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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 nineteenthcentury 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 320
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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… .”
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“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.
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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 thirtyish 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.
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She pointed him out. “See that fellow there, in the wirerimmed 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 must have been more than a petty 324
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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 326
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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.
So here it was, a bright and sunny Saturday morning, and Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and leafing through the Pennysaver newspaper, looking for something to do. Toby was by her side, in his high chair, supposedly eating scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. Maybe he would be the next Jackson Pollack, thought Lucy, watching as he smeared the eggs on the tray.
“Ready to get down?” she asked, reaching for a washcloth to wipe his face and hands.
“No.” He shook his head and began chewing on a toast triangle.
“Okay,” she said, turning the page and studying the “Things to Do” column. That’s what it was called, but there was precious little that interested her. Goodness knows she didn’t need Weight Watchers, she wasn’t interested in seeing the new holiday line of Tupperware products, she didn’t have money to spend on Mary Kay cosmetics and, darn it all, they’d missed the pancake breakfast with Santa at the fire house. “Maybe next year,” she promised Toby. “We’ll keep an eye out for it.”
Toby rewarded her with a big smile, revealing a mouth full of half-chewed chunks of toast. Not a pretty sight, even if he was her own child. She turned back to the paper, where an announcement for an open house at the historical society caught her eye. Maybe someone there would be able to give her some leads on her investigation, especially concerning her prime suspect, Emil Boott. “It says there will be refreshments,”
she promised Toby, ignoring his protests and removing a soggy wad of toast from his little fist and cleaning him up.
“Better save some room for punch and cookies.”
It was almost eleven when Lucy parked Auntie Granada in front of the Josiah Hopkins House and wrestled Toby out of CANDY CANES OF CHRISTMAS PAST