by Joanne Fluke
Back inside the kitchen, she found Toby was still busy arranging the pots so she threw the coat over a chair and sat down at the table to open the package. She slipped off the string and paper and found a slim little book, an old and worn copy of O. Henry’s famous story, “The Gift of the Magi.” It wasn’t wrapped and there was no card but she didn’t need one, she knew it came from her father. It was his tradition to read the story every Christmas.
Now, she realized, he was sending it to her so she could carry on the tradition. It was his way of saying good-bye. She pressed the musty, brown volume to her chest and tears filled her eyes.
“Book!” said Toby, attempting to climb into her lap.
She wiped her eyes and hoisted him up onto her lap. Then she began reading aloud, expecting Toby to lose interest. But he didn’t. He was content to sit in her lap and listen as she read the familiar story of Della, who sold her beautiful hair to buy a gold chain for her husband’s pocket watch, and Jim, who sold his pocket watch to buy combs for Della’s hair. In the end, he had a watch chain and no watch and she had combs for her hair but no hair to hold them, but they had their love for each other which was the best gift of all.
Finishing the story, she set Toby in his high chair with a sippy cup of juice and a handful of Cheerios and reached for the phone, dialing the number she had learned as a child. Her mother answered.
“I got the book. Thank you so much.”
“He insisted. I told him I didn’t have time, it’s a long bus ride to Montefiore you know, but he kept after me and kept after me. You’re wasting your strength I told him, you should be thinking about getting well instead of worrying about a Christmas present for Lucy, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Well I really appreciate it. I know how much Dad needs you.” She paused. “How is he?”
“The same.”
Lucy reached over and stroked Toby’s silky head. He popped a Cheerio in his mouth and smiled at her. “The same? What does that mean?”
“It means he’s not getting better and he’s not getting worse.”
“Can’t they try something different? Some new medication?”
“He won’t let them.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s refusing treatment.” Lucy heard the anger in her mother’s voice. “He’s giving up.”
Lucy found herself slumping, as if a heavy blanket of sadness had dropped on her. “Do you want me to come?” she asked.
“There’s no need.” Her mother’s voice was sharp.
“But if he’s dying…,” Lucy paused, realizing it was the first time since her father became ill that she’d said the word, “if he’s dying I want to say good-bye.”
“He isn’t going to die. I’m not letting him. I’m seeing a lawyer and I’m going to court and I’ll become his guardian and then I’ll tell the doctors to do whatever they can to keep him alive.”
Lucy bit her lip. “Are you sure that’s the right…”
“Of course it’s the right thing to do. I have to go now.” Then there was a click and the line went dead.
Lucy wanted to tear her clothes and pull her hair, she wanted to yell at her mother, she wanted to feel her father’s strong arms around her one more time, but she couldn’t do those things so she lifted Toby onto his feet, standing him in the high chair, and gave him a big hug. Inside her, the baby seemed to do a somersault.
Toby wasn’t interested in hugs and after his long morning nap he wasn’t interested in his usual after-lunch nap. He was interested in banging pots but Lucy was developing a headache, so she decided to take him outside for a walk around the yard. It wasn’t Central Park, with its zoo and merry-go-round, but it did offer fresh air and occasional sunshine.
Toby needed a hand getting down the porch steps, but then he was off and running, heading down the driveway. Lucy ran after him, scooped him up and swung him around, pointing him in the opposite direction. He tried to dodge past her, determined to flirt with death in the road, but she blocked him and scooped him up again. “Let’s find a ball,” she said, and this time he ran for the safer territory of the backyard. As she followed she thought about her conversation with her mother and tried to sort out her feelings.
It seemed to her that through the years she had played out this same scenario many times. She had always felt closer to her father than her mother, but whenever any real intimacy began to develop her mother would somehow intervene. It started when she was quite small. If Pop invited her to go for a walk down the street to the candy store, her mother would come up with some chore he had to do first and the little walk would be forgotten. Even when she was in college she could remember several instances when he called to say he would be in the area on a business trip and would take her out to dinner, just the two of them, but it never happened. A sudden crisis always seemed to arise—Mom suddenly developed a mysterious ailment or her car was making a suspicious noise—and he’d have to cut the trip short and return home.
Toby had found the ball, a big playground ball, and was running with it. When he got about ten feet from her he threw it to her, making a great effort, and she laughed at the sight. He was so cute. She couldn’t imagine shutting him out or turning away from him, but that’s what her mother had done to her. She’d always felt like a third wheel, like an intruder in her parents’ life together, and she’d assumed that was the natural order of things. Now she knew differently. She caught the ball and threw it back, gently, so Toby could catch it.
Back in the house she put a Care Bears tape in the VCR for Toby and set a pot of water to boil, planning to cook macaroni for American chop suey. It wasn’t fine cuisine, but it sure stretched a pound of hamburger. While she waited for it to boil she called Miss Tilley at the library. After thanking her for letting her bake the cookies and minding Toby and giving her sherry, Lucy got to the point of her call. “Do you know anything about the glass cane your mother had?” she asked. “Was it a family treasure?”
“I’d never seen it before, nobody had,” replied Miss Tilley.
“Perhaps it was a gift she was intending to give someone?”
“I don’t know where she would have gotten it. She hadn’t been out of the house for months.”
“Maybe someone gave it to her,” suggested Lucy.
“She was too sick for visitors by then.”
“I see,” said Lucy.
“I’m afraid I’m not being very helpful,” said Miss Tilley.
“On the contrary,” said Lucy, who was beginning to think she was on to something. She might not be Sherlock Holmes, but she could use his method. It was simple logic that if the glass cane wasn’t in the house before the murder, and if Mrs. Tilley had no way of obtaining it herself, then the killer must have brought it. Find the owner of the cane and she would find the murderer.
She was explaining this to Miss Tilley when the pot began to steam and the lid rattled. “Oops, got to go,” she said, “before the pot boils over.”
Next morning it was the diaper pail that was demanding attention. Now that Toby was becoming more interested in using the toilet, the pail filled more slowly and had plenty of time to ripen. She sniffed the familiar odor and decided something had to be done. Fortunately, the septic system hadn’t been giving much trouble lately, the sink and bathtub drained nicely, the toilet flushed properly without even a hiccup, so Lucy decided to risk running the washer. She filled it with hot water, added detergent and bleach, and dumped in the diapers. The machine chugged and swished and Lucy enjoyed the sense of virtue that came from knowing she wasn’t polluting the planet with disposable diapers. Not that she wouldn’t, of course, if she could have afforded them. But that didn’t lessen the fact that she had made the ecological choice.
The cycle had almost finished and she was considering running a second load when she heard an ominous bubbling sound in the kitchen sink. She went into the bathroom and discovered the toilet was burping, a sure sign that the cesspool was nearing capacity and needed time to
drain. That second load would have to be done at the Laundromat.
Lucy put the diapers in the dryer and got it going, then she packed up the dirty laundry, zipped Toby into his snowsuit, and advised Bill not to flush unless absolutely necessary. She didn’t mind having to go to the Laundromat. It got her out of the house, and she planned to make a second stop at the Winchester College museum to inquire about the glass factory.
A light snow was falling as she steered Auntie Granada toward Main Street, passing the large old sea captains’ houses that had been built in the town’s nineteenth-century heyday. Back then there were huge fortunes to be made at sea, taking ginseng to China, and bringing back tea, and porcelain, and furniture. Those days were gone but the substantial houses had endured and were decked in holiday greenery, with wreaths and swags and garlands. A few even had decorative arrangements of fruit—pineapples, and oranges, and apples—fixed above their doors. Continuing on past the Community Church she spotted the traditional creche on the lawn and decided to show it to Toby.
She parked right in front of the church and climbed the hill to the creche, holding Toby by the hand. Another woman was already there, with a little girl a few years older than Toby.
“Hi!” said Lucy. “What a charming creche.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. The creche featured a collection of large plaster figures depicting Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the animals. In a wooden manger filled with straw a plaster baby Jesus lay with his plump arms and legs in the air.
“If that’s a newborn baby, Mary is a better woman than I,” said the woman.
Lucy looked at her, taking in her smartly tailored black coat with padded shoulders, her Farrah Fawcett hairdo, her red lipstick and her high-heeled platform boots. The little girl was also beautifully dressed, in a red wool coat with leggings, and a matching hat that screamed Saks Fifth Avenue’s children’s department. “Pardon me for saying so, but you don’t look as if you’re from around here,” she said. “I’m Lucy Stone and this is Toby. We just moved here a few months ago from New York.” Then she added, “City,” just to be clear.
“Sue Finch, and this is my daughter, Sidra. We’ve been here about a year.” She sighed meaningfully “We used to live in Bronxville but my husband, Sid, didn’t get tenure so he decided to become a carpenter.”
“That’s too bad,” said Lucy, expressing heartfelt sympathy. “My husband wanted to get back to the land and work with his hands. He used to be a stockbroker.”
“Why Maine?” asked Sue.
“Bill read an article years ago in Mother Earth News….”
“I think Sid read the same one! So here we are.” Sue held out her hands. “Strangers in a strange land.”
Lucy laughed. “Look, I have to get going, but would you like to exchange phone numbers? Maybe we could get together for tea and sympathy?”
“You’ve got a deal,” said Sue, scribbling on a piece of paper and giving it to Lucy.
Lucy tore off the bottom half and wrote her number on it. “Call anytime,” said Lucy, visualizing the calendar full of empty white squares that hung on the kitchen wall.
“I will,” said Sue. “By the way, do you think you could give us a lift to the IGA? My car got a flat and Mike at the garage said it won’t be ready before noon.”
“No problem,” said Lucy, as they walked down the hill together. Sidra, she noticed, was making faces at Toby and he was clearly fascinated.
But when they got to the car, she was embarrassed by the mess of toys and papers, not to mention the dirty laundry, and began to try to clear the passenger seat for Sue.
“Never mind,” she said, seating herself on top of some crumpled junk mail.
But Lucy did mind. She figured her new friendship was over before it began. Who would want to hang out with a slob like her?
Lucy had a laundry basket full of neatly folded clothes sitting beside her on the front seat and Toby was nodding off in his car seat in the back when she pulled into the museum parking lot at Winchester College. The college’s venerable brick buildings and quad reminded her of her own college days and she felt a bit wistful as she maneuvered Toby out of the car seat and into the umbrella stroller. She decided to take Toby for a little walk around the quad before going to the museum, hoping that the motion would lull him to sleep and the little toddler dozed off before she was halfway around. She enjoyed the reaction of the students she passed: the boys generally ignored Toby but the girls all smiled at him, probably imagining themselves as mothers some day. Good luck to them thought Lucy, whose back was beginning to ache.
Back at the museum, Lucy wheeled Toby inside, pausing to examine an Egyptian mummy that was displayed in the front hall. Wondering how it ended up in this backwater corner of Maine, she studied a directory posted on the wall and discovered the curator’s office was on the third floor. She took the elevator and when the doors slid open encountered a thirty-ish man wearing the academic uniform of tweed jacket, oxford shirt and bow tie. “Can I help you?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
Lucy assumed he didn’t get too many visitors, especially not mothers with toddlers in tow. “I’m looking for the curator,” she said.
“Well you found him,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m Fred Rumford. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Lucy Stone,” she said, taking his hand and finding it pleasantly warm and his shake firm. “I’m looking for information about a glass factory that used to be here in town.”
“Come with me,” he said, ushering her back into the elevator and pressing the number two. “We have a display.”
The second floor of the museum was devoted to local industry such as fishing and farming, and a corner featured enlarged photos of the Brown and Williams Glass Company, as well as samples of the wares it produced such as bottles, oil lamps, and fancy dishes. There wasn’t a glass cane in sight, but the photos of workers caught her eye. One picture of office workers had a list of names beneath the rather glum group and she leaned closer for a better look. Sure enough, she realized with mounting excitement, there was Emil Boott standing in the back row, dressed as the others were in a dark suit. His face was round and bland and gave no hint that he was a criminal, headed for prison.
She pointed him out. “See that fellow there, in the wire-rimmed glasses? He did something very bad and was sent to prison for twenty years.”
“You don’t say,” said Fred. “He looks nice enough.”
“You never can tell, just by looking at someone,” said Lucy, thinking of the photos she’d occasionally seen in the newspaper of murderers and other criminals. She studied them, looking for a clue to what made them commit such evil acts, but they usually looked like anyone else.
“Back in the nineteenth century they used to think there was a criminal physiognomy, that you could identify criminals by the shape of their heads,” said Fred.
“If only it were that simple,” said Lucy, with a sigh. “I’m interested in a particular item, a glass cane,” she said.
“A whimsy.”
“A what?”
“Whimsy. They were items the workers made out of leftover glass at the end of the day to amuse themselves.”
“Would there be a record of who made them, or who bought them?”
Fred shook his head. “No. In fact, since they had to be left out overnight to cool, they were often appropriated by whoever got to work first the next morning.”
“So a fellow like this Emil Boott, an office worker, could have taken a cane or two if he got to work early, before the glassblowers.”
“Well, sure,” said Fred. “But I don’t think he went to prison for twenty years for taking a whimsy.”
Lucy bent closer and took another look at the man identified as Emil Boott and remembered Miss Tilley saying that her father only gave long sentences to the very worst criminals, like murderers. Had he misjudged Emil Boott when he put him to work around the house? Had Emil Boott killed Mrs. Tilley?
“You’re right. He mu
st have been more than a petty thief,” agreed Lucy, wondering how she could find out exactly what crime Emil Boott had committed to earn such a long sentence.
Fred cleared his throat. “I really have to get back to work,” he said, with a sigh. “Budget projections are due next week.”
Lucy’s face reddened. “Oh, don’t let me keep you. I really appreciate your help. Is it okay if I look around a bit?”
“Be my guest,” said Fred, pushing the elevator button. “We don’t get too many visitors, except for school groups.” The doors slid open and he stepped aboard. “Don’t miss the mummy,” he said.
Lucy started to ask how the museum came to possess a mummy, but before she could form the question the doors closed and Fred was gone. “Another mystery,” she said to Toby. “This town is full of them.”
Chapter Five
When they lived in the city Lucy had always looked forward to the weekend when Bill didn’t have to go to work. That meant they could sleep a little later, and then enjoy a leisurely breakfast while deciding what to do with the rest of the day. Sometimes it would be a car trip out of the city, with a stop at a farm stand. Sometimes it would be an excursion to the zoo or the botanical gardens, or a museum. And other times they would simply go for a walk, perhaps stopping for a big doughy pretzel or a hot dog from a street vendor. It didn’t matter what they did, really, because there was a special holiday feel to the weekend that made it special.
But now that Bill worked at home, weekends were just the same as every other day. He couldn’t take the time, he said, because there was so much work to be done on the house. And anyway, there wasn’t really anywhere interesting to go. Tinker’s Cove didn’t offer much in the way of culture apart from the library and the museum, and Lucy was already familiar with them. The movie theater was only open in summer; it closed up tight for the winter. There was nature, of course, lots of it. Acres and acres of woods, lakes and ponds, and the endless expanse of ocean. But, oddly enough, everybody seemed to take it for granted and there was very little public access. Hunters roamed the woods, to be sure, but there were few easy trails suitable for family hiking. And most of the shore was privately owned, and rocky to boot, except for the little town beach. There was no open expanse for walking, like the beaches she knew on Cape Cod.
