She grinned, then turned to a plate of éclairs. “I hope you like éclairs. They’re my personal favorites, but Coffee’s owner makes great cinnamon rolls, too. In the meantime, here are some things for you to look at.” She began shuffling more papers while simultaneously greeting people who walked by the booth to say hello.
Rose watched with interest as Stella juggled talking to her and greeting friends and neighbors and clients without missing a single beat. She had learned everything she needed to know about Stella Palazola in the last few minutes. She made people feel good about themselves, just like she’d done with her.
In between interruptions, Stella opened a notebook as thick as a dictionary and began paging through it, turning it sideways so Rose could see.
“This is my bible,” she said. “Houses on the market or ones we’ve sold. Lots of these houses are good to go or will be torn down. Those we don’t need to worry about.” Stella grinned and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Darn these glasses,” she said, and then explained that when she was in high school, Birdie had bought her contacts but they never worked quite right, so she was stuck with her horn-rims and was actually okay with them most of the time. “They make me look intelligent, right?”
“Absolutely intelligent.” Rose picked up an éclair and took a bite. “Birdie bought you contacts?”
“She’s my unofficial godmother. My soul mother, I call her. I love Birdie Favazza with my whole heart and soul.” She tapped her chest, then took hold of a yellow tab and flipped the pages over to another section in the notebook. “These are the houses that we need to pay attention to. The ones right here.” A blunt finger left the plastic page with a creamy smudge.
The page was filled with a half dozen photos of beautiful houses.
“I’ve promised the owners that I’d do a little fixing up on a couple of these—” She looked up at Rose again and smiled. “What I mean to say is that you—not me—would do a little fixing up on these. Some owners become irritated when a home inspection reveals things that should be repaired. They just want the house sold. Then and there. So I’m going to eliminate some of those stumbling blocks right off the bat. And then, boom! We’ll have a fast sale. Our job is to make that happen, right?”
Stella finally stopped talking and looked directly at Rose, who had only spoken single words here and there. “I talk a lot, don’t I? I’m so sorry, Rosie, but meeting you the other day was serendipity. Even before I knew how accomplished you were, I knew it was meant to be. I’m not putting you off, am I?”
Rose smiled. “Of course not.” She wondered briefly if Stella was right and their paths had crossed somewhere, sometime. It was possible. Stella was older by a few years, not important now, but in childhood it can be huge.
Stella Palazola. The name rippled across her memory. What was it Ray Bradbury said about memory?
“Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.”
She looked at Stella again, watching that nice face. Pleasant but not showy. Dimples showing every time she smiled, which was often. Rose was liking everything she saw in that face, but she was unsure if she’d seen it before.
Maybe later she’d stoke the flames of her memory. Right now she needed to be looking at pictures, thinking of fixing things, and listening to Stella Palazola in a crowded coffee shop.
She wrapped her fingers around her mug and took a drink of the coffee, concentrating on a map Stella was showing her, names of sellers she was working with, and photos lying on the table. Her head began to spin with Stella’s words.
Stella looked over at her. “I hope I haven’t scared you off with all my talk.”
“Of course you haven’t.” And that was the truth. She liked being able to sit quietly, listening to Stella’s enthusiastic plans as if she was already a part of them.
And she very much liked the warm, friendly cocoon Stella was spinning around her.
“So speak,” Stella said with a grin.
Rose laughed. She looked down at the heavy notebook, the map, the lists, and finally at Stella. And then she said with an openness that surprised herself, “All right then, let’s get to this office of yours. Looks like we have lots of work to do.”
* * *
Nell was the first one to see the email attachment that day. She was cleaning out her computer, approaching it like a neglected closet, tossing and deleting notices and posts and emails with a vengeance. But for some reason, she opened this one.
And then she called Ben away from a book he was reading.
“Come look at this,” she said, pushing her coffee cup to one side and staring at the screen as Ben walked across the family room toward the kitchen island.
He looked over her shoulder, his cheek brushing against her hair. “Nice,” he said.
“What’s nice?” she said.
“You. You smell good.” He pulled his glasses from the top of his graying hair and put them on, reading aloud from her screen.
Sea Harbor Scoop . . . “Hm,” he said, then read the tag line below: 2day, Yesterday, and 2morrow.
“Kind of corny,” he said.
“Below that.” Nell pointed at the digital photo, front and center beneath the headline.
It was a photo of Beatrice Scaglia slapping Spencer Paxton on the steps of the Sea Harbor Yacht Club.
Behind her she heard Ben’s sharp intake of breath, its expulsion moving her hair. And followed by a mumble of words Ben Endicott didn’t often use.
None of them had seen anyone with a cell phone out, but clearly someone had had one. And snapped a photo at the worst possible time.
“What is this thing?” Ben finally asked.
“It looks like an online newsletter. Some local thing.” She began to scroll down, looking for names. “I don’t know how I got on this list.”
“You’ll probably never find out how you got on it. I’m probably on it, too. Maybe the whole town. He walked over to the sink, staring out the window and trying to remember who was around that day. But he and Nell both knew that it was futile to try to figure it out. People holding cell phones was about as normal and natural now as people wearing clothes. He turned back to Nell. “What do you think the newsletter—if that’s what it is—is for?”
“I don’t know. A mishmash, I think. A bit of local news. Opinion pages and lots of requests for comments.”
She clicked on a link titled “Local History” and scanned the screen. Under the heading of decades—thirty years ago, twenty, etc.—were old newspaper pictures: dedication of the library, the opening of a restaurant. The items randomly chosen, it seemed.
She smiled as a familiar face looked out from the screen. Danny Brandley. Only it wasn’t Danny, but his father years before, youthful and proud and jubilant, his arm around his wife, Margaret, and standing in front of a brand-new bookstore: SEA HARBOR BOOKSTORE, the gold letters read. Okay, Nell conceded: one good point for whoever put this together.
She continued scanning, noticing years were skipped over as if the editor was hurrying to get to more contemporary history. Headlines were misspelled, captions sloppy. She thought of all the painstaking hours and care she had put into making sure her grants were always written impeccably.
“It’s slapped together,” Nell said. “And apparently it’s not the first issue. I must have already put some in the trash.” Then her finger stopped moving as a more recent newspaper photo, larger this time, filled the screen. It was from a few years ago, as the heading indicated. A year Nell remembered well. Her eyes grew large and she lifted a palm to her face. “No,” she murmured to the screen, chastising it.
The photo and brief text chronicled an event that had taken place a while after she and Ben had become permanent residents of Sea Harbor. They’d already become an integral part of the tightly knit community. The event, and what led up to it, were hard to forget; they had thrown the entire town into turmoil.
Nell knew the photo well.
And she knew the man in the
photo.
And the woman in the background.
“Ben, this is awful,” she said. She enlarged the photo, and Ben leaned in close. He stared, a frown filling his face, his strong jaw rigid. It was worse than the first. Worse for Beatrice. And it would cause more pain.
Beatrice Scaglia, then a councilwoman, stood solemn-faced in the back of the Sea Harbor Court House. Chief Jerry Thompson stood next to her, as if providing support. Toward the edge of the photo was a judge, and standing in front of her bench, front and center and shackled, his head lowered and his face filled with fear, stood Beatrice’s then-husband, Sal Scaglia, being indicted for the murder of his mistress.
Ben gripped the edge of the island with one hand. “It’s reprehensible. Scurrilous. Why bring pain to a woman who has already suffered her fair share?”
There wasn’t much text, just the photo and some links directed to articles with titles like “What Did the Wife Know?”—rumors that had long been debunked along with a scandalmonger who had since left town.
“Poor Beatrice,” Nell said, the words sounding hollow.
Finally she shut off her computer, as if the black screen would make both the photo, the memory, and the pain her friend would suffer all over again go away. “There’s no reason to rehash all this. Sal Scaglia was guilty. He was punished. Justice was served.”
And by his own hand, Sal Scaglia had lost his life in prison, just as those who knew him well had feared would happen. The affair was meaningless to him, but losing Beatrice meant losing his anchor, his life.
Ben pushed his mug and the laptop aside and wrapped Nell in his arms, holding her close, breathing in the smell of her.
Nell nestled into his chest, finding inordinate comfort in the brush of his sweater against her cheek and the smell of his aftershave on her own skin.
It was only later, after Ben went off to a meeting and she had talked to Izzy, Cass, and Birdie, that Nell finally picked up her cell and called Beatrice Scaglia.
* * *
The Palazola Realty office was exactly what Rose had expected it would be: old and musty-smelling, with a slanted hardwood floor that made you tip slightly as you walked, with tall, heavy windows that opened with difficulty and did little to ward off ocean gusts just a block away. She loved it.
The main room was slightly bigger than a reception area, neat and airy with a round shiny table and four comfortable chairs for client meetings, a bookcase next to it, and two old wooden desks, one located under each window. Stella plopped her purse down on one, scattering papers and yellow sticky notes that were stuck down in haphazard rows. She pointed to the other desk, empty and wiped clean with Murphy Oil Soap. She grinned. “That one’s yours.”
“Do I need a desk?” Rose asked.
“Sure. It gives you a place to drop your backpack or purse or whatever. And it’s a place for us to gab and eat donuts.” She pointed out two rooms off the main office, one with a closed door.
“The room with the open door is storage. Gus McGlucken—he owns the hardware store next door—gave me a deal on saws and toolboxes and plumber’s tape and some things I didn’t recognize. Oh, and bandages, too. We have another storeroom above Gus’s shop. It’s connected to Robbie’s place—that’s his son. Robbie and I share it, but there’s plenty of extra room. Gus knows everything about tools and equipment, anything you might need. We have an account at his store. Just sign for anything you need.”
Rose laughed. It was a small-town thing. She remembered her mother doing the same thing in the Brandleys’ bookstore, then trying it once in Omaha and being surprised when the Barnes & Noble clerk nixed the idea and asked for a credit card.
Stella pointed to a closed door near a bookcase. “That’s Uncle Mario’s office. It has a window onto the fire escape, a quick escape when my aunt Sophia comes looking for him. It’s his private space. Lord only knows what goes on in it.”
A loud noise from inside the room alerted them that they weren’t alone. “I guess he’s here,” Stella said. “I never know. Uncle Mario comes in occasionally for a nip of bourbon and a nap. Late morning. Middle of the night. Sunday morning. One never knows.”
At that moment the door opened and a short man with a large flat nose and thinning hair lumbered out of the room. He was shorter than Rose and Stella, nearly round in diameter. His cardigan sweater had leather patches, professor style, and beneath it a striped shirt stretched tight over his belly. A thick gold chain was nearly hidden in the folds of his chin.
“About time you got here, Stella, m’girl,” Mario said, but with undisguised affection in his voice for his niece. He followed his comment with a robust chuckle. “Now tell me who we have here.” He lifted his furry eyebrows and smiled at Rose with rheumy eyes, wiping one of them with a large white handkerchief.
Rose guessed he had more hair in his eyebrows than on his head. Caterpillar brows. The thought made her smile. As did Uncle Mario. While Stella did the introductions, Rose moved mentally from thinking about his eyebrows to replaying several scenes from The Godfather, sure that she had seen Uncle Mario in one of them.
Mario held out his square hand, two giant diamond rings blinking in the sunlight. He started to welcome Rose with a handshake, but midway through changed his mind and wrapped her in a hug instead, then a kiss on each cheek that required him to tip up his chin since Rose was taller than he by an inch or two.
“Thatsa how we do it in Sicily.” He grinned, pulling away. “My Stell says you’re gonna be working for us, making us millions, she says.” He winked and gave her a wide smile.
Rose suspected the nip of bourbon had been underestimated. But she liked Uncle Mario and grinned back.
And then without a good-bye, the owner of the firm was gone, lumbering through the front office door and making his way down the narrow flight of stairs. His footsteps echoed loudly.
Stella walked out after him, watching from the top of the stairwell to make sure he made it safely down. “He’s probably going down to Harry Garozzo’s deli or to chew the fat with Gus next door,” she said, walking back inside and closing the door. “They watch out for each other. My mother watches out for him, too, but the rest of the family has pretty much disowned the old guy. He’s harmless, though, and has a heart as big as that huge belly of his. Besides, he lets me do anything I want, including taking over the books. I insisted on it and I don’t think he even notices that some of the huge chunks of money that used to pass through here from suspicious sources aren’t coming in anymore. The family’s hope is that I can keep him out of jail. Uncle Mario hasn’t always kept the most accurate books, if you know what I mean.”
Rose listened with half an ear. Stella was kind. And caring. And she liked Uncle Mario. That’s all she really needed to know.
Stella’s cell phone rang—or rather the mellow refrain from “Take Me Home” rang out, sending Stella rummaging through a large purse on her desktop. She nodded into the phone, as if the caller could feel her enthusiasm, and promised that she was “on it.”
A muffled noise from the other side of the office wall muted the end of the call and Stella hung up.
“Geesh, what was that?”
Several thumps and rising voices began to pour through the wall from the other side.
“That’s Robbie’s apartment.” Stella frowned.
The voices grew louder and louder, until Stella considered knocking on the wall, quieting them down. Though the words weren’t clear, she recognized Gus’s voice, calm at first, then Robbie’s—rising higher and higher until he was screaming at his father. Loud, awful words that brought both women back to their desks, as if distance would keep them from hearing the anguished, angry deluge of words passing between father and son. Most of it was said with such fury they could barely decipher the words, only the anger that carried them. Liar rose up above the others, then settled back down.
And then it stopped. A door slammed, loud enough to rattle the books on Stella’s shelf. And a pounding of footsteps on the back outdo
or staircase indicated someone was leaving.
Stella and Rose stared at each other.
“I’m sorry you heard that,” Stella said.
“I hope they’re all right.”
“Gus is a nice man. He’s a long-time friend of Uncle Mario’s. And Robbie is usually quiet. In fact he rarely talks. I hardly ever see him. I doubt if we’ll hear anything like that again.”
“Maybe it’s one of those parent-son things,” Rose said, although she couldn’t imagine in a million years talking to either of her parents like that when they were alive.
“Well, they’re gone now,” Stella said, grabbing her purse from the back of the chair. “Let us be gone, too.”
* * *
In minutes the two partners, as Stella was already calling them, were heading down Harbor Road in Stella’s SUV, the back filled with FOR SALE signs, moving out of the commercial areas and into neighborhoods marked by treed yards, large homes, and the sound of the sea. Between the gates and narrow paths between properties, Rose caught bright blue glimpses of the ocean and the magnificent sky above it.
“I have one listing out this way and if I could sell it, we’d be set for the rest of the year,” Stella said. “Our lives, maybe. It’s where we’re headed.”
“These are incredible homes,” Rose said. “Mansions. I can’t imagine living in them, though.”
“Me either,” Stella said. She slowed down and clicked a gate opener on her visor, then turned into a wide cobblestone drive. “My criterion for a house has always been that I wouldn’t be afraid to babysit in it. None of these fit the bill, but they sure are beautiful.” She turned off the engine and they sat for a minute, looking through the car windows at the house.
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