The Body in the Bonfire (16 page)

There weren't any other rooms occupied on this floor. She went up to the next floor and tried
Boothe's door. It was still locked. Not that she blamed him, but she wondered if she at least might be able to look in the windows from the fire escape that climbed the side of the house his suite occupied. Lack of a flashlight, remembrance of how cold it was away from the bonfire, and the possibility of getting caught dissuaded her.

John MacKenzie's room turned out to be on the first floor, not far from the landing where the two graceful front staircases ended. The house must have formerly been the headmaster's or built by one of the original faculty members, someone with independent means and good taste. It was a shame that it had been carved up into dormitory rooms.

There was no porn, no frivolity of any kind in John's room. Like Sloane's, there was a minimalist quality to it. No sound system, no stuff. But unlike Sloane's with its country house look, this room resembled a monk's cell. Nothing in excess. Except books. The bookcase was crammed full and there were stacks of books on the floor next to it and next to the bed. Philosophy, psychology, history—no fiction. She turned his computer on and, unlike the others, it was protected with a password. She typed in his name, trying a few variations, but nothing happened. What was it that John didn't want anyone to see? She shut down and looked through his drawers. Nothing of interest except a pile of papers labeled “Papers from Professor Boothe's Courses and Rewrites.” She picked one
up. He'd gotten a
C.
Boothe had written almost as much as John had. Attached to it was the rewrite. Apparently, John had shown the paper to Boothe, yet this time there was only one comment written at the end: “Better, but not best.” What a pedant the man was! And dangerous. This was the kind of thing that drove kids into the vortex of depression. She felt a stab of pity for John, excluded from his mentor's current course. The message was loud and clear: You're not making the grade. She wished she could sit the boy down and tell him about the Paul Boothes of the world. What little, little men they really were. At the same time, she thought, What would John do to make himself feel better, feel superior? Go after Daryl?

She left Carleton House feeling depressed herself. What was this school really about? James and Sinclair, upper-class bullies, would graduate and go on to one of the Ivies, as had Dad and Granddad and Great-granddad, continuing to sail on through life. Angry Zach would eventually explode, harming himself or someone else. John would get rejected by Harvard, because Boothe would refuse to write him a strong recommendation letter, since to do so would mean lowering Boothe's standards, and John would kill himself or maybe the teacher. Too simplistic? At the moment, she didn't think so.

 

“Have a good time, honey? Kids are asleep and the Ravens won.”

Faith must have looked blank. Tom put his arms around her. “Football team. The Super Bowl. Remember?”

“Sure. I'm very happy for you.”

“No, you're not. You're sad, because I'm a Giants fan. Plus, I lost five bucks to Sam. Noting the extreme interest you have in the subject, I'd suggest we head for bed and you can tell me all about the bonfire. Or we can skip it, baby, and you can let me light
your
fire.”

“Gambling, sex, thank God I married a minister.” Faith laughed, moving up the stairs with all due speed.

 

Sloane Buxton had still not returned to Mansfield by Monday morning. Faith thought he might have been pulled from her class as punishment and was sitting in the headmaster's office writing “I will never leave campus again” forty thousand times, but it was clear both from the worried looks on his friends' faces and Daryl's slight shake of his head that Sloane wasn't back.

Today she was teaching them how to make a few soups that could serve as either lunches or dinners, especially supplemented by some of the sandwiches she'd taught them how to make on Friday, a salad, or any number of breads or rolls—focaccia, sourdough, buckwheat, olive, or a simple baguette. She also planned to teach them how to eat soup and launch the Miss Manners part of the course.

The time went quickly and soon they were ladling out bowls of pasta e fagioli—that hearty Italian soup with beans, to which they'd added some chunks of sausage—and heading for the dining room.

“All right.” Faith looked at the smiling faces of the boys gathered around the table. But then, looks can be so deceiving. She'd been in most of their rooms and she hadn't slept well last night, despite her husband's excellent ministering. Zach, dressed in black, kept leaping into her dreams.

“There are few things in life more pleasurable than sitting down to a good meal with friends and/or family. I make that distinction, because family dinners may not be your favorite get-together at the moment.”

“Or any moment,” piped up one of the ninth graders. “Like every Thanksgiving is the same. My uncle Len drinks too much and starts listing all the mean things my mom did to him when he was a kid, and his wife gets mad, too, like she's never heard it before, and my cousins and I are out of there.”

Faith nodded. She catered a lot of family reunions and could count on one hand the ones that went off without a hitch. “Blood is thinner than gravy,” she told the boys, and wondered what she meant. They seemed to understand.

“However, friends are the family you choose, so think about eating with them.” She picked up
her soup spoon. She'd had the boys set the table with a full array of cutlery.

“It's very easy to know which piece of silverware to use. You go from the outside in. After you've put your napkin in your lap, of course.”

“Of course,” Zach said in a slight mocking tone. “We attend Mansfield Academy, remember? Where no napkin in the lap means nothing on your plate.”

“You always eat soup this way.” Faith demonstrated, spooning the soup away from herself and back toward her mouth in one sweeping motion.

“Why?” asked John.

“I have no idea,” Faith answered. “Probably so you won't splash it onto yourself or the table. Many conventions have no explanations, but they have become accepted customs. When you don't follow them, you look—”

“Like a jerk.” Daryl finished for her and copied the way she'd eaten her soup.

While they were eating, Faith asked them to list the manners no-nos they already knew.

Brian Perkins, noticeably silent in class, as usual, recited in what had to be a dead-on imitation of his mother. “Take your elbow off the table. Don't slouch. Don't talk with your mouth full. I told you not to slouch. Bring the food to your mouth, not your mouth to the food. If you keep slouching, you won't get any dessert.”

Everybody laughed and he looked pleased.

“Okay,” James said. “I've got a few. Don't eat
until everybody's served. Don't reach for stuff across the table. And my favorite, which my dad does all the time and it drives me crazy, don't make loud chewing noises.”

“And no reading or wearing your headphones, no matter how much you don't want to hear your sister whine,” Sinclair added.

“Don't eat with your knife,” John MacKenzie said solemnly, and seemed surprised when they laughed.

“We'll continue this discussion tomorrow, but you guys are very knowledgeable. Now, just the way you wait until everyone is served before eating, wait until everyone is finished before clearing. That said, we can get on with it and I'll see you tomorrow.”

She was sure it wasn't her imagination, but the class seemed more relaxed without Sloane. Even his friends seemed to forget about his absence. She wondered if they knew where he was. She was almost sure they did. They lived in the same dorm and traveled in a pack. The worried looks on their faces at the beginning of class might have been due more to concern about the trouble they could get into for not telling than any concern about good old Sloane.

 

“Faith?”

“Yes, Charley, what's up?”

Charley MacIsaac, Aleford's veteran police chief, never called without a reason.

“I understand you've been teaching a cooking class at Mansfield. Something tragic has occurred, and I'd like to come by and talk to you. The state police are in on it, too.”

Faith was alarmed. Had something happened to Daryl? Everything had been fine in class, and that had been only a few hours ago.

“Is it one of the students? You've got to tell me.”

“We're not a hundred percent sure yet, but we think so. They had a big bonfire last night.”

“Yes, I know. I was there,” Faith said impatiently. Why wasn't Charley getting to the point?

“This morning, some maintenance workers were clearing away the debris and…well, they found human remains.”

“What!” Faith yelled into the phone. “You mean all the time we were watching, there was a body in the bonfire?”

“That's what it looks like,” Charley replied. He made arrangements to come by and hung up.

Faith stood still, seeing the flames, and the voice she couldn't get out of her mind was that of the little girl talking to her father—“The bottom of the fire, it looks kind of like a face.” There had been a face—or rather, a faceless face. And it had to have been Sloane's face. She started to gag when she thought of them singing, sipping cocoa, sitting in the flickering shadows from that ghastly light, the shooting sparks, the fiery embers, the horrific fuel—a corpse—beneath the crackling blaze.

Sloane. He'd never left campus at all.

It
had
been his last bonfire, just as he'd said.

But who would want to kill him? He was just a kid. Not a particularly nice kid, but a kid, and it was hard to conceive of anyone harboring the kind of sustained psychotic anger required for this kind of murder. It had been well planned out. The timing was too perfect. Those large piano crates conveniently standing by the side of the lake, fodder for the bonfire. He had to have been killed on Friday night or very early Saturday, before the bonfire was assembled. And if it happened Friday, she might have been the last person to see Sloane Buxton alive. And that was why the police would be ringing her doorbell any minute.

Ben would be home from school soon. She called Pix and enlisted her aid. Pix, who didn't ask any questions, just came over and scooped Amy up to come play with the dogs, promising also to meet Ben's bus. So the house was empty when Charley walked in, followed not as Faith had expected, by Detective Lt. John Dunne of the state police—the man Faith liked to think of as her assistant—but by a trim, impassive young woman in uniform. She had shoulder-length wavy red hair pulled back in a low ponytail and the wrong color lipstick.

“Lorraine Kennedy.” She extended her hand. “I've heard about you from Detective Lieutenant Dunne. He's out of state, taking a course.” She managed to convey that everything John had said
about Faith was negative and that whatever course he was taking was none of Faith's business. It was not a good start. Her accent placed her squarely in South Boston or maybe Charlestown. Dunne was from the Bronx, and his voice always made Faith nostalgic for egg creams and the zoo. Lorraine Kennedy's made Faith feel that she was one of those people “from away.”

Faith shook the woman's hand. Ignoring the reference to Dunne, she said, “I can't believe something like this has happened. It must be the missing boy, Sloane Buxton.” Then she motioned toward the living room and they all sat down. She didn't offer coffee. It wasn't a social occasion. She repeated her assertion as a question. “You do think it's Sloane, don't you?”

Charley answered. “We're waiting for his dental records, but he's the most likely possibility. Been gone for a few days. Didn't tell his friends he was leaving, and they swear if he'd been planning to take off, he'd have told them.”

“I think that's true. If only so they could cover for him.”

“You didn't like him, did you, Mrs. Fairchild?” Lorraine Kennedy asked abruptly. It was the kind of question that wasn't a question.

Faith could play the same game. “Why on earth would you assume that?”

“You don't seem to be too broken up about one of your students being cremated right before your eyes.”

Charley looked uncomfortable, but didn't say anything.

“Believe me, I am ‘broken up,' as you put it. He had his whole life before him, and this was a gruesome act. But I didn't really know him. I'm teaching a two-and-a-half-week course, which only started last Wednesday.”

Charley's beeper went off. He looked at it and went out into the hall to the phone. He was pretty familiar with the parsonage.

Lorraine Kennedy took advantage of the chief's absence to be even more direct, if that was possible.

“Look, I know you think you're some kind of Nancy Drew, and you've gotten in the way of a number of Dunne's investigations, but you're not going to mess up mine. Is that clear?”

Faith felt her face flush. “Very clear. And what is it you're doing in my house exactly?” She could make herself clear, too.

“I want to know what the Buxton kid said to you Friday night, where the two of you were, and which way he was going when he left. I've heard what you told Harcourt, but I want to hear it straight from you.”

Obediently, Faith went through the whole thing again. Detective Kennedy took notes, seemed satisfied, and stood up. Charley appeared in the doorway.

“It was Buxton all right, and we have a suspect.”

Lorraine smiled at Faith as she left. “I know
something you don't know” could have been written in a balloon coming out of her mouth. Faith closed the door, and as she called next door to tell Pix she was coming to get the kids, she addressed the absent officer: “I wouldn't be so sure about that.”

She was no sooner back and struggling to get Amy out of her Rugged Bear snowsuit than the phone rang. She was tempted to let the machine pick it up, but it could have something to do with what was going on at Mansfield. Hastily, she'd whispered to Pix what had happened—it would be, or already was, all over town—and promised to call. So it couldn't be her neighbor.