“Garth Barker. Youngest of the boys. Meanest, too. Neighbor of yours on the hill.”
Terrific. “Why would he do that? He doesn’t even know me.”
“Dunno. Could’ve been the talk about Diana set him off.”
Diana again. “I don’t understand.”
“Bad blood between ’em. Didn’t want him hunting on her land and made a fuss about it.” Rogers leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. “Was his gun killed her.”
Outrage boiled within Kathryn. “If he shot her, why’s he on the loose?”
Rogers motioned for her to keep her voice down. “I said his gun, not him. Anyways, could be he was mad at me for ribbing him about the white stag and took it out on you.”
“What’s the white stag?”
“Big light-colored buck roams the woods around here. Never seen it myself and don’t know of anyone who has. But that don’t stop Garth from trying to kill it.”
“That’s crazy.”
Rogers held out his hands, palms up. “What can I tell you?”
Chapter 6
Kathryn attached three fly strips to a ceiling beam and watched with satisfaction as flies began to take the bait. Leaving the strips to do their work, she went upstairs. In the hallway a lone fly buzzed near the trapdoor leading to the attic. It was the one place Brandy hadn’t showed her. It had never been finished, Brandy explained, so there was no point going up. Could the flies be getting in through the attic? A window could have been left ajar, and there might be a dead critter to attract them.
Unfolding the wooden ladder, she climbed up. Pieces of plywood created a partial flooring over rolls of pink fiberglass insulation. Mouse dung speckled the plywood, and there was an empty tray of poison, but no small, furry body. No open window either. Old suitcases, file drawers, and boxes of papers and magazines lay haphazardly on the plywood. The detritus of the lives lived in this house. Gordon Farley’s life and Diana’s.
In her work as a curator, Kathryn had spent hours going through people’s attics in search of pictorial treasures. But she saw nothing of interest here, unless it was the 10 x 13 color photograph in a tarnished silver frame lying just out of reach on a cushion of insulation. Stepping gingerly onto the plywood, she grasped a corner of the frame and picked it up. Graffiti marred the photograph of a woman. Someone had drawn glasses and a mustache on her face, then, incongruously, huge breasts and a thatch of pubic hair on her body. Devil’s horns sprouted from her head. The words “Fuck you, bitch” were scrawled across the picture in black marker.
Kathryn’s insides knotted. People weren’t always kind to family photos. They cut out the heads of detested relatives and sometimes cropped entire groupings, but she’d never seen anything quite as bad as this. It struck her as particularly nasty to deface what looked like a wedding picture, judging from the woman’s long white dress. If this was Diana Farley’s wedding picture, why had her husband left it here? And who had done this to it? Someone who’d feuded with her like Garth Barker? Or . . .? Brandy had told her a family had rented the house for the summer and through the leaf-peeping season. Maybe one of the kids had come up here and wrecked the photograph as a prank.
She wanted to believe this because the other possibility was too disturbing. The air felt suddenly close. She put down the photograph and fled the attic, then the house in favor of a lounge chair on the patio.
The pond lay serene and still in the late afternoon light. Its peacefulness seeped into her until her body relaxed, her mind cleared, and she was transported back to a rare moment of happiness.
She sat with Aunt Kit on the lanai of the house on Diamond Head, watching the red ball of sun slip into the Pacific. The air was sweet with plumeria and the orchids Aunt Kit raised. Aunt Kit wore a flowery muu-muu which, as she liked to say, “hid a multitude of sins.” In her hand was a Mai Tai; in Kathryn’s a Shirley Temple with a magenta paper umbrella stuck in the glass.
She twirled the paper umbrella back and forth while Aunt Kit held forth on her favorite topic: the mysterious young woman in the photograph. “Now why would our ancestor, Jared Cutter, take her picture all the way to California if he wasn’t crazy about her? Why leave in the first place? He had everything he wanted in New Nottingham: a big house, loads of money, the whole town looking up to him. Why turn his back on all that unless he was running away from a great sadness? I think it had to do with her. Maybe she died before they could marry. Maybe she married someone else. Whatever happened, he was so heartbroken he couldn’t bring himself to ever speak her name. So after all these years we don’t know a thing about her. But one day I’m going to find out!” For emphasis, Aunt Kit stabbed the harpoon she used as a cane into the pavement of the lanai.
Kathryn dropped the leaf she’d been twirling in lieu of a paper umbrella. That wasn’t the sound of metal banging into pavement but a gunshot. Then another and another. Dammit! Time to have a straight talk with Brandy.
Chapter 7
“I’m sorry about those flies,” Brandy said over drinks, a white wine spritzer for Kathryn, bourbon on the rocks for Brandy, at a Great Barrington watering hole. “I would’ve mentioned them, but it never occurred to me they’d be a problem. Who would’ve thought we’d have such hot weather in November? I’m gonna call the exterminator right now.” She whipped out her cell phone and frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
“The thing is it’s kinda expensive. More trouble than you’d think, too. They can’t just set off a bomb. They have to drill all these tiny holes in the walls and fill ’em with poison. And I’d have to get Gordon’s approval. So if you can just put up with the flies a little longer, I’m sure the weather’ll change soon. In the meantime, I’ll send a cleaning person to take care of the mess, at no charge to you.”
“I guess that will be okay.” Kathryn suspected that Brandy was someone who always promised more than she could deliver.
“Fantastic!” Brandy beamed. “Now, about that other little problem you mentioned, I’m gonna find out who’s doing that target practice and make sure he does it elsewhere.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“I want you to be happy up there on the hill, Kathryn. So . . . met any of your neighbors yet?” Brandy’s smile was still pasted on, but Kathryn noticed a wary look in her eyes.
“Only one: Garth Barker.”
Brandy swallowed hard. “Nice guy, huh?”
“He rammed my shoulder with a thirty-pack at the general store. I’m pretty sure it was deliberate.”
Fault-lines appeared in Brandy’s carefully made-up face. “Really? Well, don’t take it personally. He was probably having a bad day.”
“Lucas Rogers said Garth didn’t get on with Diana Farley,” Kathryn blurted. “That his gun killed her.”
Brandy’s features sagged. “His gun, yes,” she repeated dully.
“Someone else shot Diana with it?”
Brandy nodded. “It was an accident.”
“What happened?”
Brandy gulped down the rest of her bourbon and stood. “I need a refill, what about you?”
“I’m fine.”
Brandy returned with her refill and a bowl of peanuts. After taking a swig, she said, “Diana was killed during Deer Week. She was a fool to go into the woods when they were crawling with hunters.”
“A hunter shot her?”
Brandy shook her glass, the ice rattling like old bones.“Yeah.”
“Why did he have Garth’s gun?”
“He . . . uh . . . borrowed it. And like I said, it was an accident. Happened a while ago, before they passed the law.”
“What law?”
“The one that says you can’t hunt on someone else’s property without written permission. It’s made things a lot safer.” Brandy glanced at her watch. “Gotta run. I’m supposed to meet a friend in Lenox in twenty.”
Kathryn reached for her wallet. “I’ll take care of it,” Brandy said.
They exited the bar into a narrow brick alley that led to Railroad Street. As they proceeded single-file with Brandy in the lead, Brandy said, “I’ll let you know when the cleaning person will be coming. Anything else give me a buzz.”
“There is something else,” Kathryn said. “A family rented the house before me?”
“That’s right.”
“So there was at least one child in the house?”
“Actually two. A toddler and a four-year-old. Why do you ask?”
Kathryn explained about finding the defaced photograph in the attic.
Brandy staggered, as if struck from behind.
“Are you all right?”
Brandy pressed a hand against the wall to steady herself. “My heel caught in a crack between the bricks. Oughta fix this walkway before someone falls and breaks a leg. But that’s awful! I can’t imagine who’d do such a thing.”
“Does anyone besides you, me, and Gordon Farley have keys to the house?”
“No, though I’ve sometimes given keys to various handymen when there was repair work to be done. But I don’t think any of them—no, it must’ve been some visiting kid. Gotta dash. Call if you need anything.” Her heels clacked on the bricks, sure-footed in flight.
Chapter 8
Brandy poured more bourbon into her glass. She stared blearily at the magnetic letters on her refrigerator door. “Be Good to Yourself.” “You are Special.” “You Are About to Realize Your Full Potential.” What a crock!
The sayings came from fortune cookies and the inspirational calendar Millie had given her last Christmas, along with a pot of Paperwhite Narcissus bulbs. She’d been thrilled when the first green shoots pushed through the stones in the pot. Then, without warning, they withered and died.
Like a lot of things in her life. Her husband’s early death from cancer. Their son’s falling in with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble.
Brandy ground the stub of her Marlboro Lite into the overflowing ashtray, lit another and dragged deeply. She’d been trying to kick the habit for years. But she couldn’t quit now. Not with another November to get through.
Someone had once told her April was the cruelest month. He was wrong. It was November.
She’d had such high hopes when she and her son had moved here from Brooklyn. Hopes of making a new start in a place most people thought was idyllic. They didn’t know that behind the Berkshires of Tanglewood picnics and The Boston Symphony Orchestra under the stars, of picture-postcard villages with chi-chi shops and restaurants, lay another Berkshires, the Berserkshires, she called it, where people did crazy, violent things. Unless she sold the Farley house she was stuck here.
The current tenant might be her ticket out of Dodge, but already, she felt the downward spiral beginning. It had started the day she showed Kathryn the house with Garth and his goddamn gunshots.
Deer Week isn’t until the end of November, she’d complained to him afterward. Can’t you hold off your shooting till then, or do it somewhere else? The bastard told her to keep her nose out of it. He’d hunt where and when he felt like it. Then he said something that made no sense at all. Told her he wasn’t after any old deer but the white stag. And he was gonna bag ’im if it was the last thing he did.
There was a bar by that name, where Garth and his cronies went drinking every night. She’d never heard of any such animal, though. Must have been the booze talking.
Should’ve known better than to approach him. Hadn’t done a bit of good. And it might’ve have made things worse by turning Garth against Kathryn. That was probably why he’d rammed her with a case of beer.
Then Lucas had to tell Kathryn Garth’s gun killed Diana, and Kathryn had found Diana’s picture messed up with graffiti. She couldn’t pull the wool over Kathryn’s eyes forever.
Brandy downed more bourbon, grateful for the buzz. What the hell? What was the worst that could happen? Kathryn would realize the flies were the least of her worries and hightail it back to the city. She’d have to find another buyer then, but she’d been there before; she could deal with it.
As Brandy took another swig, an ice cube hit the exposed nerve of a tooth that had lost the cap put on in better days. The chill snapped her out of her alcoholic haze. Kathryn’s leaving wasn’t the worst that could happen. There was worse—much worse.
Oh, Brian, oh dear God, no!
Chapter 9
Obadiah Cutter was the first settler of New Nottingham. He built a cabin on the banks of Leech Pond, now called Leech Swamp, and spent the winter of 1737 there. Folks say he nearly starved, because the Indians made him use a bow and arrow instead of his gun.
By the time he died, fifty years later, New Nottingham was a thriving town. The Cutters were the wealthiest family. They built a farmhouse on the site of Obadiah’s cabin and established a paper mill nearby. After the last Cutter left the area in the 1850s, the house fell into disrepair. A fire destroyed all but the foundation. The mill fared better. It was bought by another family who ran it into the late 1880s when it finally closed for good. The ruins of the mill are still there. You can see stone entry pillars, high walls, and underground storage rooms. My cousins and I liked to play hide-and-seek in the ruined mill. It was also a popular meeting place for courting couples.
−Recollections of Emily Goodale
Pickups filled the parking area of the general store when Kathryn drove to the village the next morning. She squeezed into a space next to a faded red truck like the one that had pulled into the Farley driveway a few days ago. The lettering on it read: “Earl Barker, Excavating.” She hoped this Barker wouldn’t be as unpleasant as the one she’d already met.
Inside, a group of men lounged around the deli counter at the rear, drinking coffee and talking. They fell silent at the sight of her. She gripped her plastic mug, nervous as a kid on the first day of school.
“Hey, Starstruck, have to go to Barrington for your Cap-poo-chee-no,” a lean, well-muscled man drawled. He was ruggedly handsome, his blue eyes set off by a deep tan.
The men laughed. A prickly heat grew on her face. She should have known better than to bring a Starstruck Coffee Traders mug in here. Too late now. She marched up to the counter and put down the mug. “Coffee, please.” Lucas Rogers poured in black liquid.
“That’ll put hair on your chest,” the blue-eyed man jeered. “Sure you don’t want cream or sugar?” He gestured at an open pint of half and half and a box of sugar.
Sensing this was a test, she shook her head and took a drink. The acrid brew roiled her stomach like battery acid. It was all she could do to keep from clutching her corroded insides.
“That’s a first,” the man declared. “Nobody, but no-o-body round here drinks Lucas’s coffee black. We believe in saving our guts for better things, don’t we, boys?”
The “boys” responded with a chorus of agreement.
“Now, Earl, my coffee’s not that bad,” Rogers grumbled.
So the blue-eyed man was Earl Barker. “It’s fine,” she fibbed. Handing Rogers a couple of dollar bills, she turned to go.
“See you’ve got a pussycat,” Earl Barker called after her.
She spun around. They faced each other like gunslingers, hands on mugs instead of holsters. “How do you know?”
“Noticed it in the window when I was up there checking the driveway the other day. Heavy rains last summer made a mess of it. Did some patchwork, but the whole driveway needs to be re-graded. Then I’ll have to put down several truckloads of gravel. Gordon wants an estimate before I begin.”
“You’ll be starting soon?” Something else Brandy hadn’t mentioned.
“Yup. Gets any worse, you’ll have a tough time getting out. Don’t think you wanna be stuck up there all by your lonesome.”
“No
.” Which was worse: being stranded, or having Earl Barker around on a daily basis?
Outside, she dumped the coffee into the bushes and headed to the town hall. A girl with cobweb-fine white blonde hair and a pasty complexion sat behind the desk in the town clerk’s office, head bent over a sheaf of papers. She looked too young for a town official, so maybe she was filling in for her mother. The nameplate on the desk said “Cheryl Barker.”
“I’m looking for Cheryl Barker,” Kathryn said.
The girl glanced up and quickly turned her face to one side, though not before Kathryn glimpsed an ugly purplish bruise under her left eye. “I’m Cheryl.”
“Of course,” Kathryn said quickly, trying to keep her eyes off the bruise. “I’m new here, renting the Farley house. If you’re related to Garth, we must be neighbors.”
The girl rested her chin in her hand, fingertips covering the bruise. “Garth’s my husband.”
Poor kid married to that brute. “Kathryn Stinson. Nice to meet you,” she said in an effort to put the girl at ease.
“You, too,” the girl said shyly. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m trying to locate house and mill sites dating back to the 1850s. Do you perhaps have any town maps from then?”
Cheryl shook her head. “You need to talk to Millie. She’s a member of the historical society, works over at the post office.”
“Thanks.”
The post office was located in a small building next to the general store with a shared parking area. Behind the counter, a petite woman with a pretty face waved a roll of catalogs and shook her head with a swish of her strawberry blonde ponytail. “Not gonna fit,” she muttered. Yanking a packing box from under the counter, she tossed in the catalogs.
“Mail boxes must fill up fast with all the junk mail that comes nowadays,” Kathryn remarked.
“No kidding!” The petite woman laughed. She wore a tailored blue pants suit that matched her eyes and showed off her hourglass figure. If there was one word that best described her it was “perky.” “This particular family won’t be back till next summer, so it’s gonna take a storage bin to hold all their mail. And most of it will get thrown out, anyway. But that’s the breaks,” she finished with a good-natured shrug of her shoulders. “How can I help you?”
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