Katherine Page - Body in the Bog

“They couldn’t have had much of a turnout. People were leaving town as fast as they could,” Sam commented.

Their speculation was stopped by Pix’s return. She was laughing.

“She’s under house arrest, too, or whatever you call this. Charley won’t let her do anything in public today and she’s furious. She wanted my support to complain to the police. I think she’s planning to call the Middlesex County DA’s office to register a formal complaint.”

“Protective custody,” Dale piped up, “That’s what I’d call it.” He returned to his magazine.

“In a way, I don’t blame her,” Pix continued. “Not that I’m leaving the premises, but Millicent works all year on this day. I think they should at least let her review the parade. That’s her favorite part.” Every year, Millicent, town officials, and other favored individuals—the closest egalitarian Aleford got to royalty—sat on a specially constructed platform near the green and watched the parade pass by, award-ing the prizes for best float, best band, and so forth.

Sat high up, out in the open. With hundreds of people strolling around below, cotton candy and fried dough in hand. But there might be a hand holding something else. Faith shivered. She was with Charley. She didn’t want Millicent to put one foot out of her clapboard house. She fleetingly wondered what Millicent’s bodyguard was doing. Probably helping her wind wool.

“Did you tell her that?” she asked Pix.

“Not exactly. I certainly wouldn’t advise the woman to defy the police. I told her what I was doing, but of course said I could not presume to make up her mind.”

“What did she say?”

“Thanked me and said it was exactly what she wanted to hear.”

“Great,” Faith said. Now she’d have to worry about Millicent, who was probably tying bedsheets together at this very moment while the police officer was trapped downstairs, his hands bound by the skein of wool.

She had an idea. “What about the Scotts? Maybe they could wait together? They’re such sane people.”

“The Scotts, very sane people, have left town. Ted told Charley they’d check in with him to find out when it’s safe to come back,” Sam told her. “I tried to get my wife to do the same, but obviously it was no use.” He shot a somewhat-sour look at Pix.

They settled down to wait again. The kids were in the backyard on the swing set. The yard was fenced, but Dale moved over by the window anyway. He’d finished the magazine. Another half hour passed.

Unaccustomed to inactivity of any sort, Pix was clearly getting restless.

“How about cards? Bridge?” she suggested.

Faith only knew how to play poker and Go Fish and was about to say so when Dale muttered something about being on duty, which immediately limited the choices.

“Double solitaire?” Pix said. Clearly the woman was getting close to the end of her tether.

“Sure,” Sam said. He knew his wife. “Have you got two decks of cards, Faith?”

Looking for cards proved a welcome time killer.

Pix went with Faith as she searched through various junk drawers and boxes of games that Tom was wont to buy at garage sales and auctions. The Fairchild clan were inveterate board game players, and when Tom came across a vintage set of Monopoly or Clue, he acted as if he’d found the Grail.

Triumphantly, Faith held two decks aloft. “I remember these because of the labels.” One was from the Queen Mary , and the other from Caesar’s Palace.

“A widely traveled family with broad tastes and maybe a sense of humor.”

Sam and Pix started to play. Faith, odd woman out, went into the kitchen to think. She sat by the window, idly watching Samantha swinging with Amy on her lap. The toddler laughed uproariously every time they swung gently forward. Faith stopped focusing on the scene outside and tried to sort through the thoughts elbowing one another for space in her mind.

Someone in Aleford wrote those letters. No one else would have known the poison involved. But whoever it was wouldn’t necessarily have had to have lived in town too long. It was only five years ago that Sam had had the affair with Cindy. Brad’s letter had been obscene, referring to certain sexual acts he may or may not have performed with Lora Deane, although given Lora’s transformation on Saturday, anything was possible. Their relationship was even more recent. Louise Scott’s alcoholic father and his accident dated further back, but it was something that might have come up in a certain kind of conversation about either drinking problems or car crashes. And the Batcheldors’. Faith searched her memory for the exact wording. Their letter had been the least specific—although no one, with the possible exception of Chief MacIsaac, knew what was in Millicent’s. The Batcheldors’ said they should stay out of the woods if they wanted to stay healthy. Almost the same words used on the phone to Lora. It was the only one that contained a direct threat. And now Margaret was dead; Nelson might be. What was in the woods? Why the Batcheldors?

All the POW! letter signers had received both letters, except Margaret, of course. Were there other recipients—too frightened to go to the police? And why the pointed omission of the signature—on Brad’s both times, the others only the second time. It suggested a precise person, someone who said only what he or she meant. A friend the first go-round, now a foe. But enmity toward Brad from the beginning. That could mean one of the Deanes, especially Lora’s grandfather or brothers, but they hadn’t known about the calls when the first letters were received.

The Deanes. Who lived in the apartment on Chandler Street? The letters and Lora seemed to be unconnected, but she kept popping up.

Faith tore a piece of paper from a pad on the counter and wrote: “apartment,” “signature,” “other letters?” and then “Brad.” She paused and after a moment jotted down “Margaret—meeting whom?” This last was a reminder to find out whether the police had located Margaret’s birding companion. Nelson had said she was going to meet someone. Who? She tucked the paper in her pocket. She knew she wouldn’t forget it.

Faith looked at the phone hanging on the wall and willed it to ring. It was one of the ones they hadn’t replaced. A dial phone. Ben viewed it as a priceless an-tique. So did Tom.

She gazed, unseeing, out the window again. The same names kept coming up over and over. A couple of these people were turning up on both her suspect and victim list: Lora Deane, Brad Hallowell. Lora’s family. And they had all been together this morning at the breakfast and on the green.

The phone rang at eleven. Faith was cleaning out the pantry by now and Sam owed Pix two thousand dollars. Dale and the kids were watching the Marathon.

This time it was Tom. He started speaking right away.

“He’s alive. He’s still in danger, but there’s hope.”

“Oh, Tom, thank God! What was it?” All morning she’d held on to the slim possibility that Nelson had had a heart attack or something else natural, however unwelcome. Then the whole affair could be a ghastly coincidence.

It wasn’t.

“He was poisoned. They’ve pumped his stomach and are analyzing the contents.”

“Poison!” A crystal clear picture of her husband giving the victim mouth-to-mouth flashed into Faith’s mind. “Tom, is there any possibility that you . . .” Tom had had his own uneasy moments. “I’m fine.

They won’t even tell me what they think it is, not yet anyway, but the doctor said he didn’t believe I was in any danger. Whatever it was, you had to have had a lot of it.”

“But how could he have been poisoned right before our eyes?”

“Exactly,” Tom said grimly.