Body in the Bog

the others only the second time. It suggested a precise person, someone who said only what he or she meant. A friend the first go-round, now a foe. But enmity toward Brad from the beginning. That could mean one of the Deanes, especially Lora’s grandfather or brothers, but they hadn’t known about the calls when the first letters were received.

The Deanes. Who lived in the apartment on Chandler Street? The letters and Lora seemed to be unconnected, but she kept popping up.

Faith tore a piece of paper from a pad on the counter and wrote: “apartment,” “signature,” “other letters?” and then “Brad.” She paused and after a moment jotted down “Margaret—meeting whom?” This last was a reminder to find out whether the police had located Margaret’s birding companion. Nelson had said she was going to meet someone. Who? She tucked the paper in her pocket. She knew she wouldn’t forget it.

Faith looked at the phone hanging on the wall and willed it to ring. It was one of the ones they hadn’t replaced. A dial phone. Ben viewed it as a priceless an-tique. So did Tom.

She gazed, unseeing, out the window again. The same names kept coming up over and over. A couple of these people were turning up on both her suspect and victim list: Lora Deane, Brad Hallowell. Lora’s family. And they had all been together this morning at the breakfast and on the green.

The phone rang at eleven. Faith was cleaning out the pantry by now and Sam owed Pix two thousand dollars. Dale and the kids were watching the Marathon.

This time it was Tom. He started speaking right away.

“He’s alive. He’s still in danger, but there’s hope.”

“Oh, Tom, thank God! What was it?” All morning she’d held on to the slim possibility that Nelson had had a heart attack or something else natural, however unwelcome. Then the whole affair could be a ghastly coincidence.

It wasn’t.

“He was poisoned. They’ve pumped his stomach and are analyzing the contents.”

“Poison!” A crystal clear picture of her husband giving the victim mouth-to-mouth flashed into Faith’s mind. “Tom, is there any possibility that you . . .” Tom had had his own uneasy moments. “I’m fine.

They won’t even tell me what they think it is, not yet anyway, but the doctor said he didn’t believe I was in any danger. Whatever it was, you had to have had a lot of it.”

“But how could he have been poisoned right before our eyes?”

“Exactly,” Tom said grimly.

“His flask. He was carrying one of those pewter flasks!”

“I’m sure the police are checking it. I’ve been out in the waiting room. I haven’t even seen Charley since we came in. Dunne arrived a couple of hours ago and then left. There have been cops in and out ever since.

They took everything Nelson was wearing or carrying away, including his musket.”

“Maybe Charley will tell you more when you do see him.”

“Possibly. I’m going to stay a bit longer. Nelson’s still unconscious, but he could come around in the next few hours, and I want to be here.” Tom had been feeling a bit incongruous sitting in the hospital in his Minuteman garb, but he didn’t want to take the time to go home to change. It wasn’t important enough for Faith to bring him his clothes, either. They’d been listening to the Marathon at the nurses’ station near the waiting room too. Everyone knew it was Patriots’

Day. He prayed for it to pass swiftly and safely.

Faith hung up the phone and went to tell the others.

How were they ever going to get through this long, long day? Waiting for the call had given them some focus. Now there were only empty hours ahead.

“Poisoned?” Pix said, shocked. “When would someone have had the opportunity? Unless it was extremely long-acting. But he would have been showing some symptoms. Did he look any different to you, Faith?”

Faith thought for a moment. “He looked tired, but not really any different from how he’s looked since Margaret died. I can’t imagine that he’s been sleeping well. Yet he was definitely moving more slowly.” Nelson, and Margaret, too, walked with brisk, purposeful strides—the strides of people who have feeders to fill, bookshelves to build. She remembered watching him leave the hall at St. Theresa’s, and while not exactly dragging his feet, he wasn’t rushing off to battle as were some of his fellow militiamen. She hadn’t been feeling especially perky herself at that hour in the morning, so she’d taken no notice of it until now.

“But he didn’t seem to be in pain, particularly gastric pain?”

“No, I would have noticed that.”

“Did you see him eat anything?”

Faith started to answer, then stopped herself. Who was supposed to be asking the questions here, anyway? After solving two murders, Pix had returned from Sanpere Island last summer ready to tackle anything from the case of Judge Crater to what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. Faith loved her friend dearly, but she wasn’t about to hand over her magnifying glass.

Fortunately, Samantha came into the room, effectively stopping her mother’s persistent line of inquiry.

Faith half-listened to the teenager while thinking about Pix’s question. She had not, in fact, seen Nelson eat or drink anything, but there were several rooms off the main hall and she had been in and out of them. It was possible he’d taken a doughnut, some coffee, or juice, all of which were in the main hall. He wasn’t at St. Theresa’s when she’d arrived and she never saw him with eggs and sausage later, so if the flask wasn’t poisoned, it was most probably one of those three.

Pretty hard to poison a doughnut, particularly one fresh from a box from a national chain. Coffee or juice, but again how, with a cop next to him and Nelson himself presumably keeping a close watch?

“It will be perfectly safe! Anyway, they’re after you, Mom, not me,” Samantha’s voice penetrated Faith’s speculations. Whoever said children were honest was right. Ruthlessly honest.

“I just called Jan and the car will pick me up here or at home. No one will even open a window, and the driver’s an auxiliary policeman anyway,” Samantha was pleading. She turned to her father. “Please, Dad, this is the last parade I’ll ever be in.”

“I certainly hope not,” he said dryly.

“You know what I mean!”

Pix sighed. “The whole thing is so crazy. I can’t imagine that anyone could want to harm us, but we—or, as you aptly point out, sweetheart, I—did get the letter. I’d like to assume Nelson was his or her intended victim and get on with my life, and my family’s, but my correspondent does not strike me as a particularly honorable or trustworthy person. What’s to prevent him from striking tomorrow or the next day or the next? Can we keep living like this—in hiding?” The Scotts could be out of town for quite a while, Faith reflected, because of course Pix was right. Murderers did not follow rules. Honorable, trustworthy—no, these were not words that sprang to mind.

“So you’re saying I can go, right?” Samantha was surprised. She’d expected a lot more opposition, especially from her mother. For a moment, adolescent that she was, she wondered if she ought to go if her mother thought it was okay.

“Sam?” Pix walked over to her husband and took his hand.

“Closed car, comes here, brings her back. A cop at the wheel. Probably as safe as the yard,” he answered.

“But no getting out of the car. Anybody. Go to the bathroom before you leave.”

“Daddy!” Patrolman Dale Warren was in the room again and Samantha was mortified.

Danny came running into the room. “You’re letting Samantha be in the parade and not me! It’s not fair!

You let her do everything!”

It was Sam’s turn to dig his heels in. A closed car was one thing. A three-mile march straight up Main Street, even in the DARE contingent, was another.

Help came from an unexpected source. “Couldn’t he come with me? There’s plenty of room, and one of our class projects was peer counseling with kids at his school. He could even wear his DARE T-shirt.” Everyone looked at Danny to see if he’d accept the compromise. Faith was getting a glimpse of a future she’d just as soon learn about when she got there—many years from now.

“Okay,” he said. “Those cars are cool. Wait till I tell Mark. He’s gonna wish he was here, too.”