How to Knit a Murder

by Sally Goldenbaum

  No one knew.

  “Bree said he didn’t know much about computers,” Izzy said.

  “But he knew someone who did.” Cass finished topping off the wineglasses and sat down next to Nell, allowing her comment to settle. She looked around, reading their thoughts.

  Of course. Robbie McGlucken, who had finally landed his dream job.

  “I had forgotten about Robbie. This must be upsetting for him,” Birdie said.

  “He moved out of his apartment recently,” Izzy said.

  “Gus said it was his way of letting his old man know he could do it on his own.” Birdie stopped, remembering the conversation. And then she added, “But he said it in a peculiar way. The way a father who had had a disagreement with his son might say it. Not pleasantly. But no matter, Robbie liked working with Spencer. Apparently Spence told him that if he helped him win the mayor’s race, he’d go places. The sky was the limit. Robbie was thrilled.”

  “Okay, back to business,” Izzy said, shifting attention to finding a murderer. “Motives. Rose. Beatrice. Merry. Dozens of people could attest to Merry’s and Beatrice’s wrath. They didn’t hide it.” She took a deep breath and added another name. “Bree.”

  Bree McIntosh.

  “You’re right,” Birdie said. “Of course. The spouse—”

  Nell nodded. How difficult it was to be probing into the psyche and lives of people they genuinely liked, sticking pins into them. She shuddered.

  “Bree wasn’t in love with him, she’s told us that much,” Birdie said.

  “But she knew there was an end to the marriage—and it wasn’t too far in the future,” Izzy said. “Soon she’d be free of an uncomfortable marriage, so why do something that could put her in prison?”

  But the awful image of the geese lying dead in the road came back to all of them. Had Spencer pushed the button that made things crumble for Bree one too many times?

  Birdie took a drink of her wine and set it down. “Bree admitted she was there that night.”

  “But she left after they argued,” Nell said.

  “She could have come back,” Cass said. “Or just parked down the street and waited.”

  Izzy pulled her blanket up and cuddled into its warmth. “I like Bree,” she said.

  “But you like Beatrice, Merry, and Rose, too. And you’re a lawyer. You know emotions don’t count diddly-squat,” Cass said.

  “Ex-lawyer,” Izzy said. “But you’re right. Emotions, go away.”

  “We know Bree had a key to the Bianchi house, she showed it to us,” Nell said.

  They were all imagining Bree in their heads. A fragile-looking beauty—but that was deceptive. In the short time they had known her they had come to appreciate her strength, both physically and emotional.

  “I don’t think she’d have brought our attention to the keys if she had used them to go into a house to kill her husband,” Izzy said. “Which makes me wonder about Beatrice. How would she have gotten in?”

  “Beatrice has ways to do almost anything she sets her mind to. I have come home to find her in my living room several times,” said Birdie.

  Nell laughed. “That’s true. And Stella had a number of keys to the house. Beatrice could have gotten one. So motive and means.”

  “And then there’s Merry, suspecting Spencer—or his company at least—might have had plans for Canary Cove and letting him know he shouldn’t even think about it. Not ever,” Izzy said. “She was a firecracker that night on the deck of the Artist’s Palate.” She got up from the chair and headed toward the deck door.

  “Merry?” Cass said. Merry Jackson had adopted all of Canary Cove as her next of kin. Although younger than most of the artists, she took care of them, pumping them full of organic vegetables and awful-looking juice drinks. But most of all, to Cass, Merry was a caretaker, watching over Cass’s own husband, Danny, when he camped out on the Artist’s Palate’s deck, writing a book, forgetting to eat or drink or go home when the lights dimmed. Merry fed him, called Cass to come get him when he fell asleep on the picnic table, or when it was late or starting to rain and he hadn’t noticed.

  Cass was forever beholden to the small blonde restaurant owner. She knew Merry could never kill anyone or anything, not even the irritating flies that attacked their fries on warm summer nights.

  “No, not Merry,” Cass said.

  Birdie and Nell looked at her. “We like her too, Cass,” Birdie said.

  “Okay. So she had motive. But—”

  “The Artist’s Palate is closed on Sunday night,” Birdie said. “She wouldn’t have been at work. She wouldn’t have that as an alibi.”

  “I’m sure she’s shared that with the police. Ben said she’d talked to them. She was proactive. She also must have known her flareup with Spencer was seen by dozens of people.”

  “Smart, but unfortunately being proactive doesn’t prove innocence. So she’s probably still on a list. A lineup. A lineup of women,” Izzy said from the doorway. She carried out a thermos of coffee. “That’s what we have.”

  “They are all good women,” Nell said.

  “Good women,” Birdie said. “Do good women . . . do bad things?”

  Do they?

  The thought floated around the deck, cushioned by the sea breeze, waxing and waning like the moon.

  Chapter 20

  Nell glanced at Izzy’s name on her cell phone and picked it up, setting her coffee mug down next to the morning paper.

  “Bree’s lecture on fiber art is going to be crowded today,” Izzy began without a greeting. “Could you and Birdie come to help? Or just hang out if we don’t need help. Or just be here? I need you with me, selfish beast that I am. Cass is working out a computer glitch on a lobster boat or she’d come, too. I know she would.”

  Although the classes Bree taught before Spencer’s death had been well attended, this one—advertised as a talk, not a class—was suddenly an “attraction.” “People are curious,” Izzy said. “They want to come to see who Bree is. I hate for her to be put on display like this. And the articles in the paper haven’t helped.”

  The Sea Harbor Gazette had penned a lengthy article the day before, answering its own headline: WHO WAS SPENCER PAXTON? in some detail. And they had spared Bree little privacy, including a photo they had unearthed from somewhere, a photo of a ravishing woman in a wedding dress, walking down a church aisle on the arm of a man now dead.

  “Few people even knew who she was or that she was married to Spencer before all this happened,” Izzy said. “Now everyone knows and everyone wants to come and see for themselves who she is. Mae said someone in Shaw’s Market actually referred to her as the ‘Black Widow,’ can you believe it?”

  Nell was appalled and had passed the news along to Ben, hoping they could do something to stop such garbage, but neither of them had any idea what that would be. Subtly the article had pointed out something they couldn’t argue about: Bree’s alibi that evening was very thin. And she seemed indifferent to strengthening it.

  “I said I’d cancel the talk or do it myself, rather than put her through it, but she insisted on going ahead. Maybe because she knows she is much better at it than I am. Or maybe because she’s strong and what others think doesn’t matter to her. It’s who you are that matters. That’s what I’m going for—and what I will teach my Abby.”

  “Or maybe she wants to simply get it over with. Gawkers can come and gawk, and then leave her alone. It’s rude, sure, but sometimes life is like that,” Nell said.

  “Maybe. But anyway, I’m just relieved that reporter didn’t know more about her marriage, or where it was headed.”

  Nell hung up, feeling Izzy’s strong need to protect Bree. She and Birdie would go to the shop and help out if needed. But mostly, she suspected, they’d simply be there. If nothing else, they could provide friendly, comfortable faces for Bree to look at as she spoke. She and Birdie were bad at gawking. And perhaps they could provide some assurance to Bree that she wasn’t alone in the mess that she w
as working her way through.

  They had all left Izzy’s deck the night before with more questions than answers, along with an uncomfortable feeling that any resolution to Spencer Paxton’s murder wasn’t going to be a good one.

  Nell had shared the same feeling with Ben when she got home. He’d been waiting up for her, as if he hadn’t seen her for days. It had felt that way to Nell, too. There was too much happening around them, and they were neglecting the together time they both deemed sacred.

  So they’d gone upstairs, wrapped themselves in robes and blankets, and sat out on the balcony off their bedroom, a small heater at their feet and their hands cupping mugs of spiced chamomile tea. Surrounded by darkness, their bodies pressed close, they had talked deep into the night.

  Nell told Ben about Bree’s sad marriage, the marriage plan Spencer was holding her to. And the hateful honeymoon incident.

  Ben had listened with compassion, but his voice became practical when he talked about what that story would mean to someone examining the Paxton murder. “Even though Bree could see an end to the marriage, was there more there that she hadn’t shared with you? What were the days and nights like? What went on behind closed doors?”

  That was true enough—they didn’t know everything about Bree and Spencer’s marriage. And what they didn’t know could be important. Who knew what Bree went through, or what a man who nonchalantly killed innocent birds was capable of?

  Could the thought of living even months more of whatever the marriage held be more than Bree could stand? Had something pushed her to the brink?

  * * *

  Nell replayed the late-night conversation in her head as she walked into the yarn shop before Bree’s class. Birdie was already there, waiting in the main room of the shop, holding a newspaper in her hand.

  “Poor, dear Bree,” Birdie said, flapping the folded paper in the air. “And our Beatrice didn’t fare much better.”

  Nell had already seen it. Another article. In a bulleted list the reporter had written what was known so far in the investigation, listing things that left readers free to conjure up all kinds of dire scenarios on their own. It reminded her of the books her nephews and niece used to read out on the Kansas ranch when they were young: Choose Your Own Adventure. The thought made her cringe; having her friends tried in a court of public opinion wasn’t acceptable.

  Beneath the bullet that mentioned Spencer Paxton’s plans to run for mayor, the reporter had added a note about a mysterious e-newsletter that had “shamefully denigrated our own mayor”—a detail that sent anyone who hadn’t seen the string of articles back to their computers to look them up.

  “Awful stuff,” Nell agreed, and Birdie promptly dropped her newspaper into a wastebasket next to the checkout counter. “I may finally cancel my subscription.”

  Mae looked up from behind the computer. “Mary Pisano’d have your hide, Birdie.”

  Birdie laughed. Mae was right. The columnist’s uncles and cousins and siblings owned newspapers up and down the shore—and Mary would surely object if she lessened the subscription list in this Internet age. But not because of the Pisano family’s newspapers—Mary liked Birdie far more than she liked her relatives. She’d only be upset because it meant Birdie wouldn’t be reading Mary’s own “About Town” column.

  “Speaking of our good mayor, she’s here,” Mae said, nodding toward the steps. “She’s not her usual Chatty Cathy self. You might want to take her a smile or two.”

  “Izzy mentioned that she was coming,” Nell said as she and Birdie walked through the archway to the knitting room. “And we know it’s not to learn how to create yarn art.”

  Birdie chuckled. Even though Beatrice couldn’t knit and wasn’t interested in learning, she faked it beautifully by buying yarn whenever she was in the shop, picking out the softest and brightest colors. Mae suspected she had the largest collection of needles in Sea Harbor. Pristine needles, never warmed by a row of knit or purl stitches or polished by the touch and rub of fingers.

  They knew the real reason Beatrice had come. It was why she often came to classes and talks in the shop’s back room: to listen to conversation that always circulated around the room, to hear people’s concerns and issues and fears, something the knitters who gathered in Izzy’s shop dispensed copiously. It made her a more fully informed mayor, she believed.

  “She’s brave to come today,” Birdie said. “And probably smart. The mayor in control. That’s what her constituents need to see. Not someone who attacked a now-dead man on the yacht club steps.”

  Although none of them had seen anyone with a phone out during the altercation that day, someone had managed to snap a photo of it, a photo that subsequently appeared in the cryptic online newsletter.

  The back room was already crowded with people sitting on plump floor cushions and around the old library table, and on folding chairs against the bookshelf. A few early birds enjoyed the comfortable chairs around the fireplace.

  Bree stood on a small wooden platform that Rose had put together for her. Her back was to the alley wall, and a small table holding baskets of yarn was in front of her. She wore old jeans and a T-shirt, her hair pulled back by a giant comb, strands pulling loose and unnoticed.

  Birdie and Nell sat on the window seat, marveling at Bree’s attempt to make herself ordinary and plain and invisible. She had failed completely.

  “Do you see Beatrice?” Birdie whispered as Izzy stood and quieted the group, introducing Bree McIntosh as the incredibly talented artist who had designed the yarn shop window and whose art would be featured in the Canary Cove fiber show.

  Nell straightened her back and looked around, finally spotting the mayor on the opposite side of the room. Beatrice looked over at them at the same time, relief showing on her face. She mouthed that she would see them after the lecture, then put a smile in place, and turned toward a screen on which Bree was running a video demonstrating certain yarn-art techniques.

  The lecture went well, and the questions asked were courteous. The only thing that Nell took notice of as being out of place were two women who came up to Bree and insisted on taking selfies with her. Bree was clearly uncomfortable with it but rather than make a scene, she looked into the camera, then escaped quickly and came over to Nell and Birdie.

  “You were very gracious,” Birdie said.

  “I kept thinking, are they doing this because they think I killed my husband and they would have some weird sort of bragging rights with the photo?”

  “They wanted it because they know you will one day be a famous artist, and they will have legitimate bragging rights with their photo,” Nell said.

  “It’s okay either way. I’m okay. I didn’t kill him, although I often wanted to.”

  Beatrice Scaglia had walked up behind them, catching the end of Bree’s comment. “Nor did I,” she said. Then added, “Though I wanted to.”

  Bree turned around. “You’re Mayor Scaglia,” she said. And then emotion flooded her face. “I am so very, very sorry for what he tried to do to you,” she said. “When I found out he was planning to be mayor, I didn’t think beyond it. I didn’t put real people behind what he would do to get what he wanted. I should have. He . . . he would have done everything he could to beat you.”

  Beatrice was still. Then she nodded. “Yes, I knew that. He already had made my life sad, and difficult in some ways, and it would only have gotten worse.”

  Her voice was courteous, but chilly. It would be a while before Beatrice would warm to anyone who had been connected to Spencer Paxton, even someone else who disliked him. Nell wondered briefly who else was on her list.

  “I have a question for you,” Beatrice said, her voice slightly softer, but not much.

  Bree braced herself.

  “Was he responsible for that hateful newsletter that was emailed to my constituents? The one meant to destroy me?”

  The awful newsletter. Nell had searched her computer the last few days and couldn’t find it in her inbox. Not since a
round the time Spencer Paxton died. It seemed to have been killed along with him.

  Bree shook her head no. “I heard about the email from a friend who found it in his inbox with the attachment. I hadn’t seen it before that. Spencer was handicapped when it came to computers. He was capable of doing other things to hurt people, but he knew little about computers. I know more than he does.”

  Nell looked at Beatrice, wondering if she would take it any further.

  But Beatrice was unfazed. “No matter who pushed the buttons, your husband was responsible for it,” she said, with utter conviction.

  Nell stepped to her side. “Beatrice, I think it’s all over. People know you. It’s over. They will forget.”

  “Yes,” Beatrice said, her face emotionless. “They will. The evil among us is gone.”

  The tone of Beatrice’s voice surprised them. Birdie and Nell looked at each other. It wouldn’t have surprised them if Beatrice suddenly started reciting Bible verses, something very uncharacteristic of Sea Harbor’s mayor.

  But she stopped short of that, put her smile back in place and with a quick embrace of her two friends, she turned and wandered back among the women milling around in small groups, discussing their lives, their children, day care problems. Now and then, an issue being discussed would cause Beatrice to pause and listen more closely—a safety concern near a stop sign or controlling gulls on the streets or school bus problems or graffiti and needles in the village green. Those concerns the mayor would dutifully commit to memory to bring up with her assistant, or the police chief, the city council or school board—wherever it could be appropriately addressed.

  “Mayor mode,” Birdie said to Nell.

  But Nell noticed something different in the mayor’s smile. It was dull, injured. Nell felt a pang that was strong enough to make her look away from Beatrice, not wanting to intrude on her private pain.

  Beside her, Birdie was looking around, over heads and around bodies. “Did Bree leave?”

  Nell hadn’t seen her leave either. She walked up the steps to scan the shop and spotted the artist’s platinum head hurrying toward the front door. Bree had abandoned the comb holding her hair in place and it floated as she moved, catching the sunlight.