The Body in the Basement (8 page)

Read The Body in the Basement Online

Authors: Katherine Hall Page

Mostly what Samantha was feeling was tired. She was responsible for teaching ten of the youngest children beginning sailing, which was going to involve everything from knot
tying, to reading the water, and finally to putting a tiny hand to the tiller. Then she had to race up to the kitchen and help serve lunch, cleaning up afterward. She'd thought it would be fun to work with Arlene, but so far, they were much too rushed to do more than exchange a quick greeting in passing. Arlene stayed on with the crew to prepare dinner and clean the cabins. She told Samantha that if last year was anything to go on, the counselors would be much worse pigs than the kids. The kids had to keep their own bunks tidy. There were no such rules for the staff.
Today was as busy as the earlier part of the week had been. Samantha raced up the hill to the dining hall, swinging open the screen door, then letting it close behind her with a bang when she saw the kitchen crew surrounding Jim, all talking at once.
“Now, now, let's not get hysterical,” he said, “There are mice all over the place. You know that. We'll put out some more traps.”
Mabel Hamilton, Freeman's sister-in-law and the cook at the camp for so many years that local people thought of Maine Sail as “Mabel's Place,” spoke above the din. Every, one quieted down.
“We've all had mice in our kitchens. I found one poor little fellow suffocated in a sack of flour once, but what we have not had until now are three mice with their heads cut off laid out on the counter along side a carving knife.”
Samantha had moved next to Arlene. “Did you see them?” she whispered.
“Yeah, it is so gross.”
“I think we should call Earl.” Dot Prescott's voice was firm. Everyone nodded. Dot was in charge of housekeeping and, like Mabel, had been at the camp forever.
Jim tried a jocular approach. “The police! Over a few dead rodents!” He laughed. It didn't work. A sea of tightly shut lips faced him. Mabel and Dot stood directly in front of him, feet
planted solidly on the worn pine floorboards, arms folded tightly across their ample bosoms.
“All right, all right, I'll tell Earl. Now, can we clean the mess up and feed the hoard of hungry kids who will be streaming through that door in less than thirty minutes?”
Everyone returned to the kitchen. Mabel scrubbed the counter, muttering angrily to herself. “I don't like it. Not one little bit. Have half a mind to …” No one learned what Mabel was going to do with half of her mind, although all hoped it wouldn't be the lobe with the recipe file. She was far and away the best cook on the island. She suddenly stopped and addressed them in a louder and determinedly cheerful voice. “Let's forget about this now. It doesn't do any good to think about such foolishness. Probably a prank somebody thought would be funny.”
Samantha wasn't sure. She also didn't think it should have been cleared away until Earl had had a chance to look at it, but no one was asking her, and she didn't feel she knew anyone except Arlene well enough to offer an unsolicited opinion. Besides, she was a kid and they were mostly grown-ups.
She had been unable to keep herself from looking at the gruesome sight. The tiny creatures were neatly laid side by side in a row, with their gory heads tidily set above each carcass. Samantha had seen dead mice before, even a mouse who had met its demise in a trap, but this precise carnage was worse than all the rest put together.
She watched as Mabel scoured the carving knife. Mitchell Pierce had been killed with a hunting knife. Carving knifes. Hunting knives. It suddenly seemed that there were an awful lot of knives in the news on Sanpere. She felt a bit dizzy and shook her head.
“Sam, are you okay?” Arlene was loading bread into baskets. The diet at Maine Sail leaned toward a carbohydrate overload. Today's entrée was macaroni and cheese. Dessert was bread pudding. There was a salad, though, lemon Jell-O
with shredded carrots and mayonnaise dressing on an iceberg lettuce leaf.
Samantha nodded. “I'm fine. It's just creepy, especially after Sunday.”
Arlene nodded knowingly and put an arm around Sam's shoulder. Since she'd started going steady, she'd begun to adopt a kind of big-sister attitude that Sam wasn't sure she totally liked.
“It is creepy, but I know who did it, and he's a harmless creep, believe me.”
“You know who did it!”
“Well, I'm almost positive. It's got to be Duncan, of course. He's like stuck in the third grade or something, and I bet he thought this would be a really great joke on us and Jim. He hates it here. Maybe he thinks if he does enough weird stuff, they'll send him away. They should send him away all right—to the loony bin. It would serve him right.”
Samantha hadn't given much thought to Duncan Cowley, whom she had yet to meet. Given everything she'd heard, though, Arlene's theory made sense. Samantha was willing to bet this had occurred to her employer, too. It certainly would explain why he wanted to make light of the incident.
She was about to ask Arlene to tell her some more about Duncan when one of the doors to the kitchen opened and a woman walked in. It wasn't the way her mother walked, Sam immediately observed—those purposeful strides meant to get you someplace. This walk was more like a glide. A dancer's walk. A beautiful walk.
The woman had very short, very fair hair that hugged her head in a silken helmet. Her eyes, or her contact lenses, were turquoise blue.
“It's Valerie,” Arlene said in a low voice, “She's so awesome. Dunc had to have been switched at birth. He just can't be her son.”
Valerie Atherton was speaking to Mabel Hamilton, then came over to the counter where the two girls were working.
“You must be Samantha Miller. I'm Valerie Atherton.” Her voice was as smooth as the sea on an dead-calm day when you sat in the boat anxiously watching the drooping sail for a hint of tautness. Nothing was taut about Valerie, except her trim body and unlined face, shadowed by a large straw hat with a big red poppy pinned to the brim. Sam's mother had three hats: a floppy white sun hat with something that was paint or rust on it, a black hat for funerals, and a yellow rubber rain hat that made her look like the old salt on the package of Gorton's fish sticks.
“Hi.” Samantha, star of the debate team, lead in the junior class play, searched for some other words, something that would make an impression on this witty and urbane woman, a woman Arlene worshiped. Sam had heard so much about Mrs. Atherton, she felt she already knew her—her clothes, her car, her cat, Rhett Butler. Valerie hailed from the South and what was a hint in Louise Frazier's speech was a full-blown answer in Valerie's.
“Hi,” Samantha said again, now ready with a remark. “I'm Samantha Miller.”
She met Arlene's eyes and turned scarlet with embarrassment. Someone else might have said, “I know. I said that, stupid,” but Valerie appeared to find it new and delightful.
“I just adore your grandmother and your parents. It's lovely of you to be helping us out this summer. I hope you'll come by the house real soon. We can't show it off enough. It was in such bad taste to build such a big place and we have no excuse, except we all seem to take up so much space and if the house was any smaller, Jim and I would probably end up getting a divorce, so really we're helping to change those terrible statistics about failed marriages.”
Mabel Hamilton, who'd been beaming since Valerie came into the kitchen, burst out laughing, “I have to remember this. Maybe if I tell Wilbur it's to save our marriage and set a good example for folks, he will finally winterize the porch so I can have my sewing room.”
Samantha's cheeks were back to their normal color. She didn't know anyone who blushed as much as she did; it was annoying, so immature. She realized Valerie had entirely changed the mood of the kitchen and gotten everyone thinking of something else in a very short time.
Valerie perched on one of the stools and asked Mabel if she could have a bowl of the macaroni and cheese. “It's my ultimate comfort food.” She was looking at Samantha, so Sam nodded and finally found some words. “Mine, too, along with chocolate pudding and whipped cream.”
“And warm applesauce,” Arlene suggested. Soon everyone was listing their favorites—mashed potatoes, cinnamon toast, tapioca—until Mabel brought the reverie to a halt with her own candidate—sardine sandwiches.
“Ugh! That's more like bait, Mabel,” Dot said. She was about to elaborate when they heard the trample of little feet, many little feet. Samantha and Arlene jumped up to take the huge trays of steaming food out to the tables, where the kids helped themselves family-style. But first Jim asked for quiet. Samantha expected some reference to the mouse incident: “If anyone has any information”—the old “Put your heads down on your desks and I won't tell who raises a hand” kind of thing. Yet he didn't mention it. Instead, he recited from Tennyson's “Crossing the Bar,” his voice growing slightly husky at “Sunset and evening star/And one clear call for me!” Jim started every meal with some inspirational nautical quotation. The man must have spent years memorizing them all. Sam was curious to see whether he recycled them each session or whether there would be a new one every day. Irreverently, she wondered whether he had picked today's quote as a tribute to the mice.
She stood near the wall on one side of the dining room, ready to refill platters and the pitchers of milk and water that were set in the middle of each table. She took the opportunity to study Jim. He didn't seem to be Valerie's type. He dressed invariably in L. L. Bean khakis, the camp T-shirt, and, of
course, Top-Siders. He was handsome. Days on the water had bleached out his light brown hair and given him a good tan. His eyes were clear and blue. He always looked as if he'd had a good night's sleep. But there was nothing exotic about him, nothing special. He didn't have any style. Samantha found herself searching for the exact words that would sum up her employer. Jim Atherton was … well, he was just so straight.
As she'd groped for the definition, Jim's antithesis appeared at the dining room door: black/white, ying/yang, right/wrong, you say
either
—all rolled up into one. It had to be Duncan. A nudge and a whisper from Arlene confirmed it. Samantha watched as Jim Atherton's gaze, which had been sweeping steadily across the room at regular intervals like the beam from the old Eagle Island lighthouse, rested on his stepson. There was no mistaking Jim's look of dismay. He concealed it hastily and walked toward the young man.
“Duncan. Hello. Are you hungry? Take a seat. We're still on the macaroni and cheese.” Jim made the mistake of resting his hand on the boy's shoulder. Duncan shook it off with disdain. Arlene whispered, “Cooties” in Samantha's ear. Sam had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Duncan had looked childish.
Duncan Cowley inhabited that curious limbo between childhood and adulthood, called, depending on the speaker, “the best years of your life,” “the process of self-actualization,” or “teen hell.” To stake out his own particular territory in this strange land, Duncan had chosen to dress all in black. Today he wore a Metallica concert T-shirt under an unbuttoned black denim shirt, black jeans, and black high-top L.A. Lites, untied and without socks. A black leather bracelet complete with lethal metal spikes completed the ensemble.
“His parents should make him smell his shoes for punishment,” Samantha said, adding, “I thought only elementary school kids wore those shoes that light up. You're right. What a loser.”
Without a word to his stepfather, Duncan made his way to
the kitchen, his shoes indeed flashing tiny red spots of light as he walked. The girls turned to the wall. It was the kind of thing that could send them into uncontrollable fits of the giggles.
“And he stinks, too! What is that smell?” Samantha gasped.
“Musk and B.O.”
“Poor Valerie.” Samantha was in total sympathy with his mother, something that would have astonished some of her Aleford friends. But then, she wasn't in Aleford, and besides, Valerie wasn't like a regular parent.
 
At dinner that night, Samantha couldn't stop talking about the Athertons. She and her mother had taken big bowls of chili down to the deck by their own boathouse. Life with Samantha was turning out to be very relaxed, Pix thought as she reached for a tortilla chip straight from the bag. She hadn't even bothered with a bowl and she pushed thoughts of what Mother—and Faith—would say far from her mind. Instead, she concentrated on a cold Dos Equis—Faith would at least approve of the beer—and on what Samantha was saying. Obviously, the girl was in love.
Had Pix's own besotted crush on their neighbor, Priscilla Graham, been as boring, and even slightly irritating to Ursula? Pix sighed. If she was going to have to listen to paens to Valerie every night, she'd better lay in some more booze. What made it worse was that Valerie was a pretty fascinating creature and Pix liked her. She also knew, though, that in terms of types of women, she, Pix, was somewhere in Julia Ward Howedom, while Valerie inhabited the realms of Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert, women who could and did wear satin.

Other books

Mountain Tails by Sharyn Munro
Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane
The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham
Murders Most Foul by Alanna Knight
Tempest by Rose, Dahlia
Angel's Advocate by Stanton, Mary