The Body In The Basement ff-6

by Katherine Hall Page

  “Ugh! That's more like bait, Mabel," Dot said. She was about to elaborate when they heard the trample of little feet, many little feet. Samantha and Arlene jumped up to take the huge trays of steaming food out to the tables, where the kids helped themselves family-style. But first Jim asked for quiet. Samantha expected some reference to the mouse incident: "If anyone has any information"—the old "Put your heads down on your desks and I won't tel who raises a hand" kind of thing. Yet he didn't mention it. Instead, he recited from Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar," his voice growing slightly husky at "Sunset and evening star/And one clear cal for me!" Jim started every meal with some inspirational nautical quotation. The man must have spent years memorizing them al . Sam was curious to see whether he recycled them each session or whether there would be a new one every day. Irreverently, she wondered whether he had picked today's quote as a tribute to the mice.

  She stood near the wal on one side of the dining room, ready to refil platters and the pitchers of milk and water that were set in the middle of each table. She took the opportunity to study Jim. He didn't seem to be Valerie's type. He dressed invariably in L. L. Bean khakis, the camp T-shirt, and, of course, Top-Siders. He was handsome.

  Days on the water had bleached out his light brown hair and given him a good tan. His eyes were clear and blue.

  He always looked as if he'd had a good night's sleep. But there was nothing exotic about him, nothing special. He didn't have any style. Samantha found herself searching for the exact words that would sum up her employer. Jim Atherton was ... wel , he was just so straight.

  As she'd groped for the definition, Jim's antithesis appeared at the dining room door: black/white, ying/yang, right/wrong, you say either—al rol ed up into one. It had to be Duncan. A nudge and a whisper from Arlene confirmed it. Samantha watched as Jim Atherton's gaze, which had been sweeping steadily across the room at regular intervals like the beam from the old Eagle Island lighthouse, rested on his stepson. There was no mistaking Jim's look of dismay. He concealed it hastily and walked toward the young man.

  “Duncan. Hel o. Are you hungry? Take a seat. We're stil on the macaroni and cheese" Jim made the mistake of resting his hand on the boy's shoulder. Duncan shook it off with disdain. Arlene whispered, "Cooties" in Samantha's ear. Sam had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. Duncan had looked childish.

  Duncan Cowley inhabited that curious limbo between childhood and adulthood, cal ed, depending on the speaker, "the best years of your life,”

  “the process of self-actualization," or "teen hel ." To stake out his own particular territory in this strange land, Duncan had chosen to dress al in black. Today he wore a Metal ica concert T-shirt under an unbuttoned black denim shirt, black jeans, and black high-top L.A. Lites, untied and without socks. A black leather bracelet complete with lethal metal spikes completed the ensemble.

  “His parents should make him smel his shoes for punishment," Samantha said, adding, "I thought only elementary school kids wore those shoes that light up.

  You're right. What a loser.”

  Without a word to his stepfather, Duncan made his way to the kitchen, his shoes indeed flashing tiny red spots of light as he walked. The girls turned to the wal . It was the kind of thing that could send them into uncontrol able fits of the giggles.

  “And he stinks, too! What is that smel ?" Samantha gasped.

  “Musk and B.O."

  “Poor Valerie." Samantha was in total sympathy with his mother, something that would have astonished some of her Aleford friends. But then, she wasn't in Aleford, and besides, Valerie wasn't like a regular parent.

  At dinner that night, Samantha couldn't stop talking about the Athertons. She and her mother had taken big bowls of chili down to the deck by their own boathouse. Life with Samantha was turning out to be very relaxed, Pix thought as she reached for a tortil a chip straight from the bag. She hadn't even bothered with a bowl and she pushed thoughts of what Mother—and Faith—would say far from her mind. Instead, she concentrated on a cold Dos Equis—

  Faith would at least approve of the beer—and on what Samantha was saying. Obviously, the girl was in love.

  Had Pix's own besotted crush on their neighbor, Priscil a Graham, been as boring, and even slightly irritating to Ursula? Pix sighed. If she was going to have to listen to paens to Valerie every night, she'd better lay in some more booze. What made it worse was that Valerie was a pretty fascinating creature and Pix liked her. She also knew, though, that in terms of types of women, she, Pix, was somewhere in Julia Ward Howedom, while Valerie inhabited the realms of Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert, women who could and did wear satin.

  “You have got to see him, Mom. He wears an earring, but not one like normal people—it's a notebook ring. I don't even want to think about how he got it through!”

  It was an unappetizing thought, Pix agreed. Her mind swerved to the current fashion that bestowed normalcy on male earrings and she laughed aloud. She liked the freedom today's kids had to dress the way they did, although she stil wished Samantha would cut her hair. In Pix's day, the most outré thing one dared do was wear one's Pandora cardigan buttoned up the back instead of the front.

  “What are you laughing at?"

  “Nothing in particular. I was just thinking about how differently teenagers dress now compared with when I was growing up."

  “Your kilts and kneesocks? Your Weejuns? Your circle pin?" Samantha teased her.

  “Someone told me circle pins were coming back. I always used to get so confused about which side to wear it on that I never wore mine much—one side meant you were ànice' girl and one meant the opposite. The middle meant something, too, but I can't remember what.”

  Now Samantha laughed. "Where would you have put it?"

  “None of your business." Pix was not the type of parent who believed in revealing al to her children, especial y before they had passed through the particular stage.

  “Do you real y think Duncan put the dead mice on the counter?" Pix was ready to move on to another topic. This had been the first thing Samantha had blurted out to her mother when Pix picked her up. Pix knew there could be no possible connection with Mitchel Pierce's murder, but it was another unsettling event in a place usual y devoid of such things.

  “I don't know. It's no secret he hates Jim, hates the camp, maybe even hates his mother for bringing him here.

  Arlene says he only has a couple of loser friends, mostly younger kids who are together not because they particularly want to be, but because nobody else likes them. They al wear a lot of black and listen to mope rock, that kind of stuff."

  “Mope rock?" This was a new one, but Pix had grown to expect unrelenting novelty after raising one adolescent.

  The temps and mores changed at roughly the speed of light.

  “Yeah, The Cure, New Order. I mean, I like them sometimes, except it gets a little much—tormented souls, desperate love. It's depressing."

  “I think these were the kids who used to write poetry and try to get their parents to let them take the train down to Greenwich Vil age in an earlier day."

  “Beatniks! I read about them in my American history book.”

  Sometimes children could make you feel very, very old with merely a few wel -chosen words.

  “I've read about them, too," Pix countered. She picked up her empty bowl and glass—she had taken the trouble to pour the beer from the bottle—and stood up. It was stil light and she hated to go indoors, but she told Samantha, "I real y have to cal Faith. The kids should be asleep by now"

  “I can't wait until they come. I miss seeing Ben and Amy. By August, they're going to be al different. Amy probably won't even remember me." Samantha had gone straight from passionate involvement with horses to smal children, and now, it appeared, to soignée thirty something women, as wel .

  “I'm sure the Fairchilds can't wait to see you, either,"

  Pix assured her, silently adding, Especial y Faith.

  “So what's going on? No mo
re bodies I trust." Faith felt she could be flippant. If another corpse had turned up, in their wel , say, surely Pix would have cal ed her at once.

  Besides, she knew every nuance of her friend's speech.

  From the moment Pix had said hel o on Sunday, Faith had known something was disastrously wrong on Sanpere.

  Tonight's greeting had been cheerful, everyday Pix.

  “No, not human ones, anyway." Pix hadn't intended to start the conversation by tel ing Faith about the mice, but here it was.

  Faith's reaction was similar to Pix's. "It seems unlikely that the two events have anything to do with each other, except proximity in time, and the use of knives. But why three mice? Were they blind?"

  “I imagine they weren't taking in any movies," Pix said.

  "I've tried to think of a connection with the rhyme, but Valerie Atherton isn't a farmer's wife, nor are you, and there aren't any other wives involved."

  “That we know of," Faith reminded her.

  “That we know of. Besides, if it was meant to il ustrate the nursery rhyme, their tails, not their heads, would have been cut off."

  “Maybe the person has a bad memory and thought it was `cut off their heads with a carving knife.' “

  This actual y made sense. Pix often misremembered childhood ditties, much to her mother's dismay. Her mother was supposed to be in the time of life when one's gray matter retreated into the shadows. Ursula's was a veritable Costa del Sol.

  “What kind of mice were they?" Faith asked.

  “Common field mice, I suppose. They're al over the island, you know.”

  Faith did not know and wasn't sure she was grateful for this new information.

  “Not white mice, the kind kids keep as pets?”

  “Samantha didn't say, but I don't think they were; otherwise, she would have mentioned it."

  “Wel , it is odd. Let me know if anything of a nursery-rhyme nature occurs again. There isn't anything in Mother Goose about a body in the basement, is there?"

  “Probably. Some of the rhymes were pretty violent. I'l ask Mother."

  “Speaking of violence, what's happening with the investigation?”

  Pix told her everything she knew, including Mitchel Pierce's present whereabouts.

  “I agree with you. It is sad. And it certainly gives new meaning to the phrase òn the shelf.' If no one has claimed him by August, he should be interred someplace on the island. Tom can do the service," Faith said, cavalierly offering her spouse. "If relatives or friends haven't turned up by then, they would be unlikely to later."

  “As soon as they calculate his estate, they're going to advertise—not the amount, of course, although Mitch couldn't have had much just that you could hear something to your interest. If this doesn't bring someone forward, nothing wil —or there's no one to be brought. I'm not saying it wel ."

  “You're saying it wonderful y. Why, I don't know, but the whole thing reminds me of the time I went in the backyard and saw this man scattering ashes on the rosebushes. It must be the ashes," Faith added parenthetical y.

  “You never told me about this!" Pix exclaimed, surprised at the incident and even more at the fact that she hadn't known about it.

  “It was shortly after we were married, and I didn't know you as wel then as I do now. I probably thought you'd be scandalized, because I was furious with him. I mean those were our roses! He could at least have had the decency to ring at the front door and ask permission. It turned out that he was a former parishioner who was passing through and just happened to have his aunt Til y in the car and thought she'd like literal y to be pushing up roses."

  “Her name wasn't real y Til y."

  “Possibly not. I don't remember. Of course I ended up feeling sorry for him. He finished his sprinkling and I gave him something to eat. I think it was some leftover blueberry tarte."

  Faith's food memory was flawless.

  “I want that recipe, remember. We're going to have a bumper crop this year and the wild strawberries in the meadow are already ripe. I should have plenty for jam."

  “Don't make me jealous. I wish I hadn't accepted al these jobs for the Fourth. I'l never do it again.”

  Pix got her chowder advice; it wasn't complicated, simply good old multiplication. Faith suggested she might like to sprinkle fresh dil on top, but Pix told her this was a chowder purist crowd, eschewing even oyster crackers.

  Faith then asked Pix's advice on how to stay sane while Amy was determinedly learning to walk, reeling around the house on feet that looked too tiny to support any kind of movement, let alone something as complicated as standing erect unaided.

  “I want to give her knee and elbow pads, plus a helmet.

  Ben never went through this self-destructive phase. Sure he pul ed himself up on things a lot, but he basical y just sat, then started walking when he was about fourteen months."

  “You just don't remember. It's a merciful forgetting. Al that fal ing down”

  They talked and laughed about the kids some more.

  Pix had yet to receive one of the stack of self-addressed stamped postcards she had sent off to camp with Danny.

  She had wanted to do the same with Mark but dared not.

  She'd have to pray for col ect cal s. She told Faith about Samantha's Valerie worship, was reassured—and realized she needed it—by Faith's own loyal remarks as to Pix's superiority, despite her lack of a subscription to Vogue.

  “It wouldn't hurt to put on a little lipstick occasional y, though. I know what happens to you in Maine. Squeaky-clean is not al that intriguing. And leave a fashion magazine or two around the house with your cow-manure manuals or whatever you're reading these days"

  “I'd rather have manure on my roses than what's on yours," Pix retorted.

  “That was years ago. Besides, they've bloomed like crazy ever since.”

  It was very difficult to get the last word with Faith. Pix said good-bye and went to bed but not to sleep. They were showing movies at the old Opera House in Granvil e again and Samantha had gone with a group of friends.

  As she lay listening for the sound of a car door, she thought about putting up another trel is in the garden for morning glories, across from the one that now sported a lush purple clematis. Building. House building. Earl wasn't sure when Seth could get back to work again. Bang.

  Samantha was home. Pix turned out her light and was almost startled into wakefulness by remembering.

  She'd forgotten to tel Faith what she stil didn't know—

  that Seth hadn't done anything at al since May. Forgotten to tel her again.

  The Sanpere Stitchers, which was what the Sewing Circle had decided to cal itself about twenty-five years before, was meeting at The Pines this month. Many island routines were disturbed by this sacrosanct meeting. Louel a closed the bakery for the afternoon; Mabel Hamilton left a cold dinner for the camp; and Dot Prescott's daughter went over to fil in for her mother. Anyone in residence at Adelaide and Rebecca Bain-bridge's bed-and-breakfast would find the doors locked. A note affixed to the shiny brass front knocker announced their return at five and suggested a long walk or drive to Granvil e until then.

  When the ladies convened at her mother's house, Pix's life was not her own for about twenty-four hours. She wasn't a member of the group, although they graciously al owed her to sit in when it was at Ursula's. Membership was a closely guarded affair, bestowed infrequently and only to women of a certain age and level of skil . The Sanpere Stitchers were very proud of their handiwork, and their annual sale in August to raise money for the Island Food Pantry was sold out by ten o'clock.

  Pix's role began the night before with a cal from Mother.

  “You remember, dear, that tomorrow is Sewing Circle at my house, don't you?”

  Since Ursula had managed in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to work this into the conversation every day since last Friday, Pix did indeed remember. It was written down on several lists.

  “Yes, of course, and I'l be there early to help.
I know you want my big coffee urn. Is there anything else you need?"

  “Not real y. Gert has things under control. She's been baking since Tuesday and cleaning since last Tuesday. But it occurred to me that you might bring some savories—a cheese spread, some crackers, you know the kind of thing.

  Perhaps arranged on a nice plate with some grapes, for those who don't want just sweets.”

  Pix developed a bowline in the pit of her stomach.

  Mother wasn't talking about a Wispride spread or Cheez Whiz. Her reputation was at stake.

  “I'l see what I can do," she promised, vowing to cal Faith as soon as Ursula hung up. This was an emergency.

  Faith, knowing Pix's culinary expertise, gave her two very simple recipes* and told her to go to the foreign-food section, one shelf, at the IGA and pick up some Carr's water biscuits and Bremer wafers.

  “Basical y, these are cream-cheese spreads. For the first, blend some of the goat cheese from the farmers'

  market with an equal amount of cream cheese. That goat cheese by itself is too crumbly. If you don't have any, it's Mrs. Cousins who makes it, and you can go to her house.

  Try to get the kind she puts herbs in. For the other spread, take some of the green-tomato chutney you put up last year

  —you must have some left; you made vats of it—and mix it into the cream cheese. Don't make it too gooshy; taste it as you go along. Then put each in a pretty little bowl and decorate the top with a nasturtium or some other nonlethal posy from your garden. Put them on a platter and arrange the crackers and grapes around the bowls with more flowers.”

  The next morning, Pix stepped back from her creation and was tempted to take a picture for Faith. The platter looked beautiful—and tasty. Julia Child, watch out. She decided to go early to Mother's and show off.

  “Isn't that lovely!" her mother exclaimed. One of the nice things about Ursula was that she expressed her appreciation, even if it was for something she herself could have done with one hand tied behind her back, especial y in earlier years. This was a woman who stil gathered her grandchildren and their friends together at Easter to make the sugar eggs with the frosting scenes inside from scratch.