Free The Body in the Moonlight by Katherine Hall Page

paper. They got both the Boston Globe and the New York Times. Most days,neither got read. All the headlines were as bad as the one in her own head. The murder had occurred too late for Sunday’s Globe, but it was prominently featured in today’s. The picture of Gwen looked like one from a yearbook. She was staring straight at the camera, bold and timid at the same time. All right, world, here I come—am I ready or not? Her hair was much longer, grazing the top of her shoulders. She seemed impossibly young. How long ago had it been taken, and where? Jared was twenty-nine, three years younger than Tom and Faith. Gwen had been younger still. Twenty-four? Twenty-five? She started to read the article but could not get beyond the first sentence. “While partygoers in the town of Aleford made merry Saturday night, Gwendolyn Lord of Boston sampled her dessert and died in what police are calling a homicide.”
    Faith stood up. She couldn’t go to work. It was off-limits. She didn’t feel like cleaning her house. The day lay stretched out before her—a blank page, and she had writer’s block. Be careful what you wish for. She had all the free time she wanted and nothing she cared to do. She called Pix. There was no answer, but she left a message. Pix would suggest something, although it would be something like canoeing on the Sudbury River or taking the dogs for a run in the conservation land. Faith didn’t care. She’d even go bird-watching, if that was what Pix was up to today, although she had a vague notion that people did this in the wee hours of the morning. Patsy was at work. They’d spoken brieflylate yesterday afternoon. Patsy was going to find out everything she could about the case today, but she’d told Faith not to worry. “And don’t be telling me not to say it. I mean it.”
    She could call Tom. See what his schedule was like. Usually, he told her, but this morning he’d been in more of a rush than usual. He did say Jared was coming out to discuss Gwen’s service and to talk. They’d been on the phone several times the day before. Faith had asked Jed to lunch, but he’d refused. He needed to be alone, he’d told her after church, giving her a quick squeeze.
    Jared Gabriel had always been one of Faith’s favorites. A New Englander born and bred—his ancestors seemed to form the bulk of the Mayflower ’s passenger list—Jed had gone to school in New York and Paris, kicking over the traces of the bean and the cod. The fact that he had ended up back in Boston was purely accidental. He’d returned to be there for his infirm parents, become involved in the city’s rich music world, and then had taken the job at First Parish on a temporary basis. Temporary had become permanent, even after the death of his mother and father six months apart two years ago had freed him to move elsewhere. By then, he’d met Gwen, an art history major, who, after Jared had introduced her to Nick, jumped at the chance to learn about the business of running a gallery. Faith thought about calling Jed, suggesting a long walk, lunch. There had always been an unspoken bond between the two—people who knewwhat “away” was like. But she did not want to intrude on his grief. She couldn’t imagine coping with both the intense pain of the loss and the horror of how it had occurred.
    She went upstairs, made the beds, and shoved Tom’s shirts and collars into a large canvas L. L. Bean tote bag. Aleford took recycling very seriously, and appearing at the market without your own assortment of reusable bags was a serious faux pas. The same with anything else you might have to transport. And woe betide the individual who mixed the green glass with the clear in the bins at the dump—the transfer station, to use the official, although never employed, designation.
    She walked past Aleford’s green—not so green at this time of