The Body in the Sleigh (19 page)

“I'll be back as soon as I can.” She kissed him hard. It was full of promise. Promise of Plan A. “Why don't you take the kids skiing? Missy might be able to join you and could use mine. She's pretty tall.”

The Sanpere Country Club had been started in the early twentieth century by a group of locals who had been bitten by the golf bug. The club had an excellent nine-hole course plus two tennis courts. It was open to anyone—no blackballing here—and the cozy little clubhouse served up excellent lunches during the summer season. She'd have to pack something for her gang now.

Tom held her closer. “I swear if I didn't know that Mary and her Nubian goats existed, I'd think you made the whole thing up
so you could sneak out and meet your secret lover. Mary Bethany. Bethany—the village where that other Mary was born. A baby, Christopher, turning up on Christmas Eve.” He settled back, still with his arm around his wife. He was loath to let her go. “I've always felt sorry for Mary—or rather Miriam, which is the Hebrew. She was as sorely tested as Job. It can't have been easy for her. Some sources put her age as young as thirteen when she became pregnant out of wedlock. The gospels don't tell us much about her, barely mentioning her by name, but it's not hard to imagine how the good people of Nazareth would have treated her.”

Faith agreed. “I always thought it was a little mean of God to leave her on her own for so long while Joseph was off building houses. Here she is betrothed and all, picking out pottery patterns, then suddenly she's getting more full with child by the day. She knew she was a virgin—but it took a while before it was all sorted out. I've always imagined her as a feisty lady. She had to be.”

“Joseph stuck by her, though.”

“Yes, I'll give him that—thanks to one of those convenient dreams people in the Bible always seem to have. But when it came time for the blessed event, why did it take so long for him to find someone to deliver the baby? Mary was on her own again in that stinky barn—or cave if you want to believe James—having the baby all by herself.”

Mary—or Miriam, Maryam, Maria—had always seemed very real to Faith, especially when she became a mother herself. She pictured her not so much as the meek and mild blue-clothed woman in Renaissance portraits—although they were beautiful—as clothed in a linen shift she'd woven under her own mother's instruction, working hard in the hot sun, an active, vibrant presence. A woman who said yes to God's emissary—“Let it be according to your word”—perhaps sensing even then that the fruit of her womb was destined for a short life on earth. A much beloved son. One of Faith's favorite parts of the Bible was that wonderful scene
at the wedding in Cana where Mary notices that the caterer must have messed up the wine order and tells her son to get busy changing the water into Merlot. When the servants balk, she's firm—“Whatever he say to you, do it.”

Faith's mind moved back to the present and she stood up.

“But, speaking of Marys, I have to go. The sooner I leave, the sooner I'll—”

“I know, I know, and say hi to your secret lover.”

“Hi, lover.”

 

Why hadn't they arrested him?

Jake Whittaker wished it weren't school vacation for the first time in his life. Without the routine of classes and the burden of homework—the teachers had gone easy on their students—there was nothing to keep him from thinking about what had happened and what might happen.

He didn't want to see anyone, but he'd gone to Davey's in the early morning hours after coming home from Ellsworth, after all hell had broken loose. He had to warn his friend and be sure they had their stories straight.

Davey had a room the size of a closet on the first floor behind the kitchen. Last year he'd convinced his mother to move her preserves to the basement and let him have the space. Jake had helped him paint it and hang up some posters, so now it was all his. It had a small window, which he never locked. Nothing in the house was. He'd been startled out of a very sound sleep by Jake's sudden appearance at his bedside, but had quickly thrown on some clothes and gone out the way Jake had come in. Neither said a word. Davey never chanced the kitchen door when slipping out at night. His mother could sleep through a nor'easter, but would be down the stairs the moment the knob turned.

Larry's truck was parked out behind the house on the gravel
drive and they got in. Jake hadn't worried about anyone noticing footprints in the snow by Davey's window; you'd have to be looking for them. But Larry was as particular about his truck as Jake was about his car. Nobody, but nobody, touched it without permission. They'd been careful to walk in the tire tracks and kicked their boots off before climbing in the cab.

“How are you, man? I guess they haven't arrested you or anything.” Davey had heard that Jake had been taken to Ellsworth for questioning about Norah's death—seemed like every old woman on the island wanted to make sure he was informed about the turn of events—but he'd had trouble taking it in. This was Jake they were talking about.
Jake.
He couldn't remember a time when Jake hadn't been his best friend. The guy could never do something like this. Somebody had gotten things totally screwed up. He hoped Jake would sue them for a million dollars. What was it Mr. Trask had been on about the other day? Slander. That was it. Libel was the other kind. Sue them for both. Sue the whole damn island. Hell, the state too and the cops.

His brother always had a pack of cigarettes in his glove compartment and Davey lit one for himself and one for Jake. This wasn't a time to think about breaking training.

“You can't repeat any of this,” Jake had said.

Davey had agreed.

“I want us to be sure we're telling the same story, because I know the cops are going to start questioning everybody I ever said hi to in my life. They don't know that you were at the party, or your brother. So, remember that. You were never at a party that night. Reverend Fairchild knows someone was with me, but I told him I wasn't naming names and I'm not. I don't care what they do to me, but if you get kicked off the team too, we're goners for the district, and totally forget about the state.”

Davey shook his head. He was blinking back angry tears. Everything was turned upside down. “I don't get it. You're the
last person to ever hurt Norah. Don't the stupid bastards know that!”

“My lawyer—I have a lawyer, weird, huh—says that they're trying to make me look like that drugged-up preppy killer guy in New York or the rich one in Connecticut. Like Norah and I were, you know, fooling around, and maybe I got rough or maybe she said to stop, but I didn't.”

“No way! I hope they do pull me in. I can set them straight on a few things.”

“Look, when they do,” Jake had said, “say as little as possible. Tell them the truth—just not everything. Yeah, you can say I don't do drugs—and wouldn't do that other stuff—but keep yourself out of it, okay? Like my lawyer says, ‘Don't answer questions they're not asking.'”

“This is like a movie. I mean I can't believe it's happening to us in real life. Here on the island. Norah murdered and they think you did it? Everything's totally messed up. Why? Just give me one good reason why they would think you did it.”

“They found her shoe in my car. That's why, my friend.”

The shoe. Those foolish, bright red shoes with the high heels.

They'd parted and now it was Friday. Jake was up in his room. Everybody was moving around the house on tiptoe. The radio, which his mother turned on when she got up and left on until she went to bed, was silent. He didn't know why, but it was pissing him off. Didn't they have places to go? His father was skipping work. He couldn't remember when his father had stayed home like this, not even when he had the flu or the time he was on crutches with a broken ankle. He thought about going downstairs and telling them to get out—or maybe walk out the door himself. Too much effort.

They were acting like someone had died. Like when his grandmother, who'd lived with them, was passing. Well, someone had died.

He couldn't concentrate. Couldn't read. Nothing. He thought about calling Reverend Fairchild. Jake planned to take what Norah told him about her father to the grave, but he had to talk to someone about the way he was feeling. That if he hadn't gone looking for her, she'd still be alive. He'd gone over and over the whole night. What he could remember of it, that is. But he was sure of two things. That while he'd been outside peeing, someone had put something in his soda can that knocked him out, and more important, he was sure that they'd been followed. And that someone hiding in the trees by the shore had overheard everything they'd said.

Jake would never forget those words, and everything else, how Norah had felt in his arms, the moon on the snow, the raucous cry of a lone heron—so at odds with the beauty and grace of the bird. No, Jake would never forget any of it. He knew now that Norah had protected him. Made certain not to use any names, so he'd be in the dark. In the clear. She'd saved his life. The life he didn't have much use for now, since he'd been responsible for ending hers.

The years ahead seemed like just something to get through until he could be with Norah for good. He thought he'd known what the world was like, but he hadn't known anything. They had snuffed her out as if she were no more than a fly on the wall. He'd felt nervous in that house, but only now thinking back did he realize he'd also been scared. Evil. He'd been in the presence of pure evil. Maybe the reverend could explain it to him. Explain how God could let something like this happen. Jake thought he was all dried up, but the tears started oozing out again. He and Norah were going to be so happy. Everything was going to be perfect.

Why hadn't they arrested him?

After she'd stumbled in the woods, he thought he'd touched both shoes when he'd helped her put the one that had come off back on. In any case, his prints were certainly all over that one. He
tried to picture it—was it the right or left? Left, he was pretty sure. Maybe it was the right one that was in his car. They'd have lifted whatever prints were on it by now, and if they'd been his, he'd be in a cell. He'd told his lawyer about this part of the night—how the shoe had come off—and she'd said to wait. “Answer what I tell you to answer.” The old “don't answer questions they don't ask.”

She did have him give them some blood and urine after they'd talked, and he said they wouldn't find anything there that wasn't supposed to be. He hadn't even had a beer after Christmas dinner when he was in his grandfather's barn with his dad and uncles looking at the new iceboat. He'd worked on it some, especially the mast and sail, trying something new to increase her speed. He'd junked his own boat for parts.

They'd taken some of his hair too. What was that for? He guessed he should have asked his lawyer—or the cops—but he found he mostly shut up around all of them. He remembered a picture in a book he had when he was a kid. It was all about the Greeks, their gods and goddesses, and had a lot of cool stories. The picture he was thinking of was of this dumb girl Pandora who was so nosy she opened a box she had been told never to touch and let out all sorts of terrible things into the world. That's how he felt. That if he opened his mouth and started to say more than a few words, all sorts of awful things would tumble out into the open. What had he done with that book? He wanted to read the story again.

Why hadn't they arrested him? He kind of wished they would.

Jake had been sitting at his desk, staring at the bleak winter landscape. The sky was graying over. Could be some weather. His yard was one of the few that wasn't jammed with traps hauled out until spring, just the couple of dozen he set with Davey.

It was only nine in the morning. What was he going to do with himself all day—and the next day and the next?

He lay down on his bed. Probably at this very moment, the cops were taking his car apart. He didn't want to think about it. They were looking for drugs—and more evidence than the shoe that Norah had been in there. But he'd never given her a ride. He'd told them that much.

She'd ridden in his car, though.

Was she already dead? He slammed his fist into his pillow.

“I'm sorry, but I don't operate my bed and breakfast during the off-season. They should have told you that at the market.”

Mary had been startled by the sudden appearance of a big fancy car coming up the long drive that led to her farm from the main road, but not so startled that she hadn't quickly erased all evidence that a baby was living in the house. It wasn't hard. She had prepared herself for the possibility—the eventuality. She took Christopher himself out through the shed and across into the barn, placing him in one of the mangers well away from the goats. He was such a good baby, but even if he did start crying, the nannies would more than drown him out.

“I must have misunderstood. My name is Dan Carpenter, by the way. I own a real estate agency down in Portland and I'm up here to check out a property.”

Mary's eyes narrowed. Skunks, that's what they were. The local agents had given up on her long ago, but there were new ones all the time. Telling her what she could get for waterfront on Eggemoggin Reach, what a genuine Down East saltwater farm would fetch. She knew what it would fetch. More skunks. Skunks who
would have the farmhouse down in two minutes and put up some sort of hotel-looking place with a tennis court.

“I am not interested in selling my property, Mr. Carpenter. Good day.” Mary started to close the door. He'd come to the front, which had further alerted her that he was a PFA—person from away.

“No, wait. Please. I'm sorry. You've misunderstood me. I'm not interested in your property. I mean, of course I'm always interested in property, but that's not why I'm here. I simply need a place to stay for the night.”

“They should have sent you to Granville. There's a motel that stays open year-round there and I can't imagine they'd be full, even with the holidays.” Mary started to close the door again.

But Dan Carpenter was very good at what he did. He was used to people trying to close doors in his face—and equally used to getting his foot in them. He'd arrived on the island around noon and headed straight for the market. Next to the post office, the market in any small Maine community was the best grapevine, and the post office only worked if you were local. So, he'd picked up a few snacks and mentioned at the register that his daughter had stayed at a bed and breakfast run by a woman who kept goats. His daughter had recommended it as a place to stay.

“That would be Mary Bethany,” offered the teenager with a singularly repulsive Goth look who was minding the till. Dan had been in luck. Anyone older would have either asked him what his business was that meant he had to stay the night on Sanpere, or more likely, simply grunted, rung up his purchases, and taken his money.

“She won't let you stay, though. Isn't open now. Better go to the motel in Granville.” The boy was a veritable hydrant of information.

But Dan had gone to Mary's after looking up her address in the phone book thoughtfully offered for free by the local island news-
paper. A stack of them rested next to the display of motor oil at the entrance to the market. It was one of those typical Maine places that sold everything you needed and nothing you didn't.

He'd cracked tougher nuts than Mary.

“Please, I'm sorry to have troubled you, but could I call the motel? I don't want to drive all the way down there and find they haven't any room at the inn.” He gave a little chuckle to show how very, very harmless and how very, very charming he was.

Mary grudgingly opened the door wider and led the way into the kitchen. “I'll call Patty and see. You sit here.” She pointed to one of the chairs at the table and turned to the phone on the wall.

“Did I hear a baby crying? Are your grandchildren visiting for the holidays?”

Instantly Mary swung around.

“Those are my goats, mister. I don't have any grandchildren and there are no babies in this house. Now, why don't you take yourself down to Granville? I don't think I care to call Patty after all.”

Dan Carpenter stood up and started walking toward Mary. She grabbed the phone again and he stopped.

“Look, I know Miriam is here with the baby. You are going to be in major trouble for hiding them if you don't get them right now!” He glared at Mary and loudly shouted, “Miriam, come here this instant!” There was no answer. He broke the silence. “My daughter, Miriam, is mentally unstable. I don't know what kind of story she's told you, but she's not fit to raise a child. She's a thief, a drug addict, and an alcoholic, just like her mother. A pathological liar too. I'm only thinking of the baby. My grandson.”

Mary had listened and watched impassively, her hand still on the phone.

“I don't know anything about your daughter,” she said calmly. “She is not here. And, as I told you before, there are no babies in this house. I'd say you were welcome to search the premises, but
then I'd be the liar. You're not welcome at all. You came into my home under false pretenses and now I want you out.” She was dialing a number as she spoke the last words. When someone answered on the other end, she turned back to face Mr. Carpenter.

“Earl,” she said pleasantly. “I have a man here bothering me. Could you come over right away? And, Earl, bring your gun.”

 

An early riser, especially when compared to his wife, Daniel had been on the road by 6
A.M
. The drive-thru at McDonald's provided breakfast with enough coffee to last him the trip up the turnpike to Orono, where he'd planned on waking Miriam up—or maybe not. If she was sound asleep and the door open, he might be able to simply spirit the baby away. He'd Google-Mapped her address and the neighborhood was not a savory one, confirming what had in his mind become a fixed belief that he was saving his grandson—soon to be his son—from a life of squalor or worse. As the sun had pierced the early morning fog, he saw himself in a truly righteous light.

He'd parked and gone into the building; the lock on the front door to the vestibule was broken. Scanning the mailboxes for Miriam's name, he'd stopped at the one for a top-floor apartment and headed up the grime-encrusted stairs to her door. But there was no reply to his repeated knocking or his eventual shouts—“Miriam! I know you're in there! Miriam, answer me!”

It looked as if he'd be spending a long day in his car, waiting for her return. Where else could she go with such a new baby? She
had
to be here. He'd turned his steps back downstairs when, he thought, his mission continued to be blessed. He ran into her neighbor Ellen. And Ellen told him where Miriam might have gone.

Afterward, on the drive to Sanpere Island, Daniel Carpenter continued to feel optimistic. And even when Mary Bethany
turned him out of her house, he did not give up. He should have known better than to listen to Ellen. Ellen, whose last name he hadn't gotten and didn't need. She was a loser and exactly what he'd expected a friend of Miriam's to be. Her heavy musk perfume did not begin to cover the other aroma in her apartment, where she'd invited him in, telling him that she hadn't seen Miriam recently.

“Do you think she's in Orono or maybe she went someplace else for a while?” he prodded.

“Wow, are you really her father—cool.”

“Stay on track, missy,” he muttered to himself, and said, “Someplace else. A trip.”

“You mean like a vacation?”

He'd almost given up and then Ellen came through—or so he'd thought.

She'd caused him to waste time driving all the way to Sanpere, but it was still early. When he returned to Orono, he intended to sit in the building right outside her apartment door; the door that Ellen had confirmed was Miriam's. “And Bruce's, only he's away. Canada?” Daniel didn't care who Bruce was. He could be the father of the child, but if he were, he wouldn't be for long. Ellen had added, “With Tammy,” and Daniel put him out of his mind completely.

After a few minutes, he'd believed the woman with her goats. Miriam had never been much of a nature girl; despite all the summers they'd sent her to camp. It was unlikely she'd have formed any kind of friendship with someone like Mary Bethany in such a godforsaken place. And the goats? The kitchen had reeked of them. He increased his speed. He was through the notorious speed trap in Searsport. At this rate he might even have time to grab some lunch.

 

On the way back from the market Miriam ran into Ellen the Airhead on the stairs. They called her “the Airhead” not because she was spaced out on drugs but because she was very, very stupid. She was also usually spaced out on drugs.

“Hi, how are things?”

Miriam was always pleasant to Ellen, especially after the girl had confided that her parents sent her a check every month on the condition she stay away from home—a wealthy suburb outside Boston. How sad was that, Miriam had thought—and how convenient for them. Out of sight, out of mind. And in Ellen's case the latter was quite possibly true.

“Oh, hi. Wow, you're so lucky. Your dad totally rocks.”

“My what?”

“Your dad, like not your mom. Your father.”

Miriam froze and slowly said, “How do you know my father?”

“Well, silly, he was here to see you, wasn't he?”

Ellen looked a little tentative. Was Miriam mad at her? Her voice sounded kind of mad.

“When was he here?” Miriam worked to keep her tone light, and casual, as if asking the time—although telling it wasn't one of Ellen's fortes.

“Today?” Was this the answer Miriam wanted?

She didn't have a moment to spare, but if she rushed the girl, she'd go to pieces and Miriam wouldn't find anything out. She'd seen Ellen fall apart over less.

“Hey, have you got any of that great coffee you gave me before? I could use a cup.”

Sitting in Ellen's cluttered kitchen with a mug of instant that she didn't want, Miriam walked her through the morning. They'd moved past getting up and getting dressed and reached the encounter on the stairs.

“Think hard. Think about how he looked. An older man. Tall with dark hair.”

“Dark hair,” Ellen repeated obediently.

“Great.” Miriam patted Ellen's hand and was soon rewarded for her patience with a flash of almost total recall on the girl's part.

“He said he was your father.” She hesitated.

“He was…is…my father. It's okay. Then what did he say?”

“He was like looking for you, and I go, I don't know where she is. Not Canada, but maybe, maybe on Sanpere Island with that goat lady.”

“What!” Miriam screeched. “How do you know about Sanpere!”

“You told me.” Ellen stuck out her lower lip. “You didn't say it was a secret. Last summer. You told me all about the nice lady with the goats on Sanpere that you and Bruce stayed with. Hey, you didn't finish your coffee.”

Miriam was out the apartment door in a flash, taking the stairs by twos. Even if her father had somehow managed to snatch Christopher away from Mary, Miriam would pass him on his way back home, follow him to his doorstep if need be—and call the police. The idea of having her father arrested for kidnapping was extremely pleasant, and it was only when she thought about what he'd say in his defense—that his grandson had been abandoned by his mother, left in the barn of someone she barely knew—that Miriam realized how precarious her situation was. She had to stop him without involving the authorities.

She should have dropped her groceries on Ellen's counter and headed straight out, but she wanted to pack her knapsack. She should have done it earlier, she thought as she also frantically tried to think of someone with a car she could borrow. It had been easy the afternoon of Christmas Eve. She went to a party on the other side of town that she'd heard about and took the keys from the drunkest person there. Today, a workday, was different.

She debated whether or not to call Mary Bethany, but she didn't want to alarm her. For all she knew, Mary might call the police,
the state police. There weren't any police on Sanpere, which was one of the reasons Miriam had picked it. That and Mary. Mary would take care of the baby. She'd raise him to be a good man. Miriam didn't care whether her son went to college, made money, or did anything other than raise goats. All she cared about was that he be as honest and kind as Mary Bethany was. She started calling around to find a car and finally located one, arranging to go get it from a classmate, Cindy.

Hastily, she did up the straps on the knapsack. She was pretty sure Mary wouldn't be fooled by whatever story Daniel Carpenter cooked up, but Miriam needed to give her some sort of letter that would say Christopher was hers. That she was surrendering her parental rights to Mary. That would keep her father away. Mary could use some of the money for a lawyer if she had to.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She angrily blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. How could she ever have called her father!

She was ready to go. Suddenly she looked at where she had been living for over a year—the stained and sagging couch, a few beanbag chairs, a coffee table scrounged from the trash. It was covered with white rings and cigarette burns. The place stank—stale air and more. The doorknob was greasy. She turned it and pulled the door open. Pulled it open and stepped back into the room.

“Hello, Miss Miriam. Glad to see you're finally home. We've been looking for you.”

“For you—and the money.”

Duane and Ralph. Two of Bruce's out-of-state suppliers. Very, very scary guys. Miriam let the knapsack slip from her shoulder. She let her whole body sag. Then she sprinted past them, slamming the door behind her, and ran out of the house into the street as fast as she could.

Ralph and Duane. How could
they
have connected her to the cash she'd taken for the baby from the storage container down in Brewer? It was one that Bruce didn't think she knew about. He
was still in Canada—there hadn't been any empty beer bottles on the counter or pizza boxes, the staples of his diet—and he couldn't know the money was missing. She'd counted on that, and even if he did find out when he returned, he wouldn't associate her with the theft.