Drawn and Buttered Page 19

  “Don, my answer is no.” Aunt Gully stood and spread her arms. Uh-oh. Here comes a song. She launched into the song from Dreamgirls but changed the lyrics.

  “And I am telling you I’m not giving you my recipe!” Aunt Gully warbled. “No no no no no!”

  Then she chuckled as she took him by the arm and helped him to his feet. Don looked dazed. His mouth moved but he didn’t make any sound.

  “You’re a nice man and all the gifts have been very nice. But no means no.”

  Don O’Neill finally found his voice. “But—”

  “It’s been fun. My answer is no.” Aunt Gully pushed him out the screened door and it closed with a bang.

  Lorel rushed after Don, throwing a frosty look at me.

  What did I do?

  “Did she just show him the door?” one customer said to another. “Maybe he didn’t tip enough.”

  Aunt Gully went back into the kitchen to a smattering of applause. I followed her.

  “The poor man. He’ll look silly when he realizes that the answer was really, truly no. He just didn’t want to hear it.” Aunt Gully washed her hands and grabbed a spoon, stirring her chowder vigorously.

  Lorel came in, her shoulders slumped. “Aunt Gully, that was a lot of money walking out the door.”

  Aunt Gully scoffed. “Don doesn’t realize that my chowder is different every time I make it. There is no recipe.”

  Lorel frowned. “But it always tastes the same.”

  “You know I don’t use recipes. Sometimes the clams taste a bit different. Sometimes, I need to add more stock. Sometimes I’m feeling spicier than other days.” Hector, Hilda, and the Gals nodded in agreement with this arcane cooking wisdom.

  True. Every time someone asked Aunt Gully for the recipe, she cheerfully gave it to them. “All they have to do is ask.” The one thing they’d never get is the recipe. She measured nothing, tossing in ingredients and tasting. A little of this, a little of that. When I asked for measurements, she’d say, well, a handful … unless it needs more. It was the same with her secret Lobster Love sauce for her lobster rolls.

  Lorel held up a hand, “Wait a minute. So you don’t really care what they put in the Aunt Gully’s Chowdahead brand chowder.”

  Aunt Gully’s cheeks pinked. “Of course I do. So don’t you get any ideas about selling them any old recipe and calling it mine just for the payday, young lady.”

  Lorel sighed and looked away. Just what she’d been thinking. I laughed.

  “If people want Aunt Gully’s chowder, they can have my chowder. All they have to do is come to the Lazy Mermaid.” Aunt Gully waved her spoon. “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

  Chapter 34

  We were slammed for a few hours with leaf peepers and tourists who’d been to the Historical Society Harvest Festival. Even Lorel threw an apron over her designer dress and pitched in. She looked lovely behind the counter while I picked lobster and hefted bags of trash into the Dumpster out behind the shack.

  I was dying to talk to Fern about the paper in Max’s backpack. Why did he have her paper? He needed money. I couldn’t imagine why he’d blackmail a grad student who had no money. Unless … there was something in the paper that was valuable.

  I glanced at the clock. Fern had said she’d be at the Harvest Festival until six and it was already five thirty. “Aunt Gully, could I—”

  “Go!” chorused Aunt Gully and the Gals at the worktable.

  I washed my hands, tossed my dirty apron in the basket by the door, and grabbed the backpack. “Thanks!”

  I drove down the twisting road to Rabb’s Point, my mind returning to Halloween night. Cars lined the road this afternoon too, jammed into any available spot, for the Harvest Festival. Since it was getting late, some folks had left and I found a space in the lot directly in front of the house. I turned off the engine.

  A group gathered to the north of the house around a tall rack where fish were arrayed. Gladys Burley and Fred Nickerson stood on either side. A long-ago memory from a school field trip surfaced: the fish-drying demonstration.

  Royal Parish, in his tall pilgrim hat and flowing cape, stood by the front door shaking hands with a visitor. I scanned the crowd but didn’t see Isobel or Kathleen. I remembered what Kathleen had said that night by the barn: All he thought of was his family history. Not his family.

  From the parking lot I could see Fern in the kitchen garden leading a tour group, her face alight with happiness. I’d have to wait until she was done. I stuck my head out the van window and waved. Fern waved back and held up both hands palms out, fingers spread. Ten minutes. I nodded.

  The backpack lay on the passenger seat. A thought struck me. Maybe Fern wouldn’t want me to read her paper.

  Maybe I should read it now.

  I opened the backpack and pulled out the magazine and paper. I hadn’t paid much attention to the magazine when I’d been in the chapel library. I turned it over.

  New England Scholarly History. The magazine with Fern’s article. I was sure Lyman Smith had lied to Fern about the “clerical mistake” that left her name off the article. I was certain she also realized that. It was too bad that she felt that she couldn’t publicly accuse Lyman since she needed his recommendation for work or a PhD program. He must have realized that the position she was in would make it impossible for her to accuse him of his theft of her research. Besides, how could she prove it?

  A slow suspicion kindled in me. Prove it.

  Maybe Max had blackmailed Lyman Smith. What had Fern said? Max “ran papers” for plagiarism. Maybe he’d discovered that the history professor had stolen Fern’s work, or maybe even had plagiarized from other students. Maybe Max had discovered a pattern of intellectual theft. Talk about a lot to lose, especially for a man just named head of the history department, who’d just received a plum grant.

  Fern’s paper was titled “Rosamund Parish: New Perspectives on the Legend of Otis Parish.” I riffled through the pages. The last page had different-color ink and different font.

  It wasn’t part of Fern’s paper. It was a report headed “PASS: Paper Assure for Scholars: Academia’s Number One Plagiarism Software.” I scanned graphs and columns of ID numbers. The report had been requested by M. Hempstead and compared two papers, one by Author S and one by Author D.

  My heart rate kicked up a notch.

  Paper by Author S and Paper by Author D had a match rate of ninety-five percent. Max hadn’t gone too far out of his way to hide the identities of the authors. Smith and Doucette. Still, there were no names listed. Not quite the smoking gun. Maybe, having run this software for Lyman herself, Fern would have some insight into this report.

  I set it aside and settled in to read Fern’s new paper.

  There was an introductory paragraph with a lot of academic terms like folklorist and fixed text, but then I skimmed to this sentence: “This story of blood, disease, fear, community pressure, and yes, love, has passed through the years, hidden away in the pages of a teenage girl’s diary.”

  This sounded good.

  Now we have a chance to verify the tale. Was it true?

  I knew the outline of the Otis Parish story but this account went in a completely different direction than the legend I’d heard growing up. Fern was a talented storyteller. The sounds of the volley of colonial muskets, fiddle music, and bleating sheep in the shearing exhibition faded as I read, as I went back in time to Mystic Bay more than three hundred years earlier.

  The house was illuminated only by meager candlelight … a figure ran toward the door, black cape flying like the wings of a bat. A woman wringing her hands, her white apron and cap glowing in the dark, stood waiting for him.

  Otis Parish had indeed come from British gentry, having been given a royal grant to lands in the area of what local Indians called Micasset. The name survives as the name of the river that flows alongside the hundreds of acres once owned by the Parish family. The Parishes cleared land, sold the timber, grazed livestock, then farmed an
d traded with the native people. The small settlement grew into a prosperous village under the leadership of Otis Parish.

  But diseases ran rampant, unchecked by modern medicine or scientific knowledge. Alone in a world lit by tallow tapers and offered only the chilly comfort of a hard Puritan religion, people in isolated areas struggled when diseases swept through.

  One such outbreak, which historians believe was tuberculosis, took place in the area renamed Mystic Bay. The Parish family’s affluence could not shield them from the epidemic.

  Otis and Ann Parish had three children: Pardon, Mercy, and Uriah. Ann died giving birth to Uriah.

  Pardon was in Boston when the epidemic began and was spared. He is the father of the line that ends with the family of Royal Parish, the current inhabitant of Parish House.

  The scourge visited Mystic Bay and the community was decimated. When the outbreak began, Mercy had been engaged to marry a young man named Thomas Fletcher, who was one of the first to die.

  The family thought they were safe on their isolated farm on what is now called Rabb’s Point, but just as winter turned to spring Mercy started showing symptoms. The violent coughing of the disease brings blood to the lips. The pale skin of the sufferer, along with the drawn face, pulling back the skin from the mouth and exposing the teeth, all combined to turn the victim from an object of sympathy to one of fear.

  Rumors started to spread that Thomas Fletcher had walked from his grave and returned to feast on the blood of his love, drawing her life’s energy to sustain his. Mercy died and the family was wild with grief and fear, since shortly after they buried her, Uriah started to show the same symptoms. Had his sister, Mercy, come to drain him of his life’s blood?

  The diary of a distant cousin, Rosamund Parish, recently discovered in the archives of the Parish House Library, relates the terrible turn of events that followed.

  I turned the page. I’d never heard this part of the story of Otis Parish.

  Otis, so robust and steady, had unraveled. He’d already buried Mercy in a remote part of his property away from hallowed ground. Uriah, his younger son, was his favorite. As the most powerful man in Mystic Bay, Otis had met with other community leaders—the parson, Reverend John Taylor, the schoolmaster, Parish’s cousin Isaiah Goodnight, other prosperous farmers—bemoaning the evil that plagued their village. That’s how the epidemic was seen, like one of the plagues that struck Egypt. What evil walked among them, taking the lives of so many in such a gruesome way?

  How to stop it?

  After weeks of prayer, death, and despair, the people of Mystic Bay turned to superstition. Surely it was vampires, those fell monsters of stories heard long ago. People heard that there was a way to strip the vampire of its power. They turned to a crone by the name of Wealtha Runnell. Shunned by the community, she lived in the marshes near the river and was known to make spells and charms. She was tolerated for her skill as a midwife, as other midwives with difficult deliveries would sometimes turn to her for guidance.

  Otis was desperate. When Wealtha told him what he had to do, he begged to be spared from the task. But as a leader in the community he couldn’t shirk his duty. He had to break a taboo to save his beloved son and all the people of Mystic Bay. Desperate villagers turned to him. He was their leader. He had to take action.

  That night, with lantern light to guide them, in the company of his minister and several trusted friends, and the crone, he went to the graveyard where they’d buried the wasted body of young Mercy Parish. They disinterred the young girl, opened the simple wooden coffin. They set their lanterns on a large flat rock nearby.

  To their dismay, her body retained its ghoulish appearance and blood still spattered the lips. Shaken, they almost turned from their brutal task, but duty drove them forward. At the direction of the crone, they opened the chest of the young girl and removed her heart, then burned it on the flat rock. When they were done, they took the ashes and mixed them in a cup of wine and brought it to Uriah to drink.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath.

  The men reburied the girl, taking care to turn the body in the coffin facedown as the crone directed them, so she could not rise again.

  Uriah drank the mixture prepared for him, but it did not restore him to health. He died a few days later.

  When they interred his body, the same grim men took measures to ensure that he would not walk among them after death. His head was removed from his trunk, the arms crossed, and again, buried facedown.

  I shivered and skipped to the end. Rosamund’s diary entry is poignant: “I swear this to be true. It was related to me by the son of the Reverend John Taylor who did penance for the rest of his life for his crimes against the bodies of Mercy and Uriah Parish and his sin in following the commands of the witch, Wealtha Runnell.”

  “‘I have never seen a man weep so,’ Taylor said of Otis Parish.”

  * * *

  Finally my eyes focused and I was no longer seeing the grim faces of those men, lit only by lantern light, as they gathered around the large stone to burn the heart of Mercy Parish.

  I’d never given thought to the other people buried in the graveyard near Otis Parish, so many buried in what I’d always heard was unhallowed ground.

  I took a deep breath. Perhaps it had been an attempt at quarantine. They didn’t really understand disease back then. They probably would’ve thought it was some kind of divine punishment, or a curse, like the one on Otis Parish for his crimes against the native people.

  With a shock I realized that Otis Parish was buried there near Uriah and Mercy. Had he also been a victim of the epidemic? That wasn’t in the history I’d ever heard. Or was his burial there an act of penance? Of punishment?

  A face appeared at my window, jolting me back to the present day. Fern. I started, dropping the top page. “God you scared me!” I scrabbled on the floor to pick it up.

  “Hi! How you’re doing?”

  “I was just reading…” Too late to hide it.

  Fern’s eyes flicked from my face to the stack of papers in my hand. “Is that my paper?”

  “Can you talk for a sec?”

  She ran around the van and got in the passenger side. She gathered the map and magazine then slammed the door. She jerked the paper from my hand.

  “How did you get my paper? And that map? That should be in the files at Lyman Smith’s office!” Fern shouted.

  I took a deep breath. I owed her the truth.

  “That was in Max Hempstead’s backpack. He left it in a study carrel at the college chapel library.”

  Fern stared openmouthed at the stack of papers, then started putting them in order, her movements agitated.

  “Your paper’s amazing,” I said.

  She shuffled the papers into order and took a deep breath. “Thanks.” She sat back against the passenger seat, her forehead creased. To my surprise, she laughed.

  “The chapel library? Yeah, nobody goes there. Why was he hiding my paper?” she said more to herself than me. “That little rat must have gone into Lyman Smith’s files and downloaded it. Lyman’s the only other person who’s seen this.”

  The backpack was on the floor at her feet. Though I liked her, I didn’t think anyone but the police should know what else was in there. She noticed my glance.

  “Is that Max’s backpack? Why do you have Max Hempstead’s backpack?” Her words were slow. I wondered if she was thinking that I had something to do with his death.

  I told her everything, starting from when I saw Max guarding his backpack at the lobster shed.

  “So you’ll have to bring it to the police. I agree. But still, why did he have my paper?”

  “Blackmail. I think, maybe, he was blackmailing people. Or at least was planning to. Let me show you this.” I took the papers from her hands and found the report from PASS. “Is ninety-five percent—”

  “Yes, that’s egregious. Lyman was stealing my work and Max ran the comparison between my paper and his article. I’m fu
rious about Lyman Smith, of course.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “He said it was a mistake. He promised to fix it. I can’t get him mad. I’ll need his recommendation to get into a Ph.D. program anywhere.”

  “Fern, can I take this home to finish reading? This is fantastic.”

  My praise calmed her. “Yeah, you might as well read it. No one else will. I can’t imagine Lyman would publish that one.”

  “Why not? It’s a gripping story.”

  Fern’s lips twisted. “This isn’t the kind of family history Royal Parish wants to see published.”

  I put the manuscript inside the magazine and tucked both next to the driver’s seat. “I was transported back in time. The large stone—”

  “The Witch’s Rock. There are many of those structures throughout the woods. Colonists didn’t think much of them—they weren’t interested in the native people’s culture. It’s a coincidence that the Parishes used it for that terrible stuff they did to Mercy’s body.”

  “Where did you learn all this? It’s from Rosamund Parish’s diary?”

  Fern’s eyes gleamed. “Yes. Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes!”

  I reached for the backpack. I still didn’t want it out of my sight.

  The festive crowd was beginning to thin. We threaded through the tourists who were streaming toward their cars. The bitter scent of wood smoke from the cooking fires blended with the rich aroma of earth and fallen leaves as we stepped inside the historical society building.

  “The library’s in the annex. Only board members have keys. I’ll get the key from Beltane and I’ll be right back.” Beltane. I stiffened. Fern said it like you’d say the name of any normal coworker. I guess to Fern, Beltane was.

  I stepped into the large front room where the grant presentation had been held just last week. How many things had changed since then. A life lost. Isobel—she’d lost Max, who I suspected she’d cared for quite a bit before the betrayal. Madame was in the hospital, facing the challenge of recovering from a stroke. Dreams—Madame’s for a grant to create a ballet; Fred’s for a grant to repair his boat—deferred or lost forever. Lyman Smith had been happy, though. That rat.