home, and she'd feed Ben early. With luck, he'd be asleep. Now they sat down to a casserole of boneless chicken breasts she had lightly poached in white wine and layered with zucchini and carrot matchsticks and blue cheese. The juice from the chicken and what was left of the poaching liquid that she had poured over it made a delicious sauce. There was also some nutty basmati rice and steamed pea pods. With the holidays, she was trying to keep an eye on their calories, although Faith was as slender as she had always been and Tom never seemed to fill up his tall, rangy frame. He was trying manfully now.
“This is delicious, honey. Ben, we are two lucky guys.' Ben was daintily picking up each grain of rice left on his plate after he had impaled all the rest of the food on his eager little fork.
“So—what's the news? Why did Chat call? It had to be for a reason; she never calls just to talk.”
Faith related the call and, as she did, wished she had jotted down the exact wording of Howard's letter. She'd call Chat back and ask her to read it again.
“Farley is over at Hubbard House now. You met him before he moved—Farley Bowditch. I've dropped by a couple of times to visit him. He seems happy enough and I've never seen anything that would suggest he should be otherwise. The place itself is beautiful. It was the Aldrich estate, and Dr. Hubbard has kept the grounds pretty much as they were. People go over to see the rhododendrons in the spring. They're planted along the drive and pretty spectacular.' Tom glanced out the window at the overgrown, woody shrubs in the parsonage backyard. They looked particularly bleak in winter. 'This year we really have to do something about those bushes. Cut them back, fertilize ...'
“Yank them out and start over,' Faith suggested. 'But tell me more about Hubbard House.'
“I don't really know much more. I've met Dr. Hubbard several times, and he seems to genuinely care about the elderly. People around here have a great deal of respect for him—and his whole family. They're all involved with the home. His son's a doctor too and his daughter's a nurse, I think.'
“Sounds like 'Marcus Welby'
“Now that you mention it, he does look a little like Robert Young, except Dr. Hubbard is taller—bigger all over, and he has that old Yankee voice, sort of a combination of marbles in the mouth and foghorn.'
“Not unlike your father.' Faith laughed.
Tom glanced involuntarily over his shoulder. The adage in the Fairchild house had always been 'Spare the voice and spoil the child.'
“I can't see that there could be any harm in asking around about the place—or danger,' Tom added pointedly, referring to some of Faith's previous investigative endeavors.
“You know, Tom, I'm pleased that Chat asked me to help. Not that I'm about to trade my whisks and spatulas for a cape and magnifying glass, but it means she has some respect for my sleuthing abilities.”
Tom's reply, which Faith recognized as a heavy-weather warning flag gliding up the mast, was cut short as they both suddenly realized that during their conversation Ben had slid down from his chair and was quietly and gleefully scattering an entire box of linguine over the pantry floor.
“Ben! What are you doing? No, no. That's very naughty! You help Mommy pick up all these spaghettis immediately!”
Tom surveyed the mess. On the Ben scale it was merely a two. Nothing like emptying the vacuum or the ultimate ten, crawling into Tom's mother's car and releasing the emergency brake—fortunately on level ground with several adults running frantically after him.
“Honey, I have to run. I have a meeting with the new divinity school student who's going to be working with us this winter. I'll call you later.”
Faith came over and gave him a kiss. 'You mean you actually prefer talking to another adult to cleaning up pieces of spaghetti from the floor? Naughty, naughty.'
“Don't put ideas in my head. I hive to work this afternoon.”
Faith turned back to the linguine. Ben thought it was almost as much fun picking it up as throwing it down, and afterward Faith cleared away the lunch dishes and took him upstairs for a nap.
While he was sleeping, she planned her campaign. MacIsaac first, then Millicent. Not that she believed in delaying the inevitable, but since Millicent was going to treat her like a congenital idiot, she'd like to know at least one or two things about Hubbard House beforehand. That way she might not appear to be a complete fool—to herself.
She made a quick call to Chat, took down the exact wording of Howard's letter, and baked the Norwegian Christmas bread she had prepared that morning.
Faith loved the holidays—the traditions, the food, the getting and giving. She'd taken Ben down to New York last week for a look at the tree at Rockefeller Center, the poinsettias massed on the altar of St. Patrick's, and the windows at Saks and Lord & Taylor—even though he was still a little too young to truly appreciate it all. It was never too soon to start. For her these periodic trips to the city, especially at certain times of the year, were a kind of life-support system. Back in Aleford at the end of the long cord, she was willing to grant that New England was the perfect place to be at Christmas. They had already had the first snow, which melted quickly but brought a reminder of things to come. At this time of year no one thought of getting stuck in snowdrifts, backbreaking shoveling, chapped lips and drippy noses. Instead, memory brought the full moon shining like a bea- con over unmarked fields of snow, snowflakes on mittens and tongues, sledding and snow angels, tall pines covered with white, and the feeling of sitting before the fire while the storm swept past the windows and down the chimneys.
But Faith wasn't thinking Currier and Ives. She was thinking Hubbard House.
Chief MacIsaac wasn't at the station. Deputy Dale Warren told Faith to try Patriot Drug—the Chief had mentioned he needed some throat lozenges, might be starting a cold. If he wasn't there, then, of course, try the Cafe. Faith thanked him and wheeled Ben in his stroller out the door and back up the street toward the pharmacy. Like most of Aleford, it had been there forever and no one save herself appeared to find anything humorous about the name, or the fact that besides what one would expect to find in a store of this nature, they also sold the odd case of tuna fish, lawn mower parts, seed packets in the spring, and shoes. Not shoes like those found in Svenson's Shoe Store up the street, where Ben sat on a wooden pony and tried on little Stride Rites with what seemed liked greater and greater frequency, but shoes with the labels cut out or slightly mismatched. If one of your feet was a seven and the other an eight, Patriot Drug was the place for you. It was also one of the few places in the country, no doubt, where you could still get old favorites—and possibly collectibles—in the Friendship Gardeh line, Dierkiss talc, and Muguet des Bois perfume. Patriot's policy was keep it till it sells. Faith peered in the door, noticed they were having a special on rather dusty cases of imported bonbons, but didn't see Charley.
He was sitting in his usual booth at the Cafe, toward the rear but on the side facing the street. His hands circled a mug of coffee, and an empty plate was pushed to one side.
“May I join you?' Faith asked.
Charley grinned at the two of them. 'Anytime, Faith, and how are things with you?'
“Fine, but I hear you have a sore throat.”
The Chief did not seem surprised that the information had already made its way around to Faith. This was Aleford, after all.
“Just a tickle, but these will fix it.' He motioned to his pack of Fisherman's Friends.
The waitress, a pleasant woman named Helen Griggs who attended First Parish, came over to the table. 'Have you decided yet, Mrs. Fairchild?”
Since Faith had either blueberry or corn muffins whenever she came in, which one was the only knotty question. She ordered blueberry, a cup of coffee, and a doughnut for Ben. He was usually so intrigued by this thing with a hole in it that Faith could count on a good fifteen minutes of uninterrupted conversation while Ben looped the doughnut on his finger and gnawed his way to the middle.
She told Charley about Aunt Chat's call and produced her copy of the passage in the letter that referred to Hubbard House for Charley's perusal. Charley took his time.
“There's basically two places people go to around here when they can't live at home anymore. Peabody House down the street, but that's pretty small, only room for eighteen and you have to be hale and hearty to get in. They don't have any medical facilities there beyond a nurse and an aide or two. Hubbard House is a bigger operation. You can start out in your room or cottage and then, if you need it, move to the hospital section Dr. Hubbard added when he set the place up. Must be about twenty, twenty-five years ago. Before that he was a GP,
