“Pix! I just heard about Adelaide Bainbridge. Come over to the house and tell me what happened. What a tragedy!”
Pix hesitated. She was curious about the fabled abode, but she wasn't really dressed, or even combed sufficiently, and she wanted to get home to call Faith. She hadn't reckoned on Samantha's reaction. Samantha clearly regarded an invitation to the Atherton's “Million Dollar Mansion” as a command performance for those fortunate enough to be asked. She actually poked her mother in the back.
“Well, perhaps for a minute. I have to get home. Mother may be calling. Rebecca is over at her house.”
Valerie smiled brightly. “You come, too, Samantha, unless you are needed here.”
Crestfallen, Samantha admitted she should be inside helping with lunch.
“Another time.” Valerie turned to Pix and said just loud enough for Samantha to hear and swoon, “You have the most precious thing for a daughter I ever did see.” Valerie occasionally lapsed into the Kappa Kappa Gammanese expressions of her college and deb days in the real South.
“Thank you. We like her,” Pix replied, then realized it sounded a little snippy and added, “We're going to miss her terribly when she goes off to college.”
“You're so lucky having a daughter,” Valerie commented wistfully as they went down the path connecting the Atherton's house to the camp. “But then, you have sons, too.” Her voice was full of commiseration. Pix was tempted to say they had never put them through the kind of hell Duncan seemed to be inflicting on his parents, yet it seemed inappropriate to gloat, and Danny was still young. Pix was loath to make any predictionsâor say anything out loudâthat might jinx things.
Valerie led her into the huge living room with teak-paneled walls soaring to a cathedral ceiling. The shape of the roomâit swept forward, following the lines of the bluff on which it was
situatedâand all the wood made Pix feel as if she was in a boat, a very spectacular boat, and that must have been the architect's intent. She admitted inwardly that she was indeed envious. The house
was
gorgeous. Every plate-glass window framed a spectacular view. One set looked straight out to sea, another to the cove. Jim's boats, including the souped-up lobster boat he'd recently purchased, were picturesquely moored there. It looked like July on a Maine-coast calendar. The fireplace was as stunning as Samantha had described. Pix noticed a large photo on the mantel of a handsome smiling man with his arm around a much younger, and happier, Duncan. Valerie followed her gaze. “My first husband, Bernard Cowley. Duncan looks a bit like his father. I wish he could act like him. Buddy was a saint. I don't think I'll ever stop missing that man. Of course,” she added quickly, “Jim is just about the nicest thing on two feet I've ever met, but you never get over something like this, and Jim understands.”
“It must have been a terrible time for you and your son.”
“It wasâand if I hadn't met Jim, I don't know how I would have survived. Coming here was just what I needed and I know Duncan will settle down.” Valerie did seem genuinely happy, more so than Pix had noted recently. Maybe things were going better with her son. Certainly it would be hard to be depressed in these surroundings. Most of the furniture in this room was modern, with a few well-chosen antiques: a softly burnished cherry card table, a child's Shaker chair, and an enormous grandfather clock, the sun and the moon slowly changing places above a stately schooner on the face. Scattered about in what Pix was sure was not a haphazard fashion were old brass navigational devices, a collection of Battersea enameled boxes, and other conversation pieces.
“Now tell me about poor Adelaide while I make coffee. I think there are two of those devastating muffins from that bakery in Blue Hill left. I swear Jim and Duncan devour whatever goodies I bring into this house like a swarm of locusts.”
Pix begged off. The locusts could feast on her devastating
muffin. She really had to get home, so she quickly gave a brief account of Adelaide's death.
“I didn't actually know them well, but Jim and his family had,” Valerie said. “Poor old lady. She did kind of let herself go, if you know what I mean.”
Pix looked at the svelte figure gracefully draped across the leather couch before her and did indeed. Valerie Cowley Atherton would never let herself go. Pix saw her twenty years hence with face as smooth as plastic surgery could make it, body as trim as aerobics and a diet of lettuce and Perrier would supply.
She left and promised to return for a full tour of the house.
“It's beautiful, Valerie, and everything you've done is perfect.”
“Thank you.” Her hostess flashed a well-satisfied smile. “I've always wanted to live in a modern house. Buddy's family, bless their hearts, would have a conniption over this place. The Cowleys are an old family and they never let anyone forget it. You can't imagine the inconvenience they put up with in order to stay authentic!”
Pix laughed. She had often heard Faith on the same subject with regard to New Englanders. She hoped the heat was breaking in Aleford, although it wasn't here. She still felt guilty about the question of air conditioning at the parsonage.
“I can imagine. I'm afraid in my family, we may tend in this direction ourselves. Thank you for showing me the house. I'll take a rain check on the coffee.”
“Bring Sam. We'll make it something else and all go into the hot tub,” Valerie called after her. Pix waved good-bye. You'd have to put a gun to Sam's head to get him to disport in that kind of revelry.
A hot tub sounded particularly unappetizing at the moment. A cold shower would be more like it. The temperature was up over ninety again. No one could remember such a long stretch of searing hot days.
But everything, including bodily comfort, took a backseat
to her most important task; she was rewarded by Faith's answer on the second ring. What was more, Ben was at a friend's house and Amy was napping.
Faith was shocked at the news. “I know who Addie Bainbridge is. She's the fat one who runs the bed-and-breakfast and makes those incredible quilts, right? Her sisterâwhat's her name again? She lives with her.”
“Yes, except it's her sister-in-law. She's a Bainbridge, too, Rebecca. They've lived together for over thirty years.”
“Oh, the poor thing. What will she do now?”
“Her main worry at the moment, besides getting Adelaide buried, is keeping her garden watered, so I think she'll be all right. She's got something to focus on. Then, too, she may not really be taking it all in. Rebecca's always been a bit scatterbrained and it's become more pronounced recently.”
“Totally gaga?”
“I wouldn't go that far, definitely bordering on eccentricity though.”
“Well, so are most of the people I know, including you. There's nothing wrong with that, but what is going on up there? I think I'll pack up the kids and come this weekend. There has to be a connection between the two quilts. Let me know as soon as you find out whether there's a mark on the latest one and what killed her.”
“I willâand it would be lovely to have you here.” At least Pix thought it would be, wouldn't it? A tiny voice was whispering that these were
her
murders, but she valiantly ignored it.
“The only problem is, we promised to go to Tom's sister's for a big family picnic, since everyone couldn't get together on the Fourth, and you know how they are about these things.”
Pix did know, having listened to Faith lo these many years. Fairchild gatherings were sacrosanct, as well as invariable. They were a family that celebratedâbirthdays, major holidays, and then their own specific South Shore rituals: First
Spring Sunday Raft Races on the North River, All-Family Autumn Touch-Football Saturday, and so forth. Faith's own family had tended toward less strenuous fetes, such as taking the children to the tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or shopping for Easter dresses at Altman's, followed by lunch in the store's Charleston Gardens restaurant. Pix wasn't sure what her own family did all those years, because they were much too busy.
“Maybe you can come up the following weekend.” Things should certainly be sewn up by then, which brought her back to the quilts.
“I told you the quilt I bought is a fake, right?”
“No, but I know you've suspected as much. Have you heard about the one found with Mitchell Pierce's body?”
“No, Earl hasn't said anything. They'll probably send the one around Addie to Augusta for testing, too. By the way, the Bainbridges sold Mitch a lot of antiques, things they thought were worthless, although I'm sure they were anything but. Maybe Addie discovered that she had been swindled, but that would mean she'd be angry at Mitch, not somebody at her. But she might have had a reason for wanting him dead, except I can't imagine her killing him. In fact, it would have been a physical impossibility for her to transport his body, let alone dispose of him in the first place.”
“Could the sister-in-law have helped?”
Pix was stunned. “Rebecca! God, no. I don't think she even swats flies.”
“I think what you need to do is sit down and make some of your lists. You're so good at that. You know the kind they do in all those British detective stories. There's got to be some link you're missing.”
Pix had been thinking all morning that she hadn't exactly been bringing the organizational skills that propelled her to the fore of every cause in Aleford to bear on this situation. It wasn't just making some lists, although that might help. She planned to sit her daughter down as soon as she came home
and find out what she knew. And the same with Mother. It wasn't going to be easy, but somebody had to do it.
“I'm going antiquing again,” she told Faith, full of plans and energy now. “Maybe Jill will come along. I want to find out if there are any more of those quilts around. Perhaps the police can trace them. We'll go up toward Bar Harborâand Sullivan.”
“That's where Mitch was living, right?”
“Yes. Maybe I should talk to his landlady. I could pretend I was looking for a place for a friend to stay.”
Pix was learning fast, Faith realized with a twinge. If she wanted to be any part of this, she'd have to get up to Sanpere as soon as possible. Damn the Fairchild fun and games, she thought guiltily.
Looking out the window over her struggling squash vines to the imperturbable line of firs beyond, Pix wished life on Sanpere would return to normal. She told Faith about the paint on the sails, adding, “And don't say a word about red sails in the sunset.”
“It never crossed my mind,” Faith lied. “It's more red and white, though.”
Pix hadn't thought of that. Things were becoming more complicated by the minute.
Amy was waking up. Faith heard soft little coos that would soon become bellows of rage. She told Pix, who remembered the scenario all too well.
“Call me as soon as you find out anything more.”
“I will,” Pix promised. “Oh, one last thing.” She couldn't hear the baby yet, so Faith had a few seconds more. “Jill and Earl have apparently split up and Jill has been going around with Seth Marshall.”
“That's a surprise. Seth is all right, but he's not what I would call husband material. Who left whom?”
“Jill, according to Earl, and he's as puzzled about it as I am. Jill is very touchy this summer. I haven't felt that I could ask her what's going on.”
“Definitely
invite her to go on your little jaunt.”
Pix laughed and suddenly perversely wished Faith were on Sanpere.
“Talk to you soon.”
“Bye-bye.”
As soon as she put the phone back in the cradleâit was an old black dial phone that no one wanted replacedâshe remembered she had completely forgotten to tell Faith that Seth had planned to pour the foundation today. Maybe she'd go over there with Samantha before dinner. At the moment, she wanted to get to work. She felt more like her old self now that she had a plan. The tire swing was receding into past memory.
She couldn't talk to Mother so long as Rebecca was there, but she should call to check in. Gert answered. Her mother was napping and Rebecca was sleeping, too. Earl had sent Dr. Harvey from the Medical Center over and he had given her a mild tranquilizer. The police had roped off the Bainbridge's house and the guests had moved on, leaving addresses, except for Norman, who was now staying at the inn. Norman. It occurred to Pix that he probably would have given his eyeteeth for some of the rubbish the Bainbridges had disposed of so blithely last fall. She wondered why Addie had gotten it into her mind to clear things out thenâintimations of mortality, or simply wanting a heavier purse? And for what? She made quite a bit of money with her quilts and it wasn't as if she was a lavish spender. If she'd traveled as far as Ellsworth in the last ten years, Pix would be surprised, so Paris or cruises to the Caribbean were not the incentive.