Katherine Page - The Body in the Cast

“No problem," Niki said with obvious enthusiasm. What she had been waiting for day after day, maybe the lead would twist an ankle.

“Are you sure? We'll be back in plenty of time to set up tonight and you know what's in the freezer ..."

“Boss, just go. Tricia doesn't have classes today. I'll get her to come in to help. We'll be fine."

“All right. And thank you!"

“You do pay me, remember. But I am also glad in my own tiny way to help further the cause of justice, or whatever it is you two are doing. Happy hunting.”

Faith hung up. She would call them later.

Pix's Range Rover stopped at the end of the Fairchild driveway exactly on time. Faith climbed in. A spirit of adventure pervaded. Sitting high up in the car, she had the feeling they might be on the road to the Serengeti instead of Route 2 into Boston.

“Chilton, MFA, Horticultural Hall, and the Copley," Pix chanted, "and I've added another one—the YWCA."

“The Y? That doesn't strike me as Penny's style at all."

“After my father died, if my mother went to the theater or a concert and the club was full, she always stayed at the Pioneer rather than drive back to Aleford in the dark. Now, of course, she's not driving anywhere, thank goodness." Pix's mother was an indomitable eighty-year-old who had reluctantly turned in her goggles and duster the year before after backing over a favorite lilac bush.

“The Pioneer Y has been converted into apartments, but the Berkeley Street branch has rooms. Mother always says it made her feel safe to have so many women around, and I imagine Penny would think the same way. I know I would."

“But wouldn't someone be apt to recognize her? Millicent was adamant her fellow club women would never turn her in, but these loyalties don't apply to the other places we're looking—or the streets."

“I'm sure that's why Penny went to Boston, if that's where she is. No one is going to notice her. Think about it. Sad but true, women of Penny's age are not studied with great care, and besides, she looks like a generic New England lady—somebody's mother, somebody's aunt. Around here, she'd stick out because everybody knows her. In the city, she's anonymous.”

Pix was right. It was what Faith had recalled during her conversation with Millicent. Penny did not exactly stand out in a crowd.

The entrance to the Chilton Club was on Common- wealth Avenue, and since they didn't have a prayer of finding a parking space nearby at lunchtime, they went straight to the garage at the Prudential Center and walked over. For once in her life, Faith did not have a plan. Fortunately, Pix did.

“I'm not a member, but Mother is, so I'll say we're meeting her for lunch. You can be searching for a bathroom if anyone asks, which no one will, especially since you left that hat in the car. I'll stay at the reception desk and make a show of peering out the door and so forth, asking for a message and wondering where can mater be. This should give you enough time to look into the dining room. I can show you where it is from outside. It's got beautiful long windows.”

Faith was impressed. Maybe she should give up catering and start a detective agency with Pix. John Dunne's worst nightmare come true.

The Chilton Club exuded a quiet elegance suggestive of monogrammed china and silver bowls of cut flowers atop a Chippendale chest. It was unmistakably a women's club. The large living room just off the hall from the reception desk had butter yellow walls that picked up the background of the long chintz drapes. Comfortable sofas and chairs with needlepoint seats were arranged with a view toward both conversation and silent escape. The room was empty save for one lone lady deeply immersed in the Wall Street Journal.

In another direction, the buzz of conversation drifting from the dining room was definitely higher-pitched than that occurring some blocks away at the Somerset. Faith looked into the room hoping for first time luck. The windows were beautiful and there was a nice Welsh rabbit sort of smell in the air, although she did not actually spot the dish. She did not spot Penny, ei- the. There were several Penny look-alikes, and Faith realized this would be happening all day in the venues they'd be casing. No one came over to ask her what she was doing there—too well-bred—so she double-checked the room.

She rejoined Pix, who was embellishing the story considerably and had obviously whipped her audience of the two desk attendants into a state of advanced concern for the elderly Mrs. Rowe.

When Pix saw Faith shake her head in a silent no, she suddenly looked at her watch—a watch so fully equipped as to tell the time and rate of exchange in Istanbul, among other things—and exclaimed, "Goodness, something must be wrong with my watch. It says it's the twenty-second today." She tapped it speculatively.

“Pix," said Faith, catching on immediately, "It is the twenty-second."

“Oh, you're all going to hate me. I thought it was the twenty-third. That's when Mother's asked us for lunch!”

f anyone hated her, they were too polite to say so, or perhaps it was relief that Mrs. Rowe was not prone nearby in one of those Boston oxymorons, a pedestrian crossing.

They got out quickly and hastened down the stairs to the sidewalk. "You were brilliant," Faith congratulated her friend.

“Thank you. We can cross the Chilton off our list. After you left, I steered the conversation around to Penny. How Mother was so worried about her good friend and so on. They'd all heard about Mrs. Bartlett's disappearance and said no one had seen her."

“Car or MBTA to the Fine Arts?"

“Let's leave the car where it is and take the subway. If we don't find her at the museum, Horticultural Hallis two stops away. I have tickets for the show, by the way. Mine and the one I got for my sister-in-law, but this is more important. Besides, she's always saying she kills every plant she touches, and the sight of all those blooming successes might be too much for her.”

A thorough search of not only the upstairs restaurant but the café and cafeteria at the Museum of Fine Arts—despite Millicent's imprecations, they had checked to be sure—yielded nothing. It had been the old "having lunch with Mother" routine again for the restaurant. This time, Faith went solo while Pix checked the members' room. Back at the entrance, they agreed their search had done nothing except make them incredibly hungry. Just as they were about to leave, Pix said, "We never checked outside! You know how nuts Penny is about fresh air. She might have taken a sandwich into the Garden Court to eat”

It was a sunny and surprisingly warm day for March. Not what Faith would call warm, but what all her neighbors, coats open, hats off, called warm.

“I suppose you may be right," she agreed, the idea of a picnic on a par with eating chilled vichyssoise in an igloo.

They retraced their steps across the museum's marble floors and down the stairs to the cafeteria. The door to the courtyard was shut but unlocked, and, sure enough, there were people eating lunch at the wrought-iron tables surrounded by leafless branches and brittle ivy. A woman in a navy down coat similar to Penny's sent them racing across the garden. Halfway there, they realized she had a toddler in tow, and even if Penny thought the ploy would help her avoid detection, it was hard to think where she could obtain a child at such short notice. There were days when Faith could have helped her out, but this was not one of them.

Out on Huntington Avenue at the trolley stop, Pix wondered aloud whether the whole thing wasn't a waste of time.

“I'm beginning to think Penny hopped a plane for parts unknown. Disappearing from Aleford was such a strange thing to do that looking in her familiar haunts doesn't match up. At the least, we should be canvassing X-rated movie theaters or Frederick's of Hollywood."