you and Daddy used to get antiques from. Binky doesn’t like it when I’m late.”
“Sorry, pet. I do feel for you, Faith. A home invasion is the ultimate violation.” Courtney shuddered. “Perhaps you misunderstood Julian. He’s a man of few words—believe me, no one knows that better than I—and he may be able to tell you more about George. He was certainly still purchasing the odd item from him as recently as last fall, because I bought something from him for a client and he said that it had come from Stackpole. To be sure, he paid the man a pittance compared with what he charged me.”
And you doubled that in your client’s bill, Faith thought.
Mother and daughter left in a cloud of complementary fragrances. As if on cue, Amy woke up crying and Ben decided to join her for no good reason. Faith locked up quickly, strapped them into their separate car seats, drove home, and settled down on the couch for a few hundred repetitions of
At 2:00 a.m., Faith wondered if she would ever get a full night’s sleep again. Either she couldn’t get to sleep or she woke up with a start, unable to fall back. She was getting more reading done than she’d been able to for a long time, but fatigue was taking its toll during the day. She’d nodded off on the couch with the children and Ben had been very annoyed. She’d started to snap back at them, then hugged both of them instead and got a cup of coffee.
Why had Julian Bullock downplayed his relationship with George Stackpole? She was sure she hadn’t been mistaken. He used few words, but the words were precise. “Met him once or twice.
Know him slightly.” Then all that business about pickers and runners.
While she was making dinner, Faith had tried dialing the phone number she’d found in Stackpole’s trash, first without any area code, then with several local ones. Tom had come in and she’d had to stop. They’d resumed the argument about Rhoda Dawson coming alone to the house, though, and Faith, frustrated at a number of other things, had told Tom it was fortunate he didn’t have to pick one of them over the other, because he’d have a very hard time. He’d started laughing at that point, which infuriated her further.
Her eyes smarted from lack of sleep and she turned the light off, yet her mind kept racing. Tomorrow—or rather, today, Tom had promised, they could go out to Julian Bullock’s to look at the sideboard. Maybe she could introduce Stackpole’s name again and watch Julian’s reaction.
She’d left Tom a message at his office as soon as she’d heard about the auction in Walton. She knew he was scheduling a meeting with the senior and junior wardens sometime on Saturday and she hoped to get to him before they did. If the meeting was too late in the afternoon, they’d miss the preview. When she’d called the auctioneers, she’d asked if there would be any furniture, specifically sideboards, and they’d said yes. She was in love with the one out in Concord, but she had to have a legitimate reason for going to the auction—and she wanted Tom to come, too. She was thankfully drifting off. Wouldn’t he be surprised when some of their silver came up in lot number something or other and they could buy it back? Who said she wasn’t efficient?
“He’ll be home all morning,” Tom announced.
He’d called Julian Bullock while Faith was getting Amy dressed.
“Daddy come.” She wriggled out of Faith’s grasp and passionately threw herself at her father. This is why women have sons, Faith reflected. Although a daughter is what you want in later years. A friend of Faith’s summed up her fil-ial role as “chief toenail clipper” after one of her frequent visits to her ninety-year-old mother.
Sons don’t do things like that.
“Great.” Faith was feeling optimistic. “Why don’t we go now?” Old age was a long way off and today the sun was shining.
The ride to Concord along Route 2A was a pretty one, especially in the spring. Orchards were blooming; trees had leafed out. There were still farms along the road, and the newly turned earth bore promises of plenty of corn and tomatoes come August. At the Concord Inn, they turned right on Monument Street, driving past Hawthorne’s Old Manse and stopping farther on to let a tour group cross from a parking lot to the path leading to the “rude bridge” where the pa-triots of 1775 had made their stand. They drove over one of the small bridges that crossed the Concord River. A canoe was gliding toward them.
Half a mile farther on, Julian Bullock’s two-hundred-year-old farmhouse sat high upon a knoll. It was surrounded by acres of meadows and or-chards. Horses grazed close to the lichen-covered stone walls. He’d named the estate Dunster Weald, a reference to Dunster House at Harvard, where he’d spent his undergraduate years. When she’d come with Patsy Avery, Patsy had explained to Faith that Julian let his neighbors use the pastureland so he could have an equine aes-thetic with none of the bother. When they’d pulled in the drive, she’d pointed out the beautiful post-and-beam barn behind Bullock’s house,
“filled with Chippendales, not Clydesdales.”
“Horsie! Horsie! Moo!” Amy exclaimed proud-ly, reaching toward the window.
“She’s so dumb, Mom. Why is she so dumb?” Ben complained in a long-suffering tone of voice.
“I mean, anybody knows horses don’t say moo.”
“She’s a baby, Ben. Remember? A baby—and you were one, too, once. At her age, you thought horses said meow.”
“Did not!”
Actually he hadn’t, but Faith had made her point.
With Amy delightedly in Tom’s arms and Ben’s hand in her viselike grip, Faith followed Julian into the hallway to show Tom the sideboard. She could tell from his expression that he was as taken with it as she was.
“Faith tells me it’s not genuine,” he said.
“If it were, it wouldn’t be here, but out in Greenfield Village or at Winterthur,” Julian pointed out. It struck Faith that he was as good at selling as he was at buying. She wondered if this was unusual. The two skills were so different. For one, you had to present yourself and your worldly goods to the public, or a rarefied stratum thereof; for the other, you had to be invisible, low-profile, behind-the-scenes.
“How much?” Tom asked bluntly.
Julian was not taken aback. “I could let it go for twenty-two hundred dollars.”
Faith had figured at least three thousand. Maybe it was because he felt sorry for them? But then she didn’t think emotion played much of a role in this kind of transaction.
“I assume this includes delivery,” Tom said.
“Certainly—and we might be able to work something out in regards to the one you’re replacing.”
Amy gave Faith a sudden panic-stricken look.
It had nothing to do with money. Faith knew it well. She took her from Tom and transferred Ben’s sticky little boy hand to his father’s large one.
“Could we use the bathroom? There’s one off the kitchen, isn’t there?”
“By all means.” Julian nodded in that direction, keeping his eyes on Tom’s face.
The small half bath had been carved out of a pantry, and they reached it not a moment too soon. Daytime dryness was a recent accomplish-ment, and Faith did not intend to have any recidi-vism. What they were saving in Huggies could pay for Amy’s first year of college.
There was a phone in the pantry, and on the way out, Faith thought she’d better call work to make sure Niki was all set. They were doing a luncheon for the Uppity Women, a small group of terrific women all originally from Aleford who got together several times a year, mostly because, according to one, “We do like one another, never have time to see one another without a definite date, and need to laugh far from the ears of the rest of the world.” Niki was doing the job solo.
When the Uppities called, Niki answered. She’d become their mascot, if not a member. The job required only one person. They’d flipped for it at first, but Faith had taken to sacrificing her turn to Niki—another carrot so she wouldn’t think about leaving.
Faith dialed the number and looked at the phone. It really was a rotary phone, an old black table model with the dial in the middle. Someone had printed the phone number on it years ago and it had faded—but not completely.
It hadn’t taken Faith long to memorize the digits she’d found in George Stackpole’s trash, nor Bell Atlantic’s message after each of her attempts:
“If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.” She wasn’t hearing the message now, but the number she’d learned by heart was staring her in the face.
