The Body in the Gazebo

Chapter 8





It took Faith about twelve seconds to decide Lily Sinclair was a total bitch.

Hoping that face-to-face contact would give her an advantage in discovering any involvement on Lily’s part, Faith didn’t call the young divinity school student, but took a chance at finding her home early on a Monday morning. Lily lived in Somerville off Davis Square. Faith was meeting Zach Cummings at a nearby Starbucks at ten. Zach lived in Somerville, too. Somerville was a very happening place, much more affordable than Cambridge. New restaurants, bars, cafés, and shops had sprung up like mushrooms, fortunately not displacing old favorites like Redbones barbecue.

The face-to-face was not going well. Yes, Lily was home, but for a while it seemed Faith’s interaction with her would begin and end quickly on the front porch of the double-decker’s first-floor apartment. Lily’s name, plus two others, was listed by the buzzer. Lily had answered the door, but didn’t take the chain off. The opening was wide enough to reveal that her visitor was someone known to her and not an assailant, but she still didn’t make a move. Her face was impassive.

“Hi, Lily. It’s Faith, Faith Fairchild.”

“Yes, I know. What do you want?”

That’s when Faith rapidly jumped to her conclusion. At the same time, she realized that she really didn’t know the people with whom Tom worked anymore. When they were first married—and continuing on to when the kids were younger before she had started the business again—she had had much more contact with everyone working in the church offices. Walter, James Holden’s predecessor, had been a dear family friend.

Lily had been one in a string of interns that were little more than names to Faith, but she thought she had parted on good, if not close, terms with the young woman. She’d brought Lily a going-away gift her last Sunday in church back in January and had received a smiling thank-you. What had happened since then?

“May I come in?” Faith was beginning to feel like someone selling encyclopedias.

The door closed, and then opened wide. Lily, who was wearing Hello Kitty pajamas, led the way down a short hall into the kitchen at the rear of the apartment. It was obviously shared. Dishes were piled in the sink and a pot of what might have been chili was on the stove, its burners encrusted with many other offerings. Lily sat down and picked up the spoon sticking out from a bowl of cereal. She didn’t offer Faith anything—neither a seat nor food. Faith was happy at this particular rudeness as it meant she wouldn’t have to say no. It wasn’t that the place was a health hazard, well maybe, but it certainly was unappetizing.

“I know why you’re here,” Lily said, crunching her granola.

“You do?” For a moment Faith herself had lost the thread. She was distracted by a makeshift clothesline strung from a knob on a cabinet to a catch on one of the windows. It was adorned with rather gray BVDs and decidedly not gray thongs.

“Look, I didn’t take the money. I never even knew about the fund. And if you must know, my time in Aleford, or should I say Stepford, convinced me a parish ministry is the last thing I want. I’ve taken a leave from the Div School.” She put her spoon down and drank the milk from the bowl.

Faith concentrated on the first words.

“How do you know about the missing money?”

Lily shrugged. “I guess it’s no big secret. Al told me.”

Albert Trumbull, the parish secretary, or rather administrative assistant. Faith didn’t really know him all that well, either. Certainly she wasn’t on an “Al” basis with him. She longed for the good old days with Madame Rhoda and her psychic powers, a mystery at first when the woman appeared to be living a double life, but oh so much more explainable than all this young weltschmerz. Albert was on leave from the Div School and finding himself, too. O tempora, O mores.

Faith thought she should express concern over the second half of Lily’s remarks. The missing money could wait a bit.

“It sounds as if you weren’t happy at First Parish and I hope your time with us didn’t contribute to your decision. You know Tom is always available to talk with you.”

Lily flushed and pushed her bowl away. “Oh, he’s a talker, all right, and let’s just say my time with you didn’t ‘contribute,’ it caused my decision.”

Before Faith could say anything more, Lily got up and moved toward the door to the hall. The interview was clearly over. Faith had no choice but to follow.

As Lily virtually pushed her out, Faith managed to ask, “Do you have any idea who might have taken the money?”

Lily smiled wickedly. “I’d suggest you ask your husband. The talker.”

Walking back toward Elm Street and Starbucks, Faith’s mind was filled with questions for her husband, but they didn’t have to do with the missing funds. They concerned Ms. Lily Sinclair.

Faith was on her second latte—she’d indulged in whole milk for the first one to soothe her troubled soul and was now nursing a skinny one—when Zach Cummings walked in. She’d scored two comfy armchairs, placing her jacket on the unoccupied one and ignoring an occasional angry look. Let them displace some of the other customers who seemed to have moved in with their laptops permanently—and nary a cup of joe in sight.

She waved Zach over and handed him her Rewards Card.

“Go nuts. Get whatever you want,” she said. Zach was taller than he’d been when she’d met him at Mansfield Academy years ago, but still as thin, and still dressed in black. His legs looked like pipe stems and he was wearing a T-shirt with a screwdriver pictured in white that read I VOID WARRANTIES.

He reached into a pocket and waved his own card.

“I’ve got it. You good?”

She nodded. It was hard to remember he was an adult now. Or almost.

He returned with what appeared to be a Venti of black coffee.

“So, what’s up?” he said.

“I need to know how someone could get access to someone else’s bank account through an ATM, withdrawing a significant amount of cash over the course of a year.”

“Same machine?”

“Yes—and twenty transactions.”

“For the limit each time?”

Faith nodded.

“And this is all theoretical, right? You’re helping someone write a book or something so everything you say is off the record and vice versa?”

“Completely theoretical, hypothetical, even rhetorical. I’m a little muddled—it’s been a bad morning.”

Zach shook his head. “I’m sorry, Faith.” His expression indicated he was talking about more than her morning. He set his coffee down.

“Well, to start, have you heard of shoulder surfing?”

“Yes, but I don’t know that much about it except it’s a way to get a PIN by peeking over a shoulder somehow.”

“It’s the simplest way, especially for a nonhacker. All you have to do is act casual and watch someone enter their PIN at an ATM or a place like this—a cybercafé that has WiFi, even a library. At crowded airports, they sometimes use miniature binoculars to look at people using bank terminals. Shoulder surfing would be the first thing I’d consider, especially as it’s the same location for each transaction. Try to recall who was close by before the first withdrawal. Was it a stranger or someone our theoretical person knew?”

“Okay, what next?”

“It gets a little more complicated, but not by much for anyone with a modicum of computer smarts. These are all phishing scams, spelled with a ‘ph,’ and are what they sound like—throwing out some ‘bait’ to see what gets caught in the net, on the Net. They try to trick you into revealing things like your Social Security number, passwords, credit card numbers—you get the picture. You’ll get an e-mail or IM that seems to be an authentic one from your bank or the IRS. It purports to be alerting you to a serious problem. In order to correct it before it gets even worse, you must respond immediately with your information. It may even take you to a Web site that looks exactly like your bank’s. A recent scam claimed to be from UPS and had you enter your credit card number to track a recent attempted delivery. Most people are getting stuff all the time, or if not, might assume someone had sent a gift, so this was very effective until it was flagged.”

Faith was stunned. “I had no idea that there were all these risks. It’s a wonder anything online is safe.”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’m assuming your, sorry, your friend’s account was a random attack—caught in that big net. But it may have been targeted—‘spear phishing.’ Again, there would have been an e-mail message or IM, but addressed specifically to the account’s user. There’s also ‘spoofing,’ which is forging data, particularly an address, so that it seems as if it’s secure. Misspelling one word, for example, which most people miss.”

“Spoofing, phishing—who thinks these things up?”

“Oh, hackers are fun guys. Look at me,” Zach said.

Faith did—hard.

“Whoa, I’m a White Hat. One of the good guys. I get paid to try to hack into systems and find out where they’re vulnerable. It’s a nice gig.”

“What else?”

“Ask the person if they’ve received a message to call the bank, or a phone call purporting to be from the bank or your credit card company giving you a number to call. Again there’s an urgent problem. The phone number you punch in takes you to the phisher’s, or in this case visher’s—voice phising—VOIP account, where you are asked to enter your bank account number and so forth.”

“VOIP?”

“Voice over Internet Protocol—basically what it comes down to is making ‘phone calls’ over the Internet. You have no idea that it isn’t originating from a regular phone number.”

“I don’t think there have been any calls like this, but I’ll check.”

“If you could arrange it, the best thing would be for me to take a look at the person’s computer. What is it, by the way?”

“There are two—an old MacBook and a newer Dell.” The Dell was in Tom’s office and had replaced his previous PC a year or so ago. She gave a start.

“What’s wrong?” Zach asked.

“The PC. I’m pretty sure the withdrawals started at the same time it arrived.”

“Interesting.” Zach got up and stretched. “I need more coffee. Want anything?”

Faith shook her head, but asked him what he was drinking. Black coffee seemed pretty boring and Zach was not a boring guy.

“They have something I like called the ‘Gazebo Blend.’ That with two shots.”

Skimming over the thought of all that caffeine, Faith focused on the name, and the coincidence. “Gazebo.” There are no accidents, she said to herself. It was getting to be a mantra.

When Zach returned he said, “Of course, the easiest way to get into someone’s ATM account if you have stolen the card is to guess their password. That provides access into anything password-protected on their computer, too.”

“With all the possibilities, I’d have thought this would be the most difficult.”

“People are innately trusting—or lazy. They go for the simplest to remember and they use one password for all their accounts. ‘One, two, three, four, five, six’—occasionally with more numbers in sequence—is the number one password, followed by ‘QWERTY,’ an individual’s birthday, phone number, pet name. You get the idea. Your password should have at least six letters—longer makes it more difficult for a hacker, as does mixing letters and numbers. And you should change your passwords with some frequency, but people don’t. They’re afraid they’ll forget a new one—and they’re . . .”

“Lazy,” Faith finished for him. A whole world of possibilities had opened up. Tom wasn’t lazy, but he was trusting. Very trusting. It went with the territory.

“If this is someone you know, I’ll bet you can guess his or her password.” He drained his cup. “Gotta run, but I can come out next weekend and have a look at all your computers. Check them out. Make sure you have the proper spam filters.”

Ben would be in heaven. Zach was a god so far as her son was concerned, and the highlight of his year to date had been a trip to MIT’s new Media Lab with Zach.

“You’ve been an enormous help. I wish there was something I could do in return.”

“You kept me out of jail, remember? I’d say that should do it for anything you want for the rest of your life,” Zach said, smiling.

Faith’s phone was vibrating. It was Tom.

“I need to take this,” she said.

“Go ahead. I have to get to class, so I’ll say good-bye.”

Faith answered the call, giving Zach a swift hug as he left.

“Hi, honey. I was about to call you. I’m still in Somerville.”

She had told Tom about meeting with Zach, but not about trying to see Lily. After both encounters, she was now itching to get home and talk to her spouse.

“What did he have to say?”

“Too much to go over on the phone. I’ll be home in half an hour. Can you get away?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll make lunch.”

Faith hung up. She had certainly married the right man. He had his priorities straight.

Tom had made toasted cheese sandwiches, or toasted “cheesers,” as he called them. It was his comfort food, together with Campbell’s cream of tomato soup. While Faith maintained that “food snob” was a compliment, especially in her case, she had relaxed somewhat as the years passed, realizing that one person’s caviar with the appropriate accompaniments (her ultimate comfort food) might be another’s processed soup. The Fairchild pantry always had some cans of tomato and cream of mushroom soup, Tom’s other mainstay, for times like this.

Before she told him about Lily, she gave him a summary of what Zach had said—she’d taken notes on her phone—and recommended they accept his offer to go over all their computers.

“According to Zach, because I know you so well, I should be able to guess your password. First we eliminate your birthday, or the birthday of anyone close to you.”

Tom nodded.

“And it’s not our phone number or a series of numbers in order starting with one.”

“Nope.” Tom seemed proud of himself. He’d avoided the usual traps.

“Then it’s ‘FAITH,’ and you use it for everything.”

His face fell. “How did you guess?”

“I know you, honey.”

And so did a whole lot of other people. She pictured what now seemed the most probable scenario. Take the keys from his desk, unlock the file, remove the bank card, stroll over to the ATM, enter the PIN, and voilà, a wad of cash in your pocket. Reverse steps. It wouldn’t have taken more than fifteen minutes total, a bit more if you had to walk around the block until the ATM was empty. Wouldn’t want any witnesses. Of course, it could be someone local who had an account at the bank, too, in which case it would seem completely normal to be waiting to use the cash machine.

She went over it with Tom. “Next time you talk to Sam, sketch this out for him.”

“I feel like an idiot,” Tom said.

“Why should you feel anything except ripped off and furious? You haven’t done anything that millions of Americans don’t do every day. Pick a PIN they can recall easily. You are not a crook.”

Bypassing the Nixonian echo in her head, Faith went on to reassure Tom that she was positive they were on the right track.

“I’m certain we know how and where it happened. We just have to find out who. And now, please tell me why Lily Sinclair hates us, and Aleford, so much.”

“You went to see her, too.” It was a statement.

“Before Zach. She referred to Aleford as Stepford, said her time at First Parish caused her to abandon the idea of a parish ministry, ,and has currently dropped out of the Div School. She knew about the missing money. Albert told her. Oh, and she thinks you took it. Plus, I’d say she is not your greatest fan. Many references to you as a ‘talker.’ ”

Tom rubbed his hand across his forehead. Faith thought she saw a new line. At this rate, the furrows were beginning to resemble a south forty.

“She had some difficulty around this time last year running the youth group and I had to speak with her. Several times. I guess she thought of them as talking-tos. I would have called them pastoral counseling, something she might emulate even. That sounds a little stuffy, I know, but my other interns never seemed to mind. In retrospect her silence during them might have been hostility rather than what I took as embarrassment over her behavior. Even though she’d been through four years of college and a year at Harvard, she seemed very young to me. When problems surfaced, I put them down to her immaturity.”

“What kinds of problems? I don’t remember that you mentioned having any issues with her.”

“I didn’t think they were major. She had trouble establishing boundaries with the kids, and the first talk I had with her, aside from our regular meetings about the internship, was after one of the mothers called me to tell me that Lily had been telling what the mother thought were inappropriate jokes and using inappropriate language.”

“Sexual?”

“No, just thoughtless remarks about how stupid adults could be, parents in particular. How they didn’t understand their own children. When I mentioned it, Lily told me that she wanted the kids to open up about problems at home, but someone was getting it all twisted around. I made some suggestions about other ways to create trust and she seemed to be listening, but she did demand to know who the mother was pretty emphatically. I’d used ‘she,’ so it was clearly a female parent. I didn’t tell her, of course.”

Hence the Stepford reference, Faith thought. And although she knew Tom wouldn’t tell her, either, she had some candidates—as Lily must have also.

“When another mother called a few weeks later with virtually the same complaint, I may have been a little more forceful in my criticism. That was the time she said almost nothing.

“And then there was that business at the end-of-the-year Sunday school picnic,” Tom said.

This Faith did remember. As people were leaving, two boys in the seventh grade class began to pelt their friends with water balloons from a stockpile they’d stashed in the cemetery. They bombarded Lily, too, who thought it was great fun. Her sopping wet T-shirt made it clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra. It wasn’t a case of Girls Gone Wild—flat-chested Lily was not a candidate—but one of the mothers had hastily run up to her and thrown a tablecloth around her shoulders. Lily started to shrug it off and then, seeing Tom’s approach, apparently had second thoughts, wrapping it tight before heading into the church. Faith could still see the defiant “F-You” look Lily had flung over her shoulder at the crowd as she stomped off. “Immature” didn’t even begin to describe it. She’d made her youth group seem like a gathering of elders.

And there were the Hello Kitty pajamas the other day, although that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Faith knew any number of adult women with this unaccountable taste in clothing and accessories. Hope had given Amy a darling Hello Kitty pocketbook last summer. A note of whimsy, wit for Faith’s own spring wardrobe? She gave herself a mental slap.

“Plus,” Tom said, “I heard later that she really lost it running the Christmas pageant. I was still laid up, but Eloise filled me in when I was writing Lily’s evaluation in January and asked everyone for input.”

This was a hard one. The Christmas pageant. Taken by itself, she would have been solidly on Lily’s side. Faith had considered adding “but not running the Christmas pageant” after “in sickness and in health” to their wedding vows. She’d seen what it had done to her mother the very few times she’d caved and become involved. Parents got crazy—“What do you mean, my child is going to be an ox!”—and as the big day drew near, the kids got crazy—“What if I have to pee when I’m watching my flocks!”

“What happened?”

“Not a mother this time, but a father. Apparently he’d set his sights on Mary for his darling daughter, and when he arrived at a rehearsal and saw she was Angel Number Three, he told Lily to make the cast change. She told him to stuff it and banned parents from coming to rehearsals. He organized a protest, pulling his child from the pageant and getting several other parents to do the same. Eloise had to smooth a lot of ruffled feathers.”

“Thank goodness we were away!” The Fairchilds had been on Sanpere for the holidays while Tom recuperated and it had been heavenly.

“Eloise knew Lily would be leaving soon and she only told me so I could make some subtle suggestions in the evaluation about controlling one’s temper when interacting with parishioners.”

Tom reached for another toasted-cheese sandwich. He’d made a stack of them. “I’m not surprised Albert told her what’s happened,” he said. “They became close friends, brought together, now that I think of it, over doubts about their calling. Maybe she came to First Parish with them; maybe her time with us created them—or Albert did. He certainly stoked the fire. I guess I haven’t talked about her much with you because I feel as though I failed her. When she finished the internship, I knew she wasn’t happy. Maybe I should go see her.”

“No! Bad idea. Very bad idea. Nothing you could say will make Ms. Sinclair change her opinion of you, or the town. Or even about the ministry. Stay away from her. I’m sure Sam would tell you the same thing.”

“I wasn’t going to mention anything about the Discretionary Fund,” Tom said. “Just see if she wanted to talk about leaving school.”

“Fine, but that decision isn’t going anywhere for a while. See if you think it’s still a good idea when this is all over.”

When we find out whether Lily’s to blame for more than bad taste and stupid remarks, Faith added to herself.

“Tom, how do you suppose Albert found out about this? I’m assuming you told James.”

“Actually I didn’t. I planned to, but he already knew and the conversation ended before it started.”

“Again, how did these people find out? I thought vestry meetings were executive sessions—confidential?”

“They are,” Tom said slowly. “We know Albert told Lily and I think we can assume James told Eloise.”

Faith had filled him in on yesterday’s display of affection. Handholding might seem tame to the layperson, but it was the equivalent of second base for the clergy.

“Eloise and Albert are pretty tight. A lot of what she’s in charge of for the Sunday school and youth group involves the calendar and Albert oversees scheduling. They live near each other in Cambridge. I heard him tell her about a new restaurant in their neighborhood and she said they should try it out.”

So her husband wasn’t as oblivious as Faith thought. She might not be the only eavesdropper in the family. She was sure, though, that he hadn’t reached her skill level.

“That leaves James,” she said. “Is there anyone on the vestry who might have leaked this to him?”

“Dear God. There is. Sherman Munroe. They have some sort of connection.”

“A connection?”

“Yes. Sherman was the one who brought James to the attention of the search committee.”

“Hello, Mother.”

“Pix dear, how lovely to hear your voice.”

“And yours sounds much stronger than it did on Saturday morning when we talked. How do you feel?”

“Much more like my old self, which is a very old self, of course.”

“Mother!” Pix hated to hear Ursula talk this way.

“Tell me about the shower. I wish I could have been there.”

“I wish you could have, too. It was wonderful. Our hostess lives in a beautiful home across from the Battery, the promenade overlooking the river. From the house’s portico we could see Fort Sumter. Oh, and Mother—her garden! She kept apologizing because it wasn’t at its peak yet and looked ‘scrawny,’ but it was gorgeous. Carpets of daffodils and tiny anemones, and then huge camellias, azaleas, and of course magnolias. Everywhere in Charleston you can smell jasmine, and redbud trees thrive here—all the ones I’ve tried to grow have died. The shower was in the garden with the food set out under a pergola covered with wisteria. Each guest received one of Charleston’s famous sweet grass baskets, small ones filled with sugared almonds. I took a lot of pictures.”

“I’m sure Rebecca was thrilled. She’s a lovely girl. Mark is a lucky man.”

“We’re all lucky. I know it’s a cliché, but I do feel as if I’ve gained another daughter. It was a nice old-fashioned shower. Samantha made the bridal ‘bouquet’ from all the ribbons, and the gifts showed that they had been chosen with care by everyone.”

Care—not poor taste. Pix had attended a shower for the daughter of a friend a few months ago, and it turned out to be a lingerie shower with the offerings so raunchy that Pix, who did not consider herself a prude, was mortified. Flavored panties that dissolved at the crotch! She hadn’t read the invitation carefully, just noted the time and date. When the bride opened Pix’s set of pots and pans, the room grew quiet and then burst into laughter. Apparently the young woman, who was in law school, used her oven as an annex to her overflowing closet and the flat cooktop as a place to pile textbooks. No one said “dinosaur,” but Pix had felt her skin beginning to look scaly.

“It sounds like you and Samantha are having a fine time,” Ursula said.

“We are. The Cohens have been the perfect hosts, both at Hilton Head and here. And Cissy has included me in everything. Saturday we went to Becca’s final fitting. She looks like a princess in her gown. It’s ivory satin, strapless—very simple—but they’ve had a little jacket made from some antique lace Cissy found, which makes it unique. But I don’t want to tire you out talking. I’ll call again tomorrow.”

“Give my love to everyone—and I want to hear all about your dress, too, darling.”

Ursula’s interest in fashion hovered between zilch and nada, so Pix took the comment for what it was—a nice thing for a mother to say to her daughter. She closed her phone and resumed her walk. She was strolling down King Street, basking in the sun—and the anonymity. She loved Aleford, but it was rather nice to be in a place where everybody didn’t know your name—or the names of your children, husband, pets, and so forth. Plus any number of other details about your life. She snapped another picture of a palm tree. She wasn’t in a rush. Life had slowed down almost to a crawl. The Cohens had arranged for Pix and Samantha to stay in Cissy’s brother’s guesthouse, a short walk away from their home. The kitchenette had been stocked for breakfast and it meant that Pix didn’t feel they were outwearing their welcome by staying with the Cohens.

Tomorrow Cissy and she were meeting with someone at the Planter’s Inn to finalize the menu and other arrangements for the rehearsal dinner. The following day Cissy had declared to be a day off from wedding plans and the ladies were going to head out to Sullivan’s Island to a beach house that belonged to someone in Cissy’s family. Pix was beginning to think that between the two of them, Cissy and Stephen were related to almost the entire population of South Carolina. Every time a name came up, one or the other would explain to Pix that it was a cousin twice removed or the sister-in-law of a brother-in-law. Mark had said the wedding would be a big one. That could be a major understatement.

She paused to look in the window of an art gallery featuring the work of a number of Gullah artists and caught sight of her reflection. Maybe Faith was wrong. Maybe she bore so little resemblance to the college girl she’d been so many years ago that there was no way Stephen could have recognized her. Okay, it was still bothering her. Every time she’d found herself alone with him for a few minutes—like last night on the brick patio behind their house drinking a glass of wine while Samantha helped Cissy and Rebecca’s sisters in the kitchen—Pix had been tempted to say something. But what? “That Yankee in your bed Green Key Weekend was me”?

She turned away and continued her walk. No, that would be tacky in the extreme. She had to let it go and be content with who she was in the present—the mother of the groom. The past was past.

Wasn’t it?

One of the things Tom and Faith had discussed in between everything else they seemed to be discussing was why Ursula seemed so driven to tell her story now. Tom thought it was because she’d been ill. He’d often had individuals confide long-held secrets to him as they approached death, and although Ursula was on the mend, the intimations of mortality had been strong during the winter months.

“But she keeps alluding to something she wants me to do when she’s finished talking,” Faith had pointed out. “That sounds like something specific has happened that’s caused her to tell me all this now.”

“Possibly, although what she wants you to do could be as simple as helping her tell her children about their father. With Pix out of town she has the time to be alone with you to work it out.”

The next day back with Ursula, Faith thought Tom might be right about Ursula’s wanting her help, not in telling Pix and Arnie, but in deciding whether to tell them at all. Yet the thought that this wasn’t the whole impetus for revealing her secret nagged at Faith nevertheless.

“Pix is having a wonderful time in Charleston. She called yesterday.”

“I talked to her, too,” Faith said. “The Cohens are going to be wonderful in-laws.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting them at the wedding.”

“Me, too.” Nothing was going to keep Ursula away from the wedding of her first grandchild, and Faith hoped she would be at all of them.

Ursula abruptly changed the subject, plunging back into the past.

“I never thought the guards wouldn’t let me see Arnold. That’s how naïve I was. Or that he wouldn’t want to see me. I walked into the jail, told them that I wanted to visit Arnold Rowe, that I was a relative—a fib, but I thought, given the circumstances, justifiable—and one of the men at the desk told me to wait. I’m sure they thought I was a great deal older than sixteen. I was wearing a suit, hat, and gloves plus I was quite tall for my age. He brought a chair for me to sit on. I assumed it would be a while and I began to worry about what I would tell my mother. Fortunately he returned soon and escorted me to a nice little room. I later learned it was the warden’s sitting room. A guard came in with Arnold and then left us alone. I scarcely recognized him. He was so pale and thin.”

“Miss Lyman, what on earth are you doing here?”



Arnold Rowe had been curious to find out who his “cousin” might be since both his late parents had been only children. Possibly last on the list he’d considered as he made his way through the series of barred doors was Theo’s sister.



Ursula had planned various openings, but as soon as she saw Arnold the words that were uppermost in her mind came spilling out.



“I know you didn’t have anything to do with my brother’s death and I think I know who did.”



“I think we should sit down,” Arnold said. “I know I need to.”



He indicated the horsehair settee next to the fireplace. It was slippery and slightly scratchy; Ursula sat on its edge as Arnold started to speak.



“First of all—and the most important thing—is to say how sorry I am about Theo’s death. There are no words that can convey the depth of my sorrow. He was not just my student, but also my friend, and the guilt that I feel will be with me every day for the rest of my life. I should never have left the house that night.”



Ursula started to speak, but Arnold held up a hand.



“No, there isn’t any excuse. I should have demanded he end the party when we returned from Illumination Night. It was getting quite wild. At the very least I should have stayed with Theo. I’ve never been able to say these things to your parents. I asked the lawyer the court appointed for me to deliver a letter with these sentiments, but he, for reasons of his own, would not. At some time you might deem appropriate I hope you will convey what I’ve said.”



Ursula shook her head. “They never speak of him—or that night. I only learned recently that you had been convicted of . . . convicted of his murder.”



“I am guilty of it in my negligence, but please believe me, I had nothing to do with the act itself.”



“I do believe you.” Ursula looked straight into his eyes. “As soon as I read the newspaper accounts of the trial, I knew the wrong person had been arrested. That the wrong person was in prison. Today by mere coincidence I got final proof of it.”



Arnold looked astounded. “Proof?”



She quickly told him first about the time discrepancy and then about the conversation she’d overheard just before the murder took place.



“I’ve often wondered how you came to be there. The sight of you, so young, beside Theo’s body, is one I can never—and should never—erase from my mind.” He had tears in his eyes and Ursula felt her own fill.



“It was definitely Charles Winthrop speaking. I’m positive.”



She described being at Stearn’s and hearing the voice again, the voice that had been reverberating consciously and unconsciously over the years.



“I don’t think he planned to harm Theo, but he was not in control of himself.” She shuddered slightly as she recalled the vehemence of his words: “You’re not going anywhere.”



She told Arnold what she believed had happened. A night that had begun in innocent, albeit self-indulgent pleasure, gone terribly wrong as an argument over money turned deadly.



“But what doesn’t make sense to me is how there was enough evidence to try you. Let alone convict you.”



“The first year I was here I thought of nothing else. I was innocent. How could it have happened? My lawyer was young and very impressed by the names of those involved in the prosecution—wealthy Bostonians, prominent old families. The owner of the house you rented pushed for a speedy trial. He made it clear to my lawyer that he was out for blood, my blood, on behalf of your family. I had a hard time even getting my lawyer to listen to my account of that night. And I had two eyewitnesses who saw me, me alone, going down the path toward the gazebo after midnight. He finally interviewed them, but said afterward he wouldn’t call them to testify.”



“Who were they?”



“Mary Smith, who worked in the kitchen, and the gardener, Elias Norton.”



“I know, or rather knew, Mary. She was deaf and I learned to sign from her.”



“Elias is deaf, too. I thought that was why the lawyer wouldn’t put them on the stand, but that wasn’t it—there were plenty of interpreters available on the island. He said they weren’t friendly witnesses. I wanted to talk to them myself. I’d learned to sign, too—the whole phenomenon of the Vineyard deafness and subsequent sign language had interested me—but there was no way I could contact them except through him. And the most damning testimony of all came from Violet Hammond.”



“She’s Violet Winthrop now, remember.”



Arnold nodded. “I’m not surprised. She was after him all that summer and poor Theo was like a lovesick calf. I tried to talk to him—Violet was costing him a lot of money, and had been during the school year what with champagne suppers at Locke-Ober and the like. He wouldn’t listen. I thought she’d find someone else and leave him alone, but she enjoyed stringing him along, even though Charles was the one she wanted. I wish I had been more persistent.”



Ursula interrupted. “He wouldn’t have listened. I saw the way he looked at her, too, and she is very beautiful. What was her testimony?”



She had a feeling she knew. . . .



“She testified that she overheard a violent quarrel between the two of us and that I threatened Theo to the point where he ran out of the house, apparently in fear of his life. She said she saw me follow him and immediately got Charles Winthrop to go after us both. She said we’d been drinking heavily. Winthrop corroborated her story. He described going after us as soon as she alerted him, coming upon us in the gazebo when it was too late.



“But they lied!” Ursula flushed angrily. “Didn’t your lawyer challenge them? And what about your testimony?”



“He didn’t question them at all and he’d told me early on that he wouldn’t put me on the stand. That the prosecutor would, as he said, ‘eat me for breakfast.’ ”



It was getting late. Ursula knew she should leave, but not yet. She needed to hear more.



“What made you go out to the gazebo? How did you know Theo was there?”



“As I said earlier, the party had become wild. Word of it had spread all over the island and cars filled with crashers kept arriving. Most of the servants, including the housekeeper, had disappeared, no doubt to the Illumination, but also to avoid any involvement. I saw a young lady tuck a small silver cigarette box into her bag, which I promptly retrieved, much to her fury. The house was filled with valuables. I knew we might need to call the police, but I didn’t want to do it without telling Theo first. I thought I could get him to announce the party was over and tell people to leave himself—a face-saving gesture. No one had seen him. I went out to the pool. It was filled with partygoers, some had shed their clothes. I was at my wit’s end and then someone, a man, told me he’d seen Theo heading in the direction of the gazebo quite a while ago. I thought he must have arranged to meet Violet there as I hadn’t seen her, either.”



“So this man saw you, too? Who was it?”



“I didn’t know him, had never seen him before, and even though I begged the lawyer to put an announcement in all the papers seeking his help, nothing ever came of it.



“And then several people began shouting at me that Theo was in the gazebo and wanted me there. They seemed to think it was some kind of joke.”



“And they were never questioned, either?”



“No.”



“So you went after Theo—and found him.” Ursula’s voice trembled.



“Yes.” Arnold put his hand briefly over hers. “Would that I had gone sooner.”



“What can I do?”



“Nothing. You’ve been kind enough to listen.” Arnold’s expression was resigned. “It’s not as horrid here for me as most. I’ve been teaching classes in all sorts of things from basic reading and arithmetic—many of the inmates never learned—to history. Civic groups donate books. We never know what we will get. As time has passed I’ve been granted certain privileges like seeing visitors without a guard, although you are my first.”



“What about your classmates at Harvard? The professors? Surely they would take up your cause!”



“That’s not how things work, Ursula. Again, it was wonderful of you to come, but I think you’d best not visit another time. This is no place for a young lady.”



Ursula stood up. She’d tell her mother she’d taken a long walk, which was partially true, but even a lengthy promenade about the parts of town where she was permitted wouldn’t have taken up this much time.



“I intend to return, Mr. Rowe—and I intend to get you out of here. The best way is for me to find out as much as possible about what really happened and present the facts to my father. He is a fair man and he would never want an innocent person to be unjustly confined. If need be, a judge will have to order a new trial.”



Arnold Rowe shook his head slowly. “You make it all sound so easy. I’m afraid you are going to be terribly disappointed—and hurt.”



“Perhaps—but I have to try. We know that Charles Winthrop was desperate for money and that Violet Hammond was, if not his fiancée at the time, about to be. They had every reason to lie. I’ll say good-bye for now.”



Arnold opened the door and the guard showed her out.



“Good afternoon, miss,” he said.



Ursula walked down West Cedar Street toward her aunt’s house on Louisburg Square. She felt as if she had passed from one world to another and was struck by how normal things looked in this one. The people she passed nodded and smiled slightly. The old, wavy amethyst glass in the windows of the Beacon Hill houses were unchanged, the brass door knockers and handles as bright as the day they were installed. The brick sidewalks uneven from years of use. Cars passed slowly. It was all as it had been before she’d rung the bell at the Charles Street Jail, but it would never be the same for her again.



Arnold Rowe had been framed. She was certain of it.



Her mother barely noted her tardiness and rushed her off to catch the train back to Aleford. On the way Ursula showed her the gloves and the purchase was met with approval. The motion of the train, the sound of the tracks, was soothing and for a moment Ursula allowed herself to feel happy. Arnold had looked a shadow of his former self—emaciated and deathly pale, but there was no pallor in his warm brown eyes or the smile that crossed his lips several times. She had found him; she was going to help him.



And she would start now.



Charles Winthrop had needed money right away. Theo hadn’t had any to give him, nor was there any money in the house. As she’d walked back to her aunt’s, Ursula had thought of something. She needed to ask her mother a question and the sooner the better.



“I know it’s very hard to talk about Theo, Mother, but I’ve been thinking of him so much today. Perhaps, in part, it was being near the old house. I would like to have something of his as a keepsake. Would you and Father let me have the pocket watch Father gave him when he turned eighteen?”



It had been gold, and was a reward for not smoking or drinking.



Her mother looked very tired.



“In all the confusion of that night, some of his things were lost. We don’t have the watch.”



“Or his signet ring?”



All the Lyman men were given these rings with the family seal when they were confirmed.



“That was lost, too.”



Ursula had her answer. It was as she thought.



The train was slowing down for the Arlington station. She watched the landscape come to a halt, but she wasn’t seeing the town center, she was back in the gazebo caressing her brother’s hands. His fingers were bare.



The ring was already missing.