Body in the Bog

newspaper. She could phone a friend. Instead, she went to the closet.

She’d worn her pale gray shearling—a Christmas gift from Tom. The night air had been cold and she was as tired as everyone else in Aleford of bulky down parkas. The House of Bauer and Bean tailoring left much to be desired on Faith’s part. Its resulting fashion statement looked more like the House of Michelin. She’d tried to get through her first winter in something less warm and more chic, but she had given in around January, before doing permanent damage to her circulatory system.

The paper she retrieved was bright orange. Its message was spelled out in a variety of eye-catching fonts, complete with shadowing and clip art. What did people do before the advent of computers, Faith wondered, when mere words had to convey one’s passion?

She regarded Millicent’s work. It had all the subtlety of a punch between the eyes.

POW!

PRESERVE OUR WETLANDS!

Aleford, arise! Over two hundred years ago, our ancestors risked their lives for independence. They were not afraid to stand up for what they knew to be right.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Once again we face a crisis. Aleford, are you ready!

The area known as Beecher’s Bog is under attack.

Only we can save this historic habitat from destruction by greedy land gobblers. Only we can preserve what’s left of Aleford’s natural beauty for future generations before it’s too late!

POW! will have its first meeting on Friday, April 5th at 7:00 P.M. in Asterbrook Hall. Call Independence 2-7840 for more information.

You couldn’t help but admire the woman. As incen-diary literature, the broadside was pithy. No names were named, yet Millicent’s John Hancock was all over it—as was her phone number. She and several other diehards still used the exchange’s full name rather than simply the letters IN or the numbers 46.

Faith knew New Yorkers like this—stubbornly cling-ing to Algonquin and Murray Hill. Millicent also hadn’t named Joey Madsen, but the “greedy land gobbler” appellation, identifiable to all, was bound to in-furiate him. For vastly different reasons, each of them was the self-proclaimed guardian of Aleford: Aleford’s quality of life. Whatever that meant. Faith noticed whenever people used the term, it tended to mean the quality of their own particular lives—backyards, streets, wallets—and not necessarily their neighbors’, next-door or global.

Still, she’d see if Samantha Miller could baby-sit.

Tom wouldn’t want to miss the meeting, and Faith had already decided to become a charter member.

Fonts or no fonts, POW! had a point. The bog was a wonderful place.

Plus, the access road would most assuredly wipe out the parsonage lilac hedge.

An hour later, Faith turned from her recipe notebooks.

Have Faith was catering a large dinner party on the

“real” Patriots’ Day, Friday, April 19, and she had been instructed by the hostess to prepare traditional New England favorites. Favorites of whom? had been on the tip of Faith’s tongue, but she bit it and was now searching through her files to find palatable fare. A region best known for baked beans, boiled dinners, and scrod was not exactly a culinary paradise on a par, say, with Provence, Tuscany, or New Orleans.

Baked beans—what could she do with them? (See recipe on page 335.) Sweeten them with the thick grade B maple syrup she preferred for its strong flavor? She’d give New England maple syrup. Also Maine lobster.

Or should she spice up the beans with a kind of mustardy barbecue-type sauce? The dinner was to be a buffet, and she’d already decided to serve her version of Yankee pot roast (see recipe on page 334) as the main course. Desserts. She sighed. They no doubt expected Indian pudding, a concoction that always tasted like porridge to Faith no matter how much vanilla ice cream she heaped on top. Besides, it should probably be called Native American pudding, and someone at the party was bound to object. Fortunately, Tom, partial to everything else springing from the rockbound soil of his birth, did not care for it.

“Cornmeal does not leap to mind when dessert is mentioned,” he’d observed. “Chocolate does.” Faith had never heard of any New England chocolate desserts. It was time to get out her venerable 1915 Fannie Farmer, a volume she normally reserved for light reading in bed due to its wonderful photographic illustrations—a doily for every dish—and the recipes.

She never tired of reading about things like Syracuse Five o’clock Tea (five o’clock tea sweetened with red or white rock candy—was Syracuse known for its sweet tooth?), Mock Sausages with Fried Apple Rings (the sausages were made of lima beans), and Lobster Boats (complete with instructions for sails made of rice paper). Then there were Little Brahmins—cooked rice flavored with catsup, shaped into the form of chickens, crumbed, and deep-fried. The photograph showed them nestled on a bed of parsley.

One is facing in the opposite direction from the rest, the poultry equivalent of a black sheep, or an obscure reference to J. P. Marquand? Faith also ardently subscribed to Mrs. Farmer’s introductory quotation: “We grow like what we eat; Bad food depresses, good food exalts us like an inspiration.” Usage aside, Faith found comfort in the words and had suggested more than once to Pix, who did things like this, that an embroidered hanging for the Fairchild kitchen would not be ill received. Fannie would have something Faith could use for dessert.

She’d been completely concentrating on her work, or so she thought, but she hadn’t accomplished much and was feeling out of sorts. There really wasn’t any reason why she should be. Her life was going well.

Second children were supposed to be more easygoing than firsts, although Faith had greeted this remark with the same skepticism she’d rightly reserved for second deliveries being easier. But this maxim was proving true. Amy slept through the night—technically, it was morning when she got up and out—as opposed to Ben. He had nearly sent them round the bend with his nocturnal wanderings once he’d mastered the parent-defying art of climbing out of the crib.

Amy had also virtually toilet-trained herself, needing only the diaper at night, and was thereby saving them enough money in Huggies so that college tuition was once more a possibility. She had an interesting and sunny temperament, although, as Ben had been at the same age, she was a child of few words—approximately fifteen at the moment. Faith attributed this to her own parental failure to offer adequate stimulation. She could read to her children endlessly, but talking to someone who did not talk back or replied with one word, occasionally two, as in “Want Daddy,” was not her idea of stimulating conversation.

She firmly classified it with playing most games.

Happily, Tom was good at that and could spend hours spinning spinners and moving brightly colored pieces about in circles with Ben. Watching them, Faith had had to concede that there are some things that passeth all understanding.

No, it was not her family. Like Amy, Ben was as easy as a child could be, which is to say he had the capacity to consume most of the oxygen in the room yet was willing to share when reminded. As for Tom, husbands are never easy, but she loved him very much and that went a long way, especially when the seat was left up in the middle of the night.

The scene with Miss Lora flashed in front of her.

What would she do if Tom really did have an affair?

Never mind the logistics. He barely had time to brush his teeth, what with parish duties and family life.

She’d warned him once when Amy’s bout with colic coincided with Ben’s discovery of how to release the car’s emergency brake that if they ever divorced, he’d have to take the kids, any pets they might acquire, as well as the cottage in Maine. If she was getting out, she wanted out. He’d laughed, but not heartily. He knew she meant it.

But she had been jealous when she’d seen another woman in Tom’s arms. And Lora Deane was not exactly a threat. When Faith had dropped Ben off this morning, the teacher had a voluminous smock over what appeared to be adult-sized Osh-Kosh overalls and an old turtleneck. No, Faith wasn’t seriously worried about Tom and any possible dalliance along Sesame Street. She was, however, worried about Lora herself.

Stalked, being harmed, or even being murdered by an ex turned up in the news every day. She hoped that Lora really was going to speak to her half sister immediately. If Joey was eliminated, as Faith suspected he would be, then they could turn their attention to Brad Hallowell before it was too late. It might make sense to find out more about him now. Faith remembered she’d said as much to Lora last night.

Brad had been at the selectmen’s meeting, standing in the back of the room. Faith had wondered what he