Another photo was partially covered, but she could make out a city sidewalk, a convenience store, and part of another building. What was it doing mixed in with Cindy 's personal
The backs of some of the photographs had initials and dates. One had the name of the Crowne Plaza— Holiday Inn 's answer to the 'Ritz Carlton—printed below the date. An enchanted evening ?
Then there was the money. Quite a bit of money if all the bills were Ben Franklins, as the top ones were. Was Cindy blackmailing someone? If she had been, why? Cindy had a lot of money of her own, and would have more. She probably demanded and got a generous allowance. Why would she have blackmailed people ? Faith knew you were never supposed to be too rich or too thin, but it still didn't match her image of Cindy.
Then there were the joints, two small ones, the matches, and the napkins. The matchbook she could see was from a motel in Ogunquit. It didn't look like the sort of place the Moores would have stopped for a family vacation. It did look like Cindy's speed—the right cable channels and one of those beds that ate quarters. The other matchbooks and more photographs were under the napkins.
Faith was trying to decipher the letters and numbers written on a napkin when Dunne arrived. She stood up quickly. He was leaning over the porch and peering in the door. There wasn't a ghost of a chance that he could get in the tiny building.
“The next time you have a hunch, would you be so kind as to tell us, Mrs. Fairchild? This isn't one of your Upper East Side scavenger hunts,' Dunne said in what Faith knew was a controlled voice. He obviously wanted to scream at her.
“West Side,' she said, pushing it. She knew she should have told them, but how was she going to help Dave at all if she didn 't find things out on her own?
“ Did you touch anything ? '
“ Only when I reached for the box. It's open because it fell.”
Dunne looked at her skeptically. She inched past him and started back to the house. He called after her, 'Mrs. Fairchild.'
“Yes?'
“Your baby 's crying.”
She didn 't bother to thank him.
Tom was in the kitchen pacing up and down with Benjamin.
“I think he 's hungry, Faith. But the Moores want to know what 's going on, so I'll keep him out here while you tell them, then we'll go.'
“Oh, Tom, this isn 't going to be easy. How do you tell two people who've just had their home broken into that their recently murdered ward may have been, from the look of it, a blackmailer?”
Tom stopped, shook his head, and said, 'I know this is happening, Faith, but tell me it's not.'
“The Pandora's box Jenny and I found was full of naughty pictures of Cindy and her conquests and a large amount of cash. Undoubtedly she kept the photos for her own entertainment, but it's possible that several of her beaux might not have wanted them for the family Christmas card. Some of the pictures seem to have been taken while her partner was asleep and unknowing.”
Tom looked grim. 'What else did you see ? '
“Nothing else that made any sense to me, but I'll bet everything in there was something that could threaten somebody.”
Faith told the Moores as gently as she could and was a bit startled at their reaction. They seemed relieved that the break-in had a specific object in mind, an object that was now found. It wasn't an attack on the house, or on them—just on Cindy.
Tom and Faith packed Benjamin back in his car seat and left, passing Eleanor Whipple, some sort of ultra- removed cousin of Patricia's, on the drive. She was carrying a pie and a shopping bag filled with what lookedlike all the produce she had put up the summer before. She continued swiftly up the walk with that purposeful Yankee stride that age seems not to diminish, but intensify. Oswald Pearson, editor of the town paper, notebook in hand and hot on the trail of another sensational story for
On the way home in the car, Faith told Tom about the Moores' reaction to her news.
“Faith, at this point, I don't think anything Cindy did would surprise them. They're numb. Maybe when it's all over it will hit them, but right now I imagine they simply want to get the funeral over with, have the police find the killer, and go back to their lives.”
Which was just about what Patricia said the next day at the monthly meeting of the Ladies' Alliance, now the Women 's Alliance—but nobody ever remembered to call it anything but the Alliance.
When Faith arrived in Aleford as a new bride, she had no idea what to expect of the group, which she knew it was one of her duties to join.
“Only if you want to, Faith,' said Tom. 'Really, this is my job, not yours. What you do is totally up to you.' So sweet and so naive, thought Faith.
To her amazement, she enjoyed the meetings in the church social hall and discovered the group did an enormous amount of good in a characteristically unobtrusive manner. Originally founded as a sewing circle to make feather-stitched layettes for orphans, the women now raised money for some of the church 's projects, but mainly for The Pine Street Inn in Boston, a shelter for the homeless ; and a local drug and alcohol abuse program. Additionally most of the women worked as volunteers at one or the other place. The Alliance Christmas Bazaar was a blockbuster moneymaker, with people ar- riving from all over the Greater Boston area to snap up Mrs. Lewis 's pinecone wreaths or an Attic Treasure from the table of the same name. Faith couldn't believe the amount of money they made each year, but seeing how industriously they stitched away at each meeting, it was perhaps inevitable. Idle hands and all that. She had had to start knitting again, something she loathed, but it was the only handwork she knew how to do other than the running stitch. She did not burden last year's fair with her lumpy muffler, but gave it to Tom for Christmas instead. The ladies were more than pleased to get jars of her
Faith wasn 't surprised to see Patricia. She was beginning to learn a lot about Aleford and one of the things she had learned was not to be surprised. Whatever might be going on at home—and in this case there was plenty —one still had one's obligations.
They listened to the minutes of the last meeting and had a formal discussion of bazaar plans before they turned to the real business, which was drinking coffee, sewing, and talking.
Patricia had turned to them and with her mouth set in a firm line told them, “ I know what you're all thinking about, so let me just say Robert and I are fine. It's been a terrific shock, of course,' her voice faltered a bit, then rallied, 'and you've all been wonderful, sending food and calling. You know how much we have appreciated it. The funeral is tomorrow and after that we are going to try to get back to normal.”
Eleanor Whipple gave Patricia's shoulder a reassuring little pat. So demonstrative.
“We'll all be there, Patricia, and you only have to ask if you need anything.' -
“Thank you, Cousin Eleanor. I know that. One realizes how much one depends on friends and family at these times.”
They sewed for a while in companionable silence. There was a sense that Patricia hadn 't quite finished and it was correct.
She blushed a little, looked around the group, and said, 'When the funeral home asked for a dress, I sent over her wedding dress.”
Did Faith imagine that an eyebrow or two went up 9 Maybe she wasn't the only one who thought it a bit odd.
“It was because the morning we bought it was one of the last times I remember having a happy day with Cindy.”
Or one of the only times, was the thought in not a few heads.
Patricia spoke wistfully. 'She was so excited and the dress was perfect, white velvet with tiny seed pearls. She looked like a Renaissance princess. The saleswomen were
The women listened as they stitched away. Over the years they had quietly heard so many revelations— breast cancer now thankfully in remission for one of them ; problems with children ; once even the possibility of an
