It sounded il ogical, but Pix knew what Louise meant.
“He was certainly adept at mooching a place to stay when he needed one, but when he was working on a house and living on the premises, you're right: He was always alone. He lived with other people only when he couldn't live in the house. The time he was restoring that barn in Little Harbor, he lived with one of the Prescotts'
“And didn't he board with John Eggleston once?'
“Very briefly. I don't think he was there a week before they quarreled and John threw him out. I'd forgotten that.'
Pix made a mental note to talk to John. A former Episcopal priest, now a wood sculptor, he might have evoked some revelations of a confessional nature from Mitch before things went awry. It would be interesting to discover what had happened to cause the heave ho, although it would no doubt turn out to have been something like Mitch's using John's towel or drinking milk from the carton. In Pix's experience, this was usual y why roommates parted ways—
nothing dramatic, just irritating little everyday things that piled up to actionable proportions.
Pix continued: 'Jil told me that Earl told her the state police have been trying to find out about Mitch's past from his tax returns and Social Security. It seems everybody has a paper trail. He was born in Rhode Island, but his parents are dead and there were no siblings. His permanent address was a post office box in Camden. They got al excited when they went over the court records—you know, he's been sued a number of times. They found a lawyer's name and got in touch with him, but he says Mitch never told him anything personal, just hired him by the case.
Never, apparently, made a wil , either—at least not with this guy. Now they're going over his bank records, seeing whom he may have written checks to and if he had a safety-deposit box anywhere. The last place he was living was a rented room in a house in Sul ivan, and there wasn't much in it except a few clothes and a whole lot of paperback mysteries.'
“It does seem amazing to us. We're so embedded in our families, our relationships, and yes, our legal affairs'
Louise laughed. 'What I'm saying is, people like us don't often think of people like Mitch—someone with no roots.”
Louise came from a large South Carolinian family, bringing with her to Maine softened speech, a penchant for drinking iced tea al year long, and an endless supply of stories about various family members. She had a tendency to talk of the living and the dead in the same tense, so Pix was never sure whether Aunt Sister, who dressed al in white and spent fifteen minutes every day of her life with slightly dampened bags—which she fashioned herself from silk and rose petals—on her closed eyes, was stil alive or had passed on. Surely, however, Cousin Fancy, who saved the sterling from the Yankees by burying it in the family plot, moving Grandaddy's stone to mark the spot—merely for the duration, you understand—was no longer rustling along the sidewalks of Charleston in her hoop skirts.
Pix accepted Louise's invitation, hoping that Sam would be able to be there with her. He liked to help El iot prepare the pit. It was an old-fashioned clambake always held in Sylvester Cove, with half the island in attendance.
She offered to bring her usual vat of fish chowder, her grandmother's cherished, but not particularly closely guarded, recipe—unlike some she could name, she told Louise, both women having tried unsuccessful y for years to get Adelaide Bainbridge's recipe for sherry-nutmeg cake.
Pix had tried not so much because she wanted to make it, but because of the principle of the thing, and besides, her mother would like it. Louise wanted it because it was a favorite of El iot's.
Pix always thought of the Fraziers as ospreys, the large fish hawks that were once more returning to the islands, building their enormous nests on rocky ledges, high atop spruce trees, and occasional y even balanced on a channel marker. Ospreys were birds who mated for life.
She'd told her theory to Sam, who agreed, commenting that El iot was actual y beginning to look a little beaky as he got older. Whatever the name or the comparison, the Fraziers were a devoted couple.
Louise accepted Pix's offer of the chowder grateful y.
'Timing at clambakes is so unpredictable, and people always get hungry before we uncover the pit.”
After she hung up, Pix thought she'd better put in a quick cal to Faith before Sunday to ask her advice about making a large quantity of chowder. Usual y, she simply quadrupled or quintupled the recipe, but working at the catering company had heightened her sensibilities. Maybe there was some special proportion known only to dedicated cooks or foodies. She wished the Fairchilds could come up for the Fourth of July festivities on Sanpere, which actual y started the weekend before. The day itself would begin with a parade in Sanpere Vil age, fol owed by children's games in the elementary school playground, before moving to Granvil e for first the Odd Fel ows Lobster Picnic, then later the Fish and Fritter Fry run by the Fishermen's Wives Association on the wharf. The day ended back in Sanpere Vil age, with fireworks over the harbor at nightfal . But Faith was catering four different functions and couldn't get away.
Pix would miss the Fairchilds, but it might be best if they weren't around until the whole business with Mitchel Pierce was cleared up. She reminded herself to cal Earl and see when Seth could start work again. She presumed they'd been over the site with magnifying glasses, tweezers, fingerprint powder, and whatever else it was they used to find clues. They'd taken both her and Samantha's sneakers away on Sunday, so examining footprints was one activity, although it had been so dry that the slightest breeze would have long since blown away any traces in a cloud of dust.
Al right, she told herself briskly. Cal Earl, cal Faith, get out chowder recipe, make shopping list, pick up Mother at the Bainbridge's, where she is lunching, stake tomato plants, set out beer-fil ed tuna cans to kil slugs, pick up Samantha at work ... She got a pencil and made a list. Pix had lists everywhere—in her purse, in her pockets, on the wal , on the fridge, tucked into books. She'd told a friend once, 'My life is one long list,' and the friend had replied, 'I know—and the list is never done.' It had depressed Pix at the time and it depressed her now. She decided to take the dogs outside and do the tomatoes first.
The exercise and the fresh air lifted her spirits immediately and she stood up and stretched. It was a long one. Pix was not her given name, but an abbreviation of the childhood nickname 'Pixie,' bestowed by her doting parents when she was a wee mite of two. At four, she had shot up to the size of a six-year-old, but the name persisted.
And as she grew older, she was thankful to whatever fate had been responsible for that brief petite moment. As a name, Pix was vastly preferable to what was on her birth certificate, Myrtle—for her father's favorite aunt and her horticulturist mother's favorite ground cover. In retrospect, Pix was grateful Mother hadn't opted for the Latin and chosen Vinca Minor instead of little Myrtle. When Aunt Myrtle died, she left her namesake a cameo, a diamond brooch, and some nice coupons to clip. Everything but the cameo had long since been converted into a hot-water heater, braces for the kids, and, one particularly tight winter, antibiotics for the dogs, the cost of which had led Pix seriously close to fraud as she considered listing them under their given names of Dustin, Arthur, and Henry Mil er on the family's health insurance.
After al , what was in a name? Pix, like most people, seldom remembered she even had another one, unless she received a notice for jury duty or her mother was particularly annoyed with her. Her mother! She dropped her tools, ran into the house, hastily washed, and dashed out to pick Ursula up. It wouldn't do to be late.
* * *
Samantha, on another part of the island, stopped for a moment to look about. It was bright and sunny—a little too warm for Maine. They stil hadn't had any rain. She'd been working for several days and was beginning to get the lay of the land.
Maine Sail Camp consisted of a number of smal rustic wooden cabins plus a large dining hal that doubled as a recreation center scattered over a sloping hil ending at the shore with a large dock and boathouse. When not actual y on the water, campers could stil see it and the sailboats that were the focus of each encampment. In addition to the sailing lessons, campers were instructed in nature lore, swimming, and the al -important crafts of lariat making and pot-holder weaving. The oldest campers were thirteen; the youngest, seven. An invisible but impenetrable wal ran down the middle of the hil separating the boys' from the girls' cabins. There were campers whose parents and even grandparents had attended Maine Sail. Reunions were nostalgic affairs and camp spirit was actively encouraged.
A tear in the eye when singing 'O Thou Maine Sail of My Life' was not viewed amiss. Jim Atherton, the
