The Body in the Cast

For my brothers, sisters, and their families

David and Barbara Page;

Anne and Ron Page-Roose;

Sheila and Manny Pologe

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Raymond Norman, owner, and Meg Bezucha of Media\Gourmet, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, for all of their\advice, and my cousin Elizabeth Samenfeld-Specht for permission to use her delicious Sugar and Spice Cookie recipe. Thanks also, as always, to my editor, Ruth Gavin.

Editors Note

The Body in the Cast includes, at the end of the story, five full recipes from Faith Fairchild's (fictional) cookbook, Have Faith in Your Kitchen, as well as a number of descriptions in the text of the way Faith makes some of her delectable dishes.

Believe me, Hester, there are few things,—whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought, few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery.

-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

One

The page of life that was spread out before me seemed dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import.

Aleford, Massachusetts was reeling—literally. Not only was an actual Hollywood movie crew in town filming a modern version of The Scarlet Letter but Walter Wetherell had abruptly resigned from the Board of Selectmen, igniting a fierce three-way contest for the vacant seat.

And, as if these were not enough, Town Meeting was in session, with all its attendant intrigue: loyalties and grudges handed down from one generation to the next; back-room political maneuvers; and immediate front-room protests. Never before had the dismally bleak month of March seemed so bright. March—when the possibility of a crisp white snowfall was greeted with about as much enthusiasm as another tax increase from Beacon Hill. March—when only the young, or perennially foolish, talked about smelling spring in the air and the imminent arrival of daffodils. March—whether accompanied by lions or lambs, a month to get through.

Over at the First Parish parsonage, the Reverend Thomas Fairchild and his wife, Faith, were adapting themselves to the newest member of their family, Amy Elisabeth. It had been Baby Girl Fairchild for about twenty-four hours following her birth the previous September as Tom and Faith battled it out, albeit with velvet gloves. Faith had counted on a dramatic pose in the hospital bed, fresh from her labor, to win the day. It didn't. She was forced to give in on Sophie, with all its sweet little French schoolgirl connotations, but rallied to demand that Tom abandon Marian, after his mother. A nice woman, to be sure, yet what would Faith's own mother, Jane, have to say? The remote and absurd possibility that Faith might be forced to have another baby to keep both grandmothers happy had presented a singularly grueling specter at the moment. For a while, it appeared agreement might be reached on VIctoria, or VIctoire (Faith persisted), but both parents eventually concurred that it might not be clear whose victory and over what, since it wasn't even clear to Tom and Faith themselves. Faith's escape from a crazed kidnapper in a French farmhouse during the fourth month of pregnancy? Or, Faith's suggestion, the whole less than enjoyable experience of childbirth itself? A memory any number of friends had assured her grew dim with time. And this had proved to be the case—somewhat. Ben's birth three and a half years earlier had receded to a far distant shore, then instantly crashed forward into total recall the moment her water broke.

They had finally settled on Amy, but Faith perversely decided to hold out for the French spelling, Aimée, to almost a bitter end. It was only when Tom sang "Once in Love with Amy" for the hundredth time, firmly declaring Ray Bolger wasn't immortalizing an Aimée, that Faith gave in. She pulled her last punch and salvaged the European s instead of z in Elisabeth, and the family turned to more important things like nibbling the baby's toes and wondering how fingernails could be so tiny.

Faith Sibley Fairchild had not always lived in Ale-ford, a fact she no longer blurted out insistently when introduced but that she nevertheless managed to subtly work into the conversation—such was the increasing wisdom that age, and life in a small village, conferred. She had grown up in Manhattan, established herself as one of the hottest caterers in town as an adult, and reluctantly left after she realized the sole way she could have her cake and eat it was to move north, marry Tom, and make sure she had a decent stove.

The institution of the ministry was not foreign to her. Both her father and grandfather were men of the cloth. It was this familiarity with parish life during her formative years that made her swear an oath with her sister, Hope, one year younger. Neither would marry men working for any "higher authority" than someone with a name on the door and a Bigelow on the floor. The girls went so far as to avoid dates with Matthews, Marks, Lukes, and Johns for a time, until this became counterproductive when Hope fell for a particularly attractive bond salesman named Luke at work. Still, she married a Quentin, an MBA, not an MDiv, and lived up to her side of the bargain. It was Faith who fell from grace when she met Tom, sans dog collar, at a wedding she was catering, not realizing he had performed the ceremony until it was too late.

Almost five years had passed. Faith had become a bit more used to Aleford and Aleford to Faith. However, she still suffered frequent longings for the sound of taxi horns blaring, the sight of blue-and-yellow Sabrett's umbrellas protecting spicy dogs and kraut, and the aroma of Bergdorf's fragrance counters. You could take the girl out of the city, but you couldn't take the city out of the girl. Her stylish New York clothes and penchant for Woody Allen movies were no longer hot topics for the early coffee and muffin crowd at the Minuteman Café. If she was talked about, and she was, the conversation now tended toward her knack for both finding corpses and subsequently solving the crimes.

But old habits die hard in places like Aleford, and stalwarts like Millicent Revere McKinley, a descendant of a distant cousin of Paul Revere and the pillar of the DAR, Aleford Historical Society, and WCTU, regarded Faith's sleuthing abilities as child's play compared with Millicent's own encyclopedic knowledge of the life and crimes of every Aleford inhabitant for the last fifty years. This knowledge was gleaned in a variety of ways, the predominant being her daily hawkeyed observations from a perch in the front bay window of ye olde ancestral Colonial house, happily located directly across from the village green and with a clear view down Battle Road, Aleford's main street. No, Miss McKinley, thank you, was not interested in Faith's supposed abilities pertaining to either detection or cuisine. Millicent clung to her initial impression; to do otherwise would have suggested uncertainty, or worse whimsicality—and she chose to dwell on the peccadilloes of a person from "away." Her attitude was made manifest by audible sighs, especially where two or three were gathered, followed by the words "Poor Reverend Fairchild.”

When Faith reopened her catering business, Have Faith, after Christmas in the former home of Yankee Doodle Kitchens, Millicent added, "And her poor neglected little children" to the litany, smiling a gentle, mournful smile before moving on to the next audience.

“Honestly, Tom, I should be used to her after all this time, but she still gets under my skin," Faith exploded one evening after the neglected children had been read to, cuddled, and generally spoiled rotten before drifting off to sleep. "It's a Gordian knot and I'm all thumbs. If I hadn't started the business again and had stayed home all day with Amy, dear as she is, I'd be a crazy woman by now. Or let's say crazier. On the other hand, working makes me feel guilty about leaving her, even for short periods. And I know the house is suffering."

“I'd rather have you sane—or are we saying saner? Besides, you've done everything you can to be with Ben and Amy as much as possible." Tom looked around the living room from the depths of the large down-cushioned sofa, a comfy legacy bequeathed by one of his predecessors. "The house looks fine—and so, Mrs. Fairchild, do you." Faith was conveniently near and he drew her into his arms.

“I suppose you're right;" she said contentedly. "Anyway, the flowers help." Faith had placed pots of bright tulips and freesia she'd forced, so as to distract the eye from whatever might be out of place or in need of cleaning. It was a trick she had learned from her Aunt Chat: "Put plenty of flowers around, keep the silver shiny, and no one will ever know how many dust bunnies are under your bed”

While letting some of the housework slide, although she was managing to keep the bunnies from reproducing at too rapid a rate, Faith did everything guilt-ridden moms everywhere do to minimize the time away from the kids. She may even have gone overboard, she'd thought on more than one occasion, longing for a moment alone. It was getting hard to remember the last time she'd had a shower more than three minutes long, and a soak in a perfumed tub seemed like a chapter from somebody else's life.

Yankee Doodle's premises had needed some remodeling, so Faith had had a carpeted play area installed at one end of the huge space, complete with Jolly Jumper, playpen, shelves for toys, and a small table and chairs. Most days, the baby came to work with her. Just as the books said, second child Amy Elisabeth was easier, settling placidly into two long naps and food at reasonable hours, except for that very early morning demand for mother's milk—now! Ben was at nursery school through lunch and spent the afternoon with Faith or, when she was pressed, in day care with Arlene Maclean, mother of Ben's beloved friend, Lizzie. Arlene also took Amy at times. Arlene didn't smoke, wasn't noticeably psychotic, and, if Lizzie was proof, knew what was what in the Raising Nice, Obedient, Yet Interesting Children department—a department Faith still felt much less familiar with than, say, Better Dresses at Bloomie's.

It had been an enormous amount of work starting the business in the new locale, far from her former suppliers and staff. She'd been discouraged almost to the point of giving up when Niki Constantine, a young Johnson and Wales graduate fresh from washing pots at Biba's, one of Boston's culinary shrines, strode confidently in to be interviewed for the job of Faith's assistant. Niki had grown up in nearby Watertown. Her parents still operated a bakery there. She nibbled all day, tasting constantly, and never seemed to put an ounce on her wiry frame. Her tight, short black curls had a few streaks of premature gray and she brought an air of serious professionalism to the job that matched Faith's own.

They soon became a team: two ambitious, hardworking women who were often convulsed in laughter, as when Niki presented Faith with a tray of spectacularly fallen individual soufflés Grand Manlier, declaiming in solemn tones, "They just couldn't keep it up." Niki also tended to answer "Food is my life" in a deceptive deadpan to most queries.

So, all was well, or at least this is what Faith optimistically told Tom, and herself, whenever she returned home at the end of a particularly long day. Amy was benefiting from having a contented mom, not to mention the purees of artichoke hearts and spoonfuls of pate de foie de volaille avec champignons the baby gobbled down with significantly greater gusto than she brought to Gerber's fare. Ben was the same, munching chocolate madeleines and milk as his after-school snack. And there were stretches when Faith wasn't working much at all and packed the kids up for enriching trips into town or dragged them along on much-neglected parish calls. She was, after all, a minister's wife. And she knew her duties.

The first inkling that movie people were coming to Ale-ford had been in December, shortly before Christmas, when a tall, thin young man in an olive Joseph Abboud suit and slightly darker topcoat had showed up at Battle Green Realty and asked the startled owner, Louisa May Talcott (her mother had read Little Women over seventy times), whether she could show him some houses. December was a slow month and Louisa May had been engrossed in the latest Charlotte MacLeod mystery when the sleigh bells on the door jangled. She'd looked up, to find her own distorted reflection in the sunglasses her caller had donned against the novel glare of white snow. Politely removing his shades, he explained he wanted to rent a small Cape Cod house, authentic if possible, located on several acres, preferably with lots of trees. It was the work of a moment to drive him out to the Pingree place, a two-hundred-year-old Cape. It had the requisite light-obscuring windows, low ceilings, and small, drafty rooms. The house also abutted a large stretch of conservation land complete with forest, streams, a bog, and several picturesque tumbled-down stone walls. Delighted with the house and its setting, the stranger revealed he was Alan Morris, the assistant director on a new Maxwell Reed movie. Alan shot countless rolls of film, took copious notes, and left a check that turned the visions of sugarplums dancing in Louisa May's head into more palpable goodies under the tree: a laptop computer for husband, Arnold; Nintendo for little Toby; and the cashmere twin set from Talbots she'd long desired for herself.

The Pingrees went to Paris.

The advent of the movie people had occupied center stage throughout December and into February. Aleford dubbed itself L.A. East as it watched the progression of various individuals arrive to scut locations, arrange permits, rent a house for the director, who did not like hotels, and book blocks of rooms for everyone else at a Marriott in nearby Burlington—Aleford itself had but one hostelry, which boasted only three bedrooms. (You did get a mighty delicious breakfast thrown in.) Everything had to be in place well before the March shooting date. But all this, even the helicopter flying low over the conservation land, was firmly relegated to the wings once the news of Walter Wetherell's resignation got out.

While some residents of Aleford had been known to take an interest in national and state politics, particularly during presidential and gubernatorial years, it was local elections that gripped the hearts and minds of the majority. Balloons did not tumble down from the ceiling, nor did smiling, well-groomed red-white-and-blue-clad families grace a podium when candidacies were declared. But this did not mean there wasn't plenty of hoopla. It merely took a different form. Perhaps a small, discreet notice in the town paper, the Ale-ford Chronicle, or, better still, a letter to the editor, which didn't cost anything. Then as things heated up, there would be larger ads listing the names of those who endorsed the candidate. Properly studied—and there were few Alefordians who were not adept at the art—the names revealed more about the candidates than any debate or position paper. Once the ads appeared and everyone had figured out who was representing whom, bolder measures would be taken. The tops of cars sprouted signs precariously anchored by bungee cords and the space between front and storm doors filled up with fliers describing the candidates' records all the way back to things like "Winner of the Fifth Grade All-Aleford Spelling Bee.”

Campaign mores were as invariable as the flag raising every morning on the green.

In the late fifties, someone had passed out ballpoints with his name emblazoned in gold ink on each and every one, but the general opinion was that he'd gone a little too far—for which he was resoundingly defeated. In a gesture of defiance, or remorse, he moved closer to Boston, where his flamboyant style presumably found a more congenial home.

The first fireworks in the current election had started in February, before any of the candidates were announced.

“Why in tarnation Walter Wetherell thinks he has to resign just because he's having some sort of pig valve put in his heart is beyond me," police chief Charley MacIsaac told Faith one particularly chilly day. He'd formed the habit of dropping in at the caterers now and then for a cup of coffee, and Faith was glad to have him. She missed their morning colloquies at the Minuteman Café. She'd been afraid she'd get woefully out of touch when she went back to work, until Charley had solved the problem. Not that he was a chatterbox, but she could usually work the conversation around to what she wanted to know. She didn't even have to try this time. Charley was more than ready to spill his guts.

“I didn't know you were such an ardent supporter of Walter's. I thought you two were at odds over widening Battle Road," Faith commented.

“We are, were, whatever. Somebody's going to get killed on that road. It cuts straight through to Route 2A and if he had gone there at rush hour like I asked, he'd have seen what I was talking about. All his talk about preserving the quality of the community—it's really because it so happens his cousin lives over there. More like preserving the quality of Bob Wetherell's front yard," Charley fumed.

“Then I would have thought you'd be happy Walter is resigning. You might get someone who agrees with you."

“And I might get somebody who doesn't. But I will get somebody I don't know, or maybe do know, which could be worse. And what's sure is, whoever it is, it will be someone who'll be asking a million dumb questions—and the meetings are long enough as they are. No, in this case, I say take the devil you've learned to put up with."

“You just don't like change, Charley. Besides, the poor man can't be expected to perform a selectman's duties while he's recuperating from major heart surgery."

“People pamper themselves too much these days. If there's anyone to feel sorry for in all this, it's the poor damned pig.”

Chief MacIsaac was echoing the opinion of most of the town, and for a while Winifred Wetherell did her shopping in Waltham at the Star Market instead of the Shop'n Save. And rather than going to the town library, Walter read all the books he had at home that he'd been meaning to read but didn't actually want to.

The identity of the first candidate to file remained a secret for only the five minutes it took town clerk Lucy Barnes to lock up the office and walk briskly down the street to the Minuteman Café. It had been a slow week for Faith and she was actually present at the historic event. She was sharing a table with Pix Miller, her close friend and next-door neighbor, and Amy, the latter delightedly finger-painting with corn muffin crumbs and spit while securely strapped into her Sassy seat.

“There I was, not expecting a thing, when I saw a shadow at the door," related Lucy breathlessly.

Faith knew the door well. She'd copied the list painted on its frosted glass and sent it to her sister, Hope, upon arriving in Aleford as a new bride. Under TOWN CLERK'S OFFICE in impressive bold script, it read:

DOG LICENSES, MARRIAGE INTENTIONS, BIRTH CERTIFICATES, DEATH CERTIFICATES, VOTER REGISTRATION, ELECTION INFORMATION, ANNUAL CENSUS, BUSINESS CERTIFICATION, RAFFLES, FISH AND GAME LICENSES, MISCEL- LANEOUS. It was the last item that had caused Faith the most amusement. What could be left? she wondered.

The town clerk had the attention of the entire café.

“Before I had a chance to even think who it might be, the door bangs open and it's ..." Lucy paused; it was her moment. "Alden Spaulding. `I'm going to be your new selectman,' he says, bold as brass, as usual. `Give me the papers.' I hadn't expected a please or thank you, and it's a good thing I didn't. Anyway, what are we going to do?”

It was a call to arms.

Alden Spaulding had few friends but some grudging admirers, whose comments took the form of, "Whatever else you may say about Alden, you have to admit the man knows what he's about"—local parlance for "knows how to make a buck" While in his twenties, forty years before, Alden had taken his inheritance and put it all into what was then the novel idea of a duplicating service. Over the years, he had expanded his offerings and locations, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the area. He was the proverbial bridegroom of his work, remaining unencumbered by a wife and family; swooping in without prior notice at one of his branches to see what the laggards Were not doing at any time of day or night.

Politically, he was a rabid conservative, so far right as to be out in left field. This would not have been a problem in other election years, but it posed a major difficulty this time around. Aleford's Board of Selectmen was composed of five citizens. Since anyone could remember, putting said recollection somewhere shortly after the Flood, there had always been two liberals, two moderates, and a conservative on the board. Walter Wetherell had been one of the moderates, the swing votes. With two conservatives, the historic balance of power would be altered and, what was worse, would put all the town's major decisions in the hands of the remaining, tie-breaking moderate, Beatrice Hoffman, who could never quite seem to make up her mind.

Chief MacIsaac groaned audibly. If Spaulding was elected, the new cruiser he hoped to get the town to buy as a replacement for the barely operable 1978 Plymouth Gran Fury currently doing duty would be a 1995 or 1996 by the time Bea made up her mind, because of course the vote would be two to two. He could hear her now: "We mustn't be hasty. This decision is too important to be made in a cavalier fashion." Cavalier. Many's the interminable meeting he'd wished someone, dashing or not, would ride in on a big black horse and carry Bea off. That was another thing. They would be meeting continuously, since one session would be ending as the next was called to order. Why the police chief had to be at these things was beyond him, but the forefathers had decided, maybe two hundred years ago, that the law had to be present, and no one was about to change it now.

“Obviously someone has to run against him—and soon. We can't let him remain unopposed." Faith spoke firmly, confident in the knowledge that no one expected her to run—not because as a wife, mother, and businesswoman she obviously didn't have a free moment to work the crowds, but because she had not lived in town the requisite thirty or so years and/or was the product of several generations of Alefordians.

Her stirring words, however, did not have a galvanizing effect on the group in the café. Everyone assumed a studied lack of activity and even nonchalance as they looked out the window, toward the ceiling, anywhere save in the direction of Faith's eye. "Well, perhaps no one here"—the room relaxed and people dared to sip their coffee once more—"but we have to make an effort to find someone. Any ideas?”

Pix would normally have felt compelled to volunteer, except for the fact that her husband, Sam, had declared heatedly that if she took on one more thing, he was going to incorporate himself and the children as a charity and make her head of the board of directors to force her to stay home at least one night during the week. She did have an idea of someone else, though.

“What about Penelope Bartlett? She's never been on the board, and I can't imagine why not."

“Perfect," cried Lucy Barnes in delight. "No one is more dedicated to Aleford than Penny, and she has so much good common sense. I'm sure she'd do a fine job."

“Perfect," declared Chief MacIsaac, in what Faith would have sworn was a parody, were he given to such things. "Alden will be running against his half sister, someone who hasn't spoken to him in twenty years or so. Should be fun"

“I didn't know Penny Bartlett was Alden Spaulding's half sister," Faith said to Tom that evening as he got ready to leave the house for a session of Town Meeting.

He'd been an elected Town Meeting member since he'd arrived at First Parish. He thought it would be a good way to get to know Aleford and its inhabitants. Besides, Fairchilds always sat at their local Town Meetings, guarding their seats and passing them down as lovingly as they did their season's tickets to Celtics games at Boston Garden.

“You really should ask someone else for the details, but I think Alden's mother died when he was about seven or eight and his father married Penny's mother, who was much younger and a neighbor, in rather indecent haste:'

“Probably needed someone to cook and do the wash," Faith said.

“I don't think so. He was comfortable, as we New Englanders like to say, and could have hired any number of housekeepers."

“ `Comfortable,' which means something akin to rich as Croesus. No, he wouldn't need to cut costs. Maybe he wanted a mother for little Alden. Then again, given the evidence of their offspring, it's probable that the first Mrs. Spaulding wasn't up for the title of Mrs. Congeniality and he may simply have wanted a pleasant spouse."

“Possibly. Penny's mother, his second wife, died long before I came here, but there are plenty of parishioners who remember her, and I've always heard her mentioned with great affection. No one mentions Alden's mother. Since Alden's father was active in the congregation and Alden, too, in his own inimitable way, I'd imagine she must have attended, although perhaps she was an invalid of some sort.”

Faith thought they ought to get off the subject of the Bartletts. Alden's participation in the congregation, along with a decent-sized pledge, took the less welcome form of line-by-line sermon critiques and objections to the amount of money spent on social concerns. He seemed to regard his tithe as an entitlement.

“What's on the agenda tonight?" she asked. Faith had no desire to attend Town Meeting, yet she liked to know what was going on. It made the old Tammany Hall look like a Brownie Scout troop.

“The library budget. I could be late, very late. Our friend Alden, who is maintaining a very high pre-election profile these days, has submitted an alternate resolution calling for drastic cuts in staff and hours. He wants the library closed weekends and Wednesdays. The rationale for this being that people read too much and should be out getting some exercise instead, which costs the town nothing. Oh, and he wants to eliminate the library aides and have patrons reshelve their own books when they return them."

“I know we have to cut, but this is ridiculous. Surely no one will vote with him."

“I wish I could be certain. There's a strong feeling in town that spending is out of control, and a sizable contingent sees Alden first and foremost as a successful business manager. These are the people who will vote with—and for—him. Enough philosophizing. We need someone who knows dollars and cents-type stuff. We do have to cut the budget, but not with a machete."

“Have fun. I don't envy you." Faith kissed her husband and sent him off with his shield. She only hoped he would not come home on it.

Aleford had resolutely resisted the blandishments of the local cable television franchise. No one could see the point of paying perfectly good money for extra television channels when they already had more than they wanted to watch. Yet when the company offered to broadcast Town Meeting on its local access station, quite a few heads were turned. No more sitting in the hard seats up in the balcony of the Town Hall, straining to hear what the members below were debating. No more listening to embarrassing stomach rumbles, as no food was allowed in the hall. The cable TV proposal had come up at last year's Town Meeting and lost by a whisker. But with the added incentive of the election—the company had promised to film candidates' forums and live ballot counting—it was sure to pass this time, unless Millicent McKinley could rally a few more Town Meeting members to her camp. The cable proposal, she declared, was one more example of the moral turpitude rapidly creeping into all aspects of everyday life. It was positively indecent to think of such a hallowed tradition as Town Meeting being broadcast to people who might be doing Lord knows what as they watched. She had heard of homes where a television was actually in the bedroom! If someone wanted to know what was going on at Town Meeting, he or she could go to Town Hall just like all the elected members. It was a question of simple equilibrium, she stated. Though people weren't too clear what she meant by the phrase, it sounded good and they didn't doubt her sincerity.

Faith had waited up for Tom and he was late. She'd been reading M. F. K. Fisher's The Gastronomical Me in bed and got up to get him something to eat when she heard the car pull into the driveway. She'd been stunned when she first learned that they had to sit all those hours without any form of nourishment. "An awful lot of people chew gum:' Tom had told her. "Sometimes I look around and feel like I've been put out to pasture with a herd of malcontented cows."

“I'm almost, but not quite, too tired to eat," he said, collapsing at the kitchen table in anticipation.

Faith was mixing beaten eggs, chopped green onion, crisp, smoky bacon, and Parmesan cheese into some spaghetti she'd cooked earlier and set aside. She poured the mixture into a frying pan with some hot olive oil and spread it out to form a large, flat mass. "Did Alden's amendment win?"

“Praise the Lord, no, but he got more votes than I would have expected. I think I'll pay a call on Penelope tomorrow and add my voice to the swelling chorus urging her to run. She looked slightly confused and blushed a couple of times when people passing her to go to the john or whatever leaned down to whisper in her ear. I'd say the campaign to get our Penny to throw her bonnet into the ring is on with a vengeance."

“Nice to know you're not getting too involved in all this, darling." Faith smiled at him as she deftly slid the golden brown frittata onto a plate and flipped it back into the pan to cook on the other side.

Two days later, Penelope Bartlett entered the race, which came as no surprise. The surprise was James Heuneman's appearance at the town clerk's office and his demand for nomination papers the same afternoon.

This time, it was Millicent who carried the news. Faith was beginning to think she should put some tables and chairs in her catering kitchen, since so many people seemed to regard it as an outpost of the Minuteman Café. Millicent was ostensibly there to get Faith to sign up to work on Penny Bartlett,'s campaign.

“A spoiler, plain and simple. James Heuneman knew that Penny intended to run!" Millicent bit down viciously on the large oatmeal raisin cookie Faith had the good manners to offer her with a cup of coffee.

“Won't he take votes away from Alden rather than Penny? He's a businessman of some sort, too, isn't he? I would have thought he represented the same constituency."

“He's a lawyer, not that it matters. What he'll do is take votes away from both of them and 'n all likelihood win. People who think Alden is a little beyond the pale but has some good ideas regarding fiscal matters '11 vote for James, and people who think Penny is nice bum_ a bit too liberal—not to mention being a woman—will vote for Heuneman, too. That's why we've got to do everything we can to help her get elected. I'm putting you down for leafleting and telephone calls. I don't expect you to hold up a sign with all the children you have." Millicent made it sound as if Faith was the old woman in the shoe or some other wanton.

“But surely, being a woman—and the sole woman to have won the Bronze Musket Award twice in one lifetime—should help her in this day and age." The Bronze Musket Award was given annually to an Aleford citizen who had contributed above and beyond the call of mere duty to the well-being of the town. Recipients were held in special regard, and any citizen given the choice between the tasteful embossed Bronze Musket plaques and the shiny Oscars of the impending Hollywood invasion would not hesitate for a moment to snatch the former.

“This day and age is not so different from that day and age as you may think, Faith. Remember, nobody knows what you're marking on your ballot in the voting booth, and you can say anything you want afterward. It's my opinion the vast majority of the electorate, even in Aleford, still isn't sure about women in office.”

Millicent was a constant source of amazement. Faith had never suspected this feminist streak, but upon reflection, it made sense. No one believed more ardently in the power of women, - especially as personified by Millicent McKinley, than the lady herself.

“What about Bea Hoffman?" Faith asked. "She got elected."

“She ran unopposed, remember? And the men in town probably figured one female on the board wouldn't make much difference—but two! Why now we're getting dangerously close to a majority!"

“Do you think that's why James is running?"

“Absolutely not. That's about the one thing I am sure about in this election. His wife is an active member of NOW and the Heunemans are the ones who got the recreation department to start the girls' soccer program. James is one of the coaches. No, I can't figure out why he wants to run. It's a complete mystery. He's such a Milquetoast—which could be another reason some people would vote for him. He won't open his mouth, just vote with Bea and keep the board balanced.”

Faith had a sudden irrational image of the board as a giant seesaw with slight James Heuneman, pale-faced, his dun-colored hair receding ever backward from his often furrowed brow, high in the air on one end and Beatrice Hoffman, large, pigeon-breasted, and given to brightly colored poplin shirtwaists, stuck on the ground at the other.

“Well," Faith told her visitor as she fetched the dough that had been rising, gave it a firm punch, and started to knead it—hoping her abtions might suggest work to do and a "mustn't keep you" exit line from Millicent—"Tom and I are happy to do whatever wecan to help Penny get elected. She has done so much for the town, particularly the children. I still find it hard to believe there would be anyone who wouldn't vote for her."

“Fortunately, she lives in North Aleford, too," Millicent remarked, taking another cookie and, as Faith told her husband later, showing absolutely no inclination to get on her broomstick.

“Why is that fortunate?" Faith gave the dough a resounding smack.

“You know what they're like up there. Then again, how could you? Not being from here, I mean. I don't like to sound catty, especially about my neighbors?' The "especially about my neighbors" part was right, anyway, Faith thought.

“But there is a tendency for the residents of North Aleford to feel they're a teensy bit better than the rest of the town. It's one of the oldest sections—not as old as mine, of course, but old—and the houses are impressive, covering the hill the way they do. Then, of course, they have their own residents' association, which we have to make sure endorses Penny. Remind them how she got them their playground on Whipple Road. Alden lives up there, too—in his father's house. When Penny got married, she moved several streets away and has stayed in that house, even after her husband died. To be sure, no one thought for a moment she'd move back in with Alden. Poor Penny. She has been widowed for a long time. It was a real love match. She's always said she could never find anyone like Francis.”

Faith had been to Penny Bartlett's house on several occasions. It was a large Victorian that contradicted Faith's prior association of Victorian houses with crowded, dark rooms, memories of antimacassars and aspidistras still haunting the corners. Penny's house was filled with light. There was stained glass, plenty of odd-shaped windows, and gingerbread trim, but the Bartletts had cleared away the huge trees and monstrous shrubs shadowing the house and let in the sun. The house was painted a warm buttercup yellow, with deep green, almost black, shutters and white trim.

She wanted to ask Millicent why it was a foregone conclusion that Penny wouldn't move back in with her brother. It obviously had something to do with why they didn't speak to each other. Millicent rarely responded to questions, though, preferring to be the recipient of information and choosing what she would share. But the woman had wolfed down two of Faith's cookies and a large mug of coffee. It was worth a try.

“Did Penny and Alden have some sort of quarrel? I've heard they don't speak to one another."

“Yes, I believe I have heard something like that. To be more precise, Faith dear—and it is so important to be precise, don't you agree?—Penny doesn't speak to Alden. He's constantly making outrageous remarks in her presence. Howsomever, these things are all ancient history, and we must concentrate on our present goal.”

Effectively shut out, as well as reprimanded, Faith could only think to comment, "It's a shame Penny never had any children. She's so wonderful with them.”

Millicent looked down at the counter. "Francis Bartlett had some sort of plumbing problem," she said vaguely. Doling out this information as a sop for withholding the rest?

Now how on earth did she find that out? Faith almost found herself asking Miss McKinley, maidenly reticence not withstanding, but to her relief, Millicent stood up abruptly, brushed the crumbs off her plaid Pendleton suit, put on her gloves, and said, "I can't sit here all day chitchatting, my dear:' And she left with one last parting glance of annoyance in Faith's direction for having wasted her time, diverting her from her mission.

Faith put the loaves she'd formed to rise again. All in a row, the rounded mounds looked like a series of low foothills. That reminded her of North Aleford. She was well acquainted with the way certain residents of this area of town regarded themselves. Maybe it was living on a hill, like Beacon Hill. Did people who looked down on the rest of the town eventually come to look down on them in other ways? Something about being top dog, top of the heap, king of the hill?

She thought wearily of working on Penny's campaign with Millicent, apparently the self-anointed campaign manager. The election was to be held March 26. If, as she hoped, she got the contract to cater the movie shoot, she'd be in the midst of the job and Tom would have to bear the brunt of the campaign responsibilities. She felt more cheerful. It was true that politics made strange bedfellows, but seldom ones who kicked half the night and hogged the blankets as much as Millicent did.

Faith had catered for shoots in New York, and she was quick to get her name in to Alan Morris. He arranged to come by the kitchens for a tasting later that week on one of his flying visits through town. Faith was ready for him.

“Great," he said, referring perhaps both to the attractive lady in front of him and the mouthful of warm pizzette with pears, brie, and caramelized onions (see recipe on page 326) he'd just swallowed. Faith had let her shining blond hair grow longer over the winter and now it grazed her chin in a simple blunt cut. She'd diligently lost the weight she'd put on in pregnancy, and at thirty-two, she caused as many heads to turn as she had at twenty-two, a fact that, while diminishing somewhat in importance over the years, still didn't bother her in the slightest. After the initial shock of that milestone birthday, her thirtieth, she was enjoying being thirtysomething and firmly believed the best ten years of a woman's life were between thirty-nine and forty, which gave her something to anticipate.

Alan was now speedily devouring a plateful of spinach lasagna with a three-cheese béchamel sauce, while keeping a close eye on the medley of Have Faith desserts beckoning from the counter next to him: flour-less chocolate cake with raspberry coulis, a steaming fruit grantiné, and crisp dark molasses spice cookies (see recipe on page 329). He smiled. "Max is really going to be happy." From the relief in his voice, it was no secret that keeping Max happy was Alan Morris's most important job.

Max was Maxwell Reed, the director of the film. At fifty-two, he was both a legend and an enigma in Tinseltown. Known as the "New Jersey Fellini," owing to his origins as the son of a wealthy shoe manufacturer from Montclair, Reed made obscure but critically acclaimed films, often in black and white. While he was the subject of a shelf full of biographies and critical studies in Europe, he'd received little recognition in his native land. He took great pains to make it clear this bothered him not at all, but the Word on the street was that he needed a big commercial success to keep attracting backers. And the movie about to be shot in Ale- ford had to be it. No matter how much Vincent Canby and The New York Times loved it, if it didn't do at least $9 million in wide release the first weekend, Reed would be yesterday's news for the foreseeable future and could watch his films move from "New and Recommended" to "Cult" in the video stores.

Mercurial, with mood swings so rapid that a sentence could start on an up note and plunge two words later to despair, Max Reed had attracted a group of actors, actresses, and crew who slavishly followed him from film to film, deeming it an honor to work with the master. He rewarded their loyalty with his, making film after film with the same individuals, often playing roles himself, yet never duplicating an effect. His most famous film, Maggot Morning, cast his constant companion, the beautiful Evelyn O'Clair, as an elderly homeless woman. She won an Academy Award for best actress and went on to other roles, keeping herself available, however, for Max's films. Speculation was that fresh from her sizzling triumph for another director in Body Parts, Max wouldn't be hiding Evelyn's attributes under any bushel baskets or behind shopping bags the way he had done quite literally in Maggot, as it was called in the trades.

Maxwell Reed was also known for his obsession with security on the set. Often the actors themselves didn't know the name or plot of the movie they were shooting until it was released. He'd broken with custom this time and let it be known he was making a modern reinterpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. The name of the picture was A. He'd also hired two actors who'd never appeared in any of his films previously but who were box-office magic. Over T9 Nants and Evians at the Polo Lounge, heads were nodding just perceptibly—Max was desperate indeed. If he pulled it off, the same nods could later be translated as "I told you so.”

The first ringer was Caleb "Cappy" Camson, star of the phenomenally successful TV series "1-800-5551212" when he was a teenager, later making a graceful transition to films. His tanned, well-developed physique, thick, dark, always slightly tousled curls, and deep brown eyes with the requisite gold flecks guaranteed any movie in which he was cast at least initially large audiences. Cappy had been in the business long enough to know his limitations and ventured from romantic comedy only for a comic romance. But nobody turned down the chance to work with Max Reed—not even Cappy. He'd modified the curls and agreed to less flattering makeup in order to play the role of the tormented young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale.

Max's other orthodox move was to cast Caresse Carroll as Pearl, Hester Prynne's daughter. Eight-year-old Caresse would be playing a major role; it could be a stretch, but Caresse was a pro down to her toenails. At age four, she'd nagged her mother, Jacqueline, into auditioning her for commercials. "I can do that," she'd said, and hadn't looked back. She was the child of choice for a whole string of space alien and horror movies. "It may not be art, but I'm working," she told her mother at six. Currently, the trades labeled her "America's Sweetheart for the Nineties" after her gutsy portrayal of a little girl who saves the family split-level, after her parents lose their auto-plant jobs, by forming a recycling company that ends up employing most of the town. Caresse didn't have Shirley Temple's dimples or curly hair. In fact, her features werd a bit odd—straight, silken white-blond hair and large aquamarine eyes that Caresse was able to fill with tears, flash with fear, or twinkle with delight depending on the script. But it was her smile that was instantly recognizable to millions of Americans. Warm, engaging, it was the kind of smile that, well, gosh darn it, made you just have to smile right back. An eminently bankable smile.

Casting her as.Pearl months before, Max planned to use Caresse's pale luminescence to personify the name. The child was a metaphor, he told Caresse and her mother, for the essential innocence of Hester Prynne's act, a jewel beyond price to be worn proudly at her mother's breast, next to the scarlet letter of her supposed shame. Hester herself was Everywoman and Pearl, Everychild. Jacqueline and Caresse nodded solemnly when he'd related this to them in his office early in the fall. Neither had the faintest idea what he was talking about, yet, whatever it was, they both had no doubt. Caresse could do it.

Max knew Caresse was older than Hawthorne's Pearl, but audiences might find it hard to believe a three-year-old could discourse as eloquently as he'd planned on the meaning of life and existence of God. The director had told his assistant, Alan, that Hawthorne's book was a canvas—a masterpiece—to which they would essentially be adding brushstrokes, such as increasing Pearl's age.

Sitting silently in a chair next to Max since the Car-rolls' arrival was Evelyn O'Clair, who would, of course, play the role of Hester Prynne. Max had cast himself as Chillingworth, the older husband who returns after a long absence to find his wife the outcast of the community for the adulterous conception of a child. The director had felt a little awkward explaining all this to Caresse. He wasn't used to children, although he would have to be, since Evelyn was about to give birth, fortunately well before the picture started.

Caresse was getting bored with the meeting. It was a pretty cheesy office, no bar or any evidence of snacks—not even an entertainment system. Just a big desk, a couple of chairs, a couch, and walls that must have been newly painted, since the smell of the stark white paint filled the air. The only thing hanging on them so far was a large calendar. He had a window, though, and a basket of fruit.

Her mother had been the one who was hot to do the movie and was being totally spastic about how lucky Caresse was to work with Maxwell Reed. Caresse herself wasn't so sure about the project. To begin with, the script sucked, a real downer. She'd even tried reading the book but couldn't get past the first page. Her taste in literature ran more to Sweet Valley High, but she knew it wouldn't make a major motion picture. She tried to quell the feeling that accepting this role might not have been the best career move by concentrating on the fact that she would be acting with big names for a big name. Caresse looked over at her mother, who was gazing at the director with open adoration. Caresse felt sorry for her. She needed a man. Caresse wouldn't be surprised if the last time Jacqueline had had sex was when she'd conceived her daughter—with whom, Caresse didn't know. It was the one thing Mom would never discuss.

But definitely Jacqueline wasn't getting any. Not that Caresse was anxious for some old fart to enter their lives and start telling her what to do. She'd trained her mother to know her place, and truthfully, Mom didn't really understand the Business.

Enough was enough. Caresse Carroll turned on her famous smile, tossed her shining hair away from herface, and interrupted Max's convoluted explanation. "Don't worry, Mr. Reed, I know all this stuff. See you in March."

“Call me Max:' he replied, and the meeting came to an end.

Evelyn had not said a Ovoid-not even good-bye.

Two

Crime is for the iron-nerved .. .

Until the call went out for extras, Aleford wasn't sure what it thought about having all these movie people around. There was some surprise at finding neighbors who had affected an attitude of only mild interest now camped out so as to be first in line. But this place had been resolutely claimed by one of the most uninterested of all, Millicent Revere McKinley.

“Maybe she needs the money. The pay is astonishing," related Pix, who had rushed to Have Faith's kitchens to report the news.

“Sure, like Imelda needed shoes," Faith retorted. "She just wants to be where the action is, like most of the rest of Aleford, and the greater Boston area, from what I hear."

“Well, how often does a movie get made in our ownbackyards? I'd try out myself, except I get stage fright painting scenery."

“Why don't you reconsider my offer? Then you'd be on the set every day behind the scenes."

“But, Faith, how could I possibly work for you? You know what I'm like in the kitchen.”

Pix's family was used to having emergency microwaved frozen inners w henever something inexplicable happened to the tuna-noodle or hamburger casseroles that composed the normal Miller bill of fare.

“I keep telling you. You wouldn't have to do any cooking. In fact, I wouldn't let you do any cooking. I have other people to help me, most especially Niki." She waved toward her assistant, who was covering a stack of paper-thin sheets of phyllo dough with a damp towel to keep them from drying out while she spread melted butter lavishly over the one in front of her. "What I need you for is that steel-trap mind of yours—bookkeeping, ordering, counting forks and napkins.”

Pix's face was contorted by a mixture of emotions: Could she? Should she? Would she? She fidgeted about on her long, shapely legs. Pix was an attractive woman with short brown hair, but she tended to downplay her natural gifts with drooping skirts and ancient pullovers.

“I'll think about it," she promised.

“No," Faith said with surprising firmness, "You've been saying this to me for months. You've talked to Sam, talked to the kids, probably even talked to the dogs" Besides Mark, a college freshman, Samantha, a junior in high school, and sixthgrader Danny, the Miller household included a large number of golden retrievers. "I'll give you until tomorrow morning, and if I don't have an answer, I'll have to start advertising the position. We start the movie job in less than two weeks."

“Okay," Pix agreed.

“Okay what? Okay you'll give me an answer or okay you'll do it?"

“Okay I'll do it," Pix mumbled bravely.

After Pix left, Niki asked Faith, "What do you think made her agree? I've been pretty sure she wouldn't after going back and forth all this time. Do you think it's the chance to be on the set?"

“Maybe, but I should have been tougher weeks ago. She's wanted to do it all along. I think she's been afraid of messing up—and when you work for a friend, that's a pretty scary thought. Anyway, she'll be fine, and deep down—I hope—knows it.”

Niki put a generous spoonful of the walnut pesto and ricotta filling she'd made at the top of a strip of the dough before deftly folding it like a flag. They were restocking the freezer with several varieties of phyllo triangles for hors d'oeuvres.

“I'm glad Pix is going to be here. She reminds me of the room mother I had in third grade."

“She probably was the room mother," Faith said. "I don't think there's a town in this area code and beyond that doesn't know to call Pix Miller when they need a volunteer. She's still running the preschool PTA, and her youngest will be shaving soon. Much as I admire what she does, and thank God she'll keep on doing it, I'm going to like handing her a paycheck."

“Mrs. MacDonald!"

“Mrs. MacDonald what?"

“That was the name of my room mother. I used to elbow other kids out of the way so I could hold her hand on field trips, and I would put myself to sleep at night dreaming about being one of her freckle-faced kids. She used to make great devil's food cakes." Niki's nor-smile crossed her lips.

What was it about Massachusetts, Faith wondered, that caused its adult population to wax nostalgic about their childhoods at the drop of a beanie? She'd never noticed this tendency in New York—except maybe in someone who'd grown up in the Bronx.

“I'm not saying she might not have been swayed by the movie job. We're talking about Pix now, Niki, not your sainted Mrs. MacDonald."

“Who wouldn't? I'm pretty excited myself. Cappy Camson. Close your eyes and think of him in those Calvin Klein ads." Niki's sharp edge returned.

“I can do it with my eyes wide open." Faith laughed.

“He wouldn't have been my choice to play the minister, especially a Puritan. I don't remember the book much except for Hester and her red letter, but wasn't Dimmesdale sort of a nerd?"

“That's how I'd recalled him, too, but I reread the book when I heard about the movie, and it's not a bad role for Camson. Maybe he's a little too healthy-looking, but he should be able to portray a man torn between passion and conscience. And Dimmesdale was described as handsome—even the same color hair and eyes as Camson has. I wonder how Reed's going to interpret the character. He has to create something different to keep people from expecting Cappy to get the girl."

“Chillingworth was the villain, right? Wasn't he a minister, too? Maybe I have him confused with Dimmesdale."

“You do. He was a doctor, well versed also in the ancient arts of alchemy." Faith rubbed her hands together, leaned over the simmering stockpot on the stove, and looked wicked in what she judged to be a fair approximation of the doctor at his cauldron of henbane and the like. "He arrives in Boston on the same day the Puritans have put Hester and her baby on the scaffold for show and-tell, only she won't reveal the name of the father. Chillingworth joins the crowd and indicates that she shouldn't recognize him, which she already had instantly because of his ugly face and the fact he had one shoulder higher than the other. He was much older than she was, and she had married him back in England after her parents died because she had no one else to turn to and he had some sort of mesmerizing effect on her. Except she did tell him she didn't love him. After that, he decided they would emigrate, and he sent her on ahead. But then he was shipwrecked, captured by Indians, and whatever else could delay someone in those days before car phones, leaving her on her own for two years. She and Arthur Dimmesdale fell in love. The rest you know.”

Faith took a tray covered with the phyllo triangles and put it in the freezer. When she returned, Niki picked up where they had left off.

“It's coming back to me. Roger Chillingworth moves in with the Reverend, right? And sucks his blood or something—and in the end, Dimmesdale is so eaten up with guilt, he tells all."

“Sort of. Roger Chillingworth moves in with the minister to try to cure the illness we all know is not the common cold, but remorse and shame. The doctor's convinced the young man is hiding something, which he is. Meanwhile, Roger also haunts Hester, who makes a fair living doing exquisite needlework, and tells her his mission in life is to discover the man who has cuckolded him. If she warns her lover, Chilling-worth will kill him or worse when he does find out. Hester ends up keeping more secrets than the chemists at Coca-Cola, since she, of course, still loves Arthur. But she is not at all ashamed ofWhat they've done. It was a pure act before God, and he fellow townspeople are the ones with the problem. Max ell Reed may very well be onto something. It really is a very modern story. Hester manages to convince Dimmesdale she's right, or maybe his flesh is weak, and they decide to run away together, except Chillingworth discovers what ship they're sailing on, and the minister realizes he has to confess to everyone. He literally bares his bosom, revealing, some of the crowd swears, the letter A branded in his flesh, and thus escapes his tormentor, Chilling-worth. He dies in Hester's arms."

“I can't wait to see the movie. If it's anywhere near as good as your synopsis, it's Oscar time”

Still in the mood, Faith mused, "It does offer a director like Maxwell Reed a lot. Hester is a great character. Hawthorne suggests that as an outcast, Hester derives from the scarlet letter some strange power to see what people are truly Iike, as opposed to how they present themselves. But it's also a curse—she sees evil everywhere, like the husband in Hawthorne's short story `Young Goodman Brown: " Faith was having fun. American Literature 101 was coming back in full force. "Then there's Pearl, trading insults at the age of three with the goody-two-shoes village children and exploring theological issues with her mom. And the governor's sister. I forget her name, but she's later executed as a witch, Hawthorne tells us. She keeps asking Hester and Dimmesdale to go dance in the forest with her. Marta Haree is playing the role and she should be terrific"

“I read in Parade magazine that she's into fortune- telling and tarot cards. Maybe that's why Max picked her."

“She's been in almost all his movies, but this casting does seem particularly apt. Caresse Carroll is a little old for Pearl and she doesn't look anything like the description in the book—the scarlet letter come to life—but Reed must have his reasons," Faith mused.

“I'll have to read the book this time, not just the Cliffs Notes. Sorry," Niki said, correctly interpreting Faith's expression of disapproval, "we weren't all English majors in the making, and as I remember, it was assigned just when we were busiest at the bakery--the week before Greek Easter."

“It's not as though it was a long book, Niki, like Love Story or one of your other favorites."

“Can it, boss.”

Niki liked working for Faith.

Two weeks later, the staff of Have Faith climbed into the canteen truck Faith had rented for the duration of the shoot. The movie crew took a break in the middle of the morning, and the truck was filled with a variety of hot and cold drinks, several kinds of muffins, fresh fruit, and bagels with various spreads. Later, lunch would be served, also on location, but inside a heated tent. The crew would return to the Marriott for dinner, where Alan Morris had arranged for Max to watch the dailies. Faith would provide dinner only if they were doing a night shoot.

In addition, the caterers were responsible for the craft services table, which would be kept stocked round the clock with essential snacks such as pretzels, M & M's, fruit, granola bars, Twinkies, soft drinks, and oceans of coffee. This would be set up permanently inthe barn in case of inclement weather. Pix had agreed that keeping it supplied would be something she could handle. "I just have to think what I put in the kids' lunch boxes—the days I'm a g mother and thinking nutritionally and the days when the bad mother throws in a Ring-Ding because the bus Is at the door.”

As Faith ran over all the plans the night before, she told Tom it was a job that posed a unique challenge, even though it was a relatively small shoot.

“How so?"

“Well, most of the crew is pure California by way of Manhattan, so this means they know what pastrami is supposed to taste like, but they're still going to want their sprouts—plus, there will be macrobiotic types who want only sprouts. Then the people they've hired locally aren't going to want either. They think low-fat' is some sort of Madison Avenue gimmick to sell things that don't taste very good."

“Which is partly true," Tom interrupted. "The cheese spread we had last week at the Millers, that Pix was so excited about, because it was so good for us, tasted like wallpaper paste—not that I've sampled that delicacy myself. Although there was a boy in my first-grade class who ate paste. You know that thick, gloppy white kind. The teacher had a big jar of it. I wonder what happened to him. Probably won a Nobel Prize."

“More likely owns a chain of stationery stores," Faith said. Native nostalgia again. At the moment, she was not in the mood for reminiscences of Tom's beloved Norwell school days. If he was to be believed, his childhood in this hamlet on the South Shore, about forty miles south of Boston, was a cross between Christopher Robin's Hundred Acre Wood and Tom Sawyer's Hannibal, Missouri. Normally, her husband's stories fascinated her. Growing up at the same time in the same country, they might as well have been living on different planets, for all the similarities in upbringings. But tonight, her mind was on the present, not the past.

“I'm not worried about the logistics or that everyone won't find something they want to eat. I'll have a good hearty soup each day for the New Englanders and plenty of fresh veggies for the rest. It's going to be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out."

“A play within a play? And if you add what they're going to do to poor Nathaniel's masterpiece, yet another play within that."

“I thought you liked Reed's movies."

“I do, but I also like The Scarlet Letter—and for starters, Hester Prynne was a brunette."

“Typical," Faith countered. "If he wasn't filming a New England classic, you wouldn't feel so protective. And in any case, you can't fool me, Thomas Fairchild. I know how starstruck you are. Play your cards right and I'll let you come and stuff some pita bread someday.”

It was true Tom was a movie buff, but his torches were lighted by Garbo, Dietrich, Colbert, and the like. Still, Faith was sure he wouldn't mind getting a closer look at Evelyn O'Clair, blond tresses or not.

“I would like to see how they film a movie, and I'm not planning to be in the crowd scene with the rest of Aleford. Even if I wanted to, it wouldn't be worth the flak. Half the town would applaud my participation in a community event, half would have me abandoning my congregation for the siren call of the silver screen, and half would say I was stuck on myself."

“We'd better get some sleep, darling. Your halves don't add up. Anyway, tomorrow's going to be a long day for me and I don't know what's on your ecclesiastical plate. Besides, as soon as we close our eyes, our little bundle of joy will be calling for her morning snack."

“Think we could train Ben to feed her, now that she's taking a bottle? You know, give the lad a sense of responsibility."

“He would be responsible all right—responsible for restoring the natural order of things to a house with only one child.”

Faith honked the canteen truck's raucous horn at what had to be an out-of-state driver, despite the Massachusetts plates. A native would have known that a posted twenty-five mph zone meant the local police chief had some extra signs lying around going to waste and the posted speed was in no way meant to be taken seriously. Making a sharp left onto River Road, toward the shoot, she smiled as she remembered the conversation the night before. It wasn't that Ben was a little monster. He might not even be terribly jealous; he had been known to let Amy grab his finger in her mighty clutch. Ben had just liked things the way they were and saw no need to change. There was some logic to his thinking. Why rock the boat?

The truck was what was rocking now as they reached the Pingrees' long, rutted driveway. By the time they finished filming, the combination of heavy usage and possible heavy March downpours would require all-terrain vehicles. Maybe Alan Morris would have it paved before then. He seemed to pave the way for most things.

Faith had come out several days earlier to talk about where to set up and had supervised the erection of the tent the previous afternoon, so she knew what the place looked like. She was not prepared, however, for the army of trucks, trailers, people, wires, and equipment that filled the New England landscape. She pulled up to the barn, which was a good distance from the house, and stopped. Alan had told her they would be shooting interior shots to begin with and that the noise of her arrival wouldn't disturb them. A short time later, the crew took its break. For the next forty minutes, the staff of Have Faith was frantically filling orders.

“A large tea, no sugar, and cream, not milk," demanded a voice accustomed to being obeyed. `And one of those muffins—warm, but not hot."

“Corny!" cried Faith in sudden recognition.

“Cornelia," the voice replied automatically, and its owner pushed aside several underlings to get a better view of the individual using the much-loathed moniker of her adolescence.

“It's Faith. Faith Sibley, only I'm Fairchild now. Your old Dalton friend. My company is catering the shoot."

“Faith! Of course, how delightful to see you. So you decided to be a cook." Having pushed Faith finely "downstairs," Cornelia added a hasty, "So much catching up to do. Perhaps a word tomorrow? Today is just too-too." Her eyes conveyed the enormity of her responsibilities—responsibilities that words could not begin to describe.

“What is your job on the film?" Faith asked. She wasn't going to let Corny get away without learning this vital piece of information.

“Max's production assistant," responded her old schoolmate in a tone of voice, similar, Faith later told her sister, Hope, to the one an apostle might have used to describe washing Christ's feet or passing Him the matzos at the Last Supper.

Faith was tempted to reply, "Oh, a gofer?" after the "cook" business, but they were grown-ups now, so she had to be satisfied with saying, "That's terrific, Corny—oops ... Cornelia. See you tomorrow, then”

And with that, Cornelia took her statuesque self away to minister to her master's needs.

Cornelia Stuyvesant had been in school with Faith since kindergarten and came from an old-money New York family, as her name implied—or rather, declared. She had always been an athletic girl and played a fierce game of tennis—also a fierce game of lacrosse, a fierce game of field hockey, and so on. She moved beautifully, with the confidence good health and a healthy portfolio supply. She had never bothered much with her appearance, still sporting, Faith noticed, the same shoulder-length brown hair cum headband of yore. Yet the tortoiseshell glasses—in the past, usually held together with a paper clip at the side—had been replaced somewhere along the line with contacts. Slim-hipped, flat-chested, tall, Cornelia was made for Armani, but she stuck resolutely to Brooks, with an occasional wild fling at Lauren.

Of course the first thing Faith wanted to do when she got home later that afternoon was call Hope, one class behind them in school and possessing a seemingly in-exhaustive memory for detail. But what with baths, supper, quality time for Amy, Ben, and Tom, it was nine o'clock before she was able to pick up the phone to call her sister.

Hope came through with flying colors. Faith wouldn't have been surprised to discover her sister had a right frontal Rolodex implanted in her brain. In this instance, however, Hope's recollections went beyond where Corny lived, family income, phone number, and what she had worn to the 1974 Winter Cotillion. "She hated you, Faith. How could you forget that?"

“Don't you think hate is a little strong? I do remember some friendly rivalry, but hate?"

“Come on! She started the Faith Sibley Hate Club in second grade and even made up membership cards, but she could only get poor, sad Susan Harvey to join—you know, I'll buy you an ice cream if you'll be my friend, Harvey—and when everybody sided with you, it simply made Corny madder. Then the teacher heard about it and made her apologize in front of the whole class. I don't know how you lived to reach adulthood."

“I do remember that! Maybe I've just wanted to forget it all these years. But Corny seems to be in a good place now and I'm sure that's all in the dim, dim past."

“What's dim is you, sis. Corny was always the green-eyed monster personified. What about the time in ninth grade when you took her boyfriend away and she set off a stink bomb in the bathroom and told the headmaster she saw you do it."

“She really wasn't cut out for that type of thing—too transparent. You could always tell when she was lying. Her face would get all red.”

The scene in the headmaster's office flashed on a screen in front of Faith's eyes and she blinked, protesting to Hope, "Besides, she had no reason to be jealous. I didn't take her boyfriend away. Bobby Conklin never even looked at her. She just told everybody they were an item."

“Anyway, be careful, Faith. Think of Comy's famous temper as one of those inactive volcanos that suddenly erupts and wipes out a village or two with no warning. On the surface, she may look like a reasonable adult—and sure, she has a good job. Being a production assistant on one of Reed's movies is something people would kill for. Still, I'm sure you were the last school chum she wanted to run into—during this lifetime, for a start—and puffs of telltale steam may start to escape."

“You're waxing very metaphorical for a business major. And I think you're exaggerating more than a tad. It was all years ago. She was quite cordial, and we're going to get together tomorrow. It will be fun to find out all about everybody in the movie. And I'm going to make a conscious effort to avoid calling her Corny, which was not the greatest nickname. Parents should think of these things."

“Speaking of parents, her mother hated you, too. How could you forget Corny's birthday party when Mrs. Stuyvesant—"

“Enough!" Faith shrieked in protest. Sometimes Hope's memory was a little too good.

As she hung up the phone, Tom mumbled, "Who or what is Corny?" from his side of the bed, where he'd been drowsily reading Paul Tillich.

“An old school friend who's working on the movie. Her real name is Cornelia."

“Were you and Hope the only ones at that school to have normal names? What was with those people Buffy, Kiki, Dede, Muffin?"

“Well, dear, they'd already used up the good names for the dogs," Faith countered archly, and turned off the light.

It wasn't until the following week that Cornelia and Faith were able to get together. Faith had reluctantly risen a little earlier to give herself some leeway to change her mind a few times about what to wear for the reunion. Sure, she'd told Hope bygones were bygones, but that didn't mean she wanted to be caught in last year's hemlines, no matter what Anna Wintour said about anything goes.

She settled on a charcoal Anne Klein knit turtleneck, an oversized matching cable-knit cardigan, and black wool crepe pants. Serviceable and chic. She was going to be working and so it wouldn't do to show up in silk. Over this, she'd wear her gray-and-white large-checked blanket coat today, instead of the Eddie Bauer down parka she'd reluctantly adopted as the indispensable, albeit ungainly, mainstay of her Aleford winter wardrobe. And she was still usually cold. Corny looked her best in jodhpurs and the like, Faith remembered, and had worn something similar the other day. Faith already had a million questions for her, starting with what Maxwell Reed was really like. But she'd phrase it in such a subtle way that Cornelia wouldn't realize it was a question she'd been asked hundreds of times before.

Alan Morris had introduced Faith to the director the first day, and Reed had come into the tent for lunch once; other times, he ate from trays reverently fetched by one of the PAs. The day he ate with the crew, faithful Cornelia at his side, he'd complimented Faith extravagantly on the meal, adding that if he wasn't careful, he'd gain a lot of weight in the next few weeks. "But of course I won't be," he'd said in chagrin, then turned away with sudden intensity—as if he'd finally realized how he wanted to end the ‘film and had to write it down before he forgot.

During the shoot, Amy was spending mornings with Arlene Maclean, where Faith picked her up after lunch, taking her back to work for the afternoon. She didn't want to bring the baby in the canteen truck, and what if she suddenly started screaming during a scene? Not that Amy was much of a screamer, more of a mewer, but motherhood had taught Faith one or two things, the most important of which being that all children are innately unpredictable. It wasn't anything to do with nature versus nurture. It was fact.

There was a baby on the set—or rather, two. Pearl as an infant was being played by twins from Natick, pretty pink-and-white babies who were even more docile than Amy. "The mother must sedate them," Faith told Niki, "the old `gin in the milk' trick." Whatever the cause, little Hillary and Valerie Phillips—" `Hill' and `Valley' we call them," Mrs. Phillips, warming up a bottle between takes, confided to Faith—were perfect.

Evelyn and Max's baby was, by coincidence, exactly the same age as Hawthorne's Pearl at the start of The Scarlet Letter—three months. But little Cordelia was installed in a lavish nursery with her own nanny at the house Max had rented for them in North Aleford. Faith wondered who had picked the baby's name: Cordelia, King Lear's good daughter. It would be interesting if it had been Max's choice. Another thing to ask Corny.

“You look awfully natty for ladling out soup, sweetheart," Tom noted as he helped Faith bundle the two kids into what seemed like thirty or forty pounds of outerwear. "Trying to land a part in the film?"

“I arranged to meet Cornelia for coffee after the break. She has some free time this morning at last, though she'll probably cancel again to impress me with how indispensable she is. It's what I suspect she was doing last week.”

It had not escaped Faith's notice that what Cornelia mostly seemed to do was run around getting things for Maxwell Reed, like endless bottles of his favorite Calistoga water, cold but not chilled, and boxes of imported glacéed fruits to nibble. The other production assistant working directly for Max, Sandra Wilson, was vying with Cornelia for the title of head handmaiden, and seemed to have the edge, since she was also Evelyn O'Clair's stand-in. There was no way Cornelia qualified for that. Sandra was eerily like Evelyn, although the poor man's version—no makeup; dressed in old jeans and T-shirts, except when they were checking the lighting. Then she emerged from the chrysalis costumed and cosmeticized, but still no O'Clair.

“Oh yes, your old school friend. I can see the two of you getting all misty over those happy golden years," Tom said mockingly. He knew very well how eager Faith had been for those golden years to pass as she sat and gazed out the windows of her Dalton classrooms at the teeming sidewalks below, infinitely more exciting than the Missouri Compromise, Arma, virumque, cano, or whatever else was being imparted within the walls. Cornelia had chafed at the bit, too, but mostly for the day to end so she could ride one of her beloved horses in Central Park.

A few hours later, Faith and Cornelia, gingerly holding hot cups of strong black coffee, were walking slowly across the large field in front of the Pingree house, toward the woods. Cornelia hadn't canceled; however, she had informed Faith sternly it would have to be a "working coffee." She was, rechecking locations for the scene where Hester waits for Dimmesdale in the woods and they decide to run off together.

“He's a genius, pure and simple.”

It was immediately clear that the challenge for Faith was not going to be getting Cornelia to talk about Maxwell Reed but getting her to talk about anything else.

“I've always admired his films, yet—" Faith wasn't allowed to finish her sentence. It could even be difficult to say anything at all, an unusual situation for Mrs. Fairchild..

“This is the third film I've been fortunate enough to work on, and I wouldn't dream of doing anything else. You must try to imagine, Faith dear, what it's like to sit and listen to him discuss his work." Corny's tone clearly implied that imagining would be all Faith would be doing.

Faith resolutely finished her earlier thought.

“This film seems a little different from the others—casting Cappy and Caresse. How do you think having such big names is going to affect the film? His other pictures have always been, well, a little like watching extremely good home movies shot by someone you know slightly.

Faith realized her choice of words—home movies—had not been the best, but oddly enough, Cornelia's face glowed with pleasure.

“That's what Max says! He would be happiest just walking the streets with a small video camera and capturing those moments no one else notices. Of course the public would never understand. But I don't think A will be any different from the others because of the casting. It's not an Evelyn O'Clair, Cappy Camson, or Caresse Carroll picture. It's a Maxwell Reed." The pleasant expression vanished with the acerbic tone of her voice.

They'd reached one of the brooks that crisscrossed the conservation land. The relatively warm weather had melted some of the ice and the banks were covered with mud. It didn't look very inviting, and as a spot for a romantic tryst, it ranked close to the tundra during a spring thaw. Corny loved it.

“Exactly what Max wants for the scene where Hester and Arthur renew their passion!" she enthused.

“I don't remember any mention of their making love—and wasn't Pearl around during the forest scene, too?"

“Faith, Faith:' Cornelia chided, "this is Max's interpretation, not Nathaniel Hawthorne's." Whoever he might be, Faith silently finished for her.

Cornelia was off and running. "Reality is an illusion as far as Max is concerned. Last night, he told me, `The world is a defiance of common sense.' I treasure those words—and the fact that he has always been able to confide in me about his work.”

René Magritte treasured those words, too, Faith recalled. There had been a review of an exhibit by the artist in last Friday's New York Times and Max must have seen it, as Faith had. It was possible the words entered his subconscious and he truly believed they were his own thoughts. Or not. But Corny believed and Faith wasn't about to mention any feet of clay. It was enough that Faith herself was suffering feet of mud—her new Cole-Haan boots were encrusted with the stuff.

“I think I have to get back and check on the lunch preparations," Faith said as Cornelia eyed the mucky path ahead with interest.

“I should be getting back, too," she said, abandoning the path not taken with a perceptible sigh. "I'm supposed to be helping Evelyn with her lines this morning."

“That must be fascinating." Faith would have been happy to spend time listening to Evelyn O'Clair's slightly husky, velvet voice try out various readings.

“Nothing fascinating about it," Cornelia complained. "The woman can barely remember her own telephone number. I can't imagine what Max sees in her. Actually, I can imagine, but he certainly doesn't talk to her!”

She suddenly lowered her voice, although the only potential eavesdroppers were a few gray squirrels and a solitary crow motionless on a tall pine.

“You may have heard that Evelyn took a long vacation in Europe last year?" Faith hadn't, but she nodded encouragingly. "Well, she was in Europe, only it wasn't for a vacation.”

Faith didn't need Corny's long pause to indicate emphasis. Her voice had underlined the words sufficiently. It would be on the final for sure.

“It wasn't?" she asked obediently.

“No, she was at a spa, if you know what I mean.”

Faith was pretty sure she didn't mean sixteen glasses of water a day and a seaweed wrap. "Was it alcohol or drugs, or did she have some other kind of breakdown?"

“That would be telling:' Corny said, smugly fastening every button on her unbared breast with annoying swiftness.

This was good gossip, but Faith knew there would be no more. The moment had passed. Preoccupied, Cornelia stomped steadfastly back toward the set, obviously thinking how much better a consort she would make. More like the virgin queen, Faith reflected. Anyway for now, and quite likely forever, Miss Stuyvesant would have to be content with the crumbs from Evelyn's table.

They were both surprised to see Max himself at the canteen truck with Sandra Wilson and some of the rest of the crew, instead of sequestered in his trailer or on the set as usual. They were laughing and it was obvious from their good humor that the morning's shoot had been successful.

“Mistress Fairchild—Faith, if I may—whatever these are, they are wicked and as addictive as ... well, let's merely say addictive. You are going to have to cater all my films," Max called out.

Faith was inordinately pleased. It was nice, of course, when the Ladies Alliance at First Parish praised the tiny buckwheat walnut rolls she filled with thin slices of Virginia ham and a touch of honey mustard, but to hear it from a famous person—this was something else again. She just might have to become a Maxwell Reed groupie herself, no matter whose quotations he cribbed.

Cornelia had immediately insinuated herself into the group around the director, and from the way she regarded Sandra, her fellow PA, it was apparent to Faith that Evelyn O'Clair was not the only fly in the pancake makeup so far as Corny was concerned.

They were all diverted by the arrival of Caresse Carroll with her mother literally following at her heels. Caresse was running, and when she stopped, planting herself firmly in front of Max, it was clear it wasn't the exercise that had brought roses to her cheeks, but annoyance—a lot of annoyance.

Caresse was very, very angry.

“Who the hell do you think you are kicking me off your stinking movie! Do you think I wanted to work for an old weirdo like you!" she shrieked. Her whole body was rigid and the only part moving was her lips. She looked like the little girl she'd played in Adopted by Aliens after they'd snatched her body.

Her mother put her arm around Caresse's shoulder, attempting to lead her away, whispering something that sounded like "Now, dear, it's not worth ..."

“Get away from me!" Caresse rudely pushed her mother, sending her almost tumbling to the ground, and without pausing for breath continued her tirade. Jacqueline Carroll had tears in her eyes.

“We have a contract, mister." Caresse took a step forward and was shaking a tiny finger that threatened to become a fist at Max. "And you'd better remember that or you'll be sorry!"

“Are you finished?" Max asked quietly. He didn't look at all disturbed, yet the words were menacing in their steeliness. He might just as well have pulled a whip from his coat pocket and snapped it in the air. Caresse stood still, openmouthed, but not for long.

“No, I am not. Fuck you! And fuck the whole movie!"

“Are you finished?" he said in the same voice, a voice that belied his casual stance. He folded his arms across his chest. The cast and crew remained frozen in position. Nobody wanted to miss this scene.

“I'm waiting. Are you quite finished?”

Caresse hadn't said a word.

“Good. Now then, I have no idea who told you you were off the film. You're not. It's true I have been rethinking a few of Pearl's scenes and we may use the infant in somewhere we had originally thought we would use the older child. But nothing, I repeat nothing, has been decided."

“Bullshit," Caresse said, looking Max straight in the eye. 'Bullshe-it." She drew the word out and walked over to her mother. "Come on, Mom, we're outta here. If he wants me, he can call my agent."

“Much as I admire the exit, I can't let you do it, Caresse" Max approached Jacqueline and softened his tone, "Believe me, Mrs. Carroll, I don't know how the rumor started and I will find out. Caresse is listed on tomorrow's call sheet and I want her to rehearse with Marta after lunch. Please let's not allow this misunderstanding to get out of control.”

Caresse had continued to walk off after Max's first words, and now she called back to her mother, "Mom! Are you coming or not?" Jacqueline gave Max an encouraging nod and murmured, "I think she's a little overtired"—that time-honored apology of mothers everywhere.

“Yeah, like Nero's ma said when he played with matches, `The child simply needs more sleep,' " whispered Niki to Faith, who thereupon had to walk away to recover her composure. She took the opportunity to make a visit to the "honey wagon," as the toilets were quaintly called. She passed Marta Haree, who had been watching the whole scene from a distance. There was no mistaking the sardonic amusement on her face, and Faith thought Marta was someone she'd like to get to know better. Certainly the woman was extraordinary-looking. Her fine red frizzled hair surrounded her head like a Pre-Raphaelite aureole. Her face was pale, with mostly delicate features—high cheekbones, a pointed chin, almond-shaped green eyes. The exception was her nose: large, slightly crooked, dominant. It was hard to tell whether she was heavy or the bulk was an illusion created by the many layers of clothing she affected—trailing gypsy like garments in bright colors. Surely Marta Haree was a stage name, but it suited her. There was something a bit secretive—and seductive—about her. She didn't mix with the other actors, spending her time alone in her trailer or with the director. Like her weight, her age was difficult to calculate. In some of Reed's movies, she played octogenarians; in others, ingenues. Faith put her somewhere in her late forties or fifties and decided there was more than a trace of Magyar in Marta.

Returning to the catering tent to put the final touches on the black bean soup and other things on the menu for lunch, Faith passed Max and Evelyn, arm in arm, deep in conversation. They stopped when they saw Faith, and Evelyn smiled engagingly. "Could you prepare a tray of something delicious for me to eat in my trailer, dear? I missed the morning break and I'm absolutely ravenous." It was difficult to imagine calories put to better use, and Faith told her she'd see to the tray immediately.

“Thank you. One of those nice little PAs will be along to get it." Evelyn bestowed yet another smile on Faith and then continued to stroll with Max. They picked up their conversation when Faith was almost out of earshot. His words were muffled, but Evelyn's were piercingly clear. "I'm tired of telling you, Maxie. I don't care what you want. Once and for all, I want her off the picture”

Back at the tent, Faith quickly put together a tray for Ms. O'Clair: a large, steaming bowl of black bean soup topped by a dollop of sour cream and fresh chives (see recipe on page 324); some of the buckwheat walnut rolls with ham that she'd missed; a salad; and a ramekin of crème caramel, along with Evelyn's drink of choice—Perrier mixed with diet Coke. As Faith worked, she thought about the fragment of the conversation she'd overheard. Caresse obviously was "her." But why did Evelyn want her off the picture, especially at this stage of the game? Wouldn't any objections she'd had have been made when Max was casting in the first place? Maybe she hadn't heard "Never act with children or dogs"—or hadn't believed it. Whatever her opinion had been earlier, she was certainly definite now. Faith added a small bud vase with a single pale pink rose, a damask napkin, and appropriate cutlery. She knew from past experiences that catering to the stars meant exactly that.

The tray dispatched, Faith, Niki, Pix, and the rest of the staff turned their attention to preparing for the stampede that would arrive shortly—not before Pix had voiced her irritation with little Miss Carroll, however.

“You know what I think about spanking," she said. Faith nodded and quoted, " `A parent out of control means a child out of control.' " Pix had taken some sort of parent-awareness classes at Adult Ed in between pierced lamp shades and folded star patchwork tree ornaments.

“But," continued Pix, and it was a momentous but, "this child needs someone to turn her over his or her knee—and if I see her push her mother again, it's going to be mine, no matter how much money America's Sweetheart makes." Having disposed of the problem of Caresse, Pix turned her attention to counting napkins, knives, forks, and spoons.

Besides the soup, there were individual tomato and onion quiches, couscous with grilled vegetables, a salad bar, assorted breads, and a savory whole pastrami keeping warm under the lights, which made it look all the more appetizing—not too fat, not too lean. Mr. and Mrs. Sprat would have had a tough time deciding.

“Stations, everyone," Faith called, and she tied back the tent flaps. The heaters made the inside a cozy contrast to what was yet another typically "brisk" New England March day. People were beginning to straggle across the Pingrees' lawn in search of sustenance when a call for help stopped them dead in their tracks.

“Fire!" somebody screamed. "Come on!”

Everyone, including the caterers, rushed off in the direction of the house. The clapboard would go up like the kindling it was. Faith grabbed one of the fire extinguishers she had on hand and shouted over her shoulder for someone to get the other one.

Once outside, they realized everyone was running toward the barn—the site of the fire made obvious by the thick cloud of black smoke billowing from the open door. It was mass confusion with a touch of mass hysteria. Two crew members—stuntmen, Faith discovered later—grabbed her extinguishers and disappeared into the smoke. The breeze spread the harsh odor of the fumes over the watching crowd. In what seemed like several hours but was in reality no more than twenty minutes, the stuntmen and the others who had gone in immediately with extinguishers from the set emerged. They looked none the worse for wear, except for smudged faces, shiny with sweat and tears from the smoke.

“It's all over, folks. Oily rags. No damage, Max," one of them reassured the director, who was hastening toward them.

“How did it start?" he asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe somebody sneaking a smoke.”

Maxwell Reed had a hard-and-fast rule about smoking on the set—anywhere. He was fanatic on the subject. Not everybody was able to live with it, and the stalls in the honey wagon smelled a lot more like Luckies than Lysol.

“I hope not," Max said grimly, his eyes raking the group still assembled outside the barn. When he reached where she was standing, Faith felt instinctively guilty—for what, she knew not.

“It's out now, and that's the important thing." Alan Morris moved quickly to douse these new flames. "Let's eat, everybody.”

It was out. And out before both bright red Aleford fire engines tore into the yard, sirens blaring, carrying a full complement of the Aleford Ancient Order of Hook and Ladder Volunteers. Screeching to a halt behind these came the ambulance. Bringing up the rear, the chief's venerable police car sputtered to its own inimitable stop.

Faith hurried back to the tent to put out additional food.

“More mouths to feed," she instructed the staff, adding to Niki and Pix, "You know they're all kicking themselves for missing the action, and you can be sure they're not going to pass up the chance to hobnob on the set now that they're here." She looked into the soup tureens. There was plenty and it was steaming hot. "And, to be fair, they can't leave without checking things out, which just might have to take all afternoon. We can grab Charley later for coffee and doughnuts. I'd like to know myself how the rags caught fire."

“Is this the Faith Fairchild version of `inquiring minds want to know' again?" Niki asked. "I've heard stories about you. I'm sure it was a cigarette. You know they all go into the woods to smoke. It's a wonder we haven't had a forest fire."

“You're probably right," Faith agreed. "But why is it always a pile of oily rags? Do you keep oily rags around? I don't. What do you do to get them oily, anyway? If you were being terribly crafty and refinishing furniture or working on your car, why not throw the rags away? It's not as though you'd wash them and use them for oily things again. No, it all seems so--well, so convenient"

“You've obviously put a great deal of thought into the problem of oily rags and I'm sure you'd prefer a straightforward fire of suspicious origin in this case, but if you'd ever looked in the hayloft of that barn, you'd have seen there are piles of all sorts of junk, including oily rags created by God knows who for what purpose.”

Tucking the thoughts of what Niki was doing in the hayloft and why she, Faith, hadn't checked it out herself into a corner of her mind for later consideration, Faith got ready to serve the returning crew. "It looks like our purpose is coming in the door.”

They were followed by the Aleford brigade about thirty minutes later. Which is why Police Chief MacIsaac, Fire Chief O'Halloran, and their cohorts eagerly slurping down Faith's soup and clamoring for seconds in amiable company with the director, cast, and crew of A were all there to witness Evelyn O'Clair's possibly last dramatic entrance.

Clutching her stomach and moaning, she staggered into the tent. "I've been poisoned!" she cried. Then she vomited violently and collapsed.

Three

But who can see an inch into futurity beyond his nose?

If one has indeed been poisoned, having a large number of trained rescue workers and an ambulance close at hand may be regarded as something more than a happy coincidence. Evelyn O'Clair had been damned lucky indeed.

But not poisoned.

Or rather, not poisoned in the classical, even conventional sense. It wasn't strychnine or arsenic. Not even digitalis—admittedly difficult to cull from t he abundant foxglove still slumbering under the earth surrounding the old house.

It was Chocolax, a digestive aid, and it was in the black bean soup—a medium that unfortunately intensified the drug's effects. In addition, a substantial amount of a liquid laxative sold over the counter for use before certain X rays had been added.

“Why didn't anyone say anything!" wailed Faith when Charley MacIsaac stopped by early the next day to bring her the ill tidings in person. He had had a bad night himself after yesterday's lunch and was not in a good mood.

“We all thought it was some sort of new fool concoction of yours, that's why. And it wasn't bad. Just kind of unusual. Besides, there was so much smoke in the air, nobody could taste much of anything.”

Tom and Ben had departed for their respective morning activities—sermon writing and Play-Doh—and at least one of them wanted to switch. Amy was asleep.

Faith had offered the chief some breakfast, but he had declined with unaccustomed haste. He opted for the sofa instead of the large wing chair, his usual choice. His face was a study in contrasts: affection for the woman sitting next to him struggled with animosity. Faith watched in alarm.

“Charley! You know I wouldn't have put a laxative in any soup I'd made, especially Chocolax, which must bear no more resemblance to real chocolate than Styrofoam to meringue. That means somebody else put it in. The question is, who and when?"

“All right, let's start from the beginning." Affection triumphed and Charley managed a weak smile. He took a small, creased spiral notepad from his jacket pocket, along with a sharp number-two yellow Dixon pencil. Faith expected him to lick the tip before commencing to write, and he did.

“When did you make the soup?"

“Wednesday afternoon."

“And it sat in your refrigerator until you brought it to the set yesterday?"

“Yes, but ..."

“Hold your horses, Faith. Now who besides you and probably the Reverend has keys to the place?”

“Pix and Niki, but ..."

“No spares hidden under the mat or in a flowerpot?" he asked doggedly.

“Charley, I'm trying to tell you something! Nobody could have put anything into the soup at the kitchen. It was fine when we arrived at the set, because I tasted it to check the seasonings when we first heated it."

“All right, now we're getting somewhere." The chief gave her a baleful look, suggesting that she had hitherto been throwing sand in the gas tank of justice. "When, as near as you can remember, did you do the tasting?"

“It was before we heard the fire alarm, and that was about quarter after twelve. We normally serve lunch at twelve-thirty, and I was watching the time pretty closely."

“So let me get this straight. The soup was fine before the fire broke out"

“Yes, which could mean the fire was set to get us out of the way while the soup was doctored. Sorry, poor choice of words."

“All the soup was in one big pot?"

“No, there were two tureens. We serve from two stations so the lines go faster."

“I'm sure they kept the samples separate, but, in any case, everyone who had the soup got the runs, so they both must have been tampered with.”

Faith had not been ill, nor had the rest of the Have Faith staff, since they normally ate after everyone else. After Evelyn's pronouncement, nothing passed anybody's lips. No, it was only the cast and crew of A, the entire fire department, and both police and fire chiefs who had been felled.

Something was nagging at Faith. Something was wrong, besides what was so obviously wrong—that person or persons unknown had deliberately set out to destroy her reputation and business.

“Charley, wait. Whoever dumped the Chocolax in the soup had to have done it earlier, because it was in the portion on Evelyn's tray and we sent that to her trailer before the fire"

“But after you tasted it?"

“Yes. Just after. I remember thinking how good it was," Faith declared staunchly. It had been good—she'd used hickory-smoked ham hocks for flavor, plus two kinds of onions and a touch of dry sherry before pureeing it all into a smooth liquid.

Charley looked tired. Up and down all night perhaps? "Then what we have here is a situation where someone comes into the tent in broad daylight and empties God only knows how many packages of the stuff into two soup pots in front of you, Niki, Pix, and the rest of the bunch."

“Plus a dozen or so crew members who needed to eat early or were waiting for trays. I admit it is impossible."

“Yet it must have happened that way."

“We would have noticed, believe me. Even if someone palmed the stuff and dropped it in the soup while we weren't looking, he or she would have to have stirred it to mix it in and then have repeated the whole thing at the other table.”

Charley looked glum. When more than a minute had passed, Faith tentatively asked the question that had been on her mind since he'd told her what had happened.

“Are you going to have to close me down?"

“I'm supposed to. You know the law as well as I do, probably better."

“Yes, except this was not a result of the caterer in question's actions. I mean, we're not talking salmonella chicken or spoiled mayonnaise here."

“Sort of what I said to the Department of Health”

“And they said?"

“They agreed—after a while. But whether the movie people still want you ..

“It would be perfectly understandable if they didn't. I just don't want to be shut down. You can't imagine how grateful I am to you, Charley." Faith would have thrown her arms around the chief, but he wasn't the hugging kind.

Charley still had the notebook out. He was thinking out loud. "A fire and food poisoning—all within the same hour. Could be one of those movie people is some sort of lunatic. You ever notice any of them behaving more strangely than the rest?" Charley took it for granted all of them were demented in some respect—otherwise, they wouldn't live in California. Faith had observed this regional chauvinism in Charley, and other Alefordians, on numerous occasions. New York City was the worst. Make no mistake about that, but L.A. was definitely in the running.

“No, I can't say I've seen anyone wandering around talking to lampposts. The only slightly maniacal outburst was an eight-year-old girl's, and she's merely spoiled." Faith then gave Charley an account of Caresse's temper tantrum, which was accompanied by noises from Amy's room, indicating she was up and ready for company. The first soft babbles became increasingly puzzled syllables, then finally insistent crying as Faith ignored her—hoping to finish the story before tending to her child.

“Get the baby, Faith, before she blows a gasket. I have to check in at the station and see what's going on there before I head over to the Marriott.”

Amy's cries had become one long antiphony.

“But I still have so many questions. At least tell me if the fire was set or an accident."

“You have questions! Some things never change." Charley looked more cheerful than he had all morning. "All right. We don't know if the fire was set or not yet. We don't know why someone wanted to close down the set of A, B, or whatever the hell the name of this thing is. And we don't know why Evelyn O'Clair was so much sicker than anybody else. Okay?”

She who must be obeyed would soon rocket right out of the crib. Faith called, "Coming, sweetie. Mommy's coming," and turned to start up the stairs. "Thanks, Charley. For everything. And let me know what's happening?'

“Sure, Faith." Police Chief Maclsaac let himself out the front door and got into the cruiser—if you could call it that, he reflected dismally. He'd bring Patrolman Dale Warren along while he questioned everyone at the Marriott. The kid saw a lot of movies. And he hadn't eaten any soup.

Amy stopped crying the moment her mother entered the room, and as Faith changed her diaper and put on a fresh set of clothes, she positively beamed. Faith's mood, however, did not match her easily placated daughter's. The business of who had put the Chocolax in the soup had to be cleared up, and cleared up quickly. Rumors in the catering business traveled faster than the tat( chili pepper craze, and if word got out that there hau been a food poisoning episode at Have Faith, she'd be lucky to be catering snacktime at Ben's nursery school. Certain food purveyors who would leap at the chance to stick a knife or even a fork in her back came to mind with frightening speed.

She took the baby into the kitchen and packed some zwieback and other baby goodies into her gargantuan diaper bag. Faith was upset and had to talk to Tom—in person. After bundling Amy into her L. L. Bean Baby Bag, she grabbed her own jacket and headed across the yard and through the ancient cemetery that separated the church from the parsonage.

At least no one had died in the incident, she reflected, looking at the slightly askew slate tombstones with their lugubrious messages from the glorious beyond—such as Daniel Noyes's pithy 1716 epitaph: "As you were, so was I/God did call and I did dy." The sun had not managed to pierce the gray cloud cover overhead and the ground was frozen. There hadn't been any snow, but the remnants of last summer's green carpet of grass, so very green in the burial ground, crunched underfoot.

Tom was slightly surprised to see Faith, flushed and obviously agitated, at his office door. She rarely ventured into this part of the church; whether from lack of interest or fear of being added to a committee, he was still not quite sure.

“Is everything all right, honey?" he asked anxiously.

"No," she replied, peeling off Amy's layers and looking around for a place to deposit her. Tom was not the tidiest person in the world. His' office consisted of a large rolltop desk, several bookcases crammed with books, two wing chairs, one Hitchcock, and piles and piles of papers and more books on the floor, said chairs, and any available surface. A four-drawer file stood to the right of his desk and held church stationery, extra hymnals, and prayer books. "I know exactly where everything is," he'd protested to both his wife and the church secretary, earnestly imploring them not to touch a thing. "I have my own system.”

Faith refrained from her usual comment. Before slumping into one of the wing chairs, she removed a stack of the yellow legal pads he favored when composing his sermons, written in longhand. "These are my computer," he often said, wiggling his fingers. Too precious for words, his wife had told him on more than one occasion, and an unlikely affectation for a man whose state-of-the-art high fidelity system required a degree from MIT to operate.

“What's happened?" he said, reaching for the baby, who proceeded to treat his lap as a trampoline, delightedly bobbing up and down in his grip.

“The reason everyone got sick yesterday was a superabundance of Chocolax and some other laxative in the black bean soup."

“Faith, this is terrible! Are they going to suspend your license?" Tom knew the repercussions almost as well as Faith.

“For the moment, no, and the rumors will die down, I hope," Faith said in a voice that belied her words. "But what's got me is, who would do such a thing and why? Was it directed at the film people or me?"

“My guess would be the cast and crew, and perhaps Evelyn O'Clair in particular. You just provided a happy medium."

“There's something else.... There's no way anyone could have put the stuff in the soup without being seen.”

Faith recounted the timetable, and Tom had to admit he was stumped, too.

“The only thing that makes sense is that the stuff was added to Evelyn's soup and the soup in the tent at different times. I'm convinced the fire was set to get everybody out of the way. But we're right back at who and why again."

“So, what next? Are you going to get in touch with Alan Morris to see if you still have a job?"

“I have to, although I'm not looking forward to it. Charley said Max wants to start shooting again tomorrow. They kept Evelyn at the Lahey Clinic for observation overnight, but she's all right now. That's another thing I don't understand. Why was she so much sicker than anyone else?"

“Body weight, maybe. Or a greater concentration of the stuff in her particular serving. Nerves. Maybe all three.”

Faith stood up. "I know you're busy, darling, and I'll be going. I just needed to be with you. I think I'll call my old friend Cornelia and see if I can find out which way the wind is blowing."

“Apt choice of words." Tom grinned and folded his wife and daughter in a warm embrace. "Need me anytime you want"

“I feel much better—and madder. Believe me, I'm going to find out who's responsible. You don't go fooling around with a woman's livelihood—not to mention the suffering all those people had to endure.”

Tom knew his wife well enough to know which fueled her anger more at the moment. It wasn't that she had a hard heart—merely certain priorities, bordering on maybe a touch too much self-interest. "I may have been slightly spoiled as a child, you know," she hadtold him shortly after their wedding in a moment of early marital candor. "Oh, really?" He'd only just managed to keep a straight face.

Faith trudged back home, her heart lighter but her chest heavier. It seemed Amy was getting larger by the hour. Her birth weight had doubled to fourteen pounds. When Faith strapped the baby in the Snugli now, she sensed the day would soon come when she'd fall face forward as gravity and the baby joined forces. And if she fell forward here in the yard, she noted ruefully, she'd be covered with the slippery, moldy leaves they hadn't managed to finish raking last fall.

The message machine was blinking frantically. Both Niki and Pix had called to find out what was going on. There was nothing from Alan Morris or anyone else connected with A. Faith made brief calls to her two assistants to tell them what she knew—or rather, didn't know—and asked that they get in touch with the others. Then she called Cornelia and invited her to come over for lunch.

“Well, I don't have much time. Max has asked me to work on part of the script with him, but I might be able to squeeze a quick bite in. It would be faster if you came here. There's a little restaurant not far from the hotel called The Dandy Lion. Do you know it?”

Faith did. It was opposite the huge Burlington Mall and provided decent salad, soup, and sandwich-type fare amidst a forest of ferns populated by the high-tech Route 128 computer crowd that favored it as a watering hole.

Arlene Maclean and even Faith's old standby Pix were both out, so Faith was forced to take Amy along to the rendezvous. With luck, the baby would lapse comatose in the stroller, as this was close to her normal post- prandial naptime. A more probable scenario was alert wakefulness in a new and exciting place. Faith had packed a bushel basket of toys and various foodstuffs to keep the infant involved while her mom pumped Auntie Cornelia for information.

After all, what were old friends for—especially old friends like Cornelia? Faith had no problem reassuring herself as she drove down Middlesex Turnpike onto Mall Road, where the restaurant was cozily tucked into a minimall with a panoramic view of vast parking lots.

Cornelia was waiting at a table in the main dining room and looked slightly askance at the baby. She favored Faith with an air kiss and waved dismissively in Amy's direction, wafting away any thoughts Faith may have had of baby worship as a way of getting Corny to spill the beans, black or otherwise.

“I've already ordered. I suppose you want to talk about yesterday." Cornelia was using her best head counselor's voice to come straight to the point, and it suddenly occurred to Faith that her friend thought she was to blame for the disaster.

“Corny," she gasped, "you certainly don't think I or any of my staff had anything to do with everyone getting sick!"

“You did prepare the food, Faith dear:' she said, fixing Faith with a stern eye that continued the thought. "But I didn't put Chocolax in the soup!”

Now Cornelia appeared surprised. "Chocolax. Did you hear this from the police?”

Obviously, the news had not reached the Marriott, or Cornelia, at any rate. Charley MacIsaac had not told Faith to keep it a secret, so she supposed the news was for public consumption.

“Yes, from our chief. He said it was Chocolax, loads of it, and another liquid laxative." Since hearing the method, Faith assumed the police were asking around at such places as Aleford's own Patriot Drug to find out whether anyone had made suspiciously large purchases of it lately. She was so busy with this thought and with rooting around in the diaper bag for Amy's plastic keys that it was a moment before she realized Cornelia hadn't said anything. She looked up. Corny had a puzzled look on her face and was staring off toward the other dining room—the one Faith preferred because of its fireplace and smaller, more intimate size.

The waitress arrived to take Faith's order, and by the time this had been accomplished, Cornelia's expression was almost back to its usual imperturbability.

“What is it? You know something, don't you?" Faith pressed. She wasn't about to miss this opportunity. Not with her business at stake, as well as enough curiosity to decimate the greater Boston cat population.

“The laxative, the Chocolax. Evelyn takes it by the handful." Cornelia was almost whispering.

“What on earth for?" Faith asked, then quickly said, "You mean...?"

“Yes," Cornelia replied. "She throws up, too. It's one of the reasons she was at the clinic in Switzerland.”

At that moment, the food arrived. Faith stared at the burger with Boursin, salad to one side, she'd ordered. Cornelia hadn't picked up a fork, either. It all looked so robust, a trickle of fat and blood oozing from the rare meat. She was being ridiculous, Faith told herself apparently at the same time Corny told herself the same thing. They grabbed their utensils and took two large bites of lettuce.

“An eating disorder. The poor woman. Is this common knowledge—or is it only because you're close to Max that you know?" Faith went from sympathy back to the main point rapidly. She hoped her not-so-subtle flattery would produce results. It did.

“Of course I knew about it before other people," Cornelia preened, "although by now it's old news. But surely Evelyn wouldn't put it in her own soup?”

Exactly what Faith was thinking. Still, it may not have been in Evelyn's soup. She bent down to pick up the toy keys that Amy had thrown on the floor for the tenth time, ecstatic as always with the game of "Fetch, Mommy, Fetch." Evelyn might have taken the Chocolax before lunch. Then why had she gotten so sick? It couldn't have been suggestibility—everyone else getting sick. Her dramatic entry had preceded the onset of the others' symptoms. But if she had taken some and it was also in the soup, that might account for the severity of her attack. Faith bit into her hamburger ruminatively. One thing was sure: Everyone working on A knew where to go to get plenty of yummy Chocolax. Or did they? She swallowed hastily.

“Did she keep the laxative in her trailer or at the house?"

“In the trailer—at least that's where I've seen the stuff. She thinks Max doesn't know, so she wouldn't have it at the house, where he might find it." Cornelia's face crumbled into the kind of pout it had assumed in earlier years when her father had said she couldn't have a new pony. "They share the master bedroom suite."

“But Max does know?”

Cornelia nodded. Her mouth was full.

Faith continued to think out loud. "What do you think? Does someone have a grudge against Max—or the crew in general?" She was eager to get as much information from Cornelia as possible before her old classmate ran off to save the movie—or, more likely, to put in an order for more cases of Calistoga water—and before Amy tired of the stroller. The baby was beginning to eye her mother's lap with increasing determination.

Cornelia looked decidedly uneasy. In fact, Faith realized, she'd been uneasy and tense since Faith's arrival. Of course, this could be attributed to the events of the day before and a night Cornelia had complained about venomously to Faith, the caterer, on the phone. Yet it was also possible she was hiding something, or someone.

“Everyone loves Max, or even if they don't exactly love him, they're thrilled to be working with him. I can't imagine that this is directed against him." Cornelia paused. "Unless it was Caresse. Little Miss Wonderful is far from his greatest fan right now. Her agent should have told her Max often writes people in and out of his movies once he starts shooting. There's no need for her to carry on the way she is.”

Faith didn't care much for the child, but if Maxwell Reed was planning to cut her role, it would be a bitter blow and one that wouldn't do anything to enhance her career. Cornelia might be onto something. Putting a laxative into everyone's food was a very childish thing to do. And precocious Caresse probably knew about Evelyn's cache. Caresse. It all added up, except for one thing. When did the merry prankster do it?

Another thought occurred to Faith. "Has there ever been trouble of this kind on Max Reed's other films?"

“No," Cornelia answered fiercely, "certainly not. Oh, well, the usual tricks, especially at the end of a shoot when everyone's nerves have been getting a little frayed. One of the PAs found a lot of plastic maggots in her coffee during Maggot Morning, thought they were real, got hysterical, and quit. Then, of course, there were plastic maggots everywhere. And sometimes people prepare joke versions of certain scenes. However"—she squared her shoulders, shoulders that needed no pads—"the individuals who work on his films are professionals.

“Now, I'd love to stay and chat with you all day"—Cornelia was up and flinging some money on the table—"but I've stayed too long already. Take care of the bill, will you?”

Another kiss kiss, a vague good-bye to little whatever, and she was gone.

“You know she didn't leave enough," Faith told her daughter, who obligingly blew a few spit bubbles in agreement.

She paid the bill and once again prepared herself and her child to meet the elements. It would be simpler, she'd told Tom her first winter in Aleford, to get sewn into a kind of quilted all-weather cocoon in October and emerge as a rank butterfly in May than constantly getting in and out of layers of clothing day and night.

She wheeled the stroller toward the door, then, attracted by the warm smell of the burning logs in the other room, turned the corner to look at the fire. The logs were crackling in the fieldstone fireplace and the occupants of the tables lingering over coffee seemed to appreciate the ambience created. Two patrons at the table farthest from the door were not looking at the fire—or Faith. They were gazing into each other's matchless eyes, gems of sparkling sapphire blue meeting deep puddles of liquid brown velvet.

It was Evelyn O'Clair and Cappy Camson.

No reason why two cast members shouldn't get to-gether for lunch, even if one of them has just gotten out of the hospital. No reason at all. Faith filed the picture the two made for future reference. Her system was every bit as efficient as her husband's, and, like Tom, she really did know exactly where everything was—usually.

This time when Faith returned home after picking Ben up at school, there was a message from one of what she and the rest of the town customarily referred to as the "movie people." It was Alan Morris and he asked her to call him back at her earliest convenience. That could be a few weeks, she thought as she tried to listen to Ben's tale of some playground inequity, gave both children something to eat, and finally settled them—Amy playpen-bound—in front of a tape of "Thomas the Tank Engine." The British had managed to make the series so didactic, a mother could almost feel she was advancing her children's moral development instead of parking them in front of the TV.

Alan Morris was in and, from the sound of his voice, happy to hear from her.

“The police chief said he had spoken with you, so you know what caused the uh ... problem yesterday:' Alan said delicately.

Faith wasn't sure what she was supposed to say. Beg for her job back, asserting Have Faith's noninvolvement? Commiserate with the assistant director, who, she recalled, had come back for seconds? But would saying she was sorry suggest blame?

“Yes, he told me," was the best she could come up with at short notice.

“Max is, as you might expect, quite furious about the whole affair," Alan continued.

Furious at Faith in some way? Furious at fate? She stuck with the tried and true. "Yes, I can imagine," she replied.

“Of course, he's not angry at you. He adores your cooking. Obviously, you and your staff had nothing to do with it.”

Did his voice rise slightly at the end of the sentence? Was it a question? Was he fishing for reassurance? Faith knew what to say now.

“Obviously. And I'm so glad you recognize this. I would hate to think you believed we were in any way responsible. And I'm sure you know the Department of Health has come to the same conclusion.”

There was relief in his voice. "Max is convinced it was a practical joke gone wrong and that whoever did it is too embarrassed to come forward. The fact that all this came at once—someone smoking in the barn and the, uh, food incident—is simply a bad coincidence. These things happen when you put a lot of people together under pressure. But any delay like yesterday's means money down the tube, and the producers are already nickel and diming us to death. Max has instructed us to put the whole thing out of our minds. We are continuing to film as if nothing happened.”

That's going to be quite a trick, Faith thought.

“Now," he continued, his calm, ever so slightly theatrical voice even calmer, "the reason I called was that we'd like Have Faith to continue to work with us.”

Faith felt an enormous load lift from her mind. Until it was gone, she hadn't realized how heavy it had been. Even though she'd sensed from 4lan's tone during the call that this was where they were heading, it wasn't until he actually said the words that she could allow herself to take a deep breath.

“So, see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Max wants to shoot the dawn scene—the one that I spoke to you about last week—on the village green. He's been waiting for the right weather, and tomorrow the sky should be perfect."

“We'll be there," Faith promised happily.

“And remember, none of this ever happened.”

So you say, she thought as she hung up the phone. You may have decided to believe it was a joke, but I'm still not laughing.

The whole town was learning more than it thought it would ever care to know about the way movies are made, and if it all didn't make sense at first, it was beginning to make even less by now. Millicent, who Faith suspected had taken out a subscription to Variety, was expounding on the craft as the caterers arrived in the pitch-dark before dawn the following morning.

Miss McKinley was responding acidly to a fellow Alefordian's comment that he couldn't see why they didn't just start at the beginning and go to the end instead of jumping around in the script, this being the way he would do it—in a logical manner.

“The director has to shoot out of sequence to take advantage of the weather and lighting conditions when they go on location. And not all the actors can be on the set all the time. Now today, Max has worked everything out with the director of photography, the gaffers, and the best boy." She continued with the air of one who expected to be sitting next to her new best friend in one of the front rows at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion some day soon.

“The gaffers, of course, carry out the cameraman's lighting plan—they're those people setting up all those lights and reflectors." She gestured grandly toward the crew. They were attaching various forms of lighting to the trees and on poles surrounding the large wooden scaffold that had been erected in the middle of the green, with the flagpole to the left and First Parish directly behind. Huge mobile generators were parked nearby and the greenskeeper and crew were busy burying the last of the wires and replacing the grass with new sod.

“The best boy is the chief gaffer's assistant," Millicent determinedly continued. She was not about to waste all the time she'd spent looking this stuff up in the reference room. Her audience had diminished, however, basely abandoning her for the hot coffee, fresh raised doughnuts, and fruit muffins that Faith had brought.

About fifty extras were dressed in their own dark-colored overcoats, hats, and gloves, as instructed. A was being filmed in modem dress, but looking at her neighbors, Faith thought not a few of the outfits failed to qualify. Millicent's serviceable black coat was definitely prewar—and which war was open to debate.

Alan Morris walked over to them. The stars and the director were presumably in their behemoth RVs lined up at the curb, getting into their roles or catching a few more winks. Several of Aleford's finest were on duty and, by their frequent yawns, perhaps not convinced the extra pay was worth having to get up so early.

“Good, good. Everyone looks fine. And remember, all you have to do is mumble. Something like `apples and oranges' usually works to produce the illusion of conversation. You won't be miked directly. Then the women, where are they?”

Five women stepped forward, Millicent, PenelopeBartlett, and Audrey Heuneman among them. They were all carrying their good pocketbooks and looked as if they were either going shopping in Boston or attending a funeral.

“You will be directly below the scaffold where Hester and Dimmesdale will be standing. On cue, you are to point to the sky and cover your mouths, like this. Don't exaggerate it too much. And don't point until the plane is out of sight and we only see the letter.”

Alan had sketched the scene out for Faith when he told her about the early-morning shoot. Max had hired a skywriter to position an enormous A in puffs of red smoke above the scaffold where the minister is joined by Hester after he's spent the night standing there alone in shame, delivering a lengthy soliloquy encompassing everything from the inevitability of alienation in modem society to the Vietnam War as a metaphor for adultery—the cuckolding of a nation. It was Cappy's big scene. They would shoot his speech back on the lot in L.A.

Max wanted a clear, bleak day and hoped to get a shot of the letter drifting down between two large leafless maples until the burning capital A was over Nester's and Dimmesdale's heads as well as to one side of the American flag, which Max hoped would be caught by the breeze. The flag joined to the letter in the sky symbolized the hypocrisy of the country's public morality, and the staid townspeople gathered below in judgment would later be revealed as secret adulterers, embezzlers, even murderers.

It was starting to get light and Faith could make out the faces of the other extras. They were beginning to learn what she already knew from past experience—that making a movie was perhaps 90 percent waiting around in boredom, and a 10 percent adrenaline high. She'd tell Millicent and Penny to start toting their knitting bags.

Maxwell Reed appeared, and for a moment no one recognized him. The director had disappeared and Roger Chillingworth had taken his place. It wasn't that Reed had put on a wig or substantially changed his appearance, other than removing his glasses. It was the sense of evil he projected, darting malevolent looks back toward the crowd over his slightly deformed shoulder. In accord with the modern-dress costuming, he was wearing shapeless gray sweatpants and a loose gray sweatshirt. He spoke to no one and moved quickly to Alan Morris and the director of photography, who were positioned under the scaffold.

The sun was rising, but it was not bright. It cast a tepid light over the green, unable to penetrate the shadows left by the night.

“Let's make a movie," Reed shouted into the stillness, and everyone hastened toward him. Evelyn appeared from somewhere and took off a heavy sable coat, which she handed to her dresser before mounting the stairs to the platform. She wore a gauzy white dress with a large pink flesh-like letter A pinned over one breast. The other was not quite hidden by the layers of cloth and the nipple was prominent in protest at the freezing cold. Cappy Camson followed, and he at least was dressed warmly in a black turtleneck and tight jeans. Faith had to remind herself it was a serious allegorical reinterpretation as it became apparent that there was nothing between Cappy and his Calvins. Caresse joined the group, scowling. Max was going to shoot two versions of the scene—one with infant Pearl; one with child Pearl. Caresse had a scarlet velvet partydress on, richly embroidered with gold thread, lace on the collar and cuffs.

Max stood in front of the crowd below and fixed his eyes on the three figures above him. Faith couldn't see his expression, but from the response of the actors looking down at him, he must be acting very well indeed. They all looked absolutely terrified.

Alan Moms shouted, "Stand by! Quiet on the set" And everyone stood like statues while the plane sputtered overhead, producing an elegant script letter A. A loud buzzer went off.

“Roll sound."

“Camera"

“Speed.”

The clapper/loader stepped in front, holding the arm of the clap slate up: A SCAFFOLD SCENE. TAKE ONE. SOUND TAKE ONE. The arm banged down. It sounded like a shot in the morning quiet. "Just like in the movies," Niki whispered to Faith.

“Action!”

The crowd commenced murmuring. Dimmesdale and Hester held hands. For some reason known to the director, Pearl lay down at their feet as the scarlet letter drifted to the exact spot Max had wanted and the women gasped and pointed. Dimmesdale and Hester looked up, then lay next to Pearl. Roger Chillingworth climbed up the ladder to the scaffolding and stood over them.

“Cut."

“Cool 'em off.”

The lights went out. Evelyn's dresser rushed forward with her coat and Caresse's mother with one for her daughter. Max spoke to Alan and went to his trailer. Evelyn and Cappy disappeared into hers.

Huge fans on derricks were brought in to blow the remnants of the red smoke away. Everyone crowded around the coffee urns, then came the call: `All right, people, again and then with the baby.”

And they did it again. Then again with the baby. Then again with Caresse, and this time Max had everyone freeze, not hard to do, until the wisps of smoke had floated off into the increasing morning brightness.

“We've lost the light," he shouted to Alan, "but we got it" There was an audible sigh of relief and everybody started talking.

“How's the campaign going, Penny?" Faith asked when what she hoped would be the next selectwoman on the Aleford board came over for some food.

Penny looked tired for a moment. "It's going fine, dear. Of course I never would have gotten involved in all this if everyone hadn't pushed me so hard, and they swore they'd do all the campaigning, but they can't very well speak for me. I've never drunk so much coffee in my life, although it is fun getting to see everyone's living rooms.”

Coffees to meet the candidates were the mainstay of Aleford electioneering.

“I know what you mean," Faith agreed. "It's always nice to take a walk at night when people's lights are on and you can see in.”

She firmly believed there was nothing voyeuristic about this natural tendency to check seating arrangements and where people kept their books and objets d'art. If they didn't want onlookers, they should pull the drapes.

“Will you be at the debate on Monday?"

“Tom and I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

The League of Women Voters was sponsoring a candidates night at the junior high and supporters of all three candidates planned to turn out in full force.

Penny thanked Faith for the doughnut and, as she turned to go, walked straight into the arms of her half brother, Alden.

She backed away without expression. He grinned wickedly and, pointedly not addressing her, said to the person next to him, "Have you noticed some older women tend to be a little unsteady on their pins?”

Penny flushed and left without saying anything in return.

“Give me some more of that java," he ordered Faith. "Could be a little stronger.”

But you couldn't, she retorted silently. She wasn't surprised he was one of the extras. He always seemed to be playing a role of some sort. At times, he was the quintessential New Englander, walking his pure-bred Labrador in the early morning, scorning an overcoat or muffler. Then there was the hard-bitten businessman complaining about profit margins and the interference of the government. He could be hail fellow, well met—or more often, "I'll say what I want to whom I want." During a parish call, Faith had been amused to see him trot out the deep thinker, casually motioning to Stephen Hawkings's A Brief History of lime placed conspicuously on the coffee table next to the latest book by A. N. Wilson, a life of Jesus Christ. When Alden left to get them a thimbleful of the second-best sherry from the kitchen, Faith picked up both books and was not surprised by their pristine, obviously unread condition.

He was playing his curmudgeon role now, or perhaps this was the real persona. He'd put his campaign button on after the ShOOt-SPAULDLNG, THE ONLY CHOICE—and took the cup of coffee with a mumble that could possi- bly have been a thank you by a gymnastic stretch of the imagination. Buttons, bumper stickers, and posters were sprouting up all over town. Alden was putting quite a bit of money into his campaign, and Faith wondered why he wanted the seat at this particular time. He'd never run before and there had been plenty of opportunities.

He took several doughnuts and remembered he was running for office. "Shall we see you at the debate, Mrs. Fairchild? Although I don't flatter myself that you are one of my supporters, I would hope the Reverend has kept an open mind.”

Really, the man was so offensive, it was hard to think of an adequate rejoinder that would not wind up as headlines in the tabloids: REV'S WIFE TELLS ONE OF THE FLOCK TO F- Her thought was interrupted and, as it turned out, Faith didn't have to say anything at all.

The steaming-hot coffee urn went flying off the end of the table along with a tray of doughnuts, muffins, cream, and sugar—flying off to make a direct landing on Alden Spaulding's outstretched left arm. He screamed in pain and rage.

Faith ran around the table to his side; he'd collapsed onto the grass and people were running toward them to see what had happened.

“Quick," she called, "someone get the ambulance over here. I think he's been burned."

“You damn fool woman," the victim shouted, "I'm not burned. You've broken my goddamned arm, is all, and I'm going to sue you from hire to Sunday!”

Faith looked around. By some miracle, the urn hadn't opened. No coffee had spilled out, except from Alden's own cup. His thick dark tweed coat, jacket, and the long-johns no doubt below had protected his arm from the heat, but not from the weight, of the heavy metal urn. There go my insurance premiums, she thought dismally.

“It had nothing to do with Faith:' said a distinctly cool voice. "In fact, it was no one's fault but yours, Alden, for having the misfortune to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time." Audrey Heuneman joined the group gathered about the prone figure of her husband's political opponent, but she did not crouch down to his level. "Someone bumped into me and I hit the table," she stated matter-of-factly.

The EMTs were loading Alden onto a stretcher after he declared himself unable to move in no uncertain terms. It was not an easy job. Alden was a large individual, one who might have been called a fine figure of a man in the nineteenth century, when twelve-course dinners did not signify excess. In the twentieth, he was constantly advised by his doctor to cut down and didn't.

“Then I'll sue you," he roared.

“Fine," she said. "Only you'll have to prove malice aforethought.”

Looking at the expression on Audrey's face, Faith had the feeling that might not be so difficult. It also explained at long last why James was running. Obviously Audrey Heuneman hated Alden Spaulding with every bone in her body.

Still swearing vengeance on somebody—he'd gotten around to the film company by this point—Alden was lugged off and the crowd on the green melted like snow in May to spread the news.

There were times, Faith told Tom over dinner that night, when her sojourn in the Big Apple seemed pretty dull compared to Aletord's day-to-day dramas.

Tom was less interested in what turned out to be Alden's minor injury than the filming of the scene on the green.

“It sounds like a brilliant effect—the letter in the sky at dawn."

“It was amazing," Faith recounted. "The letter drifted down perfectly every time. It was as if Max had some sort of remote control."

“I don't get the jogging outfit, though. What's that supposed to represent?"

“Well, Chillingworth is supposed to be some sort of medical researcher who's been away in the Middle East and Hester has moved to town while waiting for him to come back. Maybe the clothes are meant to suggest he's in good shape? Or maybe Max wanted him to look like Everyman, and around here, Everywoman." Jogging suits seemed to be the approved apparel for anything from dropping your kids off at school to a dinner party, Faith had noted disapprovingly when she'd arrived in the suburbs. She did own a sweatshirt—a gift from Tom's family the Christmas after they were mar- ried, with FAIRCHILD NUMBER EIGHT stenciled on it—but had yet to complete the outfit.

“Maybe he doesn't want the clothes to distract the viewer, although Evelyn's might."

“Definitely, and you should see her scarlet letter, Tom, it's slightly obscene. It looks almost alive, as if it's made out of flesh."

“There is a danger in updating the story. Hester Prynne wouldn't be an outcast in today's society. She'd be asked to join a support group,and neighbors would come round with booties and casseroles."

“And on what planet is that perfect little village?Come on, think what the response would be here if an attractive married lady moved into town, spurned all attempts to be drawn into the Newcomers Club, Friends of the Library, even shut the door on the Welcome Wagon. Then got pregnant! The first thing that would happen is that Millicent would circulate a list of every man she'd ever seen drive in that direction, then everybody would get nervous about whose husband it might be, and finally, and forever, they'd ignore the harlot—except for those hushed-voiced `I think you should knows' whenever someone who wasn't familiar with the story was around."

“Maybe you're right, honey. But I like to think the best of people. It goes with the trade. Now is there any more of this lasagna left, or did those movie people scarf it all down?”

The movie people had finished most of the three-cheese vegetarian lasagna Faith had offered as one of the lunch choices, but there was plenty of bread and salad, she told her husband, proffering as consolation another glass of the 1988 Caymus Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon they'd opened.

“There's lots of apple crisp (see recipe on page 328) for dessert, though. The crew seemed to be avoiding sugar shock today. They'd all been pretty keyed up about getting the shot right and I think they were high enough on that afterward."

“Lucky me," said Tom. His lanky frame seemed immune to the vicissitudes of sugar, starch, and fats. His sole problem since he was a kid had been filling himself up. Faith put a large bowl of the fragrant hot apple crisp in front of him and added a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream, which promptly oozed over the apples in a warm, delicious sauce.

The children were both asleep. The house was blessedly silent. She kissed the top of her husband's reddish brown hair. He smelled good, not like sharfipoo, but a clean soapy Tom smell all his own.

“Don't take too long, darling," she said. "I'll be upstairs.”

The next morning in church, Faith's mind was wandering as usual. She still hadn't convinced the Ladies—no one could remember to call it the more politically correct Women's—Alliance that cushions with an actual filling as opposed to the ancient slabs of thin cloth presently lining the pews would be a worthy fund-raising project. No, they kept insisting on eminently more worthwhile projects such as helping the homeless, AIDS sufferers, and battered women—and Faith concurred. The only good thing about the cushions was that they kept you alert. It was impossible to get too comfortable and doze off.

Well aware of how numb certain parts of her body were getting, Faith kept half an ear on the order of service so she'd know when to stand up, while she thought some more about the food poisoning and the fire. Further conversations with Charley had done nothing to help. He'd questioned everyone involved and the police were still stuck with both opportunity and motive. He was leaning toward Reed's "practical joke gone wrong" theory and bluntly suggested that Faith do the same. Faith had tried to cast her eye about while on the job the day before, but she had gotten too busy to give it much thought—which is why it Was inappropriately occupying her mind now.

Cornelia had said that "tricks" like this hadn't happened before, although she wasn't exactly objective.

There were no chinks in Maxwell Reed's armor, as far as his devoted page was concerned, and that included his set. Faith thought Alan's comment about people under pressure was more accurate. It just happened to be Faith's soup.

Faith had noticed on the calendar this morning that it was going to be a full moon and she hoped that wouldn't cause any more high jinks among the lotus eaters.

Her attention was caught by the lector reading the second lesson. It was Penny Bartlett and she was reading from St. Mark, chapter 10, the section on adultery. It was an apt passage for these red-letter days. Mark was pretty specific about the do's and don'ts of it, but Penny read swiftly on, her voice slowing only when she got to the part about "how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!" By the time she reached the camel going through the eye of a needle, it was apparent to the entire congregation she was addressing her half brother, fixing him with a steely eye and quoting the words by heart with unmistakable emphasis. He looked straight back at her and glowered.

It was a positive relief to stand up and start singing, although the first line of the hymn—"When the world around us throws all its proud deceiving shows"—was a bit too apt for comfort. A few voices faltered on the high notes and there were more throat clearings than usual. Faith knew the title of Tom's sermon, "Material Men and Women: How Much Is To Much?" and so the whole thing made sense to her, but what did Penny have in mind? Campaign spending, business ethics, a quarrel over their father's will?

Faith settled back into the pew and prepared to listen to her husband talk about what constituted riches. She was willing to bet Alden wouldn't agree.

“Get the cards, Marta."

“Oh, Max, not tonight. I'm tired. Besides, we just read them Wednesday."

“A lot has happened since then."

“That's true and the moon is full tonight, so the power will be strong.”

She got up, went to the bureau in the hotel room, and took a small intricately carved wooden box from the top drawer. Max sat down in one of the chairs by the window, in front of a low table. Marta placed the box carefully in front of him and drew open the drapes. Strong white moonlight streamed over the room and Marta turned off all the inside lights, except for one next to the table. She sat opposite Max and said, "Open the box." She preferred the querent to handle the cards as much as possible, transferring whatever vibrations he or she was carrying around to the pack. Max unwrapped several layers of bright silk and silently handed her the cards that were inside the package.

She looked through them and selected one. "1 still see you as the King of Swords. All right?" He nodded and she placed the card face up on the table.

“Do you have the question firmly fixed in your mind?" Marta asked.

“Yes," answered Max, closing his eyes.

“Then shuffle the cards and cut.”

Max shuffled several times with great deliberation, then hesitated before cutting the deck. With an almost defiant gesture, he quickly cut and leaned back in his seat.

Marta turned up the top ten cards, placing them in a pattern around the court card.

“What do you see?" he asked with a slight smile. "Anything different?"

“You're always too impatient. Don't rush me." Marta's face was anxious.

He leaned forward and scrutinized the cards. By now, he knew their characteristics as well as she did, but he couldn't interpret them.

“The Knight of Swords again—and the Chariot.”

“Hush, Max, the cards often repeat.”

Marta looked intently for several more minutes, then pointed to the first card and intoned, "The Five of Wands covers him. He is involved in competition and struggle.”

The film, Max thought. The card pictured five young men fighting. He'd be happy to have so few adversaries.

“The Four of Cups crosses him. He is weary and discontent. It is a time to rest in life's race.

“The Wheel of Fortune is beneath him. He has had much good fortune in his past. There have been times of plenty and times that were lean.”

1 know this. Max knew not to interrupt the reading. Get to the future, Marta.

“The Six of Cups is behind him, happy memories and possibly a friendship are moving out of his sphere, leaving a space for new ones.”

Or not, Max reflected pessimistically.

“The Nine of Pentacles crowns him. There will be wealth for him far ahead."

“Solitary wealth!" Max blurted out. "I know that card!"

“Shhhh." Marta reached over and stroked his hand. He slunk back against the chair cushions.

“The Queen of Wands is before him.”

Max's face brightened. It must be Evelyn. The Queen of Wands was a blonde. What other blondes were there? Or rather, other blondes who counted.

“The querent fears the Knight of Swords, the brown-haired youth who brings or takes away misfortune.

“The Two of Pentacles represents those around him. He is balancing many factors.”

A balancing act. His whole life was one long balancing act. The cards never lied, he thought.

“The Chariot carries his hopes. He would like to achieve greatness.”

Marta stopped speaking and looked at the last card, the outcome, with the director.

“The moon is strong tonight, Max. It was inevitable."

“And the other night, the same damn Moon card?" Marta reassembled the deck.

“I know what it means, remember. Perils, deception, and secret enemies.”

She sighed. "It depends on your question. The Moon can also illuminate your path and lead you away from danger."

“Do you want to know my question?" he asked. "I think I know, Max dear"

“I wonder if you do."

Four

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

The auditorium at Pritchard Junior High was packed and the highly partisan audience a bit more rowdy than was usual at Aleford public gatherings. At the moment, the stage was empty except for four gray metal folding chairs and a long table on which four glasses of water, a full pitcher, and a microphone had been placed.

Supporters of the three candidates waiting in the wings had had to choose between front-row seats and sitting en masse. The Alden Spaulding contingent opted for proximity and tried to snare as many as possible in the choice location close to the stage, elbowing their neighbors in a determined way. Penny Bartlett's fans went for unity and were occupying a block of rows under the balcony in the center of the room. The Heuneman forces had rallied undecidedly to the left-rear and front rows. Very few in attendance were uncommitted, and Faith wondered aloud to Tom why they had all bothered to come when everyone's minds were already made up.

“You shouldn't assume everyone is so firmly decided. I, for one, intend to listen with an open mind to all three candidates"—Tom paused and then just before his wife could jump on him, he continued—"then vote for Penny."

“You see, everyone is decided. We're only here because we're all afraid the opposition might outnumber us."

“Usually true, sweetheart, but I think in this election there are really quite a few people who have not made up their minds. If it was simply Penny against Alden, the choices would be clear, yet James is a dark horse. I don't know where he stands on a lot of things myself, and I've known him since I arrived in Aleford. Then, last but not least, let's not forget the entertainment value an event like this affords the town. Who could stay home, even to watch `Murphy Brown' when you have the opportunity to see your fellow citizens going at it hammer and tongs live?”

The candidates were taking their places. Peg Howard, the reference librarian at Aleford's Turner Memorial Library and president of the League, was calling the crowd to order. Whether it was because the audience was eager to hear the speakers or because of Peg's intrinsic association with silence, everyone immediately shut up.

“I'd like to welcome you all here tonight on behalf of the League of Women Voters and explain the format.

Each candidate will have seven minutes to introduce himself or herself, then I will ask several questions prepared by the League. After that, you will have an opportunity to ask questions from the floor, and finally each candidate will have five minutes for a closing statement. Please refrain from any applause or vocal demonstrations, as it merely wastes our time" Peg looked sternly at the rows directly in front of her. Faith had no doubt the librarian would move to eject any miscreant from the hall and take away his or her borrowing privileges for a week.

Alden Spaulding was making quite a show of cradling the cast on his left wrist with his right hand. Faith was sure the wrist wasn't broken and that he had somehow intimidated the doctor into putting a cast on in a bid for sympathy votes. Audrey's remarks had eliminated any possibility that Spaulding would sue the caterers, but with everything that had been happening lately, Faith was jumpy and would have preferred to see the wrist bare, or in an Ace bandage at most.

“Now, James Heuneman will begin as he drew the highest card.”

Peg passed the mike to James and he seemed a bit confused by its appearance for a moment. Admittedly, it was vintage, a twin of Edward R. Murrow's "London Calling" one. James managed to elicit a high-pitched squeal with his first word, then delivered a fairly bland speech about the importance of democracy in action and preserving the town for future generations. It took a total of three minutes. He handed the mike back to Peg with a smile of obvious relief.

“Thank you, Mr. Heuneman. Now Penelope Bartlett will present her remarks”