There had been a neat little blue cross stitched on the binding of each of the quilts. They lined up like little soldiers. The crosses again. There had been one on Mitchell Pierce's quilt. There had been one on the quilt her mother had bought, a quilt her mother had told her was a fake. Should she tell Valerie? What should she do? She put her hands up to her cheeks to try to cool them down. They felt ice-cold against her blushes. She took a deep breath. Valerie was coming.
“The view is really something. I could stay here forever,” she said in as normal a tone as she could.
“I hope you don't have to, dear.” Valerie's tone wasn't normal at all. Samantha twisted around in the chair.
Valerie might have brought the paycheck, but she had also brought an extremely lethal-looking gun, which she was handling with ease, pointing it directly between her employee's big brown eyes.
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“I have to run. I'm already a bit late picking Samantha up, but she's waiting for me at the Athertons' house, and it's certainly no punishment for her to revel in Valerie's company amid Valerie's perfect taste. If anything, she'll probably âOh, Mother' me for getting there too soon.”
Faith laughedâwhile she still could. Amy, happily playing next to her adored Mommy on a water-filled mat, complete with floating spongy fish, would no doubt put her through this sometime in the future, as well.
“All right. I just wanted to check in and hear about the funeral,
though this one sounds pretty tame.” Faith and Pix had attended a more dramatic service on the island several summers agoâone that people were still talking about.
“Yes, poor Addie. Poor Rebecca. But I suppose their lives have been happy ones, if not bursting with excitement. And Adelaide really did make a name for herself in the quilt world.”
“Hmmm,” Faith was ready to move on back to the living, especially her own life. “If Tom can get away early, we'll be up Friday night. Do you think Seth will have started the framing by then?”
“He said he would, and even though it's been cooler, we haven't had any rain, so the foundation should be dry soon.”
“I can't wait to see itâand you, and Samantha.”
“Likewise, I'm sure.”
The two women hung up. Faith reached for Amy. “Your first trip of many to Sanpere Island,” she told her child, who listened intently and replied with a string of appropriate nonsense syllables. Was it just because she was a mother that Faith thought she could discern the words
wanna go, wanna go?
Well, I want to go, too, Faith reflected. With the amount she was spending calling Pix, it might have been cheaper, and more sensible, to have shut down the company and gone up in July in the first place. Besides, although things seemed to have settled down on the island, she knew she wouldn't feel easy until she saw Pix and especially Samantha for herself.
“You'll like it there.” She continued to hold a one-sided conversation with her child, a situation she'd eventually gotten used to with Ben. In his early days, she'd felt as if she was talking to a cat or some other domesticated pet. “It has icy cold water, lots of bugs, no place to eat, no place to shop, nothing much to do.” And they were building a house in this Shangri-la.
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Pix knocked loudly at the Athertons' front door and, receiving no reply, knocked again. Perhaps they were on the deck in
the front of the house. She walked around, didn't see anyone, and went back to the door. She knocked yet again, then did what she normally did in Sanpere: walked in. She could hear Valerie's voice coming from upstairs.
“It's me, Pix,” she called from the bottom of the spiral. Taking the silence for an invitation, she went on up. She was curious to see more of the house. At the top of the stairs, she saw an open door and through it Valerie's back. She entered the room. “Sorry I'm a bit late ⦔ Her apology was cut short first by her initial impression of the decorâit was fit for a little princess, or an aging romance writerâthen by the gun.
“What's going on! Samantha, are you all right?”
“Shut up and sit down in the other chair.”
Pix was so stunned that for a moment she couldn't move. It was simply too much to take in all at once. Valerie?
“Move!”
She moved.
Samantha had been similarly turned to stone. She had hardly moved a muscle since Valerie had entered the room; even Pix's arrival did not cause more than a flutter of an eyelash. Every thought she had directed her to keep still and stay alive. Her mother reached for her hand and she grabbed it, but did not shift her gaze or open her mouth.
Valerie, however, was talking to herself nonstop. Tapping her foot in annoyance yet maintaining a steady aim, she sat down on the daybed, incongruously surrounded by lace.
“Everything was perfect! Mitch was out of the way. We'd heard Seth tell his crew that they would be pouring the foundation after they finished the work at the camp. Perfect!” She was fuming. “Mitch, the old lush. Couldn't keep his mouth shut
and
he thought he should get more money. For what? I ask you.” Pix correctly assumed this was a purely rhetorical question, especially since Valerie did not even pause before continuing her tirade. “So he could make things look old. Big deal. There are plenty of people to take his placeâor who could have taken his place.” If looks could indeed kill, Pix
would have been effectively demolished and the gun superfluous. “But you had to start playing Nancy Drew. Still, that didn't get anywhere, and I was home free. I had even gotten rid of Duncan, so life around here could be a little more peaceful. I thought we were all going to have a lot of fun together. You haven't been a good friend at all!” She was pouting now.
The woman must be absolutely mad, Pix thought. She was talking as if Pix had done her out of an invitation to the Magnolia Ball or some such thing at the same time as she was confessing to murder! What else could the references to Mitch being “out of the way” and “pouring the foundation” mean?
The initial shock had passed and Pix was never one to sit meekly by.
“Valerie, put that gun down before someone gets hurt. I have no idea what you're talking about and you're upsetting Samanthaâand me.” Pix grasped for an out. “Did you think she was an intruder?” It was pretty feeble and she quickly followed it with some soothing words in as warm a voice as she could manage, “And what's this nonsense about our not being friends? You know that's not true.”
If Samantha was surprised at her mother's sudden gift for bold-faced lying, she didn't show it.
“Now, Pix”âValerie shook the gun like a chiding fingerâ“friends help friends, and you haven't helped me one little bit. I was all ready to settle down in my beautiful house for the rest of my life, but that's all spoiled. And you're to blame. Now, I have to think what to do.”
Pix offered a suggestion. “Why don't we just forget that any of this happened and we'll go home.”
“I said I was thinking! Shush!”
Samantha squeezed her mother's hand and Pix obeyed. She felt a sudden bleak stab of despair.
The spiral staircase did not muffle footsteps. Pix listened with a lifting of her heart as the sounds continued, mounting quickly to the second floor. Jim threw open the door.
“I don't have much time. I have to be back for my nature group after dinner.”
So much for any hope of rescue. The Athertons were definitely a team.
“Her mother just barged in. Came to pick her up. As I said on the phone, I saw her go into the closet on the monitor in your den. Somehow she had a key to the armoire.” Valerie looked away from Jim, to Samantha. “And where did you get that key, young lady? How many other times have you been snooping around our things!”
Samantha opened her mouth, but words did not come out. She thought she might be sick.
“Answer me!”
“In the woods. I found it in the woods out by the Fairchilds' new house,” she whispered.
“Mitch must have had it in his pocket and it dropped out when we were carrying him,” Jim said meditatively. He might have been mulling over the answer to a crossword-puzzle clue.
Meanwhile, Pix was trying to piece it all together. Samantha must have stumbled across something incriminating in the closet, something no one was meant to see. Pix had heard that along with their gold faucets and bidets, the Athertons had a state-of-the-art surveillance system. Yet it was the innocent caught by the guilty in this case.
“Jim, Samantha merely came over to get her check. I'm sure she didn't mean to pry into anything, but you know how teenagers are.” She was sure her daughter would forgive her. “There doesn't seem to be any harm done, so why don't we simply stop this. I'd like to go home.”
“And I wish I could let you go, but we can't.” Jim sounded genuinely sorry. “You may not understand all that is happening nowâI know you wouldn't lie to us; you're too good a friendâhowever you'll figure it out later and have to tell Earl. Then where will Valerie and I be? No, I'm afraid it's too late.”
There it was again. The friendship thing. Well, friends didn't aim guns at friends in Pix's book. She couldn't think of
anything to say and decided to keep quiet and concentrate on how she and her daughter were going to get away from these two lunatics. She was trying to replace all her fear with anger and it was working.
“It doesn't matter if we make a mess in here, because we're going to have to leave the house in any case.” Valerie was speaking matter-of-factly. “So, why don't we kill them both now and get rid of the bodies after dark?”
“What!” Pix couldn't help herself.
Jim seemed a bit taken aback also.
“Honey, I'm not so sure. I mean, I've known Pix for simply ages, my whole life, in fact.”
“So what? You knew Mitchâand Buddy, for that matter.”
Buddy? Bernard Cowley! They had killed him, too!
“But not closely. I only met Buddy once or twice, remember, and of course he really did drown, albeit with a bit of help from you. Pix is another matter. Our parents used to play bridge together.”
“Oh, well then, that changes everything.” Valerie spoke with heavy sarcasm. “Why don't we let them go, then?”
Jim put his arm around his wife's shoulder in a gesture of affection. “Now, don't go getting all huffy, sweetcakes. I know we can't let them go, but I don't like the idea of having their deaths on my hands. We'll figure something out, don't you worry.”
Pix had the feeling she was watching a strange combination of Ozzie and Harriet and Bonnie and Clyde.
“Look,” he continued, “we'll tie them up and you can keep on eye on them. We can't go anywhere until after dark, anyway. And now I really do have to get back. The kids will be waiting. We're going to look at slides of seabirds.”
The camp, Jim's beloved camp.
“Jim,” Pix asked, “how can you give up Maine Sail? It's been a part of your family all these years. You love it. It's in your blood. Do you want to say good-bye to it forever?” Pix
thought if she talked like Jim, she'd have a better chance of getting through to him.
He did indeed look downcast. “I know. There's always been the sad possibility we'd have to cut and run. That's why I got the new boat, biggest diesel engine Caterpillar makes. I was going to enter the lobster-boat races next month.” He nodded his head toward the cove, where it bobbed in the water not far from the sloop. “Maine Sail was the most important thing in my life until I met Valerie, and you're right, I will miss it. But, Pix dear, there are other places and I'll have another camp. Of that, I'm sure. Don't you worry. Now, why don't you come with me? I think we'll have to separate you.” This last was in a sterner, “caught talking after lights out” voice.
Separationâit was what Pix was afraid of, Samantha, too.
“Mom!”
“No.” Pix stood up and pulled Samantha into her arms. “I'm not leaving my daughter's side.” She hoped Jim's parents had been lucky at cards.
He sighed. “Oh all right, you can stay together. Give me the gun, honey, and get some rope from the basement. Here's a thought. Maybe we should lock them in the wine cellar? It would be quicker.”
“Yes, and why don't we give them some of the Baccarat so they can enjoy a glass or two.” Valerie was still bitter.
“I doubt they would wish to imbibe now, Val. Besides, Samantha is underage. No, we best leave them here. They might break one of the bottles.”
Nuts, completely nuts. The words echoed in Pix's head as she waited for Valerie's return. When Jim had mentioned the wine cellar, she'd had a thought. There was always the possibility that someone delivering somethingâthe handyman at work, or maybe Gert Prescott coming to cleanâwould see the odd procession through the huge plate-glass windows, but they couldn't court even this slim chance.