Body in the Bookcase

“Great. I’m terribly far behind, and she offered to get what I needed. So, she’s on her way back?”

“I suppose so. How many times has she come here without you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe three or four. Why?”

“Come on, Tom. We’ve been robbed. Why do you think! And what did you do, give her your keys?”

“It’s ridiculous to think she had anything to do with that, but if it makes you uncomfortable, I won’t ask her again. You never minded when my former secretary went into my study at home.”

“That was before we were broken into, and besides, she was about a hundred and ten years old.”

“Calm down and we’ll talk about this later.

She’ll be back any minute. Maybe I’ve been in-sensitive, but I think you’re overreacting. We can’t let the robbery take over our whole lives, getting suspicious of totally innocent people. Bye, sweetheart.”

“Totally innocent people tell you where they live, whether or not they have a family, and they don’t use a post office box for an address,” Faith sputtered. She was determined to have the last word and almost did.

“Hi, Rhoda. I’ll be with you in a minute. Thank you,” she heard Tom say as he hung up.

Easy enough to get a key made on your lunch hour, Faith speculated. Or make a wax impression if there wasn’t time before returning the keys to Tom. She was furious as she walked across to the church to get Ben. Tom really didn’t understand what she was going through. She’d forgotten to tell him about finding her watch. She felt lonelier than ever. Yet, maybe he was right.

Maybe this was taking over her life.

She returned to the house with Ben. She hadn’t checked the messages before. There weren’t any.

The meeting with Stephanie and Courtney was still on.

The man at George Stackpole’s booth had mentioned he’d see him at Morrison’s. It must be an auction. She grabbed the Yellow Pages and found “Morrison and Son” under auction houses. It only took a moment more to call and find out when and where the auction was being held.

Tomorrow night at eight o’clock, preview starting at six. A VFW hall in Walton. She’d be there.

Ben had learned a new song and entertained Faith with a spirited rendition of “Inch by Inch” as they drove to get Amy and then to work. The Bullock women, mother and daughter, were on time, much to Faith’s amazement. Making people wait was such an essential component of maintaining one’s position in society.

“Your children?” Courtney asked in a somewhat dubious tone, as if Faith might have rented them for the afternoon to add a note of authentic-ity to her role as working mother.

“Yes, Ben is five and Amy will be two in September.” True to her schedule, Amy was conked out in the playpen. Ben, humming steadily, was constructing a giant block tower. He’d barely cast a look their way, but Faith was eager to get the Bullocks in and out. Blocks captivated for only so long.

“I’m eager to see what you’ve picked for the tablecloth and I have some suggestions for the flowers. Would you like to sample the avocado bisque we talked about for the first course of the rehearsal dinner?” She knew enough to stop before saying, “I’m sure you’ll like it.”

“That would be lovely,” Courtney said graciously. She sat down and opened her briefcase, extracting the leather-bound wedding planner, thick as a dictionary now, and a fabric swatch.

“This will be striking,” Faith said appreciatively, fingering the charcoal gray heavy silk covered with tiny stars embroidered in thin gossamer gold thread. The woman did have good taste. The china was Wedgwood cream ware. Have Faith’s food would look gorgeous. Now, to decide on the flowers.

“This tastes better than it looks,” Stephanie said, scooping up the last drop of soup in her bowl. Faith reached for it to give her seconds and added some more puff pastry cheese sticks to the plate in front of them.

“Nonsense. The color is divine. Very primavera.

I see ranunculus—and masses of fringy parrot tulips in exotic colors. We can put them everywhere. Julian has tons of vases. We don’t want things to be too bridal. We need color.” Faith agreed with Courtney. This was going to be easier than she’d thought. She could do small nosegays to tuck into each napkin for the rehearsal dinner—maybe a few brilliant silken-petaled Icelandic poppies. But not tied with raffia. As far as Faith was concerned, raffia was the rubber band of the nineties and about as attractive. Call her old-fashioned, but she stuck to wired gauzy French ribbon and reels of satin.

“The word bridal comes from ‘Bride-ale,’ the brew the Britons drank at wedding celebrations,” she told them to pass the time. “Rehearsal dinners used to be more colorful in earlier days. The noisier the better to drive evil spirits away and ensure good luck for those about to be married.

All the plates and glasses were smashed at the end and people got roaring drunk.”

“I don’t think Daddy would go for that—the smashing part. He’s very attached to his possessions,” Stephanie commented, gracefully flipping her long flaxen hair back over her shoulders, a habitual gesture that palled in repetition.

“More attached to them than his family,” Courtney observed acerbically. “Now, shall we start making lists?” Business was business.

Forty minutes later, the menus were etched in stone, the flowers near enough, and Faith was beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel.

“I’m so sorry for your loss. Stephanie told me about your unfortunate experience.” Courtney had been delighted with Faith’s suggestions and was now in a cheerful-enough mood to chat up the help.

Faith knew Courtney was talking about the burglary, not a bereavement. Her ex-husband was not the only one for whom objects and individuals were interchangeable.

“Thank you. It has been a difficult time. I haven’t seen you since we’ve started turning up some more of our things, and that’s been encouraging, to say the least. Everything points to one antiques dealer in particular and I’m hopeful we’ll be able to use this lead.”

“That’s amazing. Congratulations.” Courtney was sounding positively human. “So few people ever find any of their lost valuables. You really have done a remarkable job—or I should say the Aleford police? I never would have thought it.” Faith felt a glow of pride. “I’m afraid the police have very little to do with it. Break-ins are all too common for them to try to track down individual items. I’ve been checking out this dealer’s various outlets, an antiques show at the Copley this morning, and tomorrow night he has some lots in an auction I plan to attend. I haven’t turned up much, considering what was taken, but at least we’re getting some of our own back.”

“Was Daddy any help?” Stephanie asked in a bored tone of voice. She was ready to leave.

“Yes, he told me a great deal about the way the business is structured, but he didn’t know much about the dealer in question, George Stackpole.”

“George Stackpole?” Courtney said. “Why, that’s absurd. Julian has known George for years.

They were partners in the old days.”

Eight

“When Julian graduated from Harvard, he was already spending most of his time buying and selling antiques. Daddy wanted to set him up with a shop on Charles Street, but Julian preferred to run the business from his—I should say our home. He bought so frequently from Stackpole that they worked out an arrangement that gave Julian first crack at whatever George turned up. I knew him, too, of course, and the man did have an eye. He could have done very well for himself if he hadn’t been such a lush.” Courtney’s voice dripped with scorn at the imperfections of others.

“He does have nice things; everyone did,” Faith said. “I had such a strange feeling walking around the show, wondering how much of what was for sale had ended up there the way mine did.”

“There will always be dealers—and customers—who are not overly concerned with provenance, and this is true on every level of the business. Just look at the fuss they had at the MFA about that Egyptian breastplate they bought from Sotheby’s that turned out to have been stolen from some little college someplace no one ever heard of.”

Faith remembered the incident, and the college was Lafayette, not exactly little. Stephanie was bored. The conversation wasn’t about her.

“Are you sure about the soup? I think we need to taste some alternatives.”

Courtney gave Faith a complicit glance. “Darling, you want to fit in your dress, don’t you? The menus are perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing at this point.”

Faith couldn’t believe her ears.

“I have to meet Binky at Sonsie’s for drinks in an hour and I really can’t sit here talking about some little man