Body in the Bookcase

resumed his list making.

“Can you describe some of the more valuable pieces for me, Mrs. Fairchild? The sooner—”

“I know, I know,” Faith said impatiently. She’d already run through them in her mind once she saw her garment bag on the floor. The garment bag—her safe hiding place. A pretty velvet jewel roll tucked in the bottom, its compartments filled with the gifts Tom had given her for anniversaries, birthdays, when the children were born.

Some family pieces. She started describing the items, the words tumbling out. She was still talking and grasping Pix’s shoulder when Tom arrived, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Faith! Faith! Are you all right?” he called. She heard him and ran down the hall into his arms.

“Oh, Tom, we’ve been robbed!” She burst into tears and cried as if her heart would break.

It lasted only a few minutes, although to the police, particularly Charley and Dale, it seemed much longer. This was not the Faith they knew.

Dale Warren looked down at his notes. Next to

“Victim,” he’d written her name. He added Tom’s. The Fairchilds, victims? He wished she’d let him get her a cup of tea or coffee.

When Tom entered their room, his face lost all its color and he sat down heavily on the bed.

“Don’t!” Faith cried. Tom jumped to his feet, puzzled. Surely, Faith didn’t expect the police to get prints from the rumpled linens.

“I have to wash everything. Everything they touched.”

Tom held his wife close. People he’d known in these circumstances talked of feeling violated.

Raped. He looked at their pillows. One of the cases was missing.

“Damn it, Charley, what kind of a world are we living in?” He gestured around the room, finishing with his arm flung imploringly toward the police chief. Tom felt completely and utterly helpless.

Charley knew Tom didn’t want an answer. At least not now. What he wanted was action. So did Charley.

“You’ll have to go down to the station with me and let us take your prints, so we can eliminate them. The kids’ are so small, we won’t have any trouble recognizing those.”

The kids! It was almost time to pick them up.

Where did the morning go? Faith said to herself in conscious irony. And the Lexington gallery reception. She had completely forgotten about work.

Niki must be wondering where she was.

“I don’t want Ben and Amy to see this mess. We have to . . .” she started to say.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them and take them to my house,” Pix offered. “After Amy’s nap, they can come watch Samantha’s softball game with me.” Pix Miller took motherhood seriously—and joyfully. She’d been the room mother for all of her children’s years in elementary school, the aforementioned Scout leader long after her own left the ranks, chaperone for innumerable trips to the Science Museum, the Aquarium, and virtually every other educational Boston landmark. She was the one who drove, who collected, who called. Watching the two Fairchild children for the afternoon was a mere blip on the radar screen of Pix’s far-flung activities. Her husband, Sam, had tried in vain to teach her the magic words Sorry, I can’t. Maybe he hadn’t tried all that hard.

He was pretty dependent on her himself.

“And I called Niki. She said she can handle everything with Scott and Tricia.” These were a young couple Faith employed part-time. “Don’t worry about a thing,” Pix again reassured the Fairchilds, realizing how totally stupid it sounded. She blushed, then headed for home.

The police left the room, too. Tom and Faith were alone.

“I don’t know what to do, where to start,” Faith said. She could hardly bear the thought of touching her things. Lingerie and other clothing had been tossed all over the floor. It looked like Fi-lene’s Basement ten minutes after the doors opened for the Neiman Marcus sale.

“I do,” Tom said firmly. He kissed her—hard—and went to the phone. The light-colored handle was covered with black powder. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it off.

In rapid order, he called the couple who came to help clean the house, the handyman to repair the back door, or at least secure it, and Rhoda Dawson. At the close of their conversation, he felt obscurely obliged to assure her, a newcomer, that this type of thing was not the norm in Aleford.

Or was it? Besides Sarah Winslow’s, the local paper had reported five break-ins in the last few weeks, two of them at night. He sighed. Why hadn’t he worked at home today? But then he’d had to go out to the VA. It would have happened anyway. He sat down on the bed again. He was exhausted. Happened. Anyway.

Faith listened to her husband make the calls, grateful for his assumption of responsibility.

She’d be okay once the house was cleaned up. It was all this mess. Out of control. Once everything was under control . . . This was what was getting to her. She’d be okay. She shivered, but she did not reach for one of her sweaters lying so conveniently at her feet. Instead, she wandered downstairs. The police were packing up and getting ready to leave.

“You’re going to need a new door,” Ray, the fingerprint specialist, observed. “Looks like they used a crowbar. Would’ve popped your dead bolt, if you’d had one.”

The Fairchilds hadn’t gotten around to installing a dead bolt. Before last week, Faith often didn’t even bother to lock the door at all. Not now, though. Not ever again. She’d been bemoan-ing the lack of a dead bolt—and the open garage door. It made her feel better to hear that one omis-sion wouldn’t have mattered.

“Place like this should have an alarm system.” Ray was chatty now that the job was done.

“You’re in full view of everyone and his uncle out front, but once you’re back here, no one would be likely to see you on a weekday, except from the cemetery.”

It was true. The parsonage was separated from the church by the backyard, the ancient burial ground, and the church driveway. The long sanctuary windows looked toward the parsonage, but the church offices were at the rear of the church.

Ben’s nursery school was in the basement. In any case, at this time of year the thick hedge and other shrubbery formed a substantial barrier. It had been installed at various times in the house’s history—perhaps by ministers’ wives, seeking, like Faith, the illusion of private life.

But an alarm system? In Aleford? In the parsonage! The enormity of the crime became defined by Ray’s well-meant suggestion. The silver was gone. The jewelry. The drawer. But most precious of all, the intruders had stolen the Fairchilds’ peace of mind—the security and calm they’d taken for granted all these years. Charley was looking at Faith, but before he could say anything, she spoke.

“I should have stayed in New York!”

* * *

“But why is our door all broken? Why is Mr.

Kelly nailing it shut? How will I get out to play?

Why did someone break it, Mom? Why?” Ben Fairchild was firing questions at his mother even as he stood captivated by the handyman, who was indeed systematically nailing the door shut.

Mr. Kelly was Ben’s hero and he wanted to be exactly like him when he grew up—with all those neat tools, a truck, and a dog named Shamrock.

Shamrock had been Ben’s suggestion almost two years ago for what to name his new sister. He thought it was some kind of jewel and argued that people named girls Ruby and Pearl, prompt-ing Faith to ask Miss Lora, his nursery school teacher, what she was reading to them lately.

Even the discovery that the word shamrock referred to vegetation, albeit lucky, did not dampen Ben’s ardor and he thought Amy a poor and distant second choice.

“The thieves who came into our house when Mommy was out and took some of our things broke it. Remember what Pix told you?” The two women had worked out ahead of time what to say to this little inquiring mind.

“Yes,” Ben replied, “but why didn’t you leave the door open and then they wouldn’t have wrecked it.”

It made a certain kind of sense.

“Well . . .” Faith was losing steam. They’d been going over this terrain for a while now and would be for the foreseeable future. “I didn’t.” Tom’s head appeared at the window of the back door, then disappeared abruptly.