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  Jack, the paterfamilias, had been Julia Child’s butcher, and now it was the next generation’s turn. But Jack still supplied the best jokes. She took some portobello mushrooms out to grill.

  They’d go on top of the chops. What else? Fresh steamed asparagus with a little lemon and olive oil—and some polenta with Gorgonzola (see recipe on page 338). That should hold them. She was searing the chops when she heard a familiar voice and felt two arms lock themselves about her waist, pulling her back into a warm embrace.

  Tom was home.

  “So it’s really up to us. The police can’t investigate the way we can. They don’t have the time, or staff.” The kids were asleep—or at least Faith was choosing to believe Ben was—and their parents were talking about the robbery, what else?

  Tom had been happily gnawing on the remnants of his veal chop and Faith’s emphatic statement caused him to drop the bone onto his plate with a clatter.

  “What do you mean, ‘investigate’—and what do you mean by ‘we’?” he asked, dreading her reply. Over the years, this anxious response to his wife’s avocation had become something of a reflex.

  She poured some of the 1975 Saint-Emilion she’d opened into his empty glass, sighing in-wardly. He ought to be used to her sleuthing by now. But Tom was clinging stubbornly to his protest. She could see it all over his face.

  “Nothing even remotely dangerous. I’m not that brave a person, remember. Especially lately.

  But we, or I, can go around to pawnshops in the area to look for our stuff, and we definitely need to have a meeting. I want to get the names of people with break-ins similar to ours and invite them as soon as possible. I’ve started to draw up a questionnaire. . . .”

  “Wait a minute, honey. Don’t you think the police should be handling all this?” With Faith, inches became miles faster than well-fertilized kudzu grew.

  “They can’t. You notice I’m not saying won’t.” After yesterday’s promising beginning—the photography, fingerprinting, Charley’s call, re-grettably resulting in the wrong jewelry—Faith had assumed the tempo of the investigation would continue, even increase. Having seen her family out the door—the front one, for the moment—she’d raced down to the police department that morning to see what Charley had planned for the day. She’d been full of ideas—cross-checking the prints they’d found with U.S. and Canadian authorities, judicious questioning of known stool pigeons, area checks of other break-ins occurring the day before, and so on. Instead, she’d found Dale Warren at the desk.

  Charley was having breakfast at the Minuteman Café, as usual, and when Faith confronted him there, he confessed over his scrambled eggs that there wasn’t much more they could do at the moment than they’d already done. Life was not the movies, or books, and there was no mechanism for cross-checking prints on the scale Faith proposed. Her vague notions of DNA testing were out of the question, too. Nor did the Aleford Police Department have a list of canaries. He’d find out about the break-ins, though, and when the pictures were ready at Aleford Photo, he’d send them along to several of the surrounding towns, but she knew he was just saying all this to make her feel better.

  She’d returned home and called the man she chose to think of as her partner, Detective Lt. John Dunne of the Massachusetts State Police. In fact, despite numerous cases together, Dunne would never use the word partner regarding Mrs. Fairchild. In his opinion, she was a woman of seemingly insatiable curiosity—and worse. This, however, had never seriously registered with Faith, and she did not hesitate to call him now.

  He was very sympathetic, especially when she told him about Sarah Winslow’s death and breakin exactly a week earlier. This attitude changed abruptly when she started relaying her investigative plans and asking him what else she could do.

  “Look, Faith, I don’t know how to put this any other way, but most likely your property is out of state by now and the profits up somebody’s nose.

  It’s good you have pictures. They’ll help with the insurance. It’ll be enough of a job for you and Tom to deal with the adjuster and get your house back to normal. Concentrate on that.”

  “I intend to, yet I can’t simply let these people get away with this. At least I’m going to have the meeting and see what we might have in common.

  For all you know, we could have the same plumber, or new roofs or something.”

  Faith was beginning to accumulate what she referred to as “larceny lore”—stories about burglaries. The latest was one relayed by Pix about a ring of thieves whose other job was roofing. They cased houses when repairing or installing a roof.

  Then on rainy days, when they couldn’t work, they’d come back and break in. A cop in Byford had noticed the rainy-day pattern and solved the crime. Then there was the obituary felon. He noted the time of the funeral of the deceased, when a house would be empty, and planned his crimes accordingly. The cops staked out a series of houses over time and got lucky. He even dressed in black to pass himself off as a mourner if surprised.

  Dunne’s deep voice interrupted Faith’s reverie.

  “I would say the probability of all of you in Aleford having the same plumber and virtually every other service person is pretty high, but if it makes you feel better, have a meeting. That’s about all you can expect from it, though.”

  “Why are you being so negative?” Faith asked.

  “Because I’ve been a cop for a very, very long time. Bad guys are mostly stupid and they get sloppy, especially the druggies, although yours sound like pros, and they stay clean for the job.

  Somewhere down the line, someone will get caught and the prints will match up. Then, bingo, you’ve got your guy—or girl.”

  Faith was by no means ready to give up, or hang up. “If I was going to look for our belongings, what pawnshops should I go to? I’m not particularly well versed on the locations.” Dunne figured he might as well tell her. She’d either nag at him until he did or go through the Yellow Pages. This way, he’d make her feel she had accomplished something and she might leave him alone—for a little while anyway. “You could try up in Lowell. Bad guys like to get rid of things quickly and easily—zip down the interstate to Aleford, or one of the other western suburbs off Route One Twenty-eight, and then zip back up, stopping on the way to get rid of the stuff. You might also go across the border to Salem, New Hampshire. Easy access, and there’s a track there—that means lots of pawnshops.

  Then the ones in town. But, Faith, don’t go alone.

  I mean it. You’re not dealing with people who gift wrap. Take Tom.”

  Faith was pleased. Now she was getting somewhere, if only as far as Lowell. She’d gotten more information than she’d thought she would, and yes, she would take Tom—if he’d go.

  Now she looked across the kitchen table—she didn’t plan to eat in the dining room until the sideboard or its drawer was replaced—and thought about the best way to convince her husband to help her.

  “ ‘Bad guys.’ That’s what the police kept saying. Really. Good guys and bad guys. It must make life very simple.” She paused and speared a last stalk of asparagus from the serving dish with her fork. “It’s hard to explain, sweetheart, but I feel like they’ve won. The bad guys. Not just that we were robbed but that somewhere they’re sitting around laughing at how helpless we are. If I don’t do something, that helpless feeling is going to get worse and worse. Even if we look in only a few of the pawnshops and have the meeting, I’ll feel as if I have a little of my own back, that I’ve done something. Does this make any sense?” Tom picked up his bone again. Unfortunately, it did make sense. He felt it, too. When you’re a victim, you have lost control completely. Any steps toward changing their status would feel good, although he sincerely doubted the bad guys, whoever they were, spent their time chortling over their victims. It was a whole lot more impersonal than that. But Faith could have her meeting. Pass out her questionnaire. They’d go to two or three pawnshops. What could be the harm?

  If someone had told her a week a
go that she would be grateful for Stephanie and the diversion the difficult young woman’s wedding presented, Faith Sibley Fairchild would have made an immediate appointment with the nearest therapist for a reality check. Yet, the next day when Stephanie breezed into the catering kitchen, unannounced, as always, Faith greeted her warmly. At least this was lunacy she could handle.

  “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by to see if there’s anything you wanted to go over. Saves me a trip. Is that fresh coffee?” Stephanie’s requests were always couched this way. She was perennially doing them a favor, while saving herself any bother. “This will save you time later” was one of her ubiquitous, and most dreaded, formulations.

  “The Fairchilds’ home was burglarized on Tuesday and they’ve lost almost everything of value—all their silver, jewelry,” Niki said sternly.

  Unlike Faith, she was not in the mood—ever—for Stephanie. As Niki was wont to say, it was women like Ms. Bullock who put a hex in Generation X.

  “How perfectly awful!”

  For an instant, Faith and Niki watched with bated breath. Would the figure on the tightrope topple? Was Stephanie a human being after all?

  Not!

  “When I was at school, someone stole the diamond tennis bracelet Mummy and Daddy gave me for my Sweet Sixteen, and it was literally sick-making. I had to go to the infirmary. Of course, I haven’t lost anything since then. The one they gave me to make up for it was actually nicer, but that’s not the point. The point is, someone took it, and you can be sure I kept a sharp eye on everyone’s wrists afterward, but she was too smart. I think it was Debbie Putnam. She was new.” Stephanie stopped ruminating over this past in-justice and fixed Faith with a scolding look, as was due someone careless enough to lose not merely a bracelet but absolutely everything of value. “Don’t tell me you forgot to set the alarm.” Faith mumbled something about not having an alarm, not wanting to live that way, but she needn’t have bothered. Dismissing Faith’s mis-fortune with a wave of her hand—no need to speak of unpleasantness—Stephanie went on to something more important: her rehearsal dinner.

  Ostensibly, the groom’s parents, the Wentworths, were hosting the event, and footing the bill, but the Bullock women were in charge. Faith had not even met Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth, the couple having wisely departed for Palm Beach when the engagement was announced, and pretty much staying there since.

  “Are you sure Daddy’s house is going to work?

  It was Binky’s idea to have it there, not so stuffy as the Algonquin Club, which was Daddy’s thought.

  But maybe that would be easier on you?” Again the pretense of concern when Stephanie was actually thinking about what was easier for her. It could be that she’d suddenly decided she didn’t want to drive out to Concord the night before the big event, or she could simply be in the mood to stir up trouble.

  Binky was Stephanie’s fiancé, Bancroft “Binky” Wentworth III, stockbroker and scion of another old Boston family, the limbs sufficiently far removed from the Cabots and Bullocks to ensure good breeding stock. After seeing Binky and Stephanie together the first time—both blue-eyed, lean, tall but not ungainly, Stephanie’s long, silky light blond hair matched by Binky’s somewhat darker, slightly wavy locks—Faith was not altogether sure that breeding hadn’t been the whole idea—most certainly, in Stephanie’s case.

  Lord help them if they produced an errant throw-back to a myopic or undersized ancestor.

  Following the ceremony at Trinity Church in Copley Square, the lavish reception would be held high above Boston in the large private dining room on top of the Wentworth Building.

  When she and Niki had gone to check out the premises, Faith’s breath had been taken away by the harbor views. Forget the Skywalk at the Prudential Center. The Wentworths had their own personal nontourist attraction—and no ticket could get you in.

  “If you cancel the rehearsal dinner at your father’s, the Wentworths will still have to pay for it, plus another one,” Faith warned. “The Algonquin does their own functions.”

  “Oh, don’t be a silly, of course we don’t want to cancel it. Daddy would be terribly hurt if we didn’t have it at his house. And Mummy has her own reasons for wanting it there—mostly because Daddy didn’t in the beginning.” Faith wasn’t too sure about the first part of Stephanie’s statement. The one time she had met Julian Bullock at his home, which also served as his very exclusive antiques shop, she’d received the distinct impression that dinner at his house had been his daughter’s and his ex-wife’s idea—

  totally. The second part of Stephanie’s remark confirmed this. Courtney Cabot Bullock, as she introduced herself, had positively purred while Julian put up a well-bred protest about the place being too small, then demolished his objections with one swipe of her paw: “It’s going to be an intimate dinner, darling. Only the wedding party.

  The dining room table seats twenty, if I’m not mistaken.” She wasn’t.

  “Besides, even if we did change our minds about anything, Daddy and Binky’s family have wedding insurance.”

  Niki whispered in Faith’s ear, “We do that in my family, too, but we don’t bother with the pre-miums, just keep a loaded shotgun around.” Stephanie reached for a chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookie from a rack where a batch was cooling. Resisting the temptation to slap the back of her hand, Faith said, “We really are terribly busy, Stephanie.” The diversion was beginning to pall.

  The young woman looked around in surprise.

  “You don’t look very busy to me. Maybe we’d better run through the menus one more time, although Mummy wanted to be here for that.” Grabbing for an out, any out, Faith said, “Then let’s schedule a time to meet. Your mother called last week. She still hasn’t found the fabric she wants for the tablecloth. We could have a final, ” she put extra stress on the word, although knowing it was a vain attempt, “final run-through meeting next week.”

  Mrs. Bullock, who had been her husband’s business partner when they were married, handling the decorating end of things, still dabbled in the trade. None of Have Faith’s linens had met with her approval for either the rehearsal dinner or the reception. She had found a gold damask that picked up the colors of the bridesmaid’s simple sheaths for the round tables in the Wentworth dining room, but she was still searching for a print—“witty, but not too Provençal”—for the night before.

  Niki stood up and pointedly removed the cookie racks, placing them out of Stephanie’s reach. “The menus you have are perfect, Stephanie. It’s going to be a wonderful wedding. Now, why don’t you run along and break in your shoes or something while Faith and I handle the food?” Niki didn’t believe in coddling the debutante.

  She had told Faith months ago that since she never intended to work for Ms. Bullock, soon to be Mrs. Bancroft Wentworth III, she had nothing to lose.

  The shoe remark hit home. “Mummy and I are having such a hard time finding shoes to match our gowns. You’re right: I need to concentrate on that. The food can wait until next week. I think I’ll give Mummy a call and see if she’s had any luck at Saks. If not, we can go out to Chestnut Hill and look some more.” Stephanie treated the firm’s phone as her own private line, and after a half-hour call at daytime rates to her maid of honor in San Francisco, Faith had declared the instrument for staff only. In the interests of moving her along today, though, she held out the receiver, dialing Courtney Bullock’s number herself.

  Animal imagery seemed to come easily regarding the Bullock women. After meeting them, Faith had characterized Stephanie as the spoiled lapdog of the family and Courtney as the pit bull in pearls. In one of her soliloquies, Stephanie had waxed nostalgic about her grandparents’ house on Beacon Hill—Louisburg Square—where Mummy had grown up, before flying in the face of mater and pater’s advice to marry Julian. Courtney had come to that first meeting with the caterer armed with a leather wedding planner embossed with Stephanie’s name and the date of the wedding—then over a year away—Filofax, swatches,
and even recipes. Faith was impressed: Here was a woman who knew what she wanted and usually got it. Surely her organizational acumen was being wasted on a mere slip of a girl, her daughter. After several more meetings, it became clear that Stephanie was Courtney’s jewel in the crown, her most perfect creation. Decorating a condo at the Four Seasons for a princess or locat-ing a King George tankard for the Museum of Fine Arts was naught compared with the job she’d devoted her life to—Stephanie. And Stephanie’s mother. She had not neglected her own complementary persona. Slim, with a flawless complexion and a pageboy the color of an Elsa Peretti gold necklace, Courtney worked almost as hard at being Courtney.

  She was clearly delighted with her daughter’s match and wedding plans, the only discordant note being Binky’s insistence on red meat for the main course at the reception—no fish, no chicken.

  Meat. Faith had been fascinated to watch Binky, hitherto easygoing to positive carpetlike propor-tions, lay down the law to the Bullock women.

  She had wondered how long it would take after the nuptials for Binky to disappear and Bancroft to take charge. Courtney had tried staring him down, pleasantly—firmly—voicing her own preference for poached salmon, “so much more appealing to the eye than bloody slabs of prime rib.” Hoping to lighten the mood, Faith had jocularly suggested as a compromise the largest dish ever served at wedding receptions: hard-boiled eggs stuffed into fish, the fish into cooked chickens, the chickens into sheep, and the sheep into a camel, which is then roasted—a Bedouin custom and guaranteed to provide something for everyone. It was after the leaden silence greeting her remark that she realized for the first of many times that both mother and daughter had no sense of humor. None. None at all. When Binky laughed and suggested they go for it, Courtney had hastily declared beef it would be.