The Body in the Moonlight (20 page)

Since she'd worked with Daisy Morton before, Faith knew her taste. Good food, plenty of it, and nothing too fussy. Accordingly, she'd prepared two warm hors d'oeuvres—mushrooms stuffed with toasted walnuts and assorted miniquiches—plus two cold ones—snow peas filled with a lightly smoked salmon cheese spread and caramelized onion with fresh tomato bruschetta. Jim wanted oysters for a first course, and Faith had convinced him to try oysters Rockefeller—that rich combination of spinach, Pernod, and bivalve—instead of raw with cocktail sauce. They briefly went back and forth on the main course, from duck to beef, then duck it was, which Jim knew in his heart his wife would prefer, although he said he'd really liked the filet Faith had made for an earlier dinner with “those big mushrooms.” As a variation from duck à l'orange, Faith had glazed tonight's
canard
with cassis. She was also serving asparagus, wedges of sautéed polenta, and plenty of rolls to fill in the cracks. After salad, there would be birthday cake, of course, for dessert. Niki had made an old-fashioned layer cake—devil's food with butter cream frosting covered with crystalized sugar daisies. “Perfect,” Jim said when Niki reverently took the cake from the box. “Absolutely perfect. Hey, you gals might like to see this.” He reached in his pocket and took out a small velvet-covered box, opening it to reveal a diamond-petaled daisy with a sapphire center. Faith was touched. There was no “He loves me, he loves me not”
going on here. Daisy had told her that the Mortons had been married for forty years, and it looked like they were good for forty more.

The guests who were not part of the luncheon/museum plot had all arrived, and it wasn't long before a car pulled up to the front of the house. Poised in the dining room with the trays of champagne and hors d'oeuvres, Faith could hear Daisy say, “Good-bye, girls. What a fun day. I'll have to turn sixty more often. Maybe every year from now on!” It had been thoughtful of her husband to plan an outing that meant she'd be suitably dressed for a party and not in her bathrobe, ready for a tray and
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
There were a few giggles, coughs, and sssh's from the next room.

The birthday girl let herself in, car doors slammed behind her, and figures jumped up in front of her, led by Jim, who turned on the lights and yelled, with great enthusiasm, “Surprise!”

Then Niki and Faith walked in with the food.

The room went dead silent. Daisy opened and closed her mouth, as did several of her friends. One of the men—clueless—said, “Hey, drinks! Great!” then stopped, bewildered by the empty air surrounding him.

“What's the matter, darling? Are you okay?” Jim asked anxiously. His wife looked at him. Oh, Jim, was written all over her face—and the faces of every woman in the place.

“I'm fine, dear. It was just seeing—I mean, it was just the…shock. I think I'll sit down.”

Faith had gone white, then red, and was back to white. She stepped forward with the tray of flutes. “Champagne?” she asked Daisy.

Daisy started to laugh. “Might as well, Faith. Might as well.”

 

After that, the party swung into high gear, fueled by plenty of champagne. There was a quality of abandon, risk taking, to it that was unusual for an Aleford event, especially one on a weeknight. The participants could all dine out for months on the experience: “You actually ate the food!” “And how did she look?” “She'd only found the poor fellow that morning!”

Once everyone was seated and the main course served, Faith could stay in the kitchen and let Niki pour wine and water, mostly wine. It wasn't difficult to hear what people were saying, and there were several classic moments, wives not having had an opportunity to brief their spouses.

“Great food. We must get the name of the caterer, Maude. She'd do a bang-up job for Muffy's wedding. Must be booked up pretty far in advance. People probably kill to get her.”

The nervous hilarity increased, and one woman, striving desperately to change the subject, said, “Doesn't that famous mystery writer Anson Scott live in Aleford? I'm sure I read this someplace. I adore his books, except I can't read them at night.”

Daisy answered, “He does live here. On the other side of town, but we don't see him much. He keeps to
himself, writing all those books, of course. And he travels a great deal, I hear. He looks just like his picture, only more so.”

All the women nodded. The men looked baffled.

“Lived down the hall from me at Eliot House,” a ruddy-faced man with a shock of blond hair turning to silver said, reminiscing. “An odd character, and we weren't at all surprised the way he turned out.”

The woman who had asked the first question quizzed him excitedly. “What
was
he like? He's such a mystery man himself, seldom gives interviews.”

“Came to Harvard with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, assumed everyone had gone to prep school. Scholarship student, and I think it bothered him that he didn't have much money. I certainly didn't, either, but there was a lot of it around and some of the fellows liked to make a splash. He didn't get into the club he wanted. I know that was a disappointment. And there was the whole business of his family.”

“What do you mean? What was the matter with his family?”

“It's so long ago. I can't remember exactly, but his mother or grandmother had killed herself when he was a child. Pretty horrible. Ambitious. That I do remember. Made better grades than anyone in the house and was writing even then. The same sort of things—like Poe. He kept a statue of the raven in his room and used to wear a cape. Big man, even then. Comes to reunions, of course, and now there's a scholarship named for him. Life's funny. Suppose there's some more of this duck?”

Faith hastily refilled the serving platter and Niki took it out. Then she sat at the Mortons' kitchen table, lost in thought. Anson Scott's early life had been melodramatic. She imagined him at Harvard's elite Eliot House, watching his wealthy classmates breeze through life while he had to watch every penny. What kind of effect does this have on someone? she wondered. This and the loss of his mother or grandmother? Perhaps his grandmother was the one who'd been in service at Ballou House. Obviously, Scott's parents hadn't made much money either, but had produced a brilliant, and ambitious, boy. His ambitions had been realized. Anson Scott was an extremely wealthy man. Private to the point of reclusiveness, yet he went to reunions. Went to reunions to show them what he'd become. But she was willing to bet he still wasn't in the club.

She'd seen the raven statuette on one of the shelves in his library. Poe had been his inspiration, and in some ways Scott had outdone his mentor in manipulating the reader, creating real fears, psychological horror. Being entombed alive, mistaken for dead and buried—like Poe, Scott regularly used this theme. Faith shuddered. There was no mistake about Jared—or Gwen.

After Gwen's funeral, Faith had tried to get in touch with Paula Pringle to find out who had written the mystery play used at Ballou House, but she had continually gotten Paula's machine, then not even that. Paula must be away and the machine had filled up was Faith's conclusion. Paula might have written the play herself. She could, or
thought she could, do everything else. It was doubtful that any of the mystery-writer guests would have participated, unless paid—as they should be—and Faith thought she would have heard about this at one of the committee meetings. The most likely thing was that Paula had bought a kit.

“Strange,” she said to Niki, who was returning with the empty platter. “Part of the plot of the mystery game sounds like Anson Scott's life.”

“And parts of a million other people's. I read the thing between courses and it was boilerplate.” She put the cake on a cake plate. “No fears about strychnine in this bunch. Forget about a lot of leftovers for your hubby.”

Her hubby. Home watching the game. Basketball, football, hockey, whatever. Faith was never sure of the seasons. They seemed to go on simultaneously and forever. Her hubby. She'd found a dead body this morning and had scarcely seen Tom since. She had the distinct feeling that she'd somehow let him down. That by involving herself in finding out about Gwen's death, she'd somehow brought Jared's literally to their doorstep. She shook her head. She was being absurd.

“Open the door,” Niki commanded, “turn out the lights, and start singing.”

Faith was feeling distinctly at loose ends. Despite the accolades the night before, no one had asked for cards and there were no messages of any kind on the machine at work. She'd told Tom at breakfast that they had to face the very real possibility that she'd have to close the business. She could easily afford the rent for some months, but there was Niki's salary to consider—and, more important, Niki's reputation. She was just starting her career. Faith didn't want to jeopardize her assistant's chances. Tom had been sympathetic, but he told her he thought she was being too hasty. He'd been waiting up for her the previous night, with cognac already poured. They'd talked about Jared. About the loss. About the shock of it all. “I don't know where I am anymore, Faith,” Tom had said at one point. “And I certainly don't know where I'm going.” She had tried to get him to be more specific. But after that brief declaration, he'd taken her in his arms for what she supposed and hoped was a declaration of another sort. Now in the clear light of day, it was his words that came back to haunt her. Tom, who had always been so
sure of what he wanted, from his vocation to the woman he'd married, was sailing on uncharted waters. It terrified her.

She wandered over to the Millers'. Ursula and Pix were sitting at the kitchen table, making pinecone wreaths.

“Faith, dear, how lovely to see you!” Ursula exclaimed. “Pull up a chair and help. We're making these for the fair.”

Faith had forgotten all about First Parish's Holly Bazaar, the Ladies' Auxiliary's big moneymaker, in mid-November. She had promised baked goods and several baskets of Have Faith's preserves.

“I'm not sure I'm good at this sort of thing,” Faith said dubiously, eyeing the cones, wreath forms, glue guns, and other strange items adorning the table. Crafts of all sorts were second nature to the Rowes, as were bird counts, fern identification, and the ability to get amaryllis bulbs to bloom again.

“You don't have to do a thing.” Pix gave her mother a reproving look. Faith had been through enough lately. “Just sit with us.” Pix had, of course, been over the day before. As soon as she saw the police leave, she'd arrived with a casserole that Faith hadn't the heart to refuse, and she'd called several times since.

“Nonsense,” Ursula said. “She can talk while she works. You can sort the cones for us by size.” Mrs. Rowe was of the school that believed activity was the cure for all ills.

Faith thought she could do this and started to make piles.

“We voted at the last meeting to donate the proceeds from this year's fair to the Anniversary Campaign, but there was a fair amount of discussion and dissent. Everybody's tired of all the wrangling over what it should be used for—the steeple or the crypt—and I'm sorry the church got into this mess in the first place,” Ursula declared.

“What do you think the money should be used for?” Faith asked. The whole campaign had slipped to the back of her mind recently.

“The crypt—just like your husband. Oh, you don't have to say a word. I know what Tom thinks. He's mentioned holding services there often enough, and in any case, it's shocking. The wiring is old and we have no idea what's down there besides boxes of hymnals with pages missing that no one wanted to get rid of.”

“Maybe we'll find a valuable painting, like the Episcopalians in West Newbury. A del Sarto in the closet where the minister hangs his coat. The congregation thought it was ugly and took it down from the choir stall twenty years ago, and there it's been sitting ever since. It sold at one of the auction houses for over a million dollars,” Pix said.

“I don't think we have any del Sartos or anything remotely resembling one in our closets.” Faith had made a thorough exploration of the church as a new bride. Even the crypt. Old hymnals, broken chairs, and stones marking the graves were all she remembered seeing, in
addition to a superabundance of spiderwebs. “Besides, there's some question about the painting being solely the work of del Sarto. It was in the
Times.
Apparently, the auction house knew there was some question about its authenticity, but that wasn't noted in the catalog and not widely known until after the sale. The buyers knew and took their chances.”

“But they may have gotten a fake. A very expensive fake.”

“True, but despite the doubts, the purchasers are insisting they bought the genuine article.”

“I'm surprised at the auction house,” Pix continued, fiercely firing her glue gun. “There should have been fair warning—‘as is.'”

Her mother looked at her. “From what I've read, the art world is not above such things—and you know very well that unless you go to the preview, you can end up with a pig in a poke even when they give ‘fair warning.'”

Ursula's words echoed in Faith's head: “The art world is not above such things.” Bingo. She should have thought of all this sooner. Much sooner. What could Gwen most obviously have had on her employer, a smart girl, well versed in art history, situated right there in the gallery? Selling fake or stolen goods. Thereafter, she either received a cut or was paid to keep her opinions to herself.

“Did you know the Gabriels?” she asked Ursula. “Millicent told me that Jared's grandparents had a summer house here and that he and Nick used to come when they were little boys.”

“Yes, I knew them well. They were members of King's Chapel, but they attended First Parish when they were in Aleford and were very generous to the church. Even before poor Jared, it's been a family filled with tragedy. You know how his parents went, so close together and neither of them even sixty. His mother, Lucy, never was very strong. They were terribly proud of their son, but I know they wanted a bigger family. It didn't happen and she used to suffer from depression. They should have adopted—Lucy really adored children. Nicholas had always been like a brother to Jared—a good brother—and that helped. He spent a great deal of time with them, because his parents were divorced and his mother lived in Europe. His father tried his best, but he had to work, and of course Nicholas couldn't go running off to Europe, even if his mother had wanted him around, which was not the impression I received. I don't know why his father didn't remarry. Men generally do.”

It was such a typically Ursula thing to say, coming at the end of the story, that Faith couldn't help laughing. She was doing a good job with the pinecones, and if not light at the end of the tunnel, there was now a glimmer. It was horrible to think about, but she was beginning to believe that Nick had murdered Gwen to shut her up once and for all; then somehow Jared must have figured it out and Nick had to kill him, too.

“It's true, Nick and Jared seemed very close,” Faith observed, hoping to hear what more Ursula might say.

“I think they were—although they had completely different personalities. Jared was quiet. I used to think he was always hearing music and preferred listening to what was in his mind than talking much. Nick is very outgoing—and, from what I understand, a very capable businessman. I never thought of him as an art lover. But if that's where the money is these days, that's where he'd be.”

“Nick Gabriel wasn't the kind of little boy who simply had a lemonade stand but would franchise,” Pix interjected.

Ursula nodded in agreement and held up a completed wreath.

“Now, Faith, I'm going to start the next one and you can follow me step by step.”

“Truly, there's nothing I would enjoy more,” Faith lied, “but I have to get to the market before I pick Amy up.”

“That's all right. Another time.” Ursula was not going to let her off. “By the way, I understand Daisy Morton got quite a surprise last night.”

“And lived to tell the tale,” Faith said, only half-jokingly.

Ursula, who was not a demonstrative woman, got up and patted Faith on the shoulder. “People will come around. They don't have much experience with things like this, so they've pulled back. Like a turtle in its shell. We're like that around here, you know. It's a blessing and a curse, depending on the circumstances.”

Faith sincerely hoped this was a time Ursula viewed
New England self-protectiveness as a curse, and her next words were reassuring.

“I'm thinking of giving a little party myself, a kind of preholiday get-together. I'll call you with the date. You'll see. Before too long, you'll have more business than you want. When people realize they might have to cook and clean up themselves for their holiday parties, they'll be engaging you.”

It was terribly kind—and terribly wrong. Whom they would be engaging would be other caterers, but Faith appreciated Ursula's vote of confidence and dared to give her a quick hug.

At the door, she turned and said to Pix, “I almost forgot—what does one wear to a PTA meeting? It's tonight.”

“Something inconspicuous,” Pix answered.

 

“Sorry, I don't have time to talk. This all sounds delightfully complicated. You just caught me. Someday, I really will leave the apartment and let the phone keep ringing, I keep telling myself. I have a machine, after all. But I don't because it might be someone like you, for instance. Anyway, come see me. Much more fun to talk in person. I'll take you to lunch wherever you want; then we can catch the Eames show at the Cooper-Hewitt.”

“I don't think I can get away. No, it's impossible.”

“Nonsense. You've done it before. Take the early shuttle. But now I must run. Thursday's best for me. Call me when you decide.”

Faith was struck by a powerful longing to go home if only for a few hours. It was like a thunderbolt, what the French call a
coup de foudre.
New York. Autumn in New York. She almost hummed a few bars of the song, smelling the chestnuts street vendors used to roast before the mayor closed them down. She could go to the Chelsea Market. She could go to Barneys. She couldn't go.

She'd go.

“Yes. I mean, I'll come. Where should I meet you?”

“Good girl. Christer's at noon. On West Fifty-fifth. They have a lovely little fireplace and the food is splendid. Scandinavian, but not a boiled potato in sight, or if so, disguised. And I'll do a little investigating about your Undique Gallery. I've heard the name, but I can't remember in what context. See you Thursday, and do try not to turn up any more stiffs in the meantime.”

Faith hung up, wishing that people would stop saying that and wishing even more to comply with their request. Thursday. The day after tomorrow. It was only lunch. Nothing more. Yes, it did involve a plane trip. But it was only lunch.

 

PTA night. She was overdressed. Her tapered black wool pants and soft gray cashmere twin set—clothes she had imagined would blend in with the crowd stood out among the denim skirts and Dockers chinos like a Bob Mackie frock at a Sunday school picnic. She put her jacket back on, a fawn-colored suede from Paul
Stuart. It helped a little, but not much. After every eye in the room trained an X-ray beam on her, the group turned their attention back to the secretary. Janice Mulholland was reading the minutes. She looked bad again—haggard and even thinner. Faith could tell the woman would kill for a cigarette. Janice's hand started to shake and she put the report down on the podium.

Since this was her maiden voyage, Faith had no idea whether tonight's standing-room-only crowd represented the norm or if the turnout was due to the rumors about the principal. There were many more women than men, yet that was to be expected. She wished she hadn't urged Tom to stay home with the kids and get some rest himself. She would have liked company. Arlene MacLean, Ben's friend Lizzie's mom, was seated a few rows ahead and there were some other familiar faces, but no one nearby. She tried to concentrate on what Janice was reading, but it was pretty dull stuff. Apparently, the hot topic at last month's meeting had been Macs versus PCs for the library. Uniformity—the school already had Macs—or diversity. She wasn't the only person not paying attention. There was a low buzz of conversation throughout the room—and not a happy buzz. There was a somber, even sad, look on many faces. George and several teachers, including Julie Black, were in the front row. Faith couldn't see how they looked, but she could guess. Resolute? Resigned? Surely the accusations wouldn't come up tonight. This was a PTA meeting, a place where parents talked about what to do with the
cash they raised for the school. A place where invited speakers attempted to decode current educational practices. A place where parents received reassurance that they had done the best-possible thing for their children by assuming mortgages they couldn't afford in order to live in a town with good schools.

They were meeting in the school cafeteria. The tables had been folded up and stacked against the walls, their places taken up by rows of folding chairs. The walls were covered with murals celebrating good table manners, balanced diets, and dental hygiene. A faint odor of macaroni and cheese hung in the air.

“Thank you, Madam Secretary,” the president said. “All those in favor of accepting the minutes as read, please signify by saying ‘aye.'”

There was a chorus of ayes.

“All those saying ‘nay.'”

There was dead silence.

“Hearing none, the minutes are accepted as read. Now, next on the agenda is the treasurer's report.”

Faith was surprised by the size of the PTA coffers—and, as the treasurer pointed out, the current total did not include sales figures for the wrapping paper, since the drive was still going on.

The report was accepted, and the president, a tall, efficient-looking woman with a mop of totally unruly curls, mentioned for the record that special thanks were due to Janice Mulholland for donating her time and talents. Everyone clapped. Everybody seemed to know what Janice had done, apart from what she nor
mally did for the school, which was almost everything. Janice managed a thin-lipped smile and nodded her head graciously at the group.