They sat down around a big table and ordered lobster stew, biscuits, and coffee. While they were waiting, Jill came in. Jill and Sergeant Dickinson. Faith wasn't surprised. She had expected the full cast of characters to appear—those that were not dead or in jail, that is. They had already seen the Hamiltons at the 3,200-pound six-foot oxen pull and Hope and Quentin were happily wandering the arcades, toting an enormous white bison Quentin had won pitching pennies. This was what "Meet Me at the Fair" was all about. Sooner or later you'd run into everyone you had met all summer.
Faith waved. "Come join us," she called.
“Thank you. We'd be glad to," answered Earl, putting a protective arm around Jill and steering her toward the table. So it was like that.
Jill was the first to bring up what was on everyone's mind.
"Don't think you have to avoid talking about what has
happened because of me," she told them. "It's going to take
a long time to sort it all out and talking is the only way to do it. To say that I didn't know what Eric was like is a major understatement.”
Faith was relieved. She still had a question or two and the people who could supply some of the answers were sitting right there.
“I still can't believe I missed the whole thing," Pix said ruefully. "If Arlene's mother had taken proper care of her tires, she wouldn't have had a flat on the way back from Bangor. I spent all my time driving back and forth from the bridge to the Prescotts', sick with worry about Samantha. Of course, if they hadn't been delayed, I would have had her with me and that wouldn't have been good."
“Or good for you either, sweetheart," Sam said emphatically. "There's no telling what you might have taken it into your head to do.”
Faith was afraid they were going to get hopelessly sidetracked on one of the famous Miller tangents. She interrupted.
“You're off duty, Earl, or so it seems." She smiled as she caught him dipping a spoon to taste Jill's chowder. He'd ordered a hamburger. "What were Eric and the Prescotts up to?"
“Well, I figure you have a better right than most to know, Mrs. Fairchild. Anyway, it's no secret now. Sonny Prescott has turned state's evidence and hasn't stopped talking since we got him to Ellsworth. He's pretty sore about Margery. Never knew she was carrying on like that. Come to mention it, quite a few of us were surprised."
“Matilda never liked Margery," Louise commented. "Said she used to poke around the house and attic at night. Looking for that gold, I suppose."
“I think we can forget about the gold. I know it was in that letter in the box you found, but I've been hearing about it since I was a kid, and nobody ever saw it or ever will."
“Don't forget, Earl, somebody over in Penobscot dug up a vase near the Bagaduce river with more than two thousand gold coins inside. It was believed to be pirate gold," Jill reminded him.
“Honey, that was more than a hundred years ago! Any gold around these parts has already been found or is just imagined. Anyway, a lot of people believed Matilda had the gold and I have an idea she liked them to. But that didn't get her killed. No, what got her killed was kindness or foolishness or both."
“What do you mean?" Tom asked. He had a lot of catching up to do and had barely gotten all the people straight. What he did have straight was that his wife had once more unaccountably landed herself and child in danger and been miraculously spared. He squeezed her hand as he fed Ben some stew.
“Matilda's people weren't paying a whole lot of mind to her, and those two young fellows were. She was flattered and got to care for them. Genuine niceness on Roger's part, more than likely, but Eric must have always had his eye on the main chance. I thought he might have burned his house down himself to convince her to leave them hers. But Sonny did that and he's been kicking himself ever since."
“Sonny? Why?" Faith realized she had missed something. "He was trying to get Eric to leave the island. He tried other things too, but nothing worked."
“So that fight at the dance was real." Faith was beginning to put it all together. "He wanted out of the business, right?"
“Ayuh. I'm not saying what he did wasn't wrong, very wrong, especially when you see all the drugged-out kids around this area. Right here tonight—kids who would have been showing the sheep they raised or the jams they put up before all this hit. I blamed the bridge that they built to the mainland, but that's neither here nor there and it was bound to happen one of these days. Pretty hard getting across the reach by boat in the winter.”
Now it was Earl who was off.
Faith felt like the lady they had seen at the sheepdog trials earlier. She resisted the impulse to say "come on, Laddie.”
“But you think Sonny did have some excuse for doing what he did?"
“Not excuse. Reason. He was in big trouble financially. Two summers ago was a bad one for lobsterin' and an especial bad one for Prescott's pound. They had just bought anew six-wheeler when they lost a boat in a storm and then there just weren't any lobsters. That was when Eric came along. Sonny was only going to do it until he got on his feet again, but it was easy money and after a lifetime of strain and struggle, which fishing is, I guess a little easy money was like heaven. They landed the bales on some of the small islands offshore, then loaded them into the front of the trucks at the Old Ferry Cove dock, which hasn't been used for years. Then they'd go back to the lobster pool and fill the rest up with lobsters. If they did get stopped, an inspector looking for shorts would never make them unload the whole truck without a pretty good reason. And they were lucky. The drivers didn't know what they were driving and Eric had it all worked out on the New York end. Sonny didn't even see the stuff. He just provided the transport. Andy and his crew from Camden were doing the heavy work."
“But then Sonny wanted to stop," Jill picked up the story. "I was so stupid. I should have known what was going on. I heard them arguing one night. It didn't make any sense to me and when everything else began to happen, I forgot about it." Her voice lowered and she looked away. "I guess it was hard for me to believe Eric could be involved with anything illegal."
“I'm stIll confused. Why did Eric kill his friend Roger? And why did he have my wife at gunpoint?”
All the pieces had fallen into place and it was Faith who could answer him. "I think Eric was a very selfish person. Enough was never enough. He had a lucrative pottery business, but he started dealing drugs to make more money. Then Matilda left them the house. That would have been fine, so long as it was Roger, but when he found out about Bird and the baby, that was too much. There are so many sad stories here, but Bird's is the saddest. She had finally found Roger after all those years and was looking forward to marriage, motherhood. But Eric couldn't allow that. It also may be that Roger had found out about the drug dealing. Something Eric said the other night suggested that. And Bird probably knew because of Andy. So he sabotaged the boat, no doubt put something stronger in place of what Roger usually smoked, and took off for his friends. He returned grief stricken and oddly enough, I think he was."
“Roger was the only person Eric ever really cared about or let get close," Jill said softly. "Oh, I never fooled myself into thinking he loved me as much as I did him. There was always a distance between us. But he loved Roger, almost like a part of himself—a better part. I remember when Bird came to the island, he was upset. If she and Roger hadn't gotten together, I'm sure Eric would have given up the dealing rather than lose Roger. But since Roger was already lost to him, he just went ahead taking care of himself."
“ `Taking care of himself' is an apt expression," Faith continued. "It was going to be so easy too, before things began to go wrong. He had planned a nice tidy little murder.”