The Body in the Gazebo (18 page)

And so did a whole lot of other people. She pictured what now seemed the most probable scenario. Take the keys from his desk, unlock the file, remove the bank card, stroll over to the ATM, enter the PIN, and voilà, a wad of cash in your pocket. Reverse steps. It wouldn’t have taken more than fifteen minutes total, a bit more if you had to walk around the block until the ATM was empty. Wouldn’t want any witnesses. Of course, it could be someone local who had an account at the bank, too, in which case it would seem completely normal to be waiting to use the cash machine.

She went over it with Tom. “Next time you talk to Sam, sketch this out for him.”

“I feel like an idiot,” Tom said.

“Why should you feel anything except ripped off and furious? You haven’t done anything that millions of Americans don’t do every day. Pick a PIN they can recall easily. You are not a crook.”

Bypassing the Nixonian echo in her head, Faith went on to reassure Tom that she was positive they were on the right track.

“I’m certain we know how and where it happened. We just have to find out who. And now, please tell me why Lily Sinclair hates us, and Aleford, so much.”

“You went to see her, too.” It was a statement.

“Before Zach. She referred to Aleford as Stepford, said her time at First Parish caused her to abandon the idea of a parish ministry, ,and has currently dropped out of the Div School. She knew about the missing money. Albert told her. Oh, and she thinks you took it. Plus, I’d say she is not your greatest fan. Many references to you as a ‘talker.’ ”

Tom rubbed his hand across his forehead. Faith thought she saw a new line. At this rate, the furrows were beginning to resemble a south forty.

“She had some difficulty around this time last year running the youth group and I had to speak with her. Several times. I guess she thought of them as talking-tos. I would have called them pastoral counseling, something she might emulate even. That sounds a little stuffy, I know, but my other interns never seemed to mind. In retrospect her silence during them might have been hostility rather than what I took as embarrassment over her behavior. Even though she’d been through four years of college and a year at Harvard, she seemed very young to me. When problems surfaced, I put them down to her immaturity.”

“What kinds of problems? I don’t remember that you mentioned having any issues with her.”

“I didn’t think they were major. She had trouble establishing boundaries with the kids, and the first talk I had with her, aside from our regular meetings about the internship, was after one of the mothers called me to tell me that Lily had been telling what the mother thought were inappropriate jokes and using inappropriate language.”

“Sexual?”

“No, just thoughtless remarks about how stupid adults could be, parents in particular. How they didn’t understand their own children. When I mentioned it, Lily told me that she wanted the kids to open up about problems at home, but someone was getting it all twisted around. I made some suggestions about other ways to create trust and she seemed to be listening, but she did demand to know who the mother was pretty emphatically. I’d used ‘she,’ so it was clearly a female parent. I didn’t tell her, of course.”

Hence the Stepford reference, Faith thought. And although she knew Tom wouldn’t tell her, either, she had some candidates—as Lily must have also.

“When another mother called a few weeks later with virtually the same complaint, I may have been a little more forceful in my criticism. That was the time she said almost nothing.

“And then there was that business at the end-of-the-year Sunday school picnic,” Tom said.

This Faith did remember. As people were leaving, two boys in the seventh grade class began to pelt their friends with water balloons from a stockpile they’d stashed in the cemetery. They bombarded Lily, too, who thought it was great fun. Her sopping wet T-shirt made it clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra. It wasn’t a case of
Girls Gone Wild
—flat-chested Lily was not a candidate—but one of the mothers had hastily run up to her and thrown a tablecloth around her shoulders. Lily started to shrug it off and then, seeing Tom’s approach, apparently had second thoughts, wrapping it tight before heading into the church. Faith could still see the defiant “F-You” look Lily had flung over her shoulder at the crowd as she stomped off. “Immature” didn’t even begin to describe it. She’d made her youth group seem like a gathering of elders.

And there were the Hello Kitty pajamas the other day, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Faith knew any number of adult women with this unaccountable taste in clothing and accessories. Hope had given Amy a darling Hello Kitty pocketbook last summer. A note of whimsy, wit for Faith’s own spring wardrobe? She gave herself a mental slap.

“Plus,” Tom said, “I heard later that she really lost it running the Christmas pageant. I was still laid up, but Eloise filled me in when I was writing Lily’s evaluation in January and asked everyone for input.”

This was a hard one. The Christmas pageant. Taken by itself, she would have been solidly on Lily’s side. Faith had considered adding “but not running the Christmas pageant” after “in sickness and in health” to their wedding vows. She’d seen what it had done to her mother the very few times she’d caved and become involved. Parents got crazy—“What do you mean, my child is going to be an ox!”—and as the big day drew near, the kids got crazy—“What if I have to pee when I’m watching my flocks!”

“What happened?”

“Not a mother this time, but a father. Apparently he’d set his sights on Mary for his darling daughter, and when he arrived at a rehearsal and saw she was Angel Number Three, he told Lily to make the cast change. She told him to stuff it and banned parents from coming to rehearsals. He organized a protest, pulling his child from the pageant and getting several other parents to do the same. Eloise had to smooth a lot of ruffled feathers.”

“Thank goodness we were away!” The Fairchilds had been on Sanpere for the holidays while Tom recuperated and it had been heavenly.

“Eloise knew Lily would be leaving soon and she only told me so I could make some subtle suggestions in the evaluation about controlling one’s temper when interacting with parishioners.”

Tom reached for another toasted-cheese sandwich. He’d made a stack of them. “I’m not surprised Albert told her what’s happened,” he said. “They became close friends, brought together, now that I think of it, over doubts about their calling. Maybe she came to First Parish with them; maybe her time with us created them—or Albert did. He certainly stoked the fire. I guess I haven’t talked about her much with you because I feel as though I failed her. When she finished the internship, I knew she wasn’t happy. Maybe I should go see her.”

“No! Bad idea. Very bad idea. Nothing you could say will make Ms. Sinclair change her opinion of you, or the town. Or even about the ministry. Stay away from her. I’m sure Sam would tell you the same thing.”

“I wasn’t going to mention anything about the Discretionary Fund,” Tom said. “Just see if she wanted to talk about leaving school.”

“Fine, but that decision isn’t going anywhere for a while. See if you think it’s still a good idea when this is all over.”

When we find out whether Lily’s to blame for more than bad taste and stupid remarks, Faith added to herself.

“Tom, how do you suppose Albert found out about this? I’m assuming you told James.”

“Actually I didn’t. I planned to, but he already knew and the conversation ended before it started.”

“Again, how did these people find out? I thought vestry meetings were executive sessions—confidential?”

“They are,” Tom said slowly. “We know Albert told Lily and I think we can assume James told Eloise.”

Faith had filled him in on yesterday’s display of affection. Handholding might seem tame to the layperson, but it was the equivalent of second base for the clergy.

“Eloise and Albert are pretty tight. A lot of what she’s in charge of for the Sunday school and youth group involves the calendar and Albert oversees scheduling. They live near each other in Cambridge. I heard him tell her about a new restaurant in their neighborhood and she said they should try it out.”

So her husband wasn’t as oblivious as Faith thought. She might not be the only eavesdropper in the family. She was sure, though, that he hadn’t reached her skill level.

“That leaves James,” she said. “Is there anyone on the vestry who might have leaked this to him?”

“Dear God. There is. Sherman Munroe. They have some sort of connection.”

“A connection?”

“Yes. Sherman was the one who brought James to the attention of the search committee.”

“H
ello, Mother.”

“Pix dear, how lovely to hear your voice.”

“And yours sounds much stronger than it did on Saturday morning when we talked. How do you feel?”

“Much more like my old self, which is a very old self, of course.”

“Mother!” Pix hated to hear Ursula talk this way.

“Tell me about the shower. I wish I could have been there.”

“I wish you could have, too. It was wonderful. Our hostess lives in a beautiful home across from the Battery, the promenade overlooking the river. From the house’s portico we could see Fort Sumter. Oh, and Mother—her garden! She kept apologizing because it wasn’t at its peak yet and looked ‘scrawny,’ but it was gorgeous. Carpets of daffodils and tiny anemones, and then huge camellias, azaleas, and of course magnolias. Everywhere in Charleston you can smell jasmine, and redbud trees thrive here—all the ones I’ve tried to grow have died. The shower was in the garden with the food set out under a pergola covered with wisteria. Each guest received one of Charleston’s famous sweet grass baskets, small ones filled with sugared almonds. I took a lot of pictures.”

“I’m sure Rebecca was thrilled. She’s a lovely girl. Mark is a lucky man.”

“We’re all lucky. I know it’s a cliché, but I do feel as if I’ve gained another daughter. It was a nice old-fashioned shower. Samantha made the bridal ‘bouquet’ from all the ribbons, and the gifts showed that they had been chosen with care by everyone.”

Care—not poor taste. Pix had attended a shower for the daughter of a friend a few months ago, and it turned out to be a lingerie shower with the offerings so raunchy that Pix, who did not consider herself a prude, was mortified. Flavored panties that dissolved at the crotch! She hadn’t read the invitation carefully, just noted the time and date. When the bride opened Pix’s set of pots and pans, the room grew quiet and then burst into laughter. Apparently the young woman, who was in law school, used her oven as an annex to her overflowing closet and the flat cooktop as a place to pile textbooks. No one said “dinosaur,” but Pix had felt her skin beginning to look scaly.

“It sounds like you and Samantha are having a fine time,” Ursula said.

“We are. The Cohens have been the perfect hosts, both at Hilton Head and here. And Cissy has included me in everything. Saturday we went to Becca’s final fitting. She looks like a princess in her gown. It’s ivory satin, strapless—very simple—but they’ve had a little jacket made from some antique lace Cissy found, which makes it unique. But I don’t want to tire you out talking. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“Give my love to everyone—and I want to hear all about your dress, too, darling.”

Ursula’s interest in fashion hovered between zilch and nada, so Pix took the comment for what it was—a nice thing for a mother to say to her daughter. She closed her phone and resumed her walk. She was strolling down King Street, basking in the sun—and the anonymity. She loved Aleford, but it was rather nice to be in a place where everybody didn’t know your name—or the names of your children, husband, pets, and so forth. Plus any number of other details about your life. She snapped another picture of a palm tree. She wasn’t in a rush. Life had slowed down almost to a crawl. The Cohens had arranged for Pix and Samantha to stay in Cissy’s brother’s guesthouse, a short walk away from their home. The kitchenette had been stocked for breakfast and it meant that Pix didn’t feel they were outwearing their welcome by staying with the Cohens.

Tomorrow Cissy and she were meeting with someone at the Planter’s Inn to finalize the menu and other arrangements for the rehearsal dinner. The following day Cissy had declared to be a day off from wedding plans and the ladies were going to head out to Sullivan’s Island to a beach house that belonged to someone in Cissy’s family. Pix was beginning to think that between the two of them, Cissy and Stephen were related to almost the entire population of South Carolina. Every time a name came up, one or the other would explain to Pix that it was a cousin twice removed or the sister-in-law of a brother-in-law. Mark had said the wedding would be a big one. That could be a major understatement.

She paused to look in the window of an art gallery featuring the work of a number of Gullah artists and caught sight of her reflection. Maybe Faith was wrong. Maybe she bore so little resemblance to the college girl she’d been so many years ago that there was no way Stephen could have recognized her. Okay, it was still bothering her. Every time she’d found herself alone with him for a few minutes—like last night on the brick patio behind their house drinking a glass of wine while Samantha helped Cissy and Rebecca’s sisters in the kitchen—Pix had been tempted to say something. But what? “That Yankee in your bed Green Key Weekend was me”?

She turned away and continued her walk. No, that would be tacky in the extreme. She had to let it go and be content with who she was in the present—the mother of the groom. The past was past.

Wasn’t it?

O
ne of the things Tom and Faith had discussed in between everything else they seemed to be discussing was why Ursula seemed so driven to tell her story now. Tom thought it was because she’d been ill. He’d often had individuals confide long-held secrets to him as they approached death, and although Ursula was on the mend, the intimations of mortality had been strong during the winter months.

“But she keeps alluding to something she wants me to do when she’s finished talking,” Faith had pointed out. “That sounds like something specific has happened that’s caused her to tell me all this now.”