“I wonder what she wants?"
“I have no idea. She didn't mention anything to me."
Mrs. Rowe smiled. Let the girls have their secrets was its implication.
Pix didn't feel like going back upstairs and so cal ed from the kitchen. She got the answering machine and left a message.
“Stil too hot for the porch?" she asked her mother.
"Yes, but not the backyard. Let's sit there.”
They took their glasses and a plate of sugar cookies out back. There were chairs and a smal table set out under a large black oak surrounded by a bed of lilies of the val ey.
They weren't in bloom now, but the columbines that had sprung up among them, managing to get just enough sunlight, were lovely.
“It's because I worry about you," Ursula said. "That's why I was angry."
“I know, but I wouldn't put myself in any danger." Pix suddenly thought of al the things she was responsible for, starting with her family. Wel , she certainly hadn't been in peril. Half the state of Maine knew where she was every minute.
“It's just this terrific need to know what happened—
maybe because I found the body. I can't not try to find out whatever I can," she told her mother.
“I understand. An enormous wrong has been done, two wrongs if, as we suspect, Adelaide was kil ed, too."
“You don't think she died of natural causes? A heart attack?"
“It may have been a heart attack, but I don't think it was natural. However, I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong"
“Did Earl say anything more about the autopsy?" Pix realized she'd forgotten to ask him.
“He said they're not finished doing their tests. Rebecca wants very much to go home, although she's happy enough here. But the house is stil sealed."
“This whole thing has been terribly hard on her."
“Yes, I suppose it has”
Pix told her mother what Seth had said about Addie's wil .
“I haven't felt right about asking Rebecca so soon, but I'm not surprised. The whole show was always Addie's and James's, her husband. You wouldn't real y remember him.
Besides, he was sick at the end of his life. But he and Addie were wel matched—two very strong-minded people.
He was First Selectman for years. His people hadn't farmed for a long time, so he fished, yet buying the house in town set them apart from some of the others. Rebecca had lived in the house, taking care of her parents until they died, then moved out when James inherited it. She lived in Granvil e and worked at the Emporium until Addie asked her to move back in to help take care of James. After he died, she just stayed. But it was always James and Addie's house, even though Rebecca had lived there for most of her life"
“I hope she can stay at least for a little while. I get the feeling she'd like to move into Addie's big front bedroom with the view.”
Her mother nodded. "I'm sure she would."
“What about the quilt? Has Rebecca said anything more about it?"
“I did ask her that, only she insists she's never seen it before and that if it had been in the house, she would have known about it. I suggested maybe the antiques dealer staying there had purchased it and left it for Addie to look at, but she said it wasn't the kind of thing he bought."
“That's true. Remember, he told us he was interested in clocks and furniture at the clambake" An image of Ursula deep in conversation with John Eggleston earlier that same day came into Pix's mind and she remembered she wanted to ask her mother some questions about him.
“Which reminds me, what were you and John talking about so earnestly over your lobsters?”
If her mother wondered at the abrupt change in subject, she did not show it. She was working on a pair of mittens with sailboats on the back for the Sanpere Stitchers Fair and her needles continued to click rapidly. Pix had worn similar mittens in her youth, ones with kittens, ice skates, and once her flower namesake done in purple on green.
Pix was a fair knitter herself, but her mittens tended to be utilitarian solid colors, as the Mil er children scattered them al over Aleford while sledding, making snow forts, and skating on the old reservoir.
“We were talking about changing one's occupation in midlife. He was expressing some amazement, and contentment, with the way the Lord had worked things out for him.”
There didn't seem anything untoward here.
“What about Mitchel Pierce? Did John mention him to you or have you heard why Mitchel moved out?"
“It was foolish to think those two could ever have lived together. They were both much too stubborn, but that wasn't what happened. John caught Mitch using his tools without permission and went through the roof. It seems he's very, very particular about them—the same way an artist would be about his brushes, I imagine."
“What was Mitchel making?"
“That, I cannot tel you. You'l have to ask John. I do know he was very upset, because Mitch had waited until John was asleep, then went out to the woodworking shed. It may have been the subterfuge that bothered John most.”
Woodworking in the dead of night, a fake quilt for his landlady: It al sounded very much as if Mitch had been in the business of making and sel ing forged antiques. But had John realized this, too?
Or had Mitch found something in John's shed?
Something John didn't want him to know about?
Pix wanted to go home, make herself a drink, and stretch out in the hammock. There was a pizza in the freezer and she could make a salad for their dinner. It was the utmost effort she could envision, and she knew Samantha wouldn't mind.
As it turned out, she didn't even have to do that much.
Samantha cal ed as she was about to leave to tel her she was going out with Arlene. Fred was helping some relative move and he'd let his girlfriend have his car. Samantha and Arlene were looking forward to Girls' Night Out: dinner and a movie in Granvil e. Pix gave her consent, said good-bye to her mother, and went home.
She poured herself a drink, put the pizza in the oven, and tried to decide whether she had enough energy to wash some lettuce for a salad. She didn't. She grabbed a handful of carrot and celery sticks to munch on instead and prepared to head for the hammock until the pizza was ready.
They kept only a smal portion of the lawn mowed, so the kids could play croquet and badminton. The rest they left to its own devices, watching the cycle of wildflowers and grasses change over the course of the summer. Now the meadow was fil ed with white daisies, purple vetch, and hawkweed, yel ow and dark red against the green. Pix stretched out in the hammock and looked up into the sky.
The air was cooler as dusk approached. She gave herself a swing with her foot and balanced her glass on her chest.
The phone rang.
She leapt from the hammock, setting the drink down on the grass, and sprinted for the house. Fortunately, Faith did not hang up.
“I figured you'd be out doing something energetic in the garden or digging clams at the shore. Whatever.”
“Actual y, I was lying in the hammock”
This did not sound like the Pix Mil er she knew, Faith thought. When her Pix Mil er indulged in contemplation, it was usual y paired with something else—taking the dogs for a run or a ten-mile hike with Danny's Boy Scout troop.
Things must be seriously out of kilter on Sanpere.
“What I have to tel you may help put some of the pieces together—or confuse things further. I'm not sure."
“Tel me. Tel me!"
“Tel me. Tel me!"
“A few days ago, I cal ed a friend of mine who has an antiques shop on Madison Avenue. She knows everybody in the antiques world, national y and international y. Anyway, right off the bat, she hadn't heard of Norman Osgood, which was pretty surprising. But she said she'd check her professional directories and ask around. She cal ed me back today, and the man does not exist. She didn't even find him in the Manhattan phone book!"