The Body in the Gazebo (4 page)

“I’ve been burning the midnight oil, don’t you worry your pretty little head. A fellow has to have some fun, you know. So, what do you say—will you do it?”

Ursula nodded. Theo lifted his sister up and swung her around. She had been as much a surprise to him nine years ago as he imagined she must have been to their parents.

“But do be careful—and good, Theo, won’t you?”

“I’m always good and careful,” he said, laughing.

Theo set his sister down and looked in the tall pier glass mirror at the end of the broad front hallway where they’d been standing. Their reflection could have been a painting by Sargent—Master Theodore Speedwell Lyman and sister, Ursula Rose. Theo’s hair was carefully parted in the middle and slicked down; he was wearing evening clothes. To please his parents, he was dining at their Cabot cousin’s home on Beacon Street before making an appearance at one of the many debutante balls to which he and his very eligible friends were continually invited. But that dinner and the ball would merely mark the start of his evening. Later he and some of his chums were treating a few of the beauties from the Old Howard to a postshow supper at Locke-Ober—upstairs in a private dining room, the only part of the restaurant where women were allowed. He’d ordered Lobster Savannah, the house specialty, and they’d have to bring in their own magnums of champagne thanks to Prohibition—damn it all. Of course the ladies would be wearing considerably more than they would have been earlier. He hoped those dreary guardians of the public morality from the Watch and Ward Society wouldn’t have stopped by to interrupt the show, which would push supper up later. The irony was that some of last season’s debs, who were officially launched and therefore granted more leeway now, would be wearing outfits at the ball that were almost as revealing as the strippers’. He chuckled to himself and pulled a Butterfinger candy bar—her favorite—from his pocket for his sister.

Ursula was studying herself in the mirror. She was clad in the blue serge skirt, black lisle stockings, and long middy blouse she’d worn to school. Winsor had moved to the Longwood area of Boston some ten years ago and Mrs. Lyman regularly complained about the distance. “When I was a student, it was so convenient. Right here on the Hill. We could walk.”

Ursula rather liked the commute. She wasn’t allowed to explore Boston on her own yet, but she yearned for the day when she could go to the opposite side of the Hill to the West End and perhaps even down to Scollay Square. She was pretty sure that was where her brother would be for at least part of the evening. She’d seen the giant two-hundred-pound steaming teakettle that hung above the Oriental Tea Company not far from the Square down Tremont Street several blocks away from King’s Chapel, but it was the limit permissible in that tantalizing direction. She wasn’t interested in what her brother sought in Scollay Square. What she wanted to explore were the bookshops on nearby Corn Hill. But her world was carefully circumscribed by the Common and the Public Garden with occasional trips to the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, the Museum of Fine Arts in the Fenway, or Symphony Hall.

Each morning Mr. Lyman’s chauffeur returned from dropping his employer off at his offices to drive his employer’s daughter to school. While Ursula thought taking the subway would be great fun, she found plenty to entertain herself looking out the window of the big Packard.

“I wish Mother would let me bob my hair,” she complained, turning away from the mirror and eagerly accepting her brother’s proffered treat.

Theo yanked one of her braids. “Don’t be in a hurry to grow up, squirt. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.”

Although the evening promised to be great fun—Charlie Winthrop was picking him up after dinner in the Stutz Torpedo he’d just bought, plus Charlie always had the best hooch—Theo had a moment’s longing for the days when he was a schoolboy at Milton, coming home on weekends with nothing much to worry about except beating Groton’s football team. He hadn’t made Harvard’s team, but it would have been rare for a frosh. He missed playing, which was maybe why he was making up for it by all this other playing. Ursula was holding out the white silk scarf he’d dropped when he’d put on his overcoat. Her serious little face was crinkled in a smile. He promised himself he’d buckle down and give up the late nights at Sanborn’s Billiards and Tobacco Parlor, hit the books, and make everyone proud—especially the girl standing in front of him.

“You’re a brick,” he told her, and with a wave, walked out into the dusk.

F
aith drove slowly through the streets of Aleford to the outskirts of town where her catering kitchen was located. Her thoughts were so firmly fixed on the early twentieth century that she was startled when a Toyota Prius glided by. The car would have seemed like something from a science fiction novel in 1929. Nineteen twenty-nine. That’s when Ursula had said her story started, although so far she’d been describing the years prior, her childhood, and Faith had been captivated by the picture of this bygone era drawn by someone who had lived it. Both Tom’s and Faith’s parents were younger than Ursula. And of those closer to her in age who would have remembered that significant year, only Faith’s paternal grandmother was still alive—Olive Sibley. She lived in New Jersey with her daughter, Faith’s aunt Chat, short for Charity. Sibley women had been named Faith, Hope, and Charity since Noah. Faith’s parents had stopped with Hope. Whether this was due to an aversion to the third name on the part of Jane, Faith’s mother, or the decision that two children were enough, Faith did not know. However, she did know that no one on the branches of the family tree had ever gone beyond Charity. What would it have been? Chastity, no doubt.

Listening to Ursula today, Faith regretted not having spent more time asking her grandmother about her childhood—or asking her mother and father about theirs. She resolved to take a recorder with her on her next trip to the city. And yes, Jersey—to Aunt Chat’s. Charity Sibley had made a name for herself—and a great deal of money—in advertising. The firm she founded was a household name, as were the products in her account portfolio. Her colleagues and friends were astounded when she sold the business, retired early, and purchased a small estate in Mendham, on the wrong side of the Hudson. She had been contentedly raising miniature horses and prize dahlias ever since. The fabulous parties she’d hosted at her San Remo apartment in one of the towers overlooking Central Park continued in the new locale. New Yorkers, for whom the Garden State was a less likely destination than Mars, were soon happily crossing the George Washington Bridge.

The big question, Faith thought as she pulled up to work, was why Pix—who had revealed details of her life ranging from the name of her kindergarten class pet (Eleanor, a guinea pig) to where and when she and Sam first did “it”—had never mentioned having an uncle.
Theo
. It was a lovely, old-fashioned nickname. There were several possible answers to this question: He was the despised black sheep of the family, although Ursula’s description of him so far had been very affectionate; he died well before Pix was born; or finally, Pix didn’t know of his existence. Was this last what Ursula didn’t want Faith to reveal? That Ursula had a brother? In the course of her story were other siblings going to emerge? Up until now, Faith had assumed Ursula was an only child. She’d indicated that there weren’t any more babies after her birth, but what about older siblings besides Theo?

She’d reached the catering kitchen. Faith unlocked the door, hung up her coat, and took out some sweet butter from the refrigerator and flour from the walk-in pantry. Ursula clearly could not talk for long without tiring and Faith had left her dozing. It meant she now had time to prepare some much-needed puff pastry,
feuilletage,
for the freezer.
Feuilletage,
from the French for “leaf,” was tricky and involved folding, rolling, and folding the buttery dough over itself again multiple times in order to get those ethereal, leaf-thin layers that would literally melt in your mouth. It was a task she had always loved—something about the repetitive motion was soothing. Not that anything particular was bothering her at the moment. She quickly knocked wood, tapping the counter with her wide rolling pin. Sure, Amy was dealing with a small group of mean girls in her grade, but she said she had only told her mother to show how well she and her friends were handling them. “We just laugh like crazy at everything they say and Sarah says stuff like, ‘Aren’t they hysterical,’ and they get mad and go to the other side of the playground.” It
was
a good strategy, but Faith, remembering some of the recent tragic outcomes of bullying, had called both the school principal and Amy’s teacher, asking each to keep an eye on the situation.

After a very rough start in middle school, Ben had discovered that he loved English—although it might have something to do with the very young and very pretty student teacher who had recently arrived. He was currently turning out short stories about vegetarian vampires for his writing assignments. They were actually pretty funny, although that might not be Ben’s intent. And Tom, thank goodness, was his hale and hearty self again. So, knock wood, no worries. Well, there was the economy and the fact that Faith’s business was off by over half. In addition, clients for the events they were catering were substituting things on sticks and cheese plates for passed mini beef Wellington and lobster spring rolls; opting for wine and beer without the exotic cocktails that had formerly been all the rage.

Some of the puff pastry in front of her was for an event Have Faith was catering for a yacht club on the North Shore. The Tiller Club had an annual game dinner in the fall and an old-fashioned clambake in the summer, both of which Faith had catered for years. The chairman had called Faith late last summer and told her there would be only one dinner this year and it would be a “Spring Fling” in late March. Faith thought he was being rather optimistic with the name—not the “Fling” part; the “Tillies,” as the men called themselves, were nautical party animals, but March didn’t suggest spring to her. However, just this week the plow guy had removed those long sticks he used to avoid running off the Fairchild’s driveway during a heavy snowfall. This was a more accurate harbinger of the season than the poor crocuses that struggled to bloom, so the Tillies had been right.

Their first course would be a
champignon Napoléon
—delicious, but plain old button mushrooms sautéed in butter with a bit of cream and sherry added at the end, not the medley of wild (expensive) mushrooms she normally used. And the chairman had opted for chicken roulade, not prime rib, as Faith had first suggested, knowing from the game dinners the amount of red meat they gleefully scarfed down.

Two things wouldn’t change on the menu. The dessert—boys at heart, they always wanted chocolate layer cake—and plenty of dinner rolls served throughout the meal, since tossing them, and rolled-up napkins, at one another made up much of the evening’s entertainment. The club supplied the booze and, recession or no, Faith was sure it would flow as amply as it had in other years. One had to maintain standards, after all. The dinner was next Friday and she made a mental note to remind Scott and Tricia Phelan, who worked as bartender and server at most of her events. Scott’s day job was at an auto body shop in nearby Byford, and Trish was working as an occasional apprentice for Faith, hoping to gain enough skill to find a job in a restaurant kitchen, bringing in some much-needed additional income. Their two kids were both in school full-time now and Faith wished she could put Trish on salary. Maybe in a few months.

Faith knew business would pick up. History repeated itself. There had been a big slump just before she left Manhattan for Aleford, marriage, and motherhood. There had been slumps here in Aleford. For now she could weather the storm without a bailout. Have Faith was still running the café at the Ganley, a local art museum, and it provided a nice, steady income. Before she took the job, Faith had checked out the fare offered by the previous purveyor. The lettuce in her salad was black and slimy; the canned tuna in the tuna salad reminiscent of the botulism-loaded cans from the Spanish-American War. The brownies looked like cow chips. The café attracted more visitors to the museum, once word got out that food poisoning was no longer a risk.

Lost in thought and pastry, Faith was startled when the door opened. It was Niki Constantine, Faith’s longtime assistant. A year and a half ago Niki had married Phillip Theodopoulos in an extravaganza that made
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
look like an elopement. Niki had grown up in nearby Watertown, during which time her mother had made her expectations clear to her only daughter. College, okay, but an engagement ring from a nice Greek boy by graduation; a June wedding; first grandchild a year later: “We don’t want people counting on their fingers.” Niki had rebelled, starting with culinary school instead of Mount Ida College, and then refusing to date any male remotely Greek in heritage, instead parading boyfriends who ranged from Lowell bikers to a Buddhist old enough to be her father, maybe grandfather. And then despite her best intentions, she had fallen hard for the man of her mother’s dreams—Yale undergrad, Harvard MBA, handsome, family oriented (he had pictures of his parents, sibs,
and
their kids in his wallet), plus he was Greek. First generation. Throughout, Faith had watched from the sidelines, listening to Niki’s descriptions and laughing. In addition to being the best assistant she could have wished for, especially when it came to desserts, Niki was also the funniest friend Faith had.

Niki wasn’t smiling today.

“I thought you and Phil were driving down to see his parents in Hartford.”

Just as Niki had found herself drawn inexorably into the vortex that was her mother’s idea of a real wedding—Niki’s gown had had so many crinolines she’d told Faith she felt like one of those dolls her aunt Dimitra crocheted skirts for to hide the toilet paper roll—she’d also been pulled into Phil’s family, although she found that she enjoyed being an aunt to his numerous nephews and nieces. The fact that his mother made the best baklava in the world and always for Niki didn’t hurt, either.