The Body in the Snowdrift (2 page)

Faith Fairchild and her sister, Hope, were lingering over coffee at the restaurant Jean Georges at Columbus Circle. They'd had a spectacular prixe fixe luncheon—$20.04, the price having increased a penny each year since the millennium. The meal had started with lobster salad on a crisp buttery rectangle of puff pastry, moved on to poached chicken in a sauce redolent of wine and winter fruits, truffled potatoes, and tiny brussels sprouts, then ended with a warm ginger chocolate concoction. And those had just been Faith's choices.

“This must be the greatest bargain in New York, and you don't even have to wait until restaurant week,” Hope said, popping one of the truffles that had come with the coffee into her mouth. During restaurant week, the city's establishments offered inexpensive prixe fixe lunch and dinner menus. The moment the list
was posted, there was a frenzy to snag reservations at the top places—you might not be able to afford Daniel Boulud's twenty-nine-dollar hamburger (it contained foie gras), but you could get your foot in his door and taste some of his other mouthwatering concoctions.

Faith nodded in agreement. The menu was a bargain, but there had been no stinting, no dubious cut of steak and mound of greasy pomme frites or tired, dried-out salmon, the staples of so many prixe fixe menus.

She was feeling almost too relaxed to talk. It was freezing outside, but sun was streaming in through the windows of the pretty, unpretentious dining room, which faced away from the newest addition to the neighborhood: the Time Warner Center, the $1.7 billion towering plate-glass behemoth that had replaced the old Coliseum. Yes, the Coliseum was a building that had seen its day, but it had had a quirky presence, projecting the spirits of auto shows, food fairs, toy expos, and international forums of years past into Columbus Circle, where they mingled with the exhaust fumes from vehicles playing Russian roulette at this intersection of Broadway, Eighth Avenue, Central Park West, and Central Park South. Horns honked and middle digits were extended, all under the benevolent eye of Gaetano Russo's Christopher Columbus, standing proudly atop the seven-hundred-ton, seventy-seven-foot-tall monument erected in 1892 to mark the four hundredth anniversary of his famous voyage, a voyage considerably easier than crossing the intersection now, should a pedestrian be foolhardy enough to try. But the Coliseum. Its footprint had not so much been obliter
ated as stamped out. Am I getting to be an old fogy, Faith wondered. Opposed to change simply because it's change? Yet she couldn't help thinking that the new structure was the ultimate monument to excess of the “Too Much Is Never Enough” school—already well represented in the city. It cast a figurative and literal shadow on the streets below. One of the restaurants was offering tasting menus at three hundred and five hundred dollars. And the retail stores in the center—don't you dare call it a “mall”—featured $24,000 French stoves and $258,000 diamond-studded Swiss watches. She tried to ignore the fact that she was sitting in the ground floor of another of these twenty-first-century temples. Jean Georges was located in the quite hideous Trump International Hotel and Tower. Resolutely, she concentrated on the view of Central Park out the window and an instant replay of the meal she'd just consumed.

“So what are you going to do?” Hope asked, breaking into her sister's rather random thoughts. She reached for another truffle, then stopped herself and straightened one of the purple anemones in the vase on the table instead. She'd had a baby in July, and while she'd lost the weight she'd gained during the pregnancy, she found she had to resist temptation as never before. She seemed to be hungry all the time—exactly like her son, little Quentin Forbes Elliott III. Unlike her sister, Hope loved the Time Warner Center. With its upscale shops, and an enormous Whole Foods market below the ground floor, it offered one-stop shopping for an upscale working mother. Not that she actually cooked, but her housekeeper did. And the restaurants,
which offered such a range of extravagant choices, charmed clients weary of the same old, same old.

“Go shopping when we finish our coffee. Maybe see the Rosenquist show at the Guggenheim if you haven't and can spare the time. It's closing soon. Then—”

“I mean about Vermont. Are you sure you really have to go?”

Faith knew what her sister had meant. They'd touched on the subject at the beginning of the meal; then she'd steered the conversation to the baby. She had wanted to put the Green Mountain State out of her mind for a while.

“Yes, I really do have to go. It's Vermont or witness protection. Dick is very serious about the whole thing.” She motioned to the waiter for more coffee.

A year ago, her father-in-law, Dick Fairchild, had announced that he was celebrating his seventieth birthday by taking the entire Fairchild clan for a week of winter fun at Pine Slopes, a ski resort in Vermont. “Don't give me a party, especially a surprise party. I hate surprise parties. Faith can bake me a cake, the kids can make cards, and I'll take care of everything else,” he'd said. Dick had already done his homework and had arranged things for the February vacation week, so his grandchildren would be free to join them. Announcing it a year ahead meant that caterer Faith couldn't use bookings as an excuse, and her husband, Tom—the Reverend Thomas Fairchild—had plenty of time to allocate parish duties to others. Not that Tom had wanted to opt out. He'd thought the whole idea was terrific the moment it was proposed—or rather, proclaimed—as had his sister and
brothers, who also would have plenty of time to rearrange their schedules.

Faith sighed and drank some of the fresh coffee. It was delicious. With his attention to detail, Jean-Georges Vongerichten was probably cultivating the beans himself.

“It's not that I don't like Tom's family, but in smaller and shorter doses. And I like to ski, but…”

“In smaller and shorter doses,” said Hope, finishing the sentence for her.

The two sisters had grown up in Manhattan, Hope arriving almost a year to the day after Faith. Their mother, Jane, was a real estate lawyer, and having her two children so close together was typical of her organizational skills. Plus, in this case, it had eliminated sibling rivalry. Neither had really known what it was to be the sole focus of her parents' attention. They were more like a small litter than sisters a year apart. The two girls grew up as good friends—and as different as night from day. Both were striking. Faith was a blue-eyed blond, while Hope's green eyes, vivid as cabochon emeralds, offset her dark brown hair. Faith had drifted through school, giving scant thought to the future until a stint at the French Culinary Institute had reaffirmed her earlier leanings toward the kitchen—the recipe for dense, chewy brownies, that she'd come up with at age eight was still one of her staples. Besides walnuts, her eight-year-old self had decided to add dried cherries and semisweet chocolate chips to the already chocolaty batter. After her training and an apprenticeship with one of the city's top caterers, Faith had started her own firm,
Have Faith, in the late eighties. Soon her food was a must at the Big Apple's glitziest parties, just as she had been as a guest earlier. New York loved the new twofer: Faith Sibley
and
fantastic food.

Hope, in contrast, had asked for a briefcase instead of a knapsack in elementary school, and her determined Jimmy Choo–clad feet had never strayed from the path where success is measured not merely in dollars and cents but in options and bonuses. The path where your own initials are enough and most words are acronyms.

The two sisters were also bound together as PKs, preacher's kids. The Reverend Lawrence Sibley ministered to a Manhattan flock, the only venue his wife, Jane, would consider. She'd grown up in the city, as had her ancestors before her. They went back to the original Dutch merchants, who had known a good thing when they saw it. After all, what were a few beads and blankets compared to the future of bright lights, big city they must have envisioned in their dreams after a few meerschaum pipes? Faith and Hope had vowed to avoid the fishbowl existence even a parsonage in the form of a duplex on the Upper East Side afforded. There was no way either was going to marry a man of the cloth, no matter how high the thread count. Hope had kept her vow, tying a firm knot with Quentin Forbes Elliot, Jr., who, like she, made money the old-fashioned way—a lot of money, which kept on making even more. Faith, however, had failed. She'd fallen for Tom at a wedding reception she was catering, unaware that he had traded his collar and robe for mufti. By the time she realized that the deal also meant
leaving the city for Aleford, Massachusetts, a small town west of Boston—dooming her to a lifetime of bad haircuts, boiled dinners, and below-zero temperatures as late as April—she couldn't imagine herself without Tom and didn't want to. The years had passed with alarming swiftness. She'd started up Have Faith again and continued the product line of sauces, jams, jellies, and chutneys she'd launched in New York. Their son, Ben, was almost ten, and his sister, Amy, was six and a half (woe to he or she who left the half off). It wasn't the life Faith had foreseen for herself, but it was the life she had, and mostly she was very happy with it—except at the moment.

She drained her cup and set it down on the saucer firmly. Her consolation prize for agreeing to the week in Vermont had been a weekend in the city, a transfusion. Tom was looking after the kids—and receiving the kind of support that only men get when they're on their own: baby-sitting offers, casseroles, invitations to dinner. Women, when their husbands are away, have merely an easier bed to make and, if the kids go to sleep on time,
Sex and the City
reruns.

“I need to get some of that French Thermolactyl underwear. You know, the
‘Moi froid, jamais!'
people. It's the only stuff that really keeps me warm. I've found a place that carries it. It's incredibly hard to find, even here. I was beginning to feel as if I were trying to score drugs. I'd call one place and they'd whisper the name of another. Come with me and I can whine while we shop. It won't take long. Then we can go wherever you want. Need anything?”

Hope never needed anything, but want was another
matter. “I wouldn't mind getting some warm undies myself. We're going to Gstaad for a long weekend. Did I tell you?”

This
was
news. Both Hope and Quentin considered
workaholic
a high compliment. They seldom took vacations, lest someone oil the next rung on the ladder while they were away. The baby had made very little difference in their schedule so far. A nanny and a housekeeper will suffice for a few years, Faith thought, but wait until later: the science-fair project due the next day, the depths of despair produced by not being invited to your “best” friend's birthday party, and those phone calls from school, “Mrs. Elliott, could you…”

“No, you didn't tell me. What's up?” Faith asked.

Hope blushed. For a corporate shark, she blushed easily. “I think Quentin is the teensiest bit jealous of Terry.” To avoid the confusion of two Quentins in the house, the baby had been nicknamed “Terry,” from the Latin,
tertius,
as “the third.” It was, on no account, to continue once the little scion was in school. Quentin he was born and Quentin he would be.

“That happens,” Faith said. There were days when she felt as if she were being stretched to fit Procrustes' mythological iron bed, except it was a three-way pull. She reached for the check. Hope pushed her hand away.

“My treat. You can get it next time.” She slipped her platinum AmEx card in with the bill. “Anyway, it's going to be great. The place is sort of Heidi meets Donald Trump. We hit the slopes, then dinner in our suite, snifters of brandy, and, I suppose, me on a bearskin rug or whatever in front of the fire. At least
that's the picture Quentin has, and I'm not objecting. Between work and Terry, we haven't had much nooky time lately. What's your place like?”

“Aside from being in a condo complex with Tom's entire family, plus Ben and Amy, I don't think Pine Slopes runs to much privacy or bearskin rugs—or snifters, for that matter. It's pretty stripped-down. Say Heidi meets Tom Bodett. Rustic.”

They got up and retrieved their coats. Outside, Hope hailed a cab.

“Good rustic or rustic rustic?” she asked as they got in and told the driver their destination.

“It's a small place, family-owned and geared toward families. The Fairchilds have had the condo since the place opened in the sixties, and they all learned to ski there as soon as they could walk—maybe sooner. There's a cute picture of Tom and his father coming down a slope. Tom doesn't look a day over six months, and his father's holding him on top of the skis.”

“Sounds sweet. And you've been there before, right?”

Faith shook her head. “The kids have been there a few times with their grandparents and once with Tom's sister, Betsey, and her crew. Tom's gone up with his brother Robert, but I've always managed to avoid this treat. My idea of a vacation is not doing all the cooking—much as I love it—for a large number of people, plus housework. Although Dick is paying for the hotel housekeeping staff to clean for the week, I think. This is why Marian takes trips. Between the condo and the house on the Cape, family vacations have been anything but for her.”

Faith's mother-in-law, Marian Fairchild, had caused a stir several years ago by booking herself onto a tour to the Galápagos. She informed Dick that he was welcome to go along, then added that if she waited for him to have the inclination to travel anywhere but the Cape and Vermont, she'd have to die to see someplace new. Since then, she'd covered a great deal of the globe—much of Europe, Machu Picchu, the Serengeti, and Beijing.

When they arrived at the store, they paid the driver and got out. It had been a rare cab drive: the driver hadn't yelled at them for wanting to go such a short distance, he hadn't endangered any pedestrians, other vehicles, or his passengers, and he had known where he was going.