Free The Body in the Basement by Katherine Hall Page

was a favorite of Elliot’s.
    Pix always thought of the Fraziers as ospreys, the large fish hawks that were once more returning to the islands, building their enormous nests on rocky ledges, high atop spruce trees, and occasionally even balanced on a channel marker. Ospreys were birds who mated for life. She’d told her theory to Sam, who agreed, commenting that Elliot was actually beginning to look a little beaky as he got older. Whatever the name or the comparison, the Fraziers were a devoted couple.
    Louise accepted Pix’s offer of the chowder gratefully. “Timing at clambakes is so unpredictable, and people always get hungry before we uncover the pit.”
    After she hung up, Pix thought she’d better put in a quick call to Faith before Sunday to ask her advice about making a large quantity of chowder. Usually, she simply quadrupled or quintupled the recipe, but working at the catering company had heightened her sensibilities. Maybe there was some special proportion known only to dedicated cooks or foodies. She wished the Fairchilds could come up for the Fourth of July festivities on Sanpere, which actually started the weekend before. The day itself would begin with a parade in Sanpere Village, followed by children’s games in the elementary school playground, before moving to Granville for first the Odd Fellows Lobster Picnic, then later the Fish and Fritter Fry run by the Fishermen’s Wives Association on the wharf. The day ended back in Sanpere Village, with fireworks over the harbor at nightfall. But Faith was catering four different functions and couldn’t get away.
    Pix would miss the Fairchilds, but it might be best if they weren’t around until the whole business with Mitchell Pierce was cleared up. She reminded herself to call Earl and see when Seth could start work again. She presumed they’d been over the site with magnifying glasses, tweezers, fingerprint powder, and whatever else it was they used to find clues. They’d taken both her and Samantha’s sneakers away on Sunday, so examining
footprints was one activity, although it had been so dry that the slightest breeze would have long since blown away any traces in a cloud of dust.
    All right, she told herself briskly. Call Earl, call Faith, get out chowder recipe, make shopping list, pick up Mother at the Bainbridge’s, where she is lunching, stake tomato plants, set out beer-filled tuna cans to kill slugs, pick up Samantha at work … She got a pencil and made a list. Pix had lists everywhere—in her purse, in her pockets, on the wall, on the fridge, tucked into books. She’d told a friend once, “My life is one long list,” and the friend had replied, “I know—and the list is never done.” It had depressed Pix at the time and it depressed her now. She decided to take the dogs outside and do the tomatoes first.
    The exercise and the fresh air lifted her spirits immediately and she stood up and stretched. It was a long one. Pix was not her given name, but an abbreviation of the childhood nickname “Pixie,” bestowed by her doting parents when she was a wee mite of two. At four, she had shot up to the size of a six-year-old, but the name persisted. And as she grew older, she was thankful to whatever fate had been responsible for that brief petite moment. As a name, Pix was vastly preferrable to what was on her birth certificate, Myrtle—for her father’s favorite aunt and her horticulturist mother’s favorite ground cover. In retrospect, Pix was grateful Mother hadn’t opted for the Latin and chosen Vinca Minor instead of little Myrtle. When Aunt Myrtle died, she left her namesake a cameo, a diamond brooch, and some nice coupons to clip. Everything but the cameo had long since been converted into a hot-water heater, braces for the kids, and, one particularly tight winter, antibiotics for the dogs, the cost of which had led Pix seriously close to fraud as