Small Plates (3 page)

A
unt Eliza's bed was a shock.

Faith had expected something sedate, a pristine white counterpane, but instead it was a riot of color. Aunt Eliza had been a quilter! A vibrant Star of Bethlehem covered the bed with Double Wedding Ring shams on the pillows. A Boston rocker to one side sported a Crazy Quilt hanging over one arm. Quilts were folded across the end of the bed as well.

“This was Aunt Eliza's hobby—ever since she was a young girl,” Pru explained. “Her grandmother taught her ‘patchwork,' as she called it. The only other thing she really enjoyed was her puzzles.”

Faith noted a stack of crossword puzzle and acrostic books next to the bed. A basket filled with quilt squares sat beside them.

“Well, let's get back to work,” Tom said with a heartiness he did not appear to feel. They hadn't found so much as a codicil. “It's not as though we're searching for a needle in this quilted haystack. A will is much larger than a needle.”

Faith gave him a smile meant to convey appreciation for trying to lift their spirits, and a warning to cool the corny jokes.

An hour later, she would have welcomed any joke, no matter how trite. They'd searched both rooms and their closets from top to bottom. Nothing.

Prudence was sitting on the floor, obviously both tired and discouraged, with the basket of quilt squares in her lap. “This sampler quilt was the last thing Auntie was working on. She never got to put the squares together. Maybe whoever inherits them will let me have them and I can finish it for her.” She started to sob, and Faith went over to her.

“There's still plenty of time. Don't give up now.”

As she waited for Pru to have her little cry, Faith looked through the stack of quilt squares. Each one was different—she recalled that this was what made the quilt a “sampler”—and each was beautifully done. It was hard to believe someone could make such tiny stitches.

At the bottom of the basket, Faith found a small piece of paper they'd overlooked when they were searching for something bulkier. On it, written in a spidery hand, was a strange-looking formula:

“What is that?” Tom asked. “Some kind of code?”

“It looks like one of Aunt Eliza's acrostic puzzles,” Pru said. “You know, where you transfer letters to numbered squares and get a phrase.”

“Not a phrase! A message!” Faith gasped. “It must be the answer we're looking for—the hiding place!”

Tom scratched his head. “But where are the letters?”

As soon as he spoke, they were all struck by the same thought. Three heads turned toward the quilted squares next to the basket.

“Do you know the names?” Faith asked Prudence. “If not, Pix Miller will.” The Millers were members of First Parish, and Pix was an avid quilter.

“I'm pretty sure I know them all.” Her voice caught for a moment. “She kept repeating them to me. I haven't mixed them up, have you? I'm sure she left them in order.”

Faith shook her head. “I looked at them, but they're just as we found them. Get a piece of paper, Tom, and we'll start listing the names. Before we know it, we'll have the answer as easy as—Boston cream pie!”

Tom handed Faith a pen and took a small notebook from his pocket. “I still don't get it, though.”

Prudence's face was flushed—becomingly this time, Faith noted. “It's simple! The number ‘one' stands for the first letter of the first name of the first quilt square. ‘Two' the second letter of the second square. Then back to ‘one,' but it's the first letter of the third square, and so on. When we put the letters over the numbers, we'll know where she hid the will!”

Tom got it. The Fairchild family members were rabid games players from outdoorsy ones like touch football to indoorsy mammoth board game marathons.

The first five squares were: Old Maid's Puzzle, English Ivy, Tall Pine Tree, Boston Puzzle, and Maple Leaf. Starting with the
O,
they soon spelled out “On top.”

“All the names seem to relate to Boston, New England, and Eliza herself,” Faith said excitedly.

“She told me the quilt was going to be a memoir. I thought she meant she was using her favorite squares. And now I also know why she kept telling me the names!” Pru said. “Quick, Tom, I mean Reverend Fairchild, here are the next six: City Secrets, Church Steps, Evening Star, Secret Drawer—do you think there is one?—Cherry Basket, and Memory Block.”

The third word was
cherry
. Faith could scarcely breathe. One more word and they would have it! She looked about. “
Cherry
could refer to the color, or wood, or a pattern. No shortcuts.”

“Here it goes.” Pru slowly picked up each of the remaining nine squares and said the names aloud: “Silver and Gold, Beacon Lights, Duck and Ducklings—she loved the statues in the Public Gardens—Hourglass, Aunt Eliza's Star—she said it would be rising soon—Bright Hopes, Fair Play, Brickwork, and Butterfly.”

Tom seemed to be taking forever, and Faith almost snatched the notebook from him.

“Secretary,” he cried. “On Top Cherry Secretary.”

Prudence raced into the library and led them to the Chippendale secretary where she had been seated when they arrived.

Tom, clearly the tallest, dragged a footstool over and stood on top of it. He reached up to the carved scrollwork, then shook his head.

“There's nothing here. We already looked anyway.”

“Try the pineapple,” Faith urged. The decorative symbol of hospitality extended up. “Twist it. We should have done this before.”

Tom did it now, and a small drawer at the bottom of the piece of furniture shot out. Prudence reached inside and squealed, “It's the will!”

“Call your lawyer immediately,” Faith advised.

“What about cousin Bradford? Shouldn't I let him know first?”

“Cousin Bradford can wait.”

As Pru went toward the phone, the Fairchilds followed. Faith whispered to Tom, “Don't let her—or the will—out of your sight. I'm going downstairs to get Amy and have a little chat with Nicholas.” Tom looked at his wife quizzically. She kissed him and said, “I'll tell you all about it—if I'm right.”

Amy greeted her mother with delight, and when Faith told Nicholas and Nora the good news, their relief was apparent.

“Now,” said Faith, looking Nicholas squarely in the eye, “how long has Bradford Winthrop been blackmailing you?”

Nicholas winced, and Nora started to cry.

“Oh, Mrs. Fairchild, my Nicholas only takes a drop now and then. We would have been out on the street at our age with no references!”

“You should have come to Miss Winthrop right away. Go upstairs and tell her everything. Leave Bradford to the reverend and me.” Sadly, Faith could understand Nicholas and Nora's fear. “You controlled the elevator by remote control, right?”

“Yes,” Nicholas said with a touch of pride. “And I rigged up a timer for when we were out of the house. I should have been an engineer,” he added wistfully.

“What about the ghost of Aunt Eliza at Miss Winthrop's window? Was that electronic too?”

“No,” said Nora, looking guilt stricken. “That was just a rag mop waved in front of the window. In the dark, it looked exactly like the old lady's hair . . .”

T
hat night Pru came out to the parsonage, and they popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Tom grinned at them. “Well, Ms. Sherlock and Dr. Watson, what are you going to call this case in your memoirs?”

Faith quickly offered, “How about ‘Where's There's a Will, There's a Quilt'?”

Pru shook her head and said, “I think ‘A Stitch in Time Saved Mine' is better.” She put her hand up to her glasses. “And the first thing I'll spend the money on is a pair of contact lenses . . .”

Prudence indeed!

T
he moon was waxing in the crystal-clear night. A single gull flew across its face, silhouetted against the light, which was as silver and shimmering as the goddess Diana herself. Tall grasses cast stiletto shadows on the dunes. Nothing was stirring; the air was impossibly still. It was the kind of night when things could be expected to happen and sometimes did.

Inside a small saltbox cottage a fire crackled merrily in a fieldstone fireplace, but not loudly enough to prevent Faith Sibley Fairchild from hearing the waves lapping the Cape Cod shore. She was at The Oceanside Retreat—affectionately shortened to “The Retreat” by the loyal guests who returned like lemmings year after year and, from the look of some, had been on the doorstep when the impressive gates had first opened eight decades ago.

The Oceanside Retreat represented a unique combination of one for all and none for all. The high prices kept it exclusive, but the conferences it hosted diversified the guest population. Situated on over sixty acres of woodlands and fragile dunes fiercely protected by boardwalks, it attracted those with a naturalistic bent—or those who thought it was chic to assume the pose. Thoreaus with thousand-dollar binoculars gazed at the horizon; Carsons with pedicures tiptoed around tide pools. Meals were served “family”-style in a cavernous oak-beamed dining hall, reminiscent of the turn-of-the-century Adirondack retreats built by wealthy New Yorkers similarly in pursuit of the simple life.

Faith was not complaining. Far from it. Her husband, the Reverend Thomas Fairchild, was at The Retreat for a three-day conference, sponsored by the denomination, “Heretics: Heroes and Heroines? Conversations about Sects.” Tom was delivering a paper on his specialty, the Albigensians in France, twelfth-century ascetics who rebelled against church and state, losing life, limb, and property in the process.

Besides nonaffiliated guests, The Retreat was playing host to three other groups this week: a footwear sales force, a watercolor society, and the International Association for Human Sexual Response Research and Therapy (IAHSRRT). With sex and sects, it should be a lively and potentially confusing couple of days, Faith had commented to Tom upon reading the welcome board when they checked in.

She gazed into the fireplace, mesmerized by the fire's flames. They'd been extremely lucky to get one of the separate cottages away from the accommodations in the main building and annexes. Tom was out on the beach collecting enough driftwood to prevent the fire from dying down anytime in the near future—say three or four years. He'd already stacked a pile worthy of Paul Bunyan on the deck outside the spacious room. Faith believed fire tending revealed a definite gender difference, like knife sharpening. Not that she didn't keep her kitchen cutlery on the cutting edge—her job as a caterer depended on it. But Tom raised the whole process to new heights with his special Arkansas stone, just the right honing oil, and so on. Sharpening knives could take him hours, and he loved it.

And fires. It was burn, baby, burn all the way—no pleasantly glowing embers, but the equivalent of blazing Yule logs whatever the time of year, in this case summer, the end of June. The weather was typical of the Cape at this time of year: during the day, beach weather—warm, sunny blue skies, once the cold early morning fog lifted. After sunset, the temperature retreated to nights reminiscent of those that were the norm three-quarters of the year in Faith and Tom's Aleford home, west of Boston.

The moment she left the hearth the room was freezing. She pulled on the colorful Missoni sweater sent by her sister, Hope, for Faith's last birthday, a birthday that still put her squarely in her early thirties, and was glad she'd packed it.

Faith got up from her comfortable position and walked over to the sliding glass doors that led to the deck. She drew the drapes back and peered out. The Retreat had tasteful walk lights, but they were unnecessary with the moon's own bright steady beams. A bird cried, or at least Faith thought it was a bird. There was no sign of Tom. She wasn't worried, but she wasn't not worried. Near the window she could hear the waves more clearly. The sound was much less gentle. There were signs everywhere on the beach warning people not to swim—
EXTREMELY STRONG CURRENTS
.