“That doesn’t make sense,” Nell said. “Look at the page before it. There are plenty of awards, plenty of large pictures of happy kids in their moments of glory.”
They were silent for a moment. And then Birdie wondered aloud. “The Paxton family was powerful and it was unacceptable for Spencer to be less than perfect. I wonder if this was manipulated somehow.”
Izzy picked up on the thought. “Sure, it’s a high school yearbook and a puny younger kid who wasn’t even a real student in the school, and a girl no less, won the competition that Spence had lost. So they buried it.”
Cass flipped to the list of yearbook staff in the back and pointed to the activities editor. Spencer Paxton. She shuddered.
“I think we need to concentrate on something we’ve glossed over,” Izzy said. “People like Spencer don’t just bully once, and they don’t just do it to one person. Rosie left Sea Harbor High a year later, after her freshman year, but I don’t think her leaving town would have changed who Spencer was.”
“So we need to look for others who might have been targeted,” Cass said.
But how much can we learn from photos in a yearbook? Nell wondered. “I wonder how the other girl in the competition fared. Rose left a year later, but the other girl might still have been there.”
“I asked Rose about her. She couldn’t remember much, except that she was nice,” Birdie said. “And this photo isn’t telling us anything.”
But they continued to look, paging through and moving on to the next book.
Izzy dug through the second box that held earlier books, the grade school and middle school annuals, thinner and flimsy. “I wonder . . .” she said, and then stopped talking and started looking.
Nell checked a text from Ben. “The sailors have landed,” she said. “They’ll be by shortly to give rides to the needy.”
They looked at the boxes and the books and then back at Izzy’s diagram. And then the article from the Gazette. They’d only begun.
Moments later Nell heard the cars outside and took the article and Izzy’s diagram off the table, tucking it back inside a folder. Later she wondered why she’d done that. It had been instinctive. Like a puzzle that was being solved, but until a few more dots were connected, showing it would be premature.
Possibly wrong. Possibly dangerous.
Ben walked in and stopped just long enough to tell them that Danny and Sam were waiting in the drive. Danny was taking Birdie home, too.
And he was heading for the shower.
Cass put the books back into one of the boxes and set it next to Nell’s bookcase. “To be continued,” she said, and Nell nodded.
Izzy was still sitting on the floor, the middle school annual in her lap, ignoring the activity around her. When she looked up, her eyes were huge.
“What?” They gathered around.
“The high school didn’t make much of Rosie’s math win, probably like we guessed—because she wasn’t a student in the school and was only in the Math Olympiad competition because she excelled at math. That and Spencer Paxton wanting it buried. But Rosie was still in middle school then. And her middle school teachers were very proud of her accomplishments.”
“And?” Cass asked.
“And they didn’t ignore it.” Izzy flattened the page in the middle school annual and they all gathered around her, looking down at the activities page. The Math Olympiad event took up half of a page, including a short description of their own student, Rose Woodley, winning a high school competition, and a photo of Rosie with the two high school finalists, the trophy held high in the air by the two young women who had defeated Spencer Paxton.
Three young people. And they knew each one of them.
Chapter 31
“You like him,” Nell said. She was sitting on the Artist’s Palate deck with Jane Brewster, cofounder of Canary Cove Art Colony, but the conversation wasn’t about the art colony. Nor was it completely comfortable.
“Yes, I like Josh very much.”
“Do you think he’s honest?”
“How can I judge that, Nell? We believe our friends. But sometimes even they feel compelled to shade the truth for whatever reason. It happens.”
Jane was Nell’s oldest friend in Sea Harbor, and speaking frankly was an integral part of their relationship. Even though sometimes it led to disagreements. Today was bordering on that.
“Rose thought she saw Josh outside the Bianchi’s home the night Spencer was killed.”
“Thought,” Jane said.
Nell acknowledged that was true, and also Rose’s coating her statement with descriptives that nearly disqualified it from being taken seriously: it was dark, he had a helmet on, she didn’t really see his face, only his hair. And more.
“Neither he nor Bree had an alibi for that night,” Nell said. And then she shared with her good friend that she’d seen the couple together at the Beauport, checking in for the night.
Jane’s expression didn’t change.
Nell could tell she wasn’t surprised.
“What they do isn’t our business,” Nell said. “But getting to the bottom of Spencer’s murder is our concern, all of us, especially when innocent people like Rose and Beatrice are living under a shadow.”
Merry walked over and refreshed their coffee, then walked on. Nell watched her walk away and thought about the restaurant owner’s own dislike of Spencer’s company. People had overheard Merry speaking in strong terms about anyone trying to alter the small artists’ colony that was their home. And Izzy and Cass had seen Merry almost attack Spencer Paxton.
Nell shook her head. Even in death the man was upsetting Nell’s town. And she wanted it over.
“Yes,” Jane said, bringing Nell back on topic. “You’re right. Someone killed Spencer Paxton. And we’re all floating suspicions all over the place.”
A shadow fell across the table and they looked up.
Josh Babson and Bree McIntosh stood hand in hand, their faces solemn.
“We just came to grab coffee, but we saw you two over here,” Josh began. “From the expressions on your faces, we figured what you were talking about.”
“Would you like to sit?” Nell asked.
Josh checked his watch. Then nodded and straddled the picnic bench. Bree sat close beside him.
Merry spotted them immediately and came back with coffee, then patted Josh on the back as if offering some kind of comfort.
He looked at Jane. “I wanted to talk to you anyway, so I was glad when I saw you here. You’re like, I don’t know—you and Ham are real important to me,” he said. “I’d never deceive you or put you in a bad spot. Never. You know that, right?”
Jane managed a smile, although neither she nor Nell liked the serious look on Josh’s face.
He rested his arms on the table, his large hands playing with one another. “The chief has requested my presence again,” Josh said. He smiled, attempting to make it light. “Bree and I are headed over there shortly.”
Nell tried to read their faces. Her breathing stopped for a minute. No matter how overwhelmingly she wanted this over with and wanted Rose and others to be able to walk freely through this town, she didn’t want this.
Josh looked over at her. “I talked to Ben late last night. He gave me good advice.”
Nell hadn’t known. Dear Ben. When things were confidential, Ben kept them that way.
Bree was silent, but her eyes hadn’t left Josh’s face.
“I went out for a bike ride that night. The night he was killed. The police know that. But I rode over to the Bianchi house for a reason. Bree told me she was meeting Spencer over there, and I couldn’t get it out of my head that the guy might hurt her. It just took over everything. So I went, to make sure he didn’t, to get her out of there. I hated the guy. And when you hate someone, it makes you think bad things. When I got there I saw that Bree’s car was gone and I was relieved. Then I spotted Rose walking along the sidewalk, so I rode away from her, down the block and in between a couple
parked cars. But as Bree knows, I didn’t go back home. She knows that because she was there at my house, waiting for me. For hours. She was there when the police went looking for her at her own house to tell her that Paxton had been killed—but of course they couldn’t find her. And she was still at my house when I finally came back in the wee hours of the morning.”
He paused and swallowed a long drink of coffee.
“Clearly I didn’t share all that with the police, nor did Bree. She was trying to protect me. And herself, too. An affair before the guy gets murdered? It doesn’t look good, does it?”
“It’s not an affair,” Bree said quietly. “Josh and I fell in love a long time ago. Maybe another life, who knows? But for sure when Canary Cove adopted me months ago and I met this fine man—and fell in love with him.”
Josh let her speak but didn’t look her way, and when she finished, he continued.
“Janie, I see the worry on your face. But here’s the truth. I didn’t kill Paxton. I didn’t touch a hair on his head. Didn’t knock him out. But I wanted to. I saw the lights on in the Bianchi place so I figured he was still there. And I had a key—Bree’s key. But what I did instead was force myself away from that place. I thought of you and Ham, and this town, and mostly of Bree. So I got on my bike and I rode the darn thing around the whole coastline of Cape Ann—twice. I pedaled my way through Rockport, Annisquam, along the back shore in Gloucester, you name it. Until I finally exhausted all those bad, hateful feelings, and I went back home. To Bree.”
And somehow, during Josh Babson’s long ride, Spencer Paxton was murdered.
A nor’easter of relief passed through Nell, surprising her in its intensity. But after another drink of Merry’s strong coffee, she realized why Bree and Josh weren’t celebrating.
They were innocent, and would reveal everything to the police. But in so doing, they were handing Chief Jerry Thompson a scenario that revealed an earlier lie, a powerful motive, a bike rider out in the middle of the night, and a couple desperately wanting to go on with their life.
She thought briefly of Izzy’s Venn diagram and the multiple circles with which Josh’s circle was now intersecting.
It was messy indeed.
* * *
The thought had come to Cass in the middle of the night. Fortunately for those whose friendships she valued, she had waited until morning to share it. The text she sent out suggested they meet her at Coffee’s.
Cass had bought a plate of cinnamon rolls, several rolls already gone before the others crowded into the booth, cradling large mugs of strong coffee.
“It’s this thing about someone breaking into Stella’s office,” Cass said. “It kept niggling at me last night, maybe because we hadn’t been able to connect it to anyone or anything on that chart of Izzy’s. It was just floating around by itself. Nothing was stolen. Why not?”
Izzy was nodding. It had bothered her, too. It didn’t fit.
“When did that break-in happen?” Birdie asked.
They all thought back. In memory and on cell phone calendars, in random texts.
Izzy spoke up first. “We’re all in a time warp. This murder has done something to our minds. The break-in was just a few days ago. It was Friday night while we were at your house, Aunt Nell. Jerry got a call, remember?”
“Of course.” Nell shook off the feeling Izzy had just described. They were definitely out of sync with whatever time the world was using. “Ben and I went over to the realty office Saturday morning. Stella was perplexed because nothing was gone. The office was a mess.”
“Nothing was missing except the yearbooks,” Cass said.
“The yearbooks,” Birdie repeated. “Yes, they were there a couple days before that when Rose and I went over and found Stella looking through them. Gus had cluttered the office with lots of things.”
“And then they were gone,” Cass said. “Stella said she had tossed them in her car later that day just to get them out of the way.”
“Who would want those old yearbooks?” Nell said.
“That’s the question,” Cass said. “Maybe someone who is also trying to figure out what happened to Spencer Paxton.”
“Or someone who knows what happened to him,” Birdie said quietly.
“We need to look at them again with that in mind,” Izzy said. She checked her phone calendar again. “My afternoon class is canceled. I can be out of the shop by three or four.” She looked around at the others.
The time was good for everyone, and in minutes they’d finished their coffee and moved out of the crowded coffee shop and into the start of a new week. A productive week, they hoped. And if they looked long enough and hard enough in a pile of dusty old yearbooks, they would find the answer to a murder.
Nell was sure of it. Or at least she wanted desperately to be.
* * *
Nell had a half hour before her library board meeting. She had planned to skip it, but remembered that Harriet Brandley would be there. Like Cass, she had been bothered the night before, too. A different question. The same murder. And maybe Harriet would be able to shed some light on it.
She walked down Harbor Road, away from Coffee’s and toward the harbor pier. The wind was bracing enough to bring color to her cheeks, warm enough to be pleasurable. And the double jolts of coffee she had already consumed that day added some pep to her step.
She crossed the street on impulse, realizing she had little in her refrigerator and she hadn’t been in the new cheese shop that had opened next door to Garozzo’s Deli. One thing she knew for certain was that searching for a murderer in old yearbooks could be made more pleasurable with cheese and a glass of wine.
“Nellie!” Harry’s bombastic greeting seemed to come from nowhere, until the baker followed his voice out of the deli, his arms stretched wide.
“Harry,” Nell replied, happy today for the hug, even if it left some tomato sauce in its wake.
“So how are we doing?” His face grew serious.
“We’re fine, Harry. And you and Margaret?”
Harry glanced over his shoulder, then looked back to Nell. “I’m hearing bad things, Nellie.”
Nell frowned. “About the Paxton murder?”
“It’s moving so slow that it has people worried. Thinking that maybe our mayor might have had something to do with it. And there’s talk that the Canary Cove group had it in for Paxton, too.” He looked over his shoulder once more, then up and down the street. “And that pretty wife of his?” Harry nodded his head slowly. And then he said to Nell in a hushed voice, “That poor little thing is being talked about from the ladies’ bridge club that meets in here to you-name-it. An affair, some say.”
“Oh, Harry,” Nell said.
“I know, I know”—he held up his large hands in dismay—“she’s a sweetheart. Quiet and shy but with a big heart. Margaret says she helps her take all our extra deli food to the shelters. That little thing, no bigger than a fly, but always there to help. And Margaret says the next time the bridge club meets here in the deli and says a word about her, there’re getting something in their chowder they didn’t ask for.”
Nell laughed at the thought of big, generous Margaret standing up to Sea Harbor’s premium bridge club. “I’m with you and Margaret on this one. We have no business prying into people’s bedrooms, and I happen to like Bree McIntosh, too.”
“People are all talking about our special tree-house space, ever since that reporter snuck in and took a picture of it. I suppose we’re sort of famous.”
“I haven’t seen the room,” Nell said, relieved to have moved on from the subject of Bree. “But I hear it was the best of the best. Izzy says it had the same vibe as our knitting room. A place for good friends to be together.”
Harry nodded, his face reflecting exactly that. A place for good friends.
Nell usually loved Harry’s stories but suspected today he was about to launch into ones that might make her miss the library board meeting after all.
He surprised her. In
stead he simply said, “We were at our best when we were together.”
And then he got a twinkle in his eye and added, “And old Anthony—with Gus’s help a’course—made it easy. Anytime. Any night. Our tree house welcomed us. And if Anthony was off to Sicily or somewhere, we were still welcome. It was our haven.”
Nell frowned. “So you all had keys to the elevator? To the house? I can’t imagine Anthony’s wife liked that very much.”
“Keys? Mirabella?” Harry laughed so hard he had to put one square hand on Nell’s shoulder to steady himself. This time a look over his shoulder wasn’t enough to be sure no one was listening.
He pulled Nell over to the side of the store and whispered his sacred secret to her, one the Tree House Four had solemnly kept from Mirabella, Anthony’s finicky little wife, for nigh onto forty years.
* * *
Nell was late. She snuck in the back door just as the treasurer was finishing up the business report. She found a chair against the wall and looked around, finding Harriet Brandley immediately. Danny’s mother was sitting near the front, taking dutiful notes and listening carefully.
More carefully than she was, Nell chided herself. The day wasn’t half over and her mind was nearly full to capacity. She forced herself back to attention, and kept her mind on fund-raising events, activities at the library, and a new project they were initiating to bring authors in to speak.
The meeting was organized, without controversy, and ended early. She was seeing and feeling good omens everywhere today. And this was another one, confirming that indeed, things were coming together.
“Nell, hello,” Harriet said, coming over and sitting down in the empty seat next to her. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”
Nell smiled into Harriet’s intelligent eyes. “We must be keyed into one another. I’ve been wanting to see you, too. How is Archie?”
How to Knit a Murder Page 24