,” the man said. “It was used for battlefield amputations. Unfortunately, anesthetic hadn’t been invented yet, so this is what doctors used to take the bite off the pain. No pun intended.” He held up a short stick that was covered with bite marks. You would bite down on this and”—he raised the saw in the air—“off with your arm!” Sweeney flinched.

“How did things go?” she whispered.

“Okay,” Quinn whispered back. “I’ll tell you later.”

The surgeon went on. “Then, of course there were other kinds of treatments. If someone had a fever, the belief was that it was a poisoning of the blood, and you had to let some of that blood out. Of course, you’ve heard of doctors using leeches, but they also bled people using little knives like this.” He took out a small switchblade and held his wrist over a small white enamel bowl.

“So, you would just nick the vein, like this.” He pretended to cut himself. “Did you know that George Washington actually died of blood loss? He’d been sick and they overbled him. It was…”

Sweeney looked up at Quinn. He had gone pale and he was staring at the man’s wrist poised over the bowl.

“Let’s go,” she said suddenly, taking Megan from him and pulling him away from the small crowd of people. He stumbled, then stopped, and she said, “Tim,” and tugged again, trying to hang on to Megan with the other arm. She had never called him Tim before and the name felt odd in her mouth, a taste she couldn’t quite identify.

“It’s okay,” he said breathlessly.

“No, it’s not. Let’s just…” She tried to steer him away from the tent.

“Leave me alone,” he shouted, pushing her hand off. “I’m okay. Just…just leave me alone.” Sweeney, who had been standing too close, lost her balance and almost dropped Megan, who started to cry. A few of the people who had been watching the demonstration looked up at Quinn’s raised voice.

Quinn strode over to the side of the field and leaned over for a moment as though he was going to be sick. Sweeney watched him dry heave, then sink down to the ground, where he put his head in his hands.

Megan had stopped crying and was watching her father and whimpering, and Sweeney, not knowing what to do, tried to distract her with a little stuffed rabbit that was tied to the stroller. “It’s okay, Megan,” she told her. “It’s okay.”

It was a few minutes before Quinn came back, pale and worn-out-looking. He took Megan from Sweeney and put her in the stroller. Sweeney watched him buckle Megan in, the vein on his left temple quivering in the midday light.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said when he stood up. He met her eyes for only a second and then looked away. “I didn’t want to…I didn’t mean to push you. It was the…the wrist.”

“It’s okay. I knew where it was coming from.”

“It was…I don’t know why that happened.”

Sweeney didn’t know what to say and settled for another “it’s okay.” She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see his pain. His name still sat uncomfortably on her tongue. Without speaking, they walked back toward the main field, where some kind of battle was taking place.

They stopped and stood with a crowd of people watching a line of Redcoats approach from behind a stand of trees at the edge of the field, a blur of red and then a row of marching regulars, stepping in time to the drum beating out the minutes. The drummer boy’s yellow coat seemed almost to reflect the brilliant gold of the trees around them. When they reached the center of the field, the men stopped and waited. It was very silent and the red-coated soldiers raised their muskets toward the sky.

The men marched onward and then she caught sight of the Minutemen, fanning out across the field, kneeling to shoot and then running on. It was odd, Sweeney thought, how
slow
war seemed. When it came down to it, it was just men marching over land, trying to own it. She thought about her conversation with Ian and felt guilty.

“I found someone who saw him on Sunday,” Quinn said as they walked back toward the car. “Said he looked real upset.”

“Did he have any idea why?”

“No, he said everything went just as usual at the reenactment. He didn’t know of any argument Churchill had with anybody.”

They were heading back toward the parking lot when a man’s voice called out, “Hey, hey. Mr. Quinn.”

Sweeney turned around to find a tall strawberry-blond-haired guy dressed in a Minuteman’s breeches, coat, and tricorner hat running toward them.

“Mr. Quinn. I wanted to talk to you because, well, there’s something I think you should know. About Kenneth.”

They stopped and the man went on breathlessly. “I wanted to tell you that I think Kenneth was seeing Cecily Whiting. The woman who runs the Minuteman Museum. I didn’t say anything because of his wife, but if he’s missing, maybe she can help.” He breathed in hard and Sweeney saw his small, discolored teeth. “I think they were having an affair.”

Lauren Whiting turned off the burner beneath the teakettle and stood in front of the range for a moment, waiting for the knock. Cecily always insisted on knocking, even though Pres knew he could just come right on in. But Lauren had overheard her once, telling him that it was rude to walk in without knocking because Daddy and Lauren might be having “private time.” Lauren had felt like strangling her for the smarmy insinuation in her voice. What was poor Pres supposed to make of his father and stepmother having “private time”?

She had been watching through the window for their arrival. In the family room, she could hear Bruce playing with Rory and Noah. Rory’s high screech of delight made her wince as she waited at the window. Cecily’s Saab pulled up in the driveway and Lauren watched her get out and help Pres get his backpack from the trunk. He was walking slowly and seemed weak today, and she felt her heart sink a little. She loved their Saturday nights at home, just the five of them, a real family. But if Pres was feeling sick, he wouldn’t want to play with the kids and Bruce would be worried and distracted all night.

Well, if he was going to be distracted, anyway, she decided it wouldn’t make things worse if Bruce finally talked to Cecily about the shares.

There was a knock at the door and Lauren counted to ten before going to open it. “Hi, Pres,” she said brightly, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. Cecily winced and she took her hand away. “Hi, Cecily. How are you?”

“Fine. And you?” As she always did, Cecily looked around her at their house as though she expected to find something nasty on the floor. Lauren supposed it wasn’t up to Cecily’s decorating standards, with the blue ruffled curtains, heart-shaped rag rugs, and the blueberries stenciled along the top of the wall, but Lauren liked it and that was all that mattered. Still, seeing Cecily always brought back the feelings she remembered from when she and Bruce had first gotten together. She got along great with George and Lillian now, but at first she’d known they all looked down on her and blamed her for the divorce. That she’d been pregnant when Bruce left hadn’t helped any, but eventually things had gotten smoothed over. They usually did if you waited long enough.

“We’re good,” Lauren said, smiling, throwing in the “we” for good measure. Rory and Noah came running into the room, rushing Pres and wrapping themselves around his legs. “Pez. Cack. Oppon,” Noah babbled.

“He wants you to open his chicken game,” Lauren told Pres as Bruce came into the kitchen and gave his eldest son a bear hug.

“How ya feelin’, Elvis?” Bruce liked to call Pres Elvis, even though his first name was Preston and not Presley. Lauren had once asked him how it had started and he’d told her that they had called him that when he was a baby because he had had a dark shock of hair that stood up on top of his head in a pompadour.

“Okay.”

“He was tired today, but the doctor said his numbers are actually pretty good,” Cecily said. “Make sure he gets a good night’s sleep.”

“We will,” Lauren said, then turned to Pres. “Pres, honey, why don’t you say good-bye to your mom and then the four of us can go play with the chicken game while your mom and your dad talk about something important.”

Bruce glanced over at her with a puzzled expression on his face, then blushed when he realized what she was doing.

“What about?” Cecily asked Bruce, her eyes suddenly suspicious. She probably thought they were going to ask for more days a week.

“We’ll talk in a sec,” he said. “Pres, say good night to your mom.” He mumbled something approximating “night” and followed Noah and Rory back into the family room. Lauren followed them and shut the pocket doors behind her. She got Noah’s chicken game out and set it up for him on the floor. Pres immediately put a chicken on his head and made clucking noises. Noah and Rory laughed in delight, and seeing they were content, Lauren sat down on the floor near the door and pretended to be cleaning up toys while she listened for Bruce’s and Cecily’s voices.

Through the narrow space between the doors, she could see Cecily’s long dark-colored skirt, her soft leather boots. When Lauren had first gone to work at Whiting Monuments, she had been in awe of Cecily and her outfits. Lauren had never seen her dressed in anything other than the absolutely perfect pair of pants or jacket or skirt for that day, that season, that occasion. Lauren had even tried to copy Cecily’s style for a few weeks before she realized that she didn’t have the right clothes. She liked her own way of dressing. It was right for her. And Bruce seemed to like it too.

“…because of George’s plans,” Bruce was saying in a low voice. “He’ll hang on to his shares and so if we want to do anything with the business once he’s been phased out, we just…well, we’d just feel better if we could kind of get everything wrapped up, if you know what I mean. We want to pay you for them, of course.”

“Bruce, you gave those shares to Pres. They’re not mine to sell. It’s so he’ll have some security. In case something happens.”

“Cecily, he’s my son. I’ll always take care of him.”

“Well, you promised a lot of things to me that didn’t quite pan out, didn’t you?”

“Come on!”

There was silence.

“It’s not up for discussion, Bruce. When Pres is eighteen, he can decide whether or not he wants to sell them to you. Until then, they’re not mine to sell. Have Pres back on time tomorrow. He has school Monday.” Lauren listened carefully and heard the sound of the front door shutting and then the car starting. She dumped all of the scattered toys into the kids’ big toy box and smiled as he came in, then raised her eyebrows. Bruce raised them back and she felt a little surge of love and guilt. She shouldn’t have pushed him to talk to Cecily, not with everything that was going on. She had loved Bruce Whiting from the moment she’d first seen him, the moment he’d opened his mouth to say, “Now, tell me why you want to work at a monument company.” She loved being his wife, loved being the mother of his children, loved listening to him talk, and loved watching him when he was quiet. She stood up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his ear, feeling him shiver at the touch of her breath. “I love you.”

He grinned and gave her a hug. “All right, kids, who wants to play climb the mountain?”

Noah and Rory cheered and even Pres joined in, pretending to climb up Bruce’s back as he did his best to shake off his children, who tumbled, laughing, onto the floor.