and Will Avery in her kitchen, heating up gumbo, dirty rice, collard greens, corn bread, and what looked like several dozen sweet potato and pecan pies. “Comfort food, soul food. My mother sends the sweet potato; Will’s, the pecan.
We always have a freezerful.”
“But I make the corn bread and it’s the best in the world,” Will boasted.
Tom folded Faith in his arms. The Averys had brought plenty of Dixie 45 beer, too, and Tom had started in on it.
“Everything went like clockwork, right? And now we don’t have to hear anything more about the Bullocks, at least not until they hire you for the christening. The Lord be praised!” Faith couldn’t agree more. “How are the kids?”
“Samantha’s got them upstairs in Ben’s room.
She actually claims she’s going to miss them so much next year that she wants to spend all the time she can with them. I wasn’t about to argue.
Charley’s going to try to drop by—and I asked the Millers to come over. There’s enough food here for half of Aleford.”
They were having a party. And she didn’t have to do a thing. Will put a glass of wine in her hand.
“I know you’re not a beer drinker, but we may make one of you yet.”
Suddenly, Faith realized she was happy. It was such a foreign emotion that at first she couldn’t believe the sense of well-being that had settled over her. Friends, family, food. The basic core of existence.
“What did I miss?” asked Pix, who was followed by her husband, Sam.
“Nothing—yet. I’m hoping Charley will be able to fill in the blanks—that is, unless you called John, too.”
Tom looked sheepish. “I did, and he’ll be here with his wife in a few minutes. Turns out he’s a gumbo fan.”
“And what about your sainted Ms. Dawson?
I’m surprised she’s not here.”
Tom pulled his wife into the other room.
“I was going to wait to tell you until tomorrow—so much is going on now—but since you’ve mentioned her —”
“Tell me what? Come on, sweetheart, no holding back!”
“And what about you?” Tom was suddenly righteous.
Faith backtracked rapidly. “I’m sorry. It all got very complicated. We can talk about it later. I want some gumbo.” She was ravenous. Even with all the food today, she hadn’t had much appetite, tasting only when it was necessary. “But first, come on, give—have you found out Rhoda’s guilty secret?”
“In a word, yes—and it’s not so guilty. She didn’t think it was appropriate to reveal, given the nature of her parish job.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shocking pink flyer.
There, she was “Madame Rhoda, Psychic Reader”—picture and all. Except she wasn’t wearing shoulder pads. She was wearing veils, a lot of them wound around her head. Long gold earrings dangled from each lobe; beads and chains of small coins encircled her neck.
“A psychic!” This was the last thing Faith would have predicted, thereby demonstrating her total lack of aptitude for the calling.
“She said she’s been very concerned, ‘very agitated,’ and she came to me late yesterday afternoon. She told me that she was getting very strong vibrations of distrust from you and, to a lesser degree, from me. She thought it might have something to do with the burglaries, and of course she was right. But the main reason she told all was that she sensed a storm was brewing in your life and that you were going to be in great danger.”
Maybe there was more to this than Faith had imagined. Certainly it would have been nice to have this information
“I reassured her that whatever she did on her own time was her business, and that there is much about heaven and earth we don’t know. I also told her you were off catering a dinner, surrounded by lots of people, and couldn’t possibly be in any danger. That seemed to satisfy her, but she kept repeating she was getting strange vibrations. I called her this morning and told her if she got them again to let me know—pronto.”
“Tom!” Faith was stunned. “This doesn’t sound like you at all—and what would the parish think?”
“If God in his wisdom has sent me a secretary who can let me know when my wife is out on a limb, or whether we’re going to get a nor’easter, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of the gift.” He kissed Faith soundly and whispered in her ear, “But let’s keep Rhoda’s—and my—secret, all right?”
John Dunne’s wife was about five feet tall, but she was putting away gumbo with the best of them and had downed two beers already. Her husband was holding forth and she was listening with the expression of one who has been there, done that—often. “Could someone pass those delicious baked beans?” she asked softly. Pix had brought them. It was one of her few culinary skills.
“Courtney Bullock isn’t saying a word now.
She’s being arraigned on Monday and has about six lawyers, yet I doubt very much that she’s going to get out of this one. If we don’t get her for Stackpole’s murder, we will for Gloria Farnum’s.
Her body turned up in Julian Bullock’s pond.
Talk about the ex-wife from hell.” John laughed heartily and reached for some more corn bread.
“What we figure is, Courtney went to an ATM
machine with George Stackpole sometime to deposit money she owed him, learned his code, then stole his card. What we know for certain is that she flew to Montreal on the last flight late Tuesday night and back the next morning, using Gloria’s ticket and identification. They don’t look at identification that carefully at the gate for flights like this. She probably wore a hat or a scarf. Gloria got dumped in the pond on the way to New Hampshire. Our Courtney is nothing if not efficient.”
Faith thought of Courtney’s bulging wedding notebook with every detail outlined, checked, and double- checked. Excellent practice for murder.
“Courtney Cabot Bullock has been identified by the crew on both flights—and by two taxi drivers. The boys are going over her trunk. It shouldn’t be hard to gather evidence. She was actually very sloppy—or cocky.”
Faith remembered Courtney’s remark about traveling so much. In light of the fact that at the time Faith had been facing a long one-way trip herself, the words hadn’t registered until now.
Dunne continued: “I’m sure she never lowered herself to meet with the guys hired to break into the houses —five hundred dollars a pop—but George trained them well. It was a good little business, and a pattern not unknown to us.
“The safe at Stackpole’s had been cleaned out—again by Courtney, no doubt, to cast more suspicion on Gloria if we didn’t buy Julian. We got a search warrant for her town house and turned up a lot of silver and jewelry in Ziploc bags. Christmas could come early for some recent victims.”
There is hope for Great-Aunt Phoebe’s cameo ring yet, Faith thought optimistically. She also hoped the police would use a metal detector on George’s backyard.
Faith had described the plan she hatched with Julian and now Patsy commented, “In a way, it’s a good thing he left the auction in Maine early. It would have taken much longer to solve all this.
He may have scared the daylights out of you, but you got to eliminate him as a suspect and figure out it was Courtney and then set the trap. My kin do the same for game.”
“But why would she do all this? She had money, a beautiful home, an adored daughter, the position she wanted in society, and a tony job.
Why take the chance?” Pix asked.
Will answered, “People like Courtney Bullock are so filled with their own entitlement that it blinds them to common decency, common morality. The rules don’t apply to her. She’s a free agent in a universe of her own making. I’m sure she will never believe that anything she did was wrong.
Plus, she needed a great deal of money to maintain this lifestyle of hers.”
“Poor Stephanie,” Pix said. “Imagine having a mother like that!”
“I think she’s still mad at me for making Mummy miss the wedding, but she’ll forget about it once she’s snorkeling in the turquoise Turkish waters,” Faith said. She was starting on the pies and the first mouthful of sweet potato was the best she’d ever had. Patsy’s mother was in a class with New Orleans soulful Creole greats like Leah Chase and Tina Dunbar. She finished the pie and looked around the table at the faces in front of her. Once again,
