Body in the Bog

KATHERINE

HALL PAGE

BODY

i n t h e

BOG

To my friend Mimi Garrett,

and in memory of her dear mother, Marion Mullison Ellis

Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.

—CHARLES DICKENS

One

Seeing another woman in the Reverend Thomas Fairchild’s arms was not a sight his wife, Faith, had expected. She’d flung open the door to her husband’s study prepared to deliver an impassioned account of the infuriating selectmen’s meeting she’d just attended this April evening. Instead, she stood frozen on the threshold, perversely embarrassed at having walked in on something. Then the anger so conveniently close to the surface veered toward another target and she made her presence known by slamming the door—hard.

As a matter of course, Tom had to comfort the afflicted in mind, particularly the bereaved, and Faith could only hope that the woman, whoever she was, had lost her entire family to the bubonic plague, or else there would be some serious explaining due.

While she was considering whether to grab said woman by the hair, wrenching her from the good reverend’s grasp, Tom spoke.

“Faith, you’re home!”

“Yes, dear,” she replied, quelling the impulse to add, “obviously.”

She’d no sooner spoken when the woman turned around and abruptly threw herself into Faith’s arms.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she cried. So was Faith.

It was Miss Lora, almost-five-year-old Benjamin Fairchild’s beloved nursery school teacher and sometime weekend sitter for Ben and his younger sister, Amy. Miss Lora was crying. Miss Lora was upset.

Faith patted Miss Lora’s back, the fleeting earlier notion of clocking her one totally obscured. This was the woman who provided her son with quality care and—possibly more important—actually enabled the elder Fairchilds to get away for a few weekends alone together.

Faith looked at Tom over Miss Lora’s heaving shoulders. It was a bit difficult to read his expression since, Janus-like, one side of his face was registering deep concern while the other displayed acute embarrassment. He repeated his earlier cogent remark. “Ah, honey, you’re home,” adding, “and early. Good, good, good.”

Faith again opted for brevity. “Yes,” she replied, trusting that after six years of marriage, Tom could read the volumes between the lines, volumes entitled,

“What the Hell Is Going on Here?”

“Lora came to discuss a problem, and I’ve been trying to convince her that it really is a police matter.” Things were looking up. Faith loved nothing better than poking her nose into police matters. But Miss Lora? What on earth could be going on?

“Absolutely not! No police,” Lora said, fishing around in her pocket for a tissue, with which she proceeded to blow her already-red nose noisily.

Faith regarded the teacher and thought, not for the first time, that Miss Lora needed to look to a fashion beacon other than Raggedy Ann. Lora wasn’t wearing red-and-white-striped tights and a ruffled apron at the moment, but these were staples of her wardrobe, which also included a number of shapeless denim and corduroy jumpers, gingham blouses, and the like. She had an abundance of mousy brown hair, worn pulled back with a scrunch. Unlike the doll, however, she did not have even a hint of red on her lips or cheeks. What paint there was lay under her fingernails, the result of active participation with her young charges.

“Why don’t we go into the kitchen and have something to eat while you tell me all about it?” Faith suggested. The makeover could wait. “I assume,” she said to Tom, “that the children are asleep.”

“Naturally,” he replied, adopting an attitude of injured dignity as he led the way into the parsonage kitchen.

A parsonage was the last place Faith Sibley Fairchild had expected to be spending her adult years. It had been bad enough growing up in one. Tradition-bound, Faith’s father, the Reverend Lawrence Sibley, donned the cloth, as had his grandfather and father before him. He also clung to Sibley family mores by naming his daughters Faith and Hope. Charity might have followed had not his wife, Jane Sibley, a real estate lawyer, put her well-shod little foot down. Enough was enough.

Faith had chafed at the fishbowl existence as a “preacher’s kid”—the freely offered, “well-meant” remarks at the way the Sibleys raised their children, ate, drank, even slept, if it was too late. The fishbowl was, however, nicely located on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and that had helped.

Spurred by her younger sister’s meteoric rise in the world of finance, Faith had finally found her own true calling—as a caterer—and Have Faith was born. After glowing reviews and by much deliciously satisfied word of mouth, she became the caterer of choice for the Big Apple’s glitterati. Have Faith jams, jellies, chutneys, and sauces followed. Then, at a wedding reception, while checking to see whether a tray of the smoked trout wrapped in an herbed crêpe topped with a soupçon of caviar and crème fraîche was holding out, Faith met Tom Fairchild. He’d changed collars, and it wasn’t until they’d talked into the wee hours of the morning that the fact that she’d fallen head over heels in love with a minister hit her full force. It hit her again when she found herself in the small village of Aleford, Massachusetts, after their own wedding.

She was acutely homesick—and bored.

She was determined not to sacrifice her standards, and kept her wardrobe and haircut up-to-date. At present, her thick blond hair was chin-length, parted on the side, enabling her to let the curtain fall strategically across her face. Trips home always included the three B’s—Barneys, Bergdorf, and Bloomingdale’s—along with two others—Bendel, and Balducci’s for food, if she had time.

Yet, the years in Aleford had proved more eventful than she could have predicted. The place was beginning to grow on her, like the ivy and old mosses attacking the brick parsonage walls. Not only had she produced two children and started Have Faith again, but she’d also demonstrated an uncanny knack for getting involved in crime. Getting involved after the fact, that is, having literally stumbled across several bodies and, as she liked to remind herself, in each case beaten the police to the denouement.

Police matter. The moment Tom referred to the boys in blue—although Chief Charley MacIsaac, thirty-four years in Aleford alone, could scarcely be referred to as a boy—Faith found herself drawn to Miss Lora as never before. Certainly it was interesting to hear that Ben was truly gifted when it came to block building, but nowhere near as riveting as the possibility that Miss Lora might need Faith’s detective skills.

All in good time. Faith made fresh coffee, the drug of choice in places like Aleford, and cut some thick slices of the Scandinavian cardamom raisin bread (see recipe on page 337) she’d made the day before. Cardamom and coffee went well together and transformed the kitchen into an instant replica of the one in I Remember Mama. Faith had to watch that she didn’t start to nod at Lora’s every word and say, “Ja.” It was an atmosphere calculated to encourage confidences.

Miss Lora was hungry and slathered her bread thickly with sweet butter. Twenty-two-year-olds didn’t worry about cholesterol, Faith reflected from her vantage point ten—soon to be eleven—years ahead. In your early twenties, you didn’t worry about much. Maybe boyfriend/girlfriend troubles, finding a job, small stuff, but nothing like clogged arteries. So what was Lora worried about? She was eating heartily, yet her face, kittenlike behind the huge horn-rimmed glasses she wore, was still troubled.

Tom, bless his heart, got right to the point.

“Lora has been receiving some threatening phone calls.”

Faith turned to the young woman. “What do they say?”

Lora swallowed hard and took a gulp of coffee.

“The third one came about dinnertime. They’ve all been the same. A man’s voice tells me to get out of Aleford if I want to stay healthy. Tonight he said, ‘Get out soon.’ I was sitting in my apartment and I suddenly got so scared, I had to talk to someone, and Reverend Fairchild was the only person I could think of.” Faith wondered why Lora had not sought solace from her own spiritual leader, Father Reeves. At well over sixty, he was balding and paunchy, no match for Tom Fairchild’s good looks, but a resource that should have occurred to Lora. Tom, the only one? Faith knew she hadn’t spoken out loud, but Lora volunteered the answer as if the question had been asked.

“I couldn’t go to Father Reeves, because—and I know this is an awful thing to say about a member of the clergy—I wasn’t sure I could count on him not to tell my grandfather. I knew I could trust you not to repeat what I said to anyone.”

Well, it made sense, and it also put the kibosh on any inclinations the Fairchilds might have to go to the police, or to Lora’s grandfather, for her own good.

Lora Deane was from an old Aleford family. Not old in Millicent Revere McKinley’s book—she traced her ancestors to the famous silversmith’s door and beyond. According to Faith, Millicent’s ancestors were the forward-thinking ones who had adopted Puritan garb and Congregationalism well before the Flood.

Lora’s family had come to this country from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century and had headed straight for Aleford, where they found employment as farm la-borers and servants. Named Deane when the original name was misspelled by some official along the way, they weren’t too sure where in Germany the family had originated. Nor did they much care. They were Americans and eager to make the most of their new country through hard work. They put their money into land and now owned a few good-sized chunks of Aleford, besides several businesses, mostly in the building trades. Lora’s grandfather Cyrus Deane, called

“Gus” for so much of his life that only his wife, Lillian, ever used Cyrus, ruled the current clan with an iron fist—never mind the velvet glove.

“If my grandfather found out, he’d go nuts and make me move in with them. He wants me to, anyway,” Lora explained further.

Faith was firm. “But you have to take these phone calls seriously and find out who’s behind them. If you tell the police, they can help you get the phone company to put a tracer on your line.”

“I know that, but I can’t believe anyone would really want to hurt me. Besides, I’m pretty sure I know who it is.”

“Who?” Faith and Tom asked the question simultaneously.

“Well, actually two people.”

Faith’s image of the nursery school teacher was becoming seriously skewed. Two people who might be threatening her?

“One is my boyfriend, or I should say ex-boyfriend, Brad. Brad Hallowell. Do you know him?”

“I’ve met his parents at various functions. They moved to Aleford shortly after I did, almost six years ago. He was in college at the time. I think I know who he is, but I’m not sure.”

“You’re not missing much,” Lora said bluntly.

“He’s good-looking. I think that’s what attracted me, but all he can talk about are his computers or whatever cause he’s latched onto at the moment—Save the Field Mice, whatever.”

If Faith was surprised to discover the teacher more interested in the life of the flesh than the life of the mind, she did not show it. Only her husband might have caught the one eyebrow raised a millimeter.

“He was very upset when I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore. If you can believe it, he backed his car right over the cold frames where I was starting the children’s flower seeds. He isn’t much for children.

That was another problem—but he could have respected their work!”

Respect was a key concept in Miss Lora’s room, appearing on banners, spelled out in dried legumes, and on the leather key ring Ben had made Tom for Christmas. Faith had received a slogan-free looped pot holder.

“But why would he want you out of Aleford? It sounds as if what he really wants is to get back together,” Faith said.

“Oh, he knows I’d never go back with him, so now he goes out of his way to be nasty. You should see the looks he gives me. It sends chills down my spine. He’d just love to mess up my life and get me all upset.” It did sound plausible, and if it was Brad Hallowell, perhaps Tom could have a quiet word with him. Faith made a mental note to make some discreet inquiries about the young man.

“You said there were two,” Tom prodded in a low, sincere voice. Lora looked at him adoringly. Faith was used to this.

“The other person is my brother-in-law, Joey. Joey Madsen.”

Now this was a surprise. A scorned lover was one thing, but a member, albeit by marriage, of the Deane family!

“Why would you think it was Joey?” Tom asked.

Faith was too surprised to talk. Joey Madsen was the prime cause of the fury she’d felt when she’d come home from the selectmen’s meeting. If there was one person in town Faith herself was tempted to threaten, by phone, letter, or eye-to-eye, it was Joey Madsen.

Lora’s father, Cyrus Deane, Jr., had been married twice. Over twenty years ago, as a relatively young widower with four children ages eight through twelve, he’d immediately remarried. Lora was born a year later, and the second Mrs. Deane decided she had more than enough children to raise. After Cyrus’s un-timely death two years ago, Carolyn Deane had moved to California to escape the cold of New England, much to the Deane family’s bewilderment. They couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Carolyn had recently remarried.

Joey Madsen had married the oldest daughter from Cyrus’s first family, Bonnie. He’d joined one of the family businesses, Deane Properties, and had recently formed his own company, the Deane-Madsen Development Corporation. Tonight, his presentation of Deane-Madsen’s latest project before the selectmen had been the reason for a packed room—and Faith’s subsequent agitation.

Despite their climatic partisanship, New Englanders started looking for harbingers of spring in February. Faith’s friend and next-door neighbor Pix Miller had called her excitedly one late-February morning to announce the sighting of her first robin—quivering on a telephone wire that was encased in solid ice from the latest storm. Spring meant the turning over of new soil, and the turnees fell into diametrically opposed camps. On one side were the passionate gardeners, armed with tools from Smith & Hawken, clutching the latest book by Roger Swain, the Victory Garden man. On the other were local developers who started digging foundations and framing as soon as nature permitted, anxious to get their houses up and sold before the killing frosts of autumn. One group hear-kened to the ping! sound of a shovel hitting a rock in the unforgiving loam of the region; the other to the chorus of chain saws clearing the way for naturalistic foundation plantings. Good hedges, preferably fast-growing Canadian hemlocks, made good neighbors.

Joey Madsen had purchased a large tract that most of Aleford had mistakenly assumed was town conservation land. It included a bog, woodlands, and meadows. Joey planned to reduce them to one common denominator—enormous houses on postage stamp–sized lots. Five and six bedrooms, baths to match, exercise rooms—and gazebos. “California colonials,” he called them, clustered in a planned community with shared pool, cabana, and tennis courts. In short, Alefordiana Estates.

And the new access road would pass between the parsonage and the church, an existing—though unused—right-of-way discovered by Joey. Like other developers, he viewed the town ordinance maps much the way Long John Silver did Captain Kidd’s.

Faith fast-forwarded past her own irritations and leaned toward Miss Lora. “Yes,” she asked the teacher, “why Joey?”

“Well, you know he’s going to be building all these new houses out behind the church?”

“We have heard something about it,” Faith said, muttering under her breath, “and if he does, it will be over my dead body.”

“He needs a lot of money up front. You know, to pay for the land, put in the roads, and the houses themselves. Once he starts to sell them, he’ll be okay.

Anyway, he’s been after me to put money into the Estates, but I don’t want to, and he’s hopping mad.” Faith’s curiosity was beginning to resemble Alice’s.

And Lora’s tale was making Faith feel as if she were growing and shrinking in turn. Where would Lora, a nursery school teacher—and Faith knew exactly how underpaid she was—possibly get the kind of money Joey would be interested in? This wasn’t a question of piggy banks.

“You see,” Lora continued obligingly, “Grandfather gave us all a lump sum of money when we turned twenty-one. We’re supposed to use it to make more—

that is, start a business, whatever. My dad used his to buy the dealership.”

Deane Toyota was now in the hands of Cyrus junior’s son Bobby, and it had always been a profitable venture. Faith was beginning to get some idea of the size of the nest egg. She’d found that New Englanders were remarkably reticent when it actually came to discussing dollars and cents in figures, as opposed to thinking about them, and she doubted Lora would tell them how pretty her penny was, but there were ways around this. Millicent probably knew.

“I have told Joey a million times that I need the money for tuition. I want to get my master’s in early childhood education, but he thinks that’s not what Grandfather had in mind when he started the whole thing.”

“But that surely wouldn’t cause him to threaten you.”

“It also goes back to my mother. I get along fine with Bonnie. She was almost like a little mother to me when I was growing up, since she’s so much older.

But she never liked my mother.” Lora put on a professional air. “For a child to lose her mother at that critical age—the onset of puberty—is particularly devastating, and especially since my mother was so young. I’m sure Bonnie resented her and saw her as trying to take her own mother’s place.” She went back to her conversational tone and reached for another piece of bread. “But what they’re really angry about, all of them, is that Daddy left his money to Mom—except for what had to go back into the family pot.”

“The family pot?” Faith was learning more about the Deanes than she had ever imagined possible, and it was fascinating.

“You have to give Grandfather back what he gave you, plus five percent of the profits you’ve made by the time you’re forty.”

“But what if you don’t make a profit, or lose the money?” Tom asked.

Lora was aghast. “I have no idea. That’s never happened.”

Faith steered her back to Joey. “So your brother-in-law thought your father should have left some of his money to his family and not just to his widow?”

“Yes. Daddy left some money for me to finish college, and my mother has loaned me some more. Nobody liked that, either. But after all, she was married to him for all those years and raised them. I would have thought they’d be grateful to her.” Faith was beginning to think it was more than the climate that had attracted Carolyn Deane to California. Something about being on the opposite side of the country. With a chorus of disapproval, or worse, every time you bought a new pair of panty hose, it was no wonder Carolyn wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and these serpent’s teeth.

“You didn’t want to move with your mother?” she asked.

“No. Aleford is my home, and I’d miss my family.

I’m especially close to the twins.”

Cyrus junior’s youngest children by his first wife had been twin boys, Cyrus III and Eddie, now thirty years old. They were Deane Construction Company with their grandfather, having purchased partnerships with the eggs in their nests. This Cyrus was called

“Terry”—short for tertius, meaning “third” in Latin—to avoid any possible confusion over two men with the same name in one family. He couldn’t be called “Gus”; everyone knew there was really only one.

“Maybe I’m not getting this,” Tom said, shaking his head. All these Deanes were beginning to addle him.

“Why would Joey want you out of town if he wants you to give him money? Wouldn’t he try being nice to you?”

“Oh, he did do that. Remember when he let the kids climb all over his excavator, his steam shovel, after we read Mike Mulligan? And he was always inviting me over to the house for dinner. But once he understood that there was no way he was getting my money, he stopped. Telling me to get out of town is the threat.

He wants to scare me into giving in.” Faith thought back to some of the scenes she’d witnessed in the past. Joey Madsen was noted for his violent temper. At last year’s Town Meeting, he’d started screaming at a fellow member over a line item in the budget and then later, outside, he’d engaged in a shoving match with the man. It would have gone further had Charley MacIsaac not promptly put a stop to it.

“I’m afraid Lora does have a reason to be afraid of Joey. You should have heard him tonight, Tom. This project means everything to him, and he already must have sunk a fortune into it.”

Faith made a note to herself to find out how close Joey was to forty and how soon he’d have to be thinking about putting his percentage back into the pot. It could be he was in need of cash for more than Alefordiana.

“We can’t talk you into going to the police, Lora, so we have to come up with something else. I’d like to think there won’t be any more calls, but that’s not how people like this operate. Whoever it is will keep on.” Tom looked solemn. After a while, calls did not satisfy whatever aberration was motivating the caller, and the next step was something he didn’t want to think about.

He wished the young woman would be sensible.

“Okay. Since I’m not going to the police, what should I do?”

Faith answered. “I’ll try to find out more about Brad. Maybe we can get an idea of how badly he really is taking the breakup.”

“Badly. Believe me.” Lora seemed more than a little pleased.

“And you should go to your grandfather and tell him you suspect Joey is harassing you. I know Gus, and he wouldn’t be at all pleased at Joey’s behavior—if it is Joey,” Tom advised.

“Grandfather! No way! He’d go through the roof and be mad at me for causing problems. We’re supposed to be the perfect all-American family with no disagreements. In fact, if he knew I was telling you about this, he’d be furious.”

Faith had suspected as much. The Deanes were not known for airing their dirty, or even clean, linen in public.

“How about Bonnie?” she suggested. “You said that you’d been close growing up.”

“That’s possible,” Lora said slowly, mulling it over.

“Bonnie’s the boss in their house, and if it is Joey, she’ll put a stop to it right away.”

“I think you ought to talk to her as soon as possible,” Tom said. The seriousness of his tone seemed to impress the young woman.

“Tomorrow’s Thursday and Joey will be off working somewhere. He still hasn’t finished that house on Whipple Hill Road.”

Faith knew the house. It was an eyesore wedged between two beautiful turn-of-the-century grandes dames, completely destroying one of Aleford’s prettiest corners. Now instead of a long stretch of rolling lawn with huge ancient oaks and locusts, you saw a two-car garage almost as big as the house itself—a house boasting two decks and a gazebo.

“Bonnie is home with the baby for a few more weeks.” Lora was thinking out loud. “And I can go over there after school. I haven’t seen the baby in ages.”

“Good.” Tom sounded satisfied. He wasn’t convinced Joey Madsen was making the calls, but this way, someone related to Lora would know about them and perhaps be able to get her to take action. If by chance it was Joey, Bonnie would indeed put a stop to it immediately. Bonnie Madsen resembled her patriar-chal grandfather. And there was no question who would assume his role in the future, despite the number of aunts, uncles, cousins all within shouting distance. Bonnie worked for Deane Properties, too, and her latest coup was a new mall development project in nearby Byford. She’d gone into labor an hour after the papers were signed. Gus was still telling the story proudly all over town.

“I’m sure she’ll understand,” Faith said. “Women have moved far beyond the stage where their financial decisions are dictated by men. If you don’t think Alefordiana Estates is a good investment, then you shouldn’t be pressured—even by someone in your own family.”

“Oh, I think it’s a good investment,” Lora said.

“Joey’s going to make a ton of money. I have nothing against the idea personally. I just don’t want to put my money there right now.”

Faith looked at Tom dismally—a politically incorrect damsel in distress.

Lora left, thoughts apparently back to circle time and “If You’re Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands.” Faith and Tom were less sanguine.

“Were you being discreet or do you really not know much about Brad Hallowell?” Tom asked his wife.

“I really don’t, but the more I think about this whole thing, the more likely it seems that the calls are from him.”

“Hell has no fury—in this case—like a man scorned?”

“Exactly, and I’m worried about where that fury might lead next. Eventually, he’s going to be driven to make good on his threat,” she added.

“Lora was genuinely frightened when she arrived, quite hysterical.”

“But you calmed her down,” Faith commented somewhat archly.

Tom thought it was time to change the subject. He was getting a little tired of Miss Lora. He yawned and reached for Faith. “It’s getting late. Sleepy?”

“Not all that much,” she answered, fitting her head into the place just below his chin that seemed to have been designed for it.

Later, when she was drifting off to sleep, Faith realized she hadn’t told Tom much about the selectmen’s meeting. Now that Town Meeting had adjourned, Aleford, formerly glued to the local-access cable channel, had had nothing to watch on TV. Seinfeld was into reruns and all those stacks of must-read books next to the bed weren’t as enticing as they had seemed during the cold of winter. It was the itchiness of spring.

Then, just when Aleford was ready to give up and pick up their tomes, Alefordiana Estates came along.

As a saga, it was more riveting than Melrose Place and the Nibelungen rolled into one. It was enacted not just at selectmen’s meetings but also at the planning board’s. Then there were all the behind-the-scenes scenes at the Minuteman Café, Shop ’n Save, the library, Patriot Drug—wherever two or three Aleford residents happened to gather. Tonight’s selectmen’s meeting was the first of Joey Madsen’s final presentations of his plans, his dreams. He’d already run the gauntlet of the planning board and various town commissions. Even he was not naïve enough to think they would be approved on the first go-round, and he was right.

Joey and his lawyer had dressed appropriately in dark suits. But the resemblance ended there. Joey was a large man with a thick mat of curly brown hair, beginning to show a dusting of gray. His round face was tanned and his skin was rough. He always seemed to need a shave, even tonight, when a fresh nick in his chin had indicated a recent encounter with a razor.

But it was his hands that stood out—enormous hands, with fingers easily equaling two of Faith’s. Strong, very strong hands. His lawyer had the look of an old Yankee family in need of fewer cousins marrying.

Everything about him was bleached out, from his complexion to his thinning blond hair. He wore a signet ring. Joey’s hands were conspicuously bare of even a wedding band.

Joey had done the talking, flinging over the large blueprints, citing drainage studies, setbacks—all according to code, and with minimal wildlife impact. At home, he’d said to his wife, Bonnie, “When the rac-coons are in their garbage, they’re on the phone to Charley MacIsaac right away. But put them in a god-forsaken bog that nobody’s thought about for years and suddenly it’s like they’re about to become extinct or something.”

In front of the camera at the meeting, however, his tone had been measured and controlled. He spoke in glowing terms of the new families the Estates would bring to Aleford, contributing their talents to the community and enriching everyone’s lives. At one point, he seemed to get a bit choked up as he spoke of “a new generation of children waiting to enjoy the riches of our historic community.” Viewers at home were able to hear, although not see, a speaker who commented audibly that there weren’t too many families with young children around who could afford $900,000 mansions. Of course, it was Millicent Revere McKinley’s unmistakable voice, and people began to get excited. The show was about to begin. Joey had frowned but hadn’t missed a beat as he segued into a paean to those older occupants who had worked hard all their lives just so they could spend their golden years in a place like Alefordiana. “And their gold,” said the voice. The chairman called for order.

When Joey’s presentation was over, it was time for questions from the board, but before any of them could open his or her mouth, Millicent hopped up and cried, “Point of order!” in a manner worthy of her “The British are coming” ancestor, if indeed that was what he’d said. As with most things, there were several opinions on this in Aleford.

Penelope Bartlett, the current chairman of the board, looked a bit piqued. Millicent was a friend, but toying with the selectmen’s agenda was pushing the boundaries of friendship.

“Yes, Miss McKinley?”

Citing precedent, a 1912 discussion of new shrub-bery on the village green, Millicent demanded equal time.

“But equal time for what?” Penny asked. “It is the understanding of the board that only Mr. Madsen is submitting building plans tonight.”

“Equal time to oppose his plans.” Millicent had been Penny’s campaign manager, and now she shook her head sorrowfully. Once they get in power . . .

“Madam Chairman,” Morris Phyfe, one of the two liberals on the board, spoke up, “I believe Miss McKinley is within her rights.” Historically, the board comprised two liberals, two moderates, and one conservative. This kept things nicely in balance, the town believed, and campaigns not in accord had little chance.

Millicent made a motion from the floor to vote on the issue. Penny was now seriously annoyed and forgot her Robert’s Rules. “Millicent, you know you can’t do that.”

Morris came to the rescue and made the motion himself that the board vote on Miss McKinley’s point.

Faith noted that Morris was fulfilling his duty not only as protector of free speech but perhaps also as protector of his own property, which abutted the land in question. It could well be the Phyfes were not eager to have a multimillion-dollar complex-cum-pool and putting green in their own backyard.

To no one’s surprise, Morris’s motion passed. Sanborn Harrington, the conservative, voted against it.

Penny abstained—and would hear about it, she knew.

The rest voted to let Millicent offer a rebuttal before the board. Joey Madsen swept the room with a look that had it indeed been daggers would have resulted in wall-to-wall gore. He acidly asked again for questions from the board and Morris Phyfe spoke, after taking an unusually long amount of time looking for a single sheet of yellow lined paper upon which he had apparently written his query.

“Mr. Madsen, it is my understanding that a building of historic significance, known as the Turner farmhouse, is included in this parcel. Parts of the structure date back to the early eighteenth century and it is listed on the town’s Historic Register. What are your plans for the dwelling?”

Joey smiled. Faith had wondered why he seemed so relieved. Perhaps it was not one of the questions he’d been dreading? She, for one, planned to look at his proposal with whatever the visual equivalent of a fine-tooth comb was to ferret these out.

“The whole premise behind our proposal is uniting the best of the past with the best of the present to create a perfect future.” Was the man running for office or trying to build some houses?

“The Turner farm is what drew me to this treasured part of Aleford in the first place. The farmhouse will be lovingly restored as living history, not an inch of the original structure changed in any way. It will form the jewel in the crown of the community, its simple clapboard reminding us of those who toiled here before we did.”

Morris interrupted Joey before he started reciting Longfellow. “So it is not true that you plan to appeal to the Historic Commission for a waiver to raze the house?”

Joey looked for a moment as if he might lose it.

Millicent smiled a slow, little smile that did not show her teeth. “Absolutely not,” he shouted, “And if that’s what’s being said in town, it’s a damned lie.” Penny rapped her gavel. “I must remind the speaker to contain himself.”

He did, quickly. “The plans for the preservation of the Turner farm are included in the packet the board has received. Over the years, certain necessary repairs haven’t been made and I could not in good conscience put the house on the market without these, but I repeat, nothing of a historic nature will be altered. And you can stand and watch us if you want.” Joey was still fuming and barely in control. He bumped into the easel he’d been using and the fancy visuals the company had prepared slid to the floor.

While he and his lawyer were on their hands and knees picking things up, Morris Phyfe spoke again.

“Madam Chairman, I’d like to review the material Mr. Madsen has prepared for the board and request that I be allotted additional time for questions at the next meeting.”

“I’m sure we shall all benefit from reviewing these documents, and it is not my intent to limit questions to this evening.” Penny sounded cross. Millicent had already stood up in readiness for her presentation—or assault. Joey sat down. Both the audience at home and those in attendance took a deep breath. Millicent had marched to the front and was staring directly into the camera.

“Madame Chairman, in view of the lateness of the hour, I suggest we adjourn the meeting until next week, placing Miss McKinley’s item of business first on our agenda,” Sanborn Harrington spoke sternly, in a voice that was oddly languid and nasal, the mark of his Boston Brahmin upbringing. He was determined to carry the day in this one regard, at least.

Bea Hoffman, the only other woman and a moderate, seconded the motion. She felt sorry for Sanborn, who was almost always all by himself when he voted, so whenever she found justification to join him, she did, thus unconsciously fulfilling her Aleford-appointed role. Occasionally, the system worked.

The ayes had it, and if Aleford was slightly disappointed, they were mollified by the prospect of another great show next week. It could have been sweeps time.

Faith was drifting off to sleep after running the scenes through her mind. Millicent had handed her a flyer as she’d left. Millicent had handed one to Joey, too, who’d torn it up into confetti, throwing it into the nearest wastebasket with what could only be described as a snarl.

The paper was still in Faith’s coat pocket. Miss Lora and later dear Tom had driven thoughts of what Millicent and her supporters might be up to from Faith’s immediate consciousness. She resolved to retrieve it immediately in the morning, or else she’d come across it in a few weeks, the way she did with shopping lists or coupons long expired, similarly shoved away. She also decided to take the kids on a nice long nature walk through the land surrounding the bog—while it was still there.

A spring walk. An April walk. Her mind would not shut down and she was wide awake. April. Chaucer may have thought it “perced the droghte of March” with its “shoures soote,” but around Aleford, the month stood for something entirely different.

For those U.S. residents not fortunate enough to live in Massachusetts or Maine, the third Monday in April, Patriots’ Day—if it means anything at all—is connected to the Boston Marathon. Since 1896, runners have gathered for the 26-mile 385-yard race from Hopkinton to Boston. Aleford residents, although taking note of the race, especially if someone from town was competing, focus instead on the past. While the runners load up on carbohydrates and listen intently to the weather reports, hoping to hit Heartbreak Hill under sunny but cool skies, Aleford goes to bed content in knowing there has never been a downpour on Patriots’ Day and never will be so long as God’s in his heaven. The only food crossing local minds is breakfast, specifically the pancake breakfasts run by various churches and civic groups after the reenactment.

The reenactment. That’s the whole point of Patriots’ Day, a day marked in some way each year, with only a few exceptions, since the whole thing kicked off in 1775, assuring Aleford a place in history, not merely as a footnote but worthy of entire books. The local Patriots’ Day events meant many things to many people: a tribute to those fallen on the green that famous morning, a reminder of what they were fighting for, a celebration of continuity and survival, and, to people like Millicent, a great big thank-you for putting Aleford so deservedly on the map. Literally and figuratively, the town was swathed in bunting days before, flags lining Main Street, the green, and hanging from every patriot’s window.

Faith had heard of the Boston Marathon before she moved to Aleford, but Patriots’ Day itself had come as a surprise and was certainly not something she had associated with other major holidays, such as Thanks-giving. Tom had been quick to fill the gap. For weeks before Faith’s first celebration, he primed her with detailed accounts of the battle, names of the participants—with which she was already familiar, since they tended to be on streets, schools, or town buildings, as well—and accounts of the parade in the afternoon. Faith shelved her skepticism and looked forward to waving the red-white-and-blue along with the rest of the town.

That is, until Tom told her she would have to get up at quarter to four in the morning.

“You can’t be serious. No one gets up at four o’-clock in the morning unless the house is on fire. Are you telling me all Aleford turns out at this hour to begin the revelry?”

“In a word, yes. We Minutemen have breakfast together over at the Catholic church’s hall while we’re getting ready. The British troops join us there; then we head over to the green around five. The bell in the old belfry starts to ring at five-thirty. We muster and everything gets under way at six.”

Tom was a member of the Aleford Minutemen, playing the role of the Reverend Samuel Pennypacker for the reenactment. Faith had been relieved to discover he was not one of the ones killed, although for some time, Samuel had risked being blown sky-high during particularly inflammatory sermons, since a sizable cache of gunpowder was secreted below the pulpit—the same pulpit over which Tom now presided.

The reenactment had been the idea of several history buffs in town some twenty-five years ago, Millicent prominent among them. It had become such a popular event in the Boston area that Chief MacIsaac had to call in his auxiliary police to help with crowd control.

“If the whole thing doesn’t start until six, why can’t I come a little before then?”

Tom had been crushed. “I thought you’d join me.

After the battle, our women and children rush onto the green to tend the wounded, weep, and wail. You have to be in place ahead of time. And you could also ring the bell.”

Faith had already rung the historic bell, cast by Millicent’s great-great-great-grandfather Ezekiel Revere, in real alarm. It had seemed the sensible thing to do upon finding a still-warm dead body in the old belfry, but many in the town did not agree. The last thing Faith wanted to do was ring the bell, even on the proper occasion. One not-so-sotto voce “Look who’s at it again” might send her packing, and she was becoming, if not fond of, accustomed to Aleford.

She focused back on Tom. “All right, I’ll be your camp follower.”

Tom appeared slightly scandalized. “You’ll be my wife, Patience Pennypacker.” He leaned over to kiss her. “It’s fun. You’ll have a great time. Then later we march in the youth parade and the big afternoon parade.”

March. Parades. “Period dress, right?”

“Of course. By the end of the day, you’ll actually feel like Patience.”

Faith knew what she was going to feel like, and it wasn’t Patience.

Yet she had done it every year since, dragging out the multitude of petticoats, full-skirted dress, and scratchy linsey-woolsey cape. She’d better check to make sure the moths hadn’t gotten to it.

Before she could say “Yankee Doodle,” she was asleep and dreaming.

Two

It was after ten o’clock when Faith remembered to go into the coat closet to retrieve the piece of paper from her pocket that Millicent had thrust at her the night before. Mornings had a way of slipping out from under Faith, despite the fact that the Fairchilds, particularly the children, were all up and about at an ungodly hour. First, Amy would appear, her sleeper bulging with what Faith knew was a sodden night diaper. Tou-sled, smiling, cute as a button, their daughter at this moment held little charm for her parents and their first words of the day tended to be, “I did it yesterday; it’s your turn.” It had been Faith’s turn this morning and returning to snatch a few more minutes in the cozy warmth of bed, she had not been surprised to find Ben with roughly forty of his stuffed animals occupying her space. Tom was sound asleep.

“Mommy!” he cried in delight. “Can we have waffles for breakfast?” Thoroughly awake now, “Mommy” managed a weak smile. Food. At least he had his priorities straight.

Breakfast over, Tom out the door to the church office, kids dressed and deposited at school and play group—Faith reminded herself it was her turn Monday, another task that had been known to slip her mind—she stood still and savored the moment. The house was quiet. She could have a peaceful cup of coffee. She could read the newspaper. She could phone a friend. Instead, she went to the closet.

She’d worn her pale gray shearling—a Christmas gift from Tom. The night air had been cold and she was as tired as everyone else in Aleford of bulky down parkas. The House of Bauer and Bean tailoring left much to be desired on Faith’s part. Its resulting fashion statement looked more like the House of Michelin. She’d tried to get through her first winter in something less warm and more chic, but she had given in around January, before doing permanent damage to her circulatory system.

The paper she retrieved was bright orange. Its message was spelled out in a variety of eye-catching fonts, complete with shadowing and clip art. What did people do before the advent of computers, Faith wondered, when mere words had to convey one’s passion?

She regarded Millicent’s work. It had all the subtlety of a punch between the eyes.

POW!

PRESERVE OUR WETLANDS!

Aleford, arise! Over two hundred years ago, our ancestors risked their lives for independence. They were not afraid to stand up for what they knew to be right.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Once again we face a crisis. Aleford, are you ready!

The area known as Beecher’s Bog is under attack.

Only we can save this historic habitat from destruction by greedy land gobblers. Only we can preserve what’s left of Aleford’s natural beauty for future generations before it’s too late!

POW! will have its first meeting on Friday, April 5th at 7:00 P.M. in Asterbrook Hall. Call Independence 2-7840 for more information.

You couldn’t help but admire the woman. As incen-diary literature, the broadside was pithy. No names were named, yet Millicent’s John Hancock was all over it—as was her phone number. She and several other diehards still used the exchange’s full name rather than simply the letters IN or the numbers 46.

Faith knew New Yorkers like this—stubbornly cling-ing to Algonquin and Murray Hill. Millicent also hadn’t named Joey Madsen, but the “greedy land gobbler” appellation, identifiable to all, was bound to in-furiate him. For vastly different reasons, each of them was the self-proclaimed guardian of Aleford: Aleford’s quality of life. Whatever that meant. Faith noticed whenever people used the term, it tended to mean the quality of their own particular lives—backyards, streets, wallets—and not necessarily their neighbors’, next-door or global.

Still, she’d see if Samantha Miller could baby-sit.

Tom wouldn’t want to miss the meeting, and Faith had already decided to become a charter member.

Fonts or no fonts, POW! had a point. The bog was a wonderful place.

Plus, the access road would most assuredly wipe out the parsonage lilac hedge.

An hour later, Faith turned from her recipe notebooks.

Have Faith was catering a large dinner party on the

“real” Patriots’ Day, Friday, April 19, and she had been instructed by the hostess to prepare traditional New England favorites. Favorites of whom? had been on the tip of Faith’s tongue, but she bit it and was now searching through her files to find palatable fare. A region best known for baked beans, boiled dinners, and scrod was not exactly a culinary paradise on a par, say, with Provence, Tuscany, or New Orleans.

Baked beans—what could she do with them? (See recipe on page 335.) Sweeten them with the thick grade B maple syrup she preferred for its strong flavor? She’d give New England maple syrup. Also Maine lobster.

Or should she spice up the beans with a kind of mustardy barbecue-type sauce? The dinner was to be a buffet, and she’d already decided to serve her version of Yankee pot roast (see recipe on page 334) as the main course. Desserts. She sighed. They no doubt expected Indian pudding, a concoction that always tasted like porridge to Faith no matter how much vanilla ice cream she heaped on top. Besides, it should probably be called Native American pudding, and someone at the party was bound to object. Fortunately, Tom, partial to everything else springing from the rockbound soil of his birth, did not care for it.

“Cornmeal does not leap to mind when dessert is mentioned,” he’d observed. “Chocolate does.” Faith had never heard of any New England chocolate desserts. It was time to get out her venerable 1915 Fannie Farmer, a volume she normally reserved for light reading in bed due to its wonderful photographic illustrations—a doily for every dish—and the recipes.

She never tired of reading about things like Syracuse Five o’clock Tea (five o’clock tea sweetened with red or white rock candy—was Syracuse known for its sweet tooth?), Mock Sausages with Fried Apple Rings (the sausages were made of lima beans), and Lobster Boats (complete with instructions for sails made of rice paper). Then there were Little Brahmins—cooked rice flavored with catsup, shaped into the form of chickens, crumbed, and deep-fried. The photograph showed them nestled on a bed of parsley.

One is facing in the opposite direction from the rest, the poultry equivalent of a black sheep, or an obscure reference to J. P. Marquand? Faith also ardently subscribed to Mrs. Farmer’s introductory quotation: “We grow like what we eat; Bad food depresses, good food exalts us like an inspiration.” Usage aside, Faith found comfort in the words and had suggested more than once to Pix, who did things like this, that an embroidered hanging for the Fairchild kitchen would not be ill received. Fannie would have something Faith could use for dessert.

She’d been completely concentrating on her work, or so she thought, but she hadn’t accomplished much and was feeling out of sorts. There really wasn’t any reason why she should be. Her life was going well.

Second children were supposed to be more easygoing than firsts, although Faith had greeted this remark with the same skepticism she’d rightly reserved for second deliveries being easier. But this maxim was proving true. Amy slept through the night—technically, it was morning when she got up and out—as opposed to Ben. He had nearly sent them round the bend with his nocturnal wanderings once he’d mastered the parent-defying art of climbing out of the crib.

Amy had also virtually toilet-trained herself, needing only the diaper at night, and was thereby saving them enough money in Huggies so that college tuition was once more a possibility. She had an interesting and sunny temperament, although, as Ben had been at the same age, she was a child of few words—approximately fifteen at the moment. Faith attributed this to her own parental failure to offer adequate stimulation. She could read to her children endlessly, but talking to someone who did not talk back or replied with one word, occasionally two, as in “Want Daddy,” was not her idea of stimulating conversation.

She firmly classified it with playing most games.

Happily, Tom was good at that and could spend hours spinning spinners and moving brightly colored pieces about in circles with Ben. Watching them, Faith had had to concede that there are some things that passeth all understanding.

No, it was not her family. Like Amy, Ben was as easy as a child could be, which is to say he had the capacity to consume most of the oxygen in the room yet was willing to share when reminded. As for Tom, husbands are never easy, but she loved him very much and that went a long way, especially when the seat was left up in the middle of the night.

The scene with Miss Lora flashed in front of her.

What would she do if Tom really did have an affair?

Never mind the logistics. He barely had time to brush his teeth, what with parish duties and family life.

She’d warned him once when Amy’s bout with colic coincided with Ben’s discovery of how to release the car’s emergency brake that if they ever divorced, he’d have to take the kids, any pets they might acquire, as well as the cottage in Maine. If she was getting out, she wanted out. He’d laughed, but not heartily. He knew she meant it.

But she had been jealous when she’d seen another woman in Tom’s arms. And Lora Deane was not exactly a threat. When Faith had dropped Ben off this morning, the teacher had a voluminous smock over what appeared to be adult-sized Osh-Kosh overalls and an old turtleneck. No, Faith wasn’t seriously worried about Tom and any possible dalliance along Sesame Street. She was, however, worried about Lora herself.

Stalked, being harmed, or even being murdered by an ex turned up in the news every day. She hoped that Lora really was going to speak to her half sister immediately. If Joey was eliminated, as Faith suspected he would be, then they could turn their attention to Brad Hallowell before it was too late. It might make sense to find out more about him now. Faith remembered she’d said as much to Lora last night.

Brad had been at the selectmen’s meeting, standing in the back of the room. Faith had wondered what he was doing there. Joey’s presentation had been the third and last item on the agenda. Brad had certainly not come to hear the Minuteman Café’s request for permission to change the color of its awning from green to maroon when it ordered a new one. Nor would he have been interested in Norma Parkington’s spirited reading of the most recent letter from Aleford’s sister city in Iceland, Hafnarfjördur. So far, Hafnarfjördur officials had been to Aleford, but Town Meeting systematically voted down a request for funds for a similar junket by Aleford officials. Said officials did not seem to mind much, although, as Millicent tartly observed, if Aleford were twinned with Paris, France, they’d find the money. She was of the belief that an exchange meant an exchange and Aleford should return the call, albeit at said officials’ personal expense.

Brad must have been at the meeting to hear Joey, but didn’t the young man have better, more interesting things to do with his time? Faith certainly had had at his age, which, after all, wasn’t that long ago. She closed her recipe books and decided to talk to Pix. Pix had grown up in Aleford and was seemingly born with all ten of her capable fingers in various town pies.

Millicent might know who everybody in town was, and their mothers and fathers before them, but Pix knew what they were doing. Faith went to the phone.

“Faith! I’m so glad you called. I was about to call you. Can you come over for a quick cup of coffee? I know you have to pick up the kids soon.”

“I’d love to—and I have something to ask you, too.” Faith wanted to be sure she got equal time. Pix might be her dearest friend, but she could exhibit a single-minded sense of purpose that sometimes prevented getting a word in edgewise.

When Faith arrived at the Millers’ doorstep, it appeared that today might be one of those days. Pix, normally unflappable, was in a quandary about not one but two of her children. The oldest, Mark, had been safely launched, a college sophomore majoring in political science, with his sights set on Washington.

This did cause Pix an occasional twinge. “You don’t think he wants to be president, do you?” she’d asked Faith once. “I would make such a dreadful campaigner. All those speeches and dinners. I don’t know how Rose Kennedy ever did it.” Pix had no doubt that if Mark did aspire to the Oval Office, it was his for the asking. No, today Pix was not worried about finding a pair of pumps that matched her purse in a wardrobe consisting mainly of clogs and denim wraparound skirts. It was Samantha, a high school senior, and Danny, a seventh grader, who were on her mind today.

The Millers’ kitchen had been remodeled when they moved into the Federal brick house many years ago.

The spacious room was geared more to the family’s various pursuits than to food preparation. Faith correctly assumed the stove, refrigerator, and so on were categorized more as “things that go in a kitchen” than “things we want to use.” There was plenty of room to sit and chat—if you removed the hockey skates or quilt Pix was piecing. Pix now worked part-time for Faith, keeping the books and handling the ordering. She had agreed to this employment with the strict understanding that she would not be expected to do any food preparation whatsoever. “I could possibly peel carrots or potatoes,” she’d said, “but then I might do them wrong.” Pix’s kitchen cabinets tended to be stocked with things that had the word Helper in the title. Yet the house always smelled of freshly baked bread—and, of course, coffee. The coffee, Faith could see. The bread smell mystified her. Pix offered her a steaming mug, pretty much a reflex action, cleared a pile of magazines she’d been meaning to read since last year, and the two of them sunk into the comfortable old sofa that overlooked the yard. One of the dogs immediately lumbered over to join them. Pix made more room.

Faith correctly guessed that any conversation about Samantha must involve college. She was right.

“Has Samantha heard from all her schools yet?” Faith had already been through the application process, during which Samantha had winnowed her choices from sixty down to fifteen at her father’s insistence. “We could pay her freshman tuition with what it would cost in application fees if I let her apply everywhere she wants,” he’d told the Fairchilds.

“That’s the problem. She’s heard from every place except Brown and Wellesley.” Samantha was not only an extremely good student, but also something of a softball legend at Aleford High. Little kids asked her to sign autographs after games.

“And?”

“She’s gotten into all of them.” Pix sounded as if she’d just heard that one of the Miller family’s golden retrievers had heartworm—and it didn’t get much worse than that.

“But that’s terrific! Congratulations!”

“Oh well, yes, but how is she going to make up her mind? Coaches are calling her. Her friends keep giving her advice. One day, she’s definitely going to Stanford—which is too far away—the next it’s Bowdoin, because of marine biology.” Unlike her politically minded brother, Samantha’s future constituency consisted of the inhabitants of tide pools.

“I thought she wanted to go to Brown, continue the family tradition.” Pix had gone to Pembroke and her husband, Sam, to Brown. They’d also grown up together in Aleford. Thinking of this, Faith consoled her friend. “At least she’s not involved with anybody, so she can make an independent choice. You and Sam are unique. Most people I know who went to the same schools as their high school honeys had broken up by the end of Orientation Week.”

“Sam and I don’t want to say too much, or too little.

It would be nice if she went to Brown, but only if it’s what she wants.”

“Knowing Samantha, I don’t think you have to worry about that. Now tell me quickly what’s going on with Danny, because I want you to tell me everything you know about Brad Hallowell.” Pix was immediately diverted, as Faith hoped she might be.

“Brad Hallowell? Why do you want to know about him? What’s going on, Faith?”

Pix looked her friend squarely in the eye. If Faith had ferreted out some new intrigue in Aleford, Pix didn’t want to be left out. Faith had been far away when Pix had solved a murder up on Sanpere Island, off the coast of Maine, last summer. She felt that she had proved herself. If only her family would take up less time and mental energy!

“I can’t go into it yet. It was told to us in confidence. As soon as I can, I will.”

“Hmmm, ‘us,’ you and Tom, I assume. A parishioner? Well, all right. I understand, but I’m afraid I can’t help you too much. You really should be talking to Millicent.”

“Millicent!”

“Yes, Brad Hallowell is POW!’s most loyal follower. You do know what POW! is, right?”

“Preserve Our Wetlands!—I got the leaflet last night as I was leaving the selectmen’s meeting.”

“I thought I saw the back of your head on TV. I wish I had been there in person, but Danny had so much homework, and if I don’t sit with him, it doesn’t get done. I just caught the tail end. Maybe next week.”

Before Faith lost her advantage, she pressed Pix further. “But don’t you know any more about Brad?”

“His parents seem nice. His mother is an Evergreen.” Faith knew this meant a member of the Aleford Garden Club and did not refer to a possibly more exotic pedigree. “I do have the feeling that they regard Brad as someone from another planet. She’s often said things like, ‘I don’t know where he came from.’

Of course, many parents feel this way,” Pix added.

“Then what do you think she means? Has he ever been in trouble—with the police, for instance?”

“Not to my knowledge, but they haven’t lived here all that long, and he was in college until he moved home last year.” Children were doing that with distressing frequency these days, Faith noted. Pix, on the other hand, would greet a returning nestling with a brass band. She still occasionally forgot and set a place for Mark at dinner.

“I think she’s referring to his interest in computers,” Pix commented. “He’s always been some kind of whiz kid, and his company sends him all over the world as a consultant. She told us once that he’s had an eight hundred number since he was nineteen and carries a beeper so if someone needs help with a program they can reach him day or night. He spends all his free time cruising the Internet. Samantha explained it to me.”

Faith did know all about the Internet. Her sister had tried to convince her to hook up and get recipes that way. When Faith had discovered how much it would cost her to learn the secret of foolproof marshmallow rainbow Jell-O, that particular moment’s offering, she politely declined. Although she’d heard a rumor that Julia might be posting her secrets.

So Brad was a hacker. He would certainly know about phones, but then whoever was threatening Lora only had to know how to dial.

“Besides computers, he’s very, very ecologically minded. When Millicent found that out, she also probably figured he could do all their bulletins. You know Millicent.”

Faith did.

Pix continued to talk. As Faith had expected, she had quite a bit of information. “He was seeing Lora Deane, but she broke it off. His mother was very upset. For one thing, it had been an interest in something that did not have a keyboard. But, even more, she was outraged that anyone would reject her perfect son.

She had a few tight-lipped things to say about Lora.”

“Did she indicate how Brad was taking it?”

“Very hard—and angry. ‘I hate to see the boy like this,’ she told us. He was taking long walks in Beecher’s Bog; maybe that’s what got him started with POW! And Maureen Farmer told me he put his fist through his bedroom wall, or at least made a hole in it.”

“How on earth did she find that out?” Maureen lived on the opposite side of town.

“Same cleaners. They were there when it happened, and they arrived at Maureen’s house pretty shaken.” This act, coupled with the destruction of the cold frames, indicated the kind of temper that could goad him into making the calls. Faith was beginning to form a picture of an adored child who was also used to praise and success in his adult life. A volatile nature. Someone who became passionately committed to various causes. She remembered Lora’s remark about the field mice.

“He is good-looking. Samantha had quite a crush on him in the beginning of the year. He was helping out in the computer lab at school.”

Faith didn’t want to hear about Brad’s good looks or good works. She decided she’d try to sit next to him at Friday’s POW! meeting and gently plumb his depths. She’d mention Lora, as Ben’s teacher, and watch his reaction. If all went according to plan, Brad Hallowell could be in Tom’s study Saturday morning having the fear of God and Charley MacIsaac in-stilled, and then Lora’s troubles would be over.

“Now what’s going on with Danny?” Fair was fair.

As Faith crossed the Millers’ yard back to the parsonage, she wondered if she might be able to get a moment alone with Miss Lora. She doubted it. Pickup time at the nursery school was chaotic at best. If Ben wasn’t waving a dripping-wet finger painting, he’d have a fragile toothpick construction that would demand more care than a Fabergé egg. Lora would be in the thick of things as every mother sought a word. The two questions Faith wanted to ask—“Have you received any more threatening calls?” and “Did your boyfriend ever hit you?”—would not go unnoticed among “How was Bryant at circle time?” and “Does Katie have her blankie?”

She was right. Miss Lora was surrounded by a swarm of children and mothers, yet she did manage to give Faith a knowing look and say, “I’m on my way to my sister’s. You know, the one with the new baby.” If the other mothers noticed that the last few words were enunciated rather precisely, as if they were the day’s password to get past the guard, they did not let on.

Faith nodded and replied in kind, “Let me know how the baby’s doing. Tom and I are eager to hear.” Feeling vaguely like the spy about to go out into the cold, Faith scooped up Ben and today’s project—a chalk drawing that had already left telling smudges all over his face, hands, and clothes and would soon, no doubt, on hers. They would just be on time to pick up Amy. Some of the mothers in the play group were more relaxed about hours than others. Today’s was not one of them. Early in the fall, Ben had started calling her “The Grouchy Ladybug,” after the character in the book, and Faith had given up correcting him. It had become shortened to Ladybug and she’d adopted it herself. “We’d better hurry, or the Ladybug will be annoyed,” she told him.

Both Faith and Tom were in attendance at POW!’s first meeting on Friday night. In fact, much of Aleford was there. Asterbrook Hall was packed. People were standing at the rear and along the sides of the basement in the town hall.

“How many people do you think are here to save the bog and how many to see what’s going on?” Faith asked Tom.

“About fifty-fifty. You have noticed that the Deanes are conspicuously absent.”

“Well, of course, but someone will report back, I’m sure.”

Tom nodded. “Look, Millicent is going up onstage.” The room quieted instantly. “Thank God she tends to use her power for good,” Faith whispered to her husband. He crossed his fingers in reply.

Millicent was wearing the red Pendleton suit she normally reserved for special occasions, so Faith knew how serious the moment was. The brass buttons had lost a bit of their luster and the seat had bagged out long ago, but as raiment went, it was perfect.

“You all know why we’re here.” Millicent didn’t need a microphone. Her voice reverberated out the door and up onto Main Street.

“If we don’t put a stop to these developers, Aleford might just as well be Boston. They’ll be putting up high-rises on the green next!”

There were rumblings of agreement.

“Unfortunately, Town Meeting has never passed an ordinance limiting the size of a house in relation to the square footage of the land it sits on or the number of houses in a subdivision. We’d have had a possible out if they had. Mr. Madsen has to build quite a large number of these houses in order to turn a profit.” Faith couldn’t help but remember that when this had come up the last time, Millicent had been on the side of individual freedom and opposed the restriction along with virtually everyone else. But then, who could predict the future?

“Madsen is entirely within his rights. His plans are up-to-code and there is no way to stop him on those grounds.”

The audience looked glum.

“Nor do I think we can appeal to the man’s better nature.”

Nobody needed subtitles on this one. The implication was made clear by her scornful tone of voice. For one swift moment, Faith actually felt sorry for Joey.

He wasn’t even here to defend himself.

“Fortunately, I was able to devise a strategy that may circumvent all this. But it will take hard work on all our parts. Are you willing?”

She had them eating out of the palm of her hand and there were several yesses shouted out, a most unusual display of spontaneity for Aleford.

“First of all, we have to reconvene Town Meeting.

The easiest way would be to get the board of selectmen to do it, but I don’t think we can count on that.” Penny Bartlett was the only member of the board in the audience, and from the look on her face, she was clearly sorry she hadn’t stayed home and deadheaded her African violets.

“Which means we have to collect signatures.

Sheets and clipboards with instructions are on the table at the back of the room for you to take as you leave. I don’t have to tell you speed is of the absolute essence here! The timing is particularly bad, since Patriots’ Day is less than two weeks away. I don’t want to point a finger . . .”

Clearly, however, she did, and there wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t believe that Joey Madsen was trying to slip his plan through at Aleford’s busiest time of year, thinking everyone would be sufficiently occupied elsewhere to organize any opposition. It hadn’t occurred to Faith, but if this was what he was doing, it was pretty smart. Only, he might not have sufficiently gauged the enemy, like the poor British retreating from Concord. Millicent could run any number of things at once.

“But what do you expect Town Meeting to do?” It was the Town Meeting moderator, Susan Waters, and certainly a reasonable query.

Millicent frowned. “I was about to get to that, Susan dear.”

Susan sat down, somewhat paler than she’d been upon rising. Maybe it was the way Millicent had uttered the word dear.

“Going over town records in the library recently, I came across an account of the passage of two ordinances that will help us. One involves the Historic Commission. It can vote to delay, and I quote, ‘the significant alteration in character,’ unquote, of any property falling within the Historic District until Town Meeting is satisfied that said alterations will not, and I quote again, ‘significantly impact the district.’ Now”—she turned a beady eye on poor Susan, impaling her in her seat—“I know Beecher’s Bog is not in the Historic District, but the proposed access road between First Parish and the parsonage is.” This last word was uttered triumphantly. Faith found her spirits rising.

“Once we have the special session of Town Meeting, it can vote on this and the next ordinance I uncovered. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting these introduced and voted upon.” Millicent was herself a Town Meeting member, so no trouble at all. She paused for effect. The whole room waited breathlessly. “In 1842, our ancestors had the prescience to pass an article that gives Town Meeting the power to block any proposal it feels would be, and I quote,

‘detrimental to the quality of life in Aleford.’ ” There it was again, Faith thought, “quality of life.” It was obviously an article—someone’s whim, or worse—that had been forgotten as soon as it passed, only to surface some 150 years later to feed the flames of what was going to be one of the biggest battles Aleford had witnessed since the long-ago events on the green.

A man in a dark business suit got up and left. It was Joey Madsen’s wan-faced lawyer. He was reaching in his pocket—for his cellular phone, no doubt. Joey and Millicent were cut from the same cloth: Forewarned is forearmed.

Faith was both relieved and distressed. The bog would probably get saved, but it was not going to be a pleasant spring in Aleford.

“Now, I’m going to introduce some of my fellow committee members, who will be circulating sign-up sheets. Please indicate when you are available to leaflet, collect signatures, and don’t forget your phone numbers.” Millicent had several people rise from the audience as she called their names.

“And Brad Hallowell, who has graciously donated his time and expertise with computers to print the campaign literature.”

Brad stood up. Faith took a good hard look at him.

She had not been able to sit next to him. He was in the middle of a row, surrounded, when the Fairchilds came in. She’d have to figure out another way to talk with him. Computer advice? As Pix had said, he was attractive and definitely crush material for teenage girls—and their older sisters, too. He had thick black hair, pulled to the nape of his neck in a small ponytail.

His eyes were deep brown. He was tall and broad-shouldered and wore a flannel shirt over a T-shirt and jeans. He didn’t look like a stalker or like someone who might physically abuse his girlfriend. But then, the whole point was that such people seldom did. It was the boy next door, or the husband lying beside one in bed—not a crazed lunatic. She suddenly felt cold and realized someone had opened a window.

“Can we go now?”

Tom was getting restless. She tried to remember if there was a Celtics game on tonight. She had trouble keeping the sports seasons straight. Everything seemed to continue year-round.

“Wait, I don’t want to be the only ones leaving.” Millicent wasn’t finished. “The last two POW!

members I’d like you to meet are welcome for their dedication to the cause and also for their extensive knowledge of the area in question. Come on, Margaret and Nelson, stand up. Margaret and Nelson Batcheldor!” It crossed Faith’s mind that Millicent could have made a career for herself as a game-show hostess.

Margaret and Nelson, a childless middle-aged couple, were members of First Parish. Nelson worked as a reference librarian in Byford, and, as an amateur woodworker, he occasionally took small carpentry jobs. He’d spent the previous fall putting in shelves and cabinets for the preschool. Miss Lora was pushing for a playhouse next. Margaret devoted herself to birding, as well as a number of community activities.

But birding was her true avocation, and she often came to church with her binoculars slung around her neck the way other women wore pearls. The Batcheldors looked much alike, either because of many years spent together or due to the simple Prince Valiant hairstyle each sported. Faith had the uncomfortable feeling they probably cut each other’s hair—same bowl.

“To close our meeting, we have a real treat. Nelson and Margaret are going to show slides of the bog that they’ve taken over the years. When you see these, you will know exactly what we’re fighting for!” The Batcheldors and their neighbor, Ted Scott, struggled to the front, carrying a screen and several carousels filled with slides that Margaret started load-ing into the projector. The lights went off and a slightly out-of-focus frog face appeared. Tom nudged Faith and they ducked out.

As they left, they could hear Nelson’s voice droning on. Margaret provided a kind of counterpoint, breaking in with a somewhat-desperate cry, “Extinct is forever! These eastern spadefoot toads used to be as common as dirt. Now we’re lucky to see one at all.

Who will save them if we don’t!”

Walking hand in hand down Main Street toward the parsonage, the Fairchilds had the carefree, slightly hilarious feeling escape engenders. “Race you,” Tom challenged. Faith looked around. Aleford had taken its toll. If it had been Eighth Avenue, she wouldn’t have cared. But they were alone, so she took off, and they collapsed, laughing, in a heap next to the flagpole on the Common.

When Faith had caught her breath, she asked,

“What did you think of the meeting?”

“Millie was in fine form.” Tom was one of the few people allowed to use the diminutive. “It was pretty much as I expected, except for those old bylaws. I’d be pretty worried if I was Joey.”

“Yes, especially since he’s already spent so much money on surveys, lawyers. He almost has to keep fighting to try to recoup his loss.” Tom agreed. “And the Deanes still haven’t sold that big house on Whipple Hill Road. You know the one.” Faith did. It was around the corner, and she’d been watching it go up with the children. The construction company had been able to do a considerable amount of work during a freak February thaw, but the house was still nowhere near completion. It was a slightly scaled-down version of what Joey was going to put up in Alefordiana. The neighbors had been aghast at its size. “Something of a cross between Tara and the Flying Dutchman,” one had complained to Faith as they stood gazing at it silhouetted against the horizon. It was the house Lora had mentioned, and Faith was pretty sure that every abutter had been at tonight’s meeting. They hadn’t been able to do anything about the Whipple Hill house, but blocking Alefordiana was a way to get back at Joey.

“Tom, this does have the potential for becoming extremely ugly, doesn’t it?”

“I think it already is. Anything that polarizes the town like this is bad.”

“I feel a sermon coming on,” Faith remarked.

“Well then, I wish you’d write it.” The Reverend Fairchild tended to get a little testy on Friday nights.

Faith stood up and straightened her skirt. In deference to the event, she’d changed. Tom looked at her approvingly. “My father said he’d never thought short skirts would come back in his lifetime, which just goes to show . . .”

“It just goes to show you need to have faith,” she said, well aware of her atrocious pun, “and buy good clothes. If you wait long enough, everything comes back in style—even things that were awful the first time around, like go-go boots and fringed vests.”

“How much did that tiny little skirt cost, anyway?” Tom asked, eying the black wool Donna Karan swath Faith had now adjusted to her satisfaction.

“None of your business. Besides, Amy will probably be able to use it. Now, shall we go home?”

“Given that the sole place open in Aleford at this hour is Patriot Drug, and that only for fifteen minutes more, I’d say yes.”

Faith looped her arm through Tom’s. “It may not be the Stork Club, but I think I can find a nice bottle of something Chez Nous. And if we’re lucky, there won’t be any floor show.”

Saturday was always the most relaxed day of the week. No morning rush. True, Tom was usually putting the finishing touches on his sermon, but he tried hard to finish it early in the day.

It was cold but sunny. The only clouds in the bright blue sky were appropriately white and puffy. Faith decided she would take the kids for that walk through the bog. They weren’t into mud season yet, so she didn’t have to fear that someone’s tiny foot might get trapped in the ooze. The only terror the bog might hold today was prickly brush. By the time they got back, Tom would be done and they could do something.

Easter had been early this year. Somehow, holidays were always early or late, never on time. Tom had been flat-out since Fat Tuesday, the season culminat-ing in last weekend’s Easter marathon. She knew he was pretty drained and having trouble with this week’s sermon. As he put it, after the congregation has pushed the rafters almost through the roof with

“Christ the Lord Is Ris’n Today,” all else pales for the next few weeks.

Taking each child by the hand, she set off, Tom waving cheerfully from the window. Amy was wearing shiny yellow boots with duck-shaped toes; Ben’s were green with frogs. Faith felt like a greeting card.

“Now, let’s look for signs of spring,” she told the children.

“Signs of spring, check,” Ben said. He’d recently adopted this way of speaking from whom Faith knew not.

“Check,” said Amy, bringing the current word count to sixteen. Faith felt they’d made a good start.

Despite the cold wind that swept across them at intervals, the sun shone steadily and they did find some bright green growing things under last year’s dried grasses. Just before they were into the bog proper, Ben discovered a patch of snowdrops. “I want to pick them for you, Mom,” he cried.

“Thank you, sweetie,” his mother replied. Sons were so nice. “But we don’t pick wildflowers. We leave them to grow where they belong, and also so other people can enjoy them.”

Ben seemed satisfied, and they continued on in search of pussy willows. The approach to the bog passed through a densely wooded patch. Thick vines hung from the still-leafless deciduous trees. Small pines were struggling to compete. Amy pulled back, and Faith was surprised to see apprehension on her daughter’s face.

“Noooo?” Amy asked hopefully.

Faith picked her up. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Mommy will hold you. There are so many trees, the sun has a hard time peeking through. It will be a cool place to be in the summer.” If Joey’s chain saws haven’t leveled it, Faith thought dismally.

“I’m not scared of a bunch of trees,” Ben boasted.

“Amy is such a baby.”

“She is a baby,” Faith reminded him.

Ben gave her a patient look. “That’s what I said.” Faith decided to let it go. She was starting to train early for adolescence. Choosing one’s battlegrounds was an acquired skill.

“ ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ ” she quoted from Frost, even though there was no snow, nor did she have a horse. She did, however, have many promises to keep. Amy was getting heavy; Faith took a deep breath—or it may have been a sigh—and hitched her up higher.

“What’s that noise?” Ben grabbed the corner of Faith’s jacket.

“I don’t hear anything.” Her respiration hadn’t been that loud. “Probably an animal—a squirrel, or maybe even a deer.”

Then she heard it, too. Definitely some creature was rustling in the leaves—a good-sized creature.

“Don’t move, children,” she whispered. “Maybe we can see it.”

Like startled deer themselves, the Fairchilds froze in position, and such was the family grouping that presented itself to the two human creatures who came crashing through the brush. Human creatures in quasi-military dress with black ski masks pulled over their faces. For an instant, the whole forest stood still; then Amy opened her mouth and wailed. Quickly, the couple removed their headgear.

It was the Batcheldors.

Hugging her daughter tightly and repeating that everything was all right, while Ben twisted her jacket so tightly it began to resemble a tourniquet, Faith said shakily, “Goodness, Margaret and Nelson. Out for a walk?”

What she wanted to ask was what on earth were they doing out here dressed like Rambo extras, but she opted for a return to normalcy as fast as possible for the sake of the kids.

“Oh, yes,” Margaret replied cheerily in the birdlike tones she seemed to have copied from the confusing fall warblers. “Such a lovely day, and we were up with the sun.” She waved her binoculars at Ben. “He’s certainly old enough to start his life list. I was three when Mother started me on mine.”

Faith knew from Pix that said list referred to birds spotted and not some monstrous “To Do” resolutions or other New England folkway. She also knew if Ben was going to start said list, it was going to have to be with another mother or be limited to birds that could be spotted after nine o’clock.

“Nippy today.” Nelson smiled at the children and waved the woolen helmet, so recently the object of fear. It worked again. Amy started to wimper. Having removed their hats, the couple still looked bizarre—hair standing on end from the static electricity and deep red circles around the eyes and mouth where the elastic had been too tight. Faith could feel Amy’s body get rigid in preparation for another ninety-decibel eruption.

Faith quickly took refuge in the mother’s standby,

“I think the children are getting tired. We’ve been out for quite a while.” Before Ben, who had been blessed—or cursed—with total honesty, could point out, as he was wont to do, that they had just started, Faith said good-bye.

Margaret had found a nest and was focusing her binoculars. She chirped something unintelligible, presumably at the Fairchilds. Nelson waved good-bye with another of his smiles, which seemed destined to have the opposite effect on her children, and Faith turned the troops about-face. She hoped Ben’s clear, high-pitched queries a few yards later did not float back to the two bird-watchers, “But we just came. Why are we going back? I’m not tired. Why did you say we were tired? Amy doesn’t look tired.

You’re not tired, are you, Amy? Why did you say we’d been out here quite a while? It doesn’t feel like quite a while to me.”

Faith stopped and put Amy on her own two feet.

“Believe me, it has been quite a while and I’m tired.”

“Then you should have—”

Faith gave her son a look he knew, and he fell to studying the ground, kicking at small hummocks, muttering, “I’m not the tired one.”

Faith hoped Tom had finished his sermon.

He had, and they decided to go to the Audubon Society’s Drumlin Farm in nearby Lincoln after Amy’s nap.

Ben brightened up at the prospect of pigs and Faith was able to settle him in his bed with a book after lunch. She went back downstairs and found Tom putting the food away.

“I still can’t figure out what Margaret and Nelson were up to,” she said. The encounter with the Batcheldors had been the prime topic of lunch conversation, introduced by Ben as soon as he saw his father emerge from the study. Faith had endeavored to downplay the whole event, while punctuating the salient details with various dramatic facial expressions whenever the kids became distracted by the tri-colored fusili with Gorgonzola sauce she’d made, Ben’s totally unaccountable favorite.

“Are you sure they were ski masks, not woolen hats pulled down low?” Tom asked.

“Of course I’m sure. I thought we had stumbled into the middle of some crazed neo-Nazi maneuvers.

When they got close, I could see they weren’t wearing fatigues, but they were all in green. Now knowing how nuts Margaret is, I wouldn’t put it past her to dress up like a particular bird she was hoping to add to her list, the olive-colored, black-capped bog sucker or some such thing. But given the mood of the meeting last night, I don’t think they were birding today.”

“But what?” Tom looked extremely troubled. Nelson Batcheldor was a member of the Vestry.

“Maybe they’re planning some way to blow up the bog if Joey goes ahead with his plans.”

“How would that help them?”

“I don’t know, Tom. This is all supposition, and as far as I could tell, the only thing resembling a weapon was Margaret’s heavy set of binoculars. Unless Nelson’s camera is one of those James Bond types.”

“You were in the woods, so they were coming from the bog itself. Maybe they’re stockpiling things. Oh, this is too crazy. We know they’re a little eccentric.” Tom looked at Faith and amended his words, “Well, very eccentric, and they probably dress like that for bird-watching all the time. We’ve just never seen them before. And it was cold early this morning. I would have worn a ski mask, too, if I’d been out.”

“You don’t have a mask like that. Only robbers do.

In fact, I wonder where you’d even get one.” Faith was getting sidetracked into a realm of speculation she’d explored before. You’re about to engage in criminal activity. Where do you shop? Walk into house-wares at Jordan Marsh and ask for a good, long, sharp kitchen knife? And these masks. Soldier of Fortune mail order? For those necessities not covered by the Victoria’s Secret catalog? She was about to expound on all this when the phone rang.

Faith answered it, and whatever she had planned to say about the Batcheldors’ proclivities went clear out of her mind.

It was Pix and she was definitely agitated.

“Faith, is Tom home? I’ve got to talk to you both right away! You know Sam’s in California; otherwise I wouldn’t bother you.”

This didn’t sound either college- or middle school–related.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Faith asked anxiously.

“I’ve just gotten a poison-pen letter,” Pix answered, and burst into tears.

Three

Pix Miller was not a woman who cried without provocation—funerals, illnesses, seeing The Yearling once again. As soon as Pix had arrived, Faith put her arm around her friend and led her to the couch with only a fleeting thought to the number of females who seemed to be drenching the parsonage with their tears lately.

“It’s the shock, I suppose.” Pix reached around in her pocket, produced a crumpled handkerchief, and dabbed her eyes. “I was opening the mail and there was this thin envelope, and at first I thought, Oh dear, Samantha’s been rejected. Then I noticed there wasn’t a return address, and I opened it and . . . well, here it is.”

She handed the envelope, which she had clutched in her other hand, to Faith. Tom leaned over the back of the couch, reading over his wife’s shoulder. It was a plain white business envelope addressed in ballpoint pen, block letters, to “Mrs. Samuel Miller,” with the address.

Faith paused and put the envelope down. “It’s hard to get prints from paper, but I think we should be careful anyway.” She went into the kitchen and returned with a clean dust cloth, which she used to hold the paper by one corner as she eased it out of the envelope.

There was no doubt. It was venomous—a classic of its sort, the letters neatly cut from magazines and newspapers. Occasionally, the writer had been fortunate enough to find an entire word. A few of the pieces were colored type, producing a collage effect.

But it was not a work of art.

“CINDY” ’S NOT DEAD. SAM IS BETRAYING YOU.

DON’T TRUST YOUR HUSBAND.

A FRIEND

“I know one thing”—Pix had given her eyes one final swipe and was giving an award–winning performance of her old self—“whoever wrote this horrible letter is certainly not a friend. The idea!” Faith was staring at the letter.

“It really is strangely worded—‘A friend’ . . . ‘betraying.’ As if the person has some sort of quirky Victorian manual on how to write nasty letters—or watches a lot of daytime TV. And of course you don’t believe it,” Faith quickly reassured Pix.

Sam Miller had, in fact, had one brief, disastrous affair during his particularly bumpy ride into middle age, but that had been several years ago. The young woman, Cindy, with whom Sam had chosen to dally had later ended up as a corpse in Aleford’s own historic belfry, discovered, in fact, by Faith. The suggestion of current adultery was horrible by itself. Bringing up the murder was particularly loathsome.

“Not for a minute,” Pix said staunchly. “Still, I wish he was home.” Pix was incapable of lying. Coupled with her tendency to speak her mind, it often resulted in revealing self-confession. Faith did not have this problem.

Tom sat down on Pix’s other side and took her hand. “There’s no question that Sam is totally devoted—and faithful—to you. But letters like this are intended to plant seeds of doubt. It’s only natural to want him right here. When will he be back?”

“Tomorrow night. But don’t worry. Of course I want to look him straight in the eye, but even more, I just want him home. Who would do this to us?”

“That’s what we should be talking about.” Faith thought it was time to get down to business. If they began to dwell too much on Sam, Pix would get weepy again and water those malicious seeds Tom had mentioned. “Do you have any idea at all?” Pix shook her head slowly. “I never thought I had any enemies. You know, Tom, when you preached that sermon, ‘Who Is My Enemy?’ I thought it was going to be about what we fight against in ourselves. Oh, I agreed with what you said, that we can become our enemy—the thief, the slanderer, now the poison-pen wielder—if we don’t forgive him, yet I truly can’t think of anyone who would want to harm me.” Faith had to agree. Pix was one of the best-liked people in Aleford and one of the few about whom Faith had never heard a negative word. It was astonishing. Still volunteering in all sorts of organizations her children had outgrown—Pix had only recently stepped down as head of the cookie drive for the Girl Scouts, even though Samantha’s uniform probably wouldn’t even fit over her head—Pix was the person Aleford called for help, ideas, and comfort. Which reminded Faith, who said, “I heard you were running St.

Theresa’s blood drive this year? Are you switching pews?”

“My friend Martha Stanley was doing it, but you know she’s scheduled for a hip replacement and she couldn’t—”

“Find anybody else.” Faith finished it up for her and they laughed. It was a welcome diversion.

Tom moved them back on track. Although he’d been pleased that someone not only remembered the title of one of his sermons, but had listened. Still they were ranging a bit far afield. “The point is that although we’d be hard put to come up with anyone who had a grudge against you, or Sam, you did get the letter, and the first thing we have to do is tell Charley. Do you want to call him or would you like me to?” The offending object was on the walnut coffee table in front of them, next to a clear glass vase of anemones just past their peak—elongated stems with petals splayed out in bright silk colors. A bowl of pears completed the still life. The letter looked as out of place as a porno magazine.

“You, please,” Pix said promptly, eyeing the missive with extreme distaste. “I don’t mind Charley knowing. I suppose it is a police matter, but I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

Faith thought it impolitic to mention that the moment Charley was on the scene she’d have to do a lot of talking. “How about a cup of coffee or tea while Tom is calling. Or are you hungry? Did you have lunch?”

Pix, a tall woman with a healthy appetite, looked surprised. Certainly she’d had lunch, as had the rest of Aleford—at noon when you were supposed to, but coffee sounded good. “I’d love a cup of coffee, if it’s made.”

Faith went out to start a fresh pot and put some molasses spice cookies on a plate while she was waiting for the water to get hot. Chief MacIsaac might come here rather than meet them down at the station. She added more cookies.

“Charley’s on his way,” Tom told her when she brought the tray into the living room.

Pix bit into a cookie, “Where are the kids?” she asked. She’d been so involved in her own problem that she’d forgotten about the younger Fairchilds, as much a part of the parsonage landscape as her children—and she counted the dogs—were of hers next door.

“Amy’s still taking a good long nap in the afternoon and Ben’s upstairs resting. He’s been awfully quiet, which either means he’s dropped off, too, or he’s taking apart the VCR.” At the moment with no audible sounds, Faith was letting well enough, or the opposite, alone.

The doorbell rang. Charley must have left as soon as he hung up the phone.

“So you’ve gotten one, too, Pix,” he said as he walked toward the plate of cookies.

Faith was oddly relieved. Pix wasn’t the only one.

Find the common thread linking the recipients and they’d have their noxious correspondent.

“Who else?” she asked.

“Now, Faith, you know I can’t tell you that,” Charley said, looking around for a sturdy chair. Unfortunately, the parsonage ran to spindly Hitchcocks.

He lowered himself into one of the wing chairs flanking the fireplace. He was a large man, brought up on the stick-to-your-ribs traditional fare of his native Nova Scotia. Food had been sticking to his ribs ever since, although he carried it well. As usual, he was in plain clothes, very plain clothes. His Harris tweed jacket was due for a good pressing and it was doubtful his shirt ever had.

“Let’s see it,” he said.

Tom motioned to the coffee table. “We didn’t want to add our prints; that’s why the cloth is there.”

“Hard to get good ones from paper, but we’ll try.” Faith shot a forgivably smug look at her husband.

Charley read the words slowly, looked at the envelope, and, using the cloth, put them in a plastic bag he’d pulled from his pocket.

“They were mailed from Boston—Post Office Square, to be precise—and at the same time—Thursday afternoon. The miracle is that they all arrived yesterday or today and didn’t take several weeks as usual.

Maybe we should be looking for a postal worker.” Charley was not above a little government-employee chauvinism.

“Post Office Square is in the business district. Who do you know who works there, Pix?” Faith asked.

“Could also be that our writer has a sense of humor,” Charley interjected, on a roll. “Post Office Square, poison-pen letters—get it?”

They did.

“Every lawyer, CPA—all those kinds of people—not working here in town works there, as far as I know. Including Sam.” Pix was depressed.

Faith forgot that Sam’s law offices were on Congress Street. Yet surely he’d have no reason to mail a letter like this to his wife. Plus, he’d been out of town.

Somebody in his office? But was there anyone who was familiar enough with Aleford to send the others, hoping maybe to divert attention from the intended target, if indeed Pix, or Sam himself, was it? It seemed unlikely.

“Does anyone else from town work with Sam?” she asked Pix.

“Only Ellen Phyfe—you know, Morris’s wife.

She’s been the office manager for years. They moved to Aleford because she’d heard such good things about it from Sam.”

Faith’s mind began to work furiously. Could Ellen have something against her boss? Faith had to know who else had received letters, and if Charley wasn’t going to tell her, she’d have to find out some other way. It looked like Tom was going to be avoiding cow patties on his own this afternoon at Drumlin Farm.

She planned to make some parish calls.

“If you got permission from the others to reveal their names, it might help to meet and establish some common ground,” Tom sensibly pointed out to Charley.

“Exactly what I’ve been doing. Okay with you, Pix?” Faith had finally put a mug of coffee into his waiting hand. He took another cookie. “I plan to get all of you together . . . by yourselves—sorry, Faith—later this afternoon.”

Faith didn’t think he looked very sorry.

Pix’s face assumed a determined look. She’d been running her hands through her short, thick brown hair and one piece in front stood straight up like a visor.

“Of course you can include me. Anything that will help to figure this out.”

Charley stayed a little longer, finished his coffee, and managed to tantalize Faith further with references to the other letters. It was Pix who broke things up.

“I have to pick Samantha up at softball practice and take Danny to that skateboard place in Cambridge for a birthday party. And,” she added, “I don’t want the kids to hear anything about this. It was bad enough the last time, the Cindy time.”

“Bad enough” was putting it mildly, but Pix did not tend to histrionics. In any case, “bad enough” in Aleford was generally understood to suggest major tragedy.

She left and Charley followed. Faith and Tom sat facing each other on the couch. Amy was beginning to call from her crib and they could hear Ben go into his sister’s room. It was extremely unlikely that he had thoughts of brotherly love in mind. His idea of play with Amy consisted of making her animals “fly.”

“So,” Tom said, poised for intervention.

“So,” said his wife. “We’ve got to get this settled. I know Pix seemed calm when she left, but that’s for Samantha and Danny’s benefit. Thank goodness she’s got them to worry about.”

Tom had never been enamored of his wife’s investigative involvements, but for once he thought she ought to see what she could discover. These were the Millers—parishioners and their dearest friends.

“The first thing we have to do is call Sam. See if he can come back earlier. Pix said he was staying at the Fairmont in San Francisco.”

“Good idea. You do that while I get the kids ready for the farm.” She looked at Tom’s shoes. “You’d better put your wellies on, too.”

Tom assumed a forlorn look, “And where are you going to be while I’m having all this fun?”

“At Millicent’s, of course—at least to start.” Faith was surprised he’d had to ask.

Millicent Revere McKinley answered her door immediately, confirming that Millicent had been at her usual post, an armchair perfectly angled in the bay window so as to afford the occupant a view of Main Street and the green. Millicent’s muslin curtains provided just enough cover so that passersby could not be absolutely certain they were being observed. Millicent spent whatever leisure time she had ensconced in the chair, knitting enough sweaters, socks, and mit-tens to keep not only her own Congregational Church bazaars supplied but one or two others, as well. And she never looked down.

Leading the way into the parlor, she did not ask Faith the nature of her call. All in good time.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” she asked, not pausing for an answer. “Let’s hope this good weather keeps up through Patriots’ Day, although, as you may know, we have never had to cancel due to an inclemency.”

“Yes, it has been a lovely spring.” Now that Faith was there, her clever opening gambits slipped completely from her mind, as usual, and she felt herself rapidly falling under Millicent’s control. She pulled herself together and sat down opposite Millicent’s chair, presuming the woman would want to get back to her work—a baby sweater with little teddy bears around the yoke—and her surveillance. She presumed wrong.

“Oh, don’t let’s sit there. Come here on the couch.” Recalling other visits when she literally had had to grab the arms to keep from sliding off the singularly slippery and uncomfortable horsehair, Faith defiantly chose a chair next to it. Visits to Millicent abounded in thin-ice metaphors.

“Never mind. The couch is not for everyone,” Millicent assured her. Another test failed. “Would you like some tea?”

It was a welcome reprieve. After refusing all offers of help, Millicent left Faith alone to regroup. Getting information from Aleford’s prime source was more difficult than gaining access to the Beatles’ uncen-sored FBI dossiers.

Millicent’s parlor was crammed with objects, some good, some mediocre, yet all treasured. A veritable phalanx of Hummels stood imprisoned in a china closet like so many Hansel and Gretels biding their time behind the mullioned glass before the witch would bake them. There were small tables, tilt-top tables, one large trestle table beneath another window, and chairs everywhere. Looking at the worn but good Oriental at her feet, Faith suspected the furniture served several purposes, not the least of which was to cover the threadbare patches of the Hamadan. A mourning picture on silk, two braided-hair mourning wreaths, and a reproduction of Paul Revere as a very old man gave a slightly lugubrious air to the room.

There was a fireplace, and Faith was surprised to detect a small curl of smoke. A fire in April? Had Millicent taken leave of her senses? No true New Englander burned wood out of season, no matter what the temperature outside—or storm conditions. Curious, she stood up and went over to look at what was left of the blaze. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been much. It had been a paper fire and all that remained was the charred corner of an envelope—a plain white legal-sized envelope.

So Millicent had gotten one, too.

Faith resumed her seat quickly, fully restored. She had planned to say something about POW! She’d thought of saying that she needed a clipboard to collect signatures, or some other ploy. Since Millicent was not a member of First Parish, although she interfered enough in church business to be considered at least an “inquirer,” Tom had pointed out on more than one occasion, the parish-call routine would not do.

Now she did not need subterfuge and could come straight to the point.

She let Millicent put the tray down on a wobbly Shaker-type table and waited while the older woman fiddled with a piece of cardboard shimmed under one of the legs. Finally, all was in place and Millicent was “mother,” pouring the strong tea she favored into delicate Limoges cups that she invariably mentioned were a throwback to the Reveres’—Rivoires’—French beginnings.

Teacup in hand, Faith declared, “You’ve had one of those nasty poison-pen letters.”

Millicent cast an involuntary glance at the hearth and then back, her piercing gray eyes matched by the iron Mamie Eisenhower fringe above them. Never a hostage to fashion’s whims, Millicent—and Mamie—had found a hairstyle and stuck with it.

“What makes you say that?”

Faith noticed it was not a denial.

“Because you’ve burned it in your fireplace, which was really not the best thing to do. We need all the evidence we can get to discover who’s behind this.” Millicent gave Faith a world-weary smile—Oh, the impetuousness of youth. “I had a very good reason for burning it. It was crude and I didn’t want anyone else to see it, but of course I told Charley. I described the way it was written. A cut-and-paste job from magazines and newspapers. I’m sure he knew what I was going to do.”

“Do you know who else received one?”

“Do you?” Millicent parried.

“Yes,” Faith advanced.

“All right, then, let’s try to figure it out. If the two of us can’t, I don’t know who can.” It was a major victory, and before Faith could let it go to her head, she told herself to remain steady and took out a pad and pen.

“When did yours arrive?”

“This morning—and it was mailed in Post Office Square on Thursday afternoon, like the others I know about.”

Before she could go off on the tirade against the U.S. mail that Faith had heard lo these many times before—“My dear, we used to have two deliveries a day! You could mail a letter in Aleford at night and it would arrive at its destination at breakfast. Now you’re lucky if it makes it in a week. Far simpler to hand-deliver.”—Faith quickly interjected, “What about the others? Who’s gotten them?”

“Brad has received one. He read it to me on the phone before taking it to the police. Also the Batcheldors and the Scotts. Who do you know?”

“Pix got one, also this morning. It alluded to the whole Cindy Shepherd affair and suggested that Sam had not stopped philandering.” Being with Millicent tended to make Faith use words she had hitherto seen only in print.

“Brad’s was about that Deane girl he’d been seeing several months ago, and it was rather graphic about what they may have been up to. He seemed to think the whole thing was funny, especially since they’ve parted company.”

“And the Batcheldors?”

“That was more circumspect. It just said they shouldn’t go out in the woods if they wanted to stay healthy. It was a threat. But the one the Scotts got was particularly vicious, mentioning her father.”

“Her father?”

“He was an alcoholic and hit a little girl when he was driving while intoxicated. She survived but was paralyzed from the waist down. Shortly after, he took his own life.”

“That’s terrible!”

“Yes, especially since it was so many years ago.

And to lay it at the Scotts’ doorstep! It had nothing to do with them. Louise was a girl herself at the time. I remember it well.”

And you were how old? Faith was tempted to ask, but she did not want to mar the precarious alliance.

Millicent was notoriously sensitive about her age, admitting to no more than a vague reference to sixty-something.

“Pix’s was signed ‘A friend.’ How was yours signed?”

“The same, as was everyone else’s except Brad’s.

Brad’s wasn’t signed. But that might simply mean whoever it was ran out of letters, got careless, or was in a rush.”

Faith made a note of the omission and the possible reasons.

“Such a cowardly thing to do.” Millicent’s cheeks were flushed. She preferred to meet her enemies head-on. “And I always resent it when you read that anonymous letters are a ‘woman’s crime.’ As if a man can’t cut letters out just as well.”

Faith agreed. “I don’t think we should assume it’s one or the other. And the recipients are mixed. Let’s think about that. What do you all have in common?” Millicent looked at her with pity. “Didn’t you read last week’s Chronicle?”

Faith had to admit the weekly Aleford Chronicle was still in a stack of papers in a basket in the kitchen.

She knew that two children, husband, house, and career were no excuse for not keeping up with local issues, at least not to Millicent.

Millicent got up and went over to the decorative wooden canterbury next to an armchair. She plucked the newspaper from past issues of Early American Life, American Heritage, and other favored reading matter. Wordlessly, she turned the pages and pointed at one of the letters to the editor. Faith skimmed the lengthy plea to save Beecher’s Bog, which ended with the words, “First the bog, then the green!” But it was not the letter itself that drew Faith’s attention. It was the signers: Millicent, Pix, the Batcheldors, the Scotts, and Brad Hallowell.

“We wanted to create some interest for Friday night’s meeting,” Millicent explained. “You’d be amazed to know how many people aren’t aware of what Joey Madsen is trying to do.”

“Does Charley know about the letter?”

“Of course. I told him right away. Obviously, we were targets for our activity on behalf of the bog. And it’s also obvious who’s most interested in stopping us—Joseph Madsen and company.”

It certainly seemed that way.

Faith left Millicent’s full of information, yet feeling curiously hollow. She knew who had received the other letters and how, but the idea that Joey Madsen would be spending his time with scissors and Super Glue to intimidate his opposition just didn’t fit. He, like Millicent, confronted people head-on—sometimes literally.

She walked slowly by the green and almost bumped into Pix, who was striding along with two of the dogs.

“Oops, sorry, Faith, we almost got you. After I dropped the kids off, I decided I needed to get out.

Artie and Dusty always love walkies, too. What are you doing?”

“Not much. I’ve been talking to Millicent. . . .”

“Oh, that explains the downtrodden look. Come on, walk with us. It will do you good.”

Pix was one of those believers in the efficacy of fresh air for all the ills of body and soul. Faith was not.

“Tom’s taken the kids over to Drumlin Farm, so I think I’ll go to work for a while and make up some cookie dough for the freezer. We’re going to need every spare minute soon, so I’d like to get ahead.”

“Then I’ll come with you, but just to keep you company.”

Faith laughed. “That would be great.” As they drove to Have Faith together, Pix told Faith that Charley had canceled their meeting. All the people who had signed the Chronicle letter had received the other kind. So far, no one else had reported getting one, so he believed he’d established the link. Sam had also called and was getting the first available flight. Pix was feeling much, much better.

“Millicent wanted the bog letter to go into this week’s issue, so Sam wasn’t here to sign it. I did speak to him about it on the phone, but he said he had to investigate a little further before he’d sign anything sponsored by a group called POW! It’s that legalistic mind of his.”

And years of living in Aleford, Faith was sure.

“If he had, the letter would have been addressed to both of us, I suppose,” Pix continued.

It was an interesting point. The letter did sound as if it had been intended for both of them. Perhaps the writer had assumed Sam would join in with his wife’s views. Then when the paper came out and his name wasn’t there, the address was changed. The Scotts’

letter was addressed to the couple, but concerned only Louise.

At the catering kitchen, Faith swiftly assembled her ingredients and started to work. Pix sat on a high stool and wrapped her long legs around it.

“Knowing that everyone else got one cheered me up, which is awful, but I suppose normal,” she told Faith.

“Absolutely normal. Safety in numbers. I’m relieved, too. It’s probably someone disgruntled with the idea of limiting development, and yes, that could be Joey Madsen. But a couple of things still bother me.”

“Something’s always bothering you, boss,” came a cheerful voice from the doorway.

It was Niki Constantine, Faith’s assistant. When she had reopened the catering business, Faith had advertised in the greater Boston area and interviewed dozens of applicants. Niki presented the perfect combination of impressive credentials, dedication—“Food is my life,” she often intoned, only half-jokingly—and a sense of humor. This last was essential in an operation like Have Faith. Niki had assumed more responsibility as time had gone on. Faith knew the young woman would leave to start a firm or a restaurant of her own one day, but she hoped that day would be a long way off.

Niki had grown up in a large Greek family in Watertown. Although food might be her life, she was thin and wiry, never eating much, but tasting constantly.

Her short black curls were wiry, too, and sprang out from her head in disarray—a little like one of the metal pot scrubbers they used.

Faith had not been expecting her. “What brings you here? I thought you had a hot and heavy date with the guy from Harvard Law. Weren’t you going off with him this weekend?”

“I was, but I got cold feet. He’s so respectable and perfect I know he must be wrong for me. For one thing, my parents are dying to meet him.”

“And that’s a no-no?” Pix asked worriedly. She’d wanted to meet every one of her children’s acquaintances since sandbox days. Evidently this was not the thing to do.

“Chill, Pix. You’re different. If Samantha brings someone home when she’s my age, you won’t start making a seating chart for the wedding.” They all laughed.

Niki grew serious again. “The worst thing about it is he’s so understanding. He wasn’t even mad at me.

Told me he knows I need my space. What are you going to do with a man like that?”

“Probably marry him,” Faith said.

Niki frowned at her. “Anyway, we’re going dancing tonight. He’s a good dancer. Usually these preppy types look like Pinocchio, too humiliating. Now I’m going to make stock. I’ve been carrying these veal bones on the subway and bus in fear the bags would break and I’d be arrested for trying to dispose of my lover, conveniently chopped up in little pieces. Which takes care of all about me—what’s going on here?” They filled her in and she gave Pix a big hug. “How horrible for you. We had an obscene caller when I was in college and we had to change the number. I remember the first time it happened. It was such a shock, because you’re expecting something so different.

Somebody selling carpet cleaning or wanting to be your broker, and then these other words come out. Of course, you’ve solved it already, right, Faith?”

“Not really. The most obvious suspect is Joey, but the letters don’t seem his style. If anything, he’d write back in the paper for all the world to see.” Joey Madsen was noted for his letters to the editor. They pulled few punches and named names.

“What about his wife?” Niki suggested. “Standing by her man?”

Faith had considered Bonnie, then eliminated her for the same reasons. Bonnie didn’t sneak around. If she was upset about something, Aleford knew it.

“But,” Pix pointed out, “Joey is trying to get his plans approved. He can’t very well attack POW! in public without making himself look bad. He’s got to keep everything legal and aboveboard. Maybe the letters are his way of trying to frighten us into abandon-ing our cause.”

Faith was kneading the rich shortbread that formed the base for her chocolate crunch cookies (see recipe on page 340). There was another reason to believe Joey was behind the letters. It had struck her as soon as she’d heard it in Millicent’s parlor. The wording.

Could it possibly be a coincidence that both Lora Deane and the Batcheldors were being told to do something if they “wanted to stay healthy”—one on the phone; one in writing?

She thought about the other letters as she wrapped the dough for freezing. Why wasn’t Brad’s signed?

Could Joey, in some twisted way, actually consider himself a friend of the others? He’d known them all long enough. Brad was a newcomer. Maybe Joey didn’t want to presume. It was laughable in the face of the act.

“Whoever it is, Joey, Bonnie, Mr. or Ms. X, it’s someone who’s really rather rude.” Pix’s emphatic voice cut into Faith’s thoughts.

“We could all agree with that,” Niki said dryly.

“What I mean is everything in the letters is common knowledge in Aleford. He or she hasn’t revealed something that most people don’t already know. So it’s simply plain bad taste to mention it. None of us would.”

It made sense. “Not blackmail material, just reminders of hurtful times. Except for the Batcheldors.

What about them?” Faith asked.

“Think about it. What could you bring up? Margaret has spent her life looking at the world through rose-colored binoculars and Nelson, when he’s not trekking along behind her, has his nose buried in a book. But they signed the letter, so they had to be included.” Faith thought about mentioning her close encounter of the weird kind with the Batcheldors, then decided not to. She wanted to mull this over some more. Did the letter writer know what the Batcheldors were up to in the woods? She resolved to take another stroll there herself, avoiding the bog and definitely not taking the kids. Amy was well on the way to developing ski maskaphobia.

Pix left to get ready for her husband’s late-night return, although Faith was not sure what this entailed.

With kids in residence, it didn’t mean a black lace nightie or, in Pix’s case, a fatted calf of any sort. Most likely, it involved making sure they had a bottle of Laphroaig, his favorite scotch, that Danny wouldn’t have a friend sleeping over, and that Samantha honored her curfew. Peace and calm in the wee hours of the morning—with no mail delivery.

Faith and Niki worked a bit longer and then closed up shop. Niki changed into a tiny silver satin dress before she left. Faith loved it on her. A much more intriguing look than the girl in black about Niki’s age whom Faith had seen on the subway recently with a broken wineglass wired to her bodice.

“Definitely not the corporate-wife image,” she commented as Niki stuffed her work clothes into a bag.

“Maybe what she has on underneath,” Niki said.

“Don’t tell Mom, but this dress is a slip.” Monday morning always comes, and Faith was rushing around tidying up, all the while reflecting on the absurdity of the effort. The toddlers weren’t going to notice whether the parsonage was dusty—or even if it was standing, so long as there was plenty of juice and crackers. Yet their mothers, even in their usual blink-of-an-eye drop-off, would. But play group was a blessing. Normally, the children all went to a lovely woman who had been providing day care for Aleford’s little ones for years. One of the reasons she was able to remain so lovely, and in business, was that she very sensibly took a week off every once in a while, and then the mothers took the children in turn. One’s own turn came infrequently enough to be only a minor inconvenience. Faith had discovered with Ben, however, that some of the mothers went slightly over the edge when it was their morning to shine. One day he’d come home with an enormous cookie shaped like little Ben and decorated in exquisite detail right down to the exact colors of his rainbow sneaker laces. Faith stuck to play dough, two colors, and, weather permitting, a walk across the street to the green, where the children could roll around on the hallowed turf to their heart’s content. This was the plan for this morning, as well.

Hastily buffing some brass candlesticks while Amy occupied herself in picking out all the raisins from her bran muffin, Faith hoped Charley could get Joey to admit that he’d authored, if that was the correct word for the method employed, the “friendly” letters. Madsen was the most obvious suspect.

As they sat in church the day before, it was apparent that the word had been spread—and not the word Tom was preaching. The pleasant buzz of conversation and greetings before the service was missing. It seemed as if everyone had waited until the last minute and then hastily filed in just before the stroke of eleven. What talk there was tended to be furtive and hushed. It was the same at coffee hour. The Millers and the Batcheldors were there, but people were avoiding them, giving them a sympathetic nod in passing, yet unsure of what to say. It wasn’t a death—or a birth. It was perhaps something they weren’t even supposed to know about.

Faith wondered if the letters had stopped. She’d call Charley later and tell him what Pix had said—that whoever it was was writing about things everybody knew, indicating it had to be someone living in town, but maybe somebody who didn’t know its deepest, darkest secrets—or was too polite to mention them. Not that the letters showed an excess of good manners. In exchange, Charley might tell her what he’d been doing.

Had Millicent read Charley her letter? She’d been vague about it. Faith couldn’t think of anything about Millicent that you’d bother cutting up a magazine for.

Overweening pride? Ancestor worship? Maybe she really wasn’t a descendant of the midnight rider through his fourth cousin once removed and her whole life was a sham. But Millicent lectured all over the state on virtually every aspect of the Revere family, from what they ate to what they wrought. She was the pillar of the DAR, Historical Society; anything remotely connected with the glorious past, as her parents had been and so forth. Faith wondered why Millicent had never married. Surely she would have considered it her obligation to carry on the line.

Maybe there was something there. Millicent left at the altar—but who would dare? Or maybe Millicent wasn’t the end of the line—but again, who would dare? Besides, wed or unwed, if Millicent had produced any progeny, she’d have raised her child herself and done the job thoroughly. Goodness knows, she had opinions enough on the way others raised theirs.

Millicent may not have literally taken to the rod, but she would definitely not have spoiled the child.

Faith looked over to see how her own child was doing. She had managed to cover herself with a layer of fine crumbs and there was a raisin pasted to her cheek with spit. Faith grabbed a cloth. Romper Room would be starting any minute. Everything was ready. The only thing Faith had to remember was to keep on eye on little Jeffrey, who ate the play dough, yucky as it was. He ate paste, too.

She scrubbed at Amy’s sticky cheeks and brushed some of the crumbs from her fine blond hair. She wished she could tell Charley about Lora Deane’s calls and see if he thought there was any connection to the letters. The next selectmen’s meeting was Wednesday night. It hadn’t even been a week since Faith had walked in on Tom and the nursery school teacher. All weekend, she and Tom had taken turns calling Lora to find out what her sister, Bonnie, had said. Contrary to the advice of the police, and common sense, Lora had left a cheery message on her machine informing callers that she was out of town, presumably having fun, and to please leave a message. They did, but Lora hadn’t called back.

“At least we haven’t had to worry about her. If we’d been getting no answer all weekend, I’d have had to go over there and check up on her,” Tom had said at breakfast. He was leaving early in hopes of getting a word with her when he dropped Ben off.

“True, but it is pretty silly to advertise the fact that your place is empty.”

“I doubt she has much, honey. What do stuffed animals bring on the street these days?”

Faith hadn’t heard from Tom this morning and assumed this meant he hadn’t been able to get the teacher alone. She resolved to pin Miss Lora down herself after school and bring her back to the parsonage for lunch.

The morning went by with blessed speed. The toddlers had left the place relatively intact, although it was going to be a job getting the play dough from behind the kitchen radiator.

Everything was going according to plan. Lora accepted the invitation eagerly—maybe she was getting tired of peanut butter and jelly—and Faith was able to get her alone after lunch. Amy had nodded off into her tapioca pudding and Ben was sequestered with Tin-Tin on Nickelodeon, Lora having promised to take him for a walk afterward all by himself. He could hardly contain his excitement and after interrupting them for the third time, asking, “Is it time yet?” Faith had snapped at him, “No, and it isn’t going to be if you come in once more,” thereby revealing in front of her child’s teacher what a bad mother she truly was.

Miss Lora did, in fact, look a bit sorrowful. Faith couldn’t wait for her to have kids of her own—kids in residence.

Over a second helping of tapioca, which Lora seemed to enjoy as much as the Fairchild children, she confided that Bonnie had not responded exactly as Lora had hoped. Faith was annoyed with herself for not having predicted the outcome, or at the least its strong “kill the messenger” possibility.

“She was ripping,” Lora said. “Now she won’t even talk to me. Everyone in the family’s going to find out, if they haven’t already, and it’s going to be all my fault.”

“Did she come right out and deny it, or didn’t you get that far?” Faith asked.

Lora obediently started from the beginning. “I called her up and asked if I could go over there to see the baby. He really is the sweetest thing, little pudgy cheeks, the kind you just have to nibble.” Faith added Cabbage Patch dolls to what she already knew to be a sizable collection of teddy bears.

Miss Lora told the kids stories about them.

“We spent time with little Joey; then she put him down for a nap, so I figured it was a good time to talk.

I told her about the calls and she was very sympathetic at first. I was kind of embarrassed to bring it up, but I said straight out, ‘You know, Bonnie, Joey has been pretty upset because I wouldn’t lend him the money for the Estates. You don’t think he’s doing this to kind of get back at me, do you?’ ” Faith could picture the scene. She’d been in Bonnie’s kitchen once, dropping off some large containers of Have Faith eggplant lasagna Bonnie had ordered for a luncheon her women’s club was having. The room was so clean, you wondered if it had ever been used, but Faith could see plates of cookies and brown-ies that surely had not come from boxes. The house was only a few years old and still looked like a model home. There wasn’t any clutter, not even the kind Faith tolerated—out of the way in baskets or behind closed cabinets. No sign of a morning paper, no pictures except one that perfectly picked out the color of the tile floor and matching curtains. It was of a large fish surrounded by either offspring or prey, depending on one’s point of view. There wasn’t even a Post-It next to the phone or on the gleaming fridge. Bonnie kept her life in absolute order without reminders.

Faith knew instinctively this was a woman who used leaf polish on her houseplants.

“I didn’t know how mad she was at first, because she didn’t say anything. Just sat there. I started to tell her I was sure I was wrong. I mean, she was beginning to scare me. Staring off into space, with her hands folded on the table. Then she stood up and told me to get out of her house. I couldn’t believe it. Bonnie, my own sister—well, half sister. So I tried to tell her that this was all crazy—to forget I’d said anything and let bygones be bygones.”

“What did she do?”

“She wasn’t even listening to me, kept kind of moving me to the door. She grabbed my jacket and pushed it at me. ‘Just leave, Lora,’ she said. So I did.” But, Faith said to herself, she didn’t deny it. Out loud, she asked, “This was on Thursday. Have you heard from her or anyone else in the family since?”

“Not directly. I was gone over the weekend. Normally, I have Sunday dinner at my grandparents. We all do. My grandmother knew I wasn’t going to be there, but she called Friday afternoon late and asked me if I could change my plans. So maybe Bonnie told her. I never got a call before when I haven’t been able to make it. At that point, even if I could have gone, I wouldn’t have. You don’t know how they can get.

Everyone would be on Joey’s side, and I just couldn’t take it.”

“What about your brothers?”

“Well, maybe they’d be better, especially Eddie.

But as I told you, family is family and I was wrong to accuse Joey, especially to his wife. I see that now.” Faith didn’t. Lora was trying to get help and it was unfortunate that her sister had reacted the way she had.

“Lora, I really think you ought to tell Charley. I’ve found out a little more about Brad, and he does seem to be capable of violence—at least to his bedroom wall.”

“I heard about that.” Lora sounded contemptuous.

“But he’d never hit me. He knows I wouldn’t stand for it, nor would my family. And, as I told you, I am not telling the police. Especially not now.” There was pride in her voice. Lora might not be the most popular member at the moment, yet she knew their priorities.

She might have broken the Deane code, but they would come to her defense if she needed it.

Faith played to her family feeling. “Then if you still won’t go to the police, tell your grandparents. I’m sure you’ve heard about the letters people have been getting, and there may be some connection with the calls.” She’d forgotten that Lora had been away and so wouldn’t have heard about the letters. She filled her in, and the teacher was definitely alarmed, although not, it seemed, about herself.

“What is going on in this town? I can’t believe it. It sounds like some kind of nut is on the loose! Though why he would be calling me and writing to these POW! people doesn’t make any sense. I don’t care about the bog.”

She’d put her finger on the main thing that was missing in Faith’s logic. The wording of the call and the letter was the same, but the targets were completely dissimilar.