Pix didn't get back until after five o'clock, and she rushed straight over to Faith's. Faith and Benjamin were eating spaghetti alla carbonara in the kitchen. Pix had paled under the color the summer sun had given her and slumped into a chair. Faith made her a drink, and after a few sips she started to cry.
“I can't understand it, Faith! How could he have drowned? He was in great shape, and I think I heard he swam in college. It was wonderful having them this summer. We had all become so close. Samantha doesn't even want to talk about it. She's up in her room and I can't reach Sam.”
Faith had called Tom earlier and had been lucky enough to catch him between events. He offered to come up the next weekend, but she said she was fine. She just wanted to hear his voice.
Pix finished her drink and ate some spaghetti. Faith had discovered earlier that she was starving, and Pix seemed to be too.
“I'm sure he'll be buried here. He wasn't close to his family.'
“That's what Jill said.'
“I don't know what Eric will do without him. Roger was like the rudder. He kept the business, and actually their lives, on course. He was the one who pushed to move up here. Jill told me once that Eric had been close to a breakdown and had to get away.”
Bright lights, big city, Faith thought, and remembered her conversation with Eric. It sounded like he not only wanted to be away from the city, but needed to be. An artist friend of hers had once shown her his engagement book. It was crammed with openings, cocktail parties, private showings.
She had wondered how he ever found the time, or energy, to paint.
“Eric had been afraid that they would lose their customers and contacts up here, but Roger convinced him that they had built up a solid-enough reputation to make a move. And if anything they have become more well known in the last years. Living on an island gave a certain aura of inaccessibility to their work, having to be tracked down and persuaded, although of course it is all much more businesslike than that.'
“Maybe Eric will marry Jill now,' Faith mused out loud.
“I wouldn't be surprised. It's going to be terribly lonely for him without Roger. And the island is no place to be alone.' Tears were running down Pix's face, and Faith knew she was mentally getting her guest room ready for a long visit from Eric.
“I've got to get back to Samantha and try Sam some more,' Pix continued as she got up and brought her plate to the sink.
“Leave that, Pix, and call me if I can do anything,' Faith said, thinking that she had already done enough. In some perverse form of logic she reasoned if she hadn't found the body, Roger would still be alive. Or it would be yesterday and she could tell him not to go for a swim.
“Thanks, Faith. I keep forgetting what an awful time you've had. Do you want to spend the night?'
“No, but if I change my mind I'll come knocking at your door. It's funny, but I'm beginning to think of this as my house and my own little bed. It feels very comforting.”
Ben had been miraculously quiet, playing with a wooden train Faith had bought at H.O.M.E. in Orland. She resolved to go back to the store and get cars, trucks, whatever they had. He looked up with one of those surprisingly adult expressions children sometimes assume. This one was slightly careworn, a little
Faith felt the same way and, despite her assurances to Pix, had trouble blotting out the images of Roger's body, which kept floating across her eyes every time she closed them to go to sleep. It wasn't just a reminder of the fragility and transitoriness of life; it was a dreadful reminder.
The next day brought the real horror.
Freeman Hamilton was setting traps off the Point when he spotted a dinghy washed up on the shore. It was Roger's, and when Sgt. Dickinson and Freeman went over it, they found a number of recently drilled holes. Since it was unlikely that Roger would drill holes in his boat and then put to sea, there was only one conclusion.
Murder.
Faith heard the news in the market after church and once more found herself with the grim task of bearing bad tidings to Pix. As she steered the old Woody over the hills and dips on Route 17, she kept repeating the same question over and over to herself: 'Who on earth would want to kill Roger Barnett?”
And this was Pix's second response. Her first was that there had to have been some mistake.
But there was no mistake. The boat was definitely Roger's. He had painted it bright turquoise with a broad white stripe around at the waterline. Apparently the holes under the seats had been filled with corks and painted over. It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment job.
“And it was in our boathouse! Whoever did it had to have done it there!' Pix cried.
Roger didn't use the boat much. Mostly for picnics on one of the small islands nearby. He had been planning to replace it with something larger and more seaworthy. In fact, they had joked about it the night of the dinner party at Faith's. 'I have to bail so much, I never get to see where I'm going,' he had said. He would probably not have noticed anything unusual about water in the bottom of the boat until he got a ways out and it was too late.
“But why Roger? He didn't have an enemy in the world. I just can't understand it, Faith.”
Faith was picturing the phalanx of Prescotts surrounding Roger and Eric at the auction and thought they might aptly be described as enemies. Still, you didn't go around killing someone just because he inherited the house you wanted. Or did you? On reflection, it was a pretty good motive. Pix evidently thought so too.
“The only thing I can think of is that one of the Prescotts trashed the boat to give him a scare or whatever and had no idea it would turn out this way.”
Which seemed to be the prevailing opinion on the island, fueled by Eric's angry accusations. He had arrived back late in the morning and headed straight for the police station, or rather the police room in the combined town hall, office of the law, and post office in Granville. He wanted Sgt. Dickinson to bring in Sonny Prescott and any other Prescotts around for questioning. The sergeant had already decided to do this, but he didn't want Eric or anybody else telling him what to do. Instead, according to Eric's incensed account to Pix and Faith later, he ordered him to sit down and grilled
Eric looked terrible. He had obviously not slept and his eyes were red. He had started to cry when he saw Pix.
“What am I going to do without him? I'm nothing without Roger. Why didn't they kill me?”
Pix made a pot of strong tea and Eric began to calm down.
“I called his mother, and do you know what she said? `The world is full of sin. He is in a better place now.' Can you imagine that? That's what you say when you hear your son is dead!'
“Maybe it was the shock, Eric. Roger always said she had become very religious after his father died.'
“Well, she doesn't want to have anything to do with his burial, and that doesn't seem very Christian. She said to do what I wanted. That it was no concern of hers. Roger had made his choices. All that old stuff. No wonder she made him crazy.' He laughed bitterly. 'The last thing she said was `Did he leave a will?' I just hung up. I couldn't believe it.”
Well, did he? Faith wondered.
“I asked young Dick Tracy down at the police station when we could have the service, and he said as soon as they finished the autopsy, probably Tuesday. Roger wouldn't haveliked a big production, so I thought I would just ask John to say a few words at the cemetery.' Eric's voice was cracking. Pix put her arms around him.
“Do you think you could sleep a little? Maybe that tea was a mistake.'
“No, it was good, and I couldn't sleep anyway. But I guess I'll lie down. Jill said shed come by later, so would you tell her where I am?'
“Of course,' Pix assured him.
Eric left and they watched him walk slowly down the path to the little house he and Roger had shared all summer. Faith imagined how shattering it must be to walk into a room and see all the everyday possessions left so casually and so recently by someone you loved. She thought of Tom's old bathrobe hanging on the hook in the closet, the coffee mug that said, 'I love you, Dad,' that Benjamin had given him for Father's Day, the books he was reading. That would be the worst part. The things. They'd never be used again. The owner wasn't coming back.
Pix was saying something.
“He did make a will, though. He asked Sam to make one for him when we were here in May opening the
