Angora Alibi

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “So,” Cass said, “he was killed, not because he knew whatever it was Justin knew, but because he knew who killed Justin.”

  “I’m sure of it,” Nell said. “It feels right.” She looked down at the cable, as if it somehow had the missing stitches, the pieces that would complete the picture, hidden in its twisted shape.

  “I have to go out on the Lady Lobster today,” Cass said. “But let’s meet back here later, or maybe I can make it back for your appointment, Iz. I’d love to hear that little bruiser—as well as other things.”

  Izzy nodded. She glanced down at a half-completed intarsia sweater lying on the table. The loose ends, not yet woven in, stuck out from the sides randomly. “I think we’re getting closer. But it’s still a little bit like this sweater. We need to weave the ends in.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Nell said. “I think it’s important.”

  Cass was headed for the door. She stopped.

  “It’s Tyler Gibson.”

  They all looked at Nell.

  “I’ve been piecing conversation snippets together, and Tyler has been a piece of this puzzle from the beginning.”

  “Because he got mixed up in Justin’s crazy scheme,” Cass said. “We know that, but it didn’t have anything to do with Justin’s murder.”

  “That’s right. But maybe something else did.”

  Cass nodded, as if she had entertained similar thoughts but wasn’t sure how to fit them into the puzzle. She walked back to the table and listened while Nell refreshed their memories, lining up pieces of conversations they’d all been privy to over the weeks. They lay there in front of them like pieces of yarn, ready to be stitched into the whole.

  For a minute no one said anything. All they could hear were silent chunks of a puzzle falling into place.

  Birdie broke their trance. She stood up briskly, wiping crumbs from the table with a napkin. “Murder is awful, plain and simple. No matter who, no matter when or where. But an unsolved murder, a murderer walking casually around our town, is worse. I think we are about to stop the madness.”

  She looked across the table. “Now, Izzy, we’ll pick you up for your appointment this afternoon. Does that work?”

  • • •

  By the time Birdie and Nell left the yarn shop, Mae was unlocking doors and opening windows, and Harbor Road was waking up to a sunny day. The two women turned south and headed to Coffee’s. Although they had often tried to teach Izzy, she still made abominable coffee.

  “I need a dark roast,” Birdie said, and Nell agreed. In addition, Coffee’s was the first place they needed to go to tie up a loose end.

  Mary Pisano wasn’t on the patio with her computer yet, a good thing. The loose ends that might target a murderer were still dangling too freely to be shared, too loose to be believed. They walked into the coffee shop.

  Tyler Gibson was two people in front of them in line, just as they hoped he would be. Monday-morning regulars were just that. Tyler hadn’t failed them.

  They watched him go to a table in the back, then picked up their own cups and followed him.

  Kevin was there, his cup half-empty.

  The two men looked up, surprised to see they had company.

  “May we sit down?” Birdie asked, then pulled out a chair and settled in it, her coffee cup in front of her.

  “What’s up?” Tyler asked.

  “Tyler,” Birdie began, “did you kill Justin Dorsey?”

  Tyler’s face went white. “No, no, I didn’t kill anybody. Ever.”

  “Good, I didn’t think so. And see that you don’t.” She smiled at him.

  Nell leaned forward on the table, her hands wrapped around her coffee mug. “Tyler, you told us the other day—and, Kevin, I think you concurred—that you weren’t a close friend of Justin’s. But you hung around on the beach, parties, that sort of thing. And then there was the—how shall I say it?—‘transaction’ you had over that car seat. Is that right?”

  Tyler didn’t answer, but his expression had quickly gone from relieved to suspicious.

  “What I’m wondering,” Nell said, pulling the monogrammed belt from her purse, “is how this ended up at Mrs. Bridge’s boardinghouse in Justin’s room.” She stretched it out on the table.

  Tyler stared at the belt, and then hung his head. Finally he looked up. “Jeez, I’m a screwup, aren’t I?”

  “But a very sweet one,” Birdie said. She patted his hand.

  Tyler fingered the monogrammed buckle. “I wondered where it went. It’s been missing for a while.”

  “A couple months is what we figured. Your early days back home.”

  He nodded. “Sounds right. Like I said, Justin was a friendly guy, very accommodating. But mostly he was interested in making a quick buck.”

  “So he let people, as Mrs. Bridge put it, ‘use’ his room?” Nell said.

  “I believe she called it a rendezvous,” Birdie said.

  “Or, as your grandmother would say, a ‘dalliance.’”

  Kevin got up and told Tyler to be on time for work. He was off to the Ocean’s Edge. “No dallying for me,” he said, laughing again at his bartender’s foibles.

  When he was gone, Tyler groaned. “Okay,” he said. “It wasn’t the greatest move I ever made, but I didn’t know that till later. At the time, I thought it might be something real—I hadn’t lived here for a few years and I didn’t know any of the new people. Especially . . . well. Anyway, I was gullible, I guess. But it’s long over. So . . . what do you need to know? I’ll come clean.”

  And he did. Sometimes with more detail than they needed to know.

  But as they walked out of the coffee shop, Nell and Birdie looked at each other without saying a word. Tyler Gibson truly was one of the most naive young men they had ever met.

  As honest as he had been, it was clear to both of them that Tyler Gibson had no idea at all what his dalliance had wrought.

  • • •

  By the time they had run a few errands and landed back at Nell’s, Birdie was starving. She began pulling out Nell’s leftovers, wrapping two wedges of a wild mushroom torte in foil and putting them in the toaster oven to heat.

  Izzy showed up minutes later. “I couldn’t concentrate on work and Mae banished me. She told me to take a nap. Not much chance of that.”

  “This will take your mind off things,” Nell said. She motioned to a basket sitting on the island. “Ben forgot about the basket of lotions when he delivered all the other things to your house.”

  Izzy fingered the fancy jars and wrapped bars of soap. Each person had brought her own favorite scented lotion or soap and added a short note to the item. “It’s like being in the room with all my friends.” She rummaged around and found a pot of ginger-scented body lotion. “Here’s you, Aunt Nell. I will forever think of you when I smell this wonderful ginger soufflé.”

  “It was such a nice idea,” Birdie said. She took the torte from the oven and began filling plates.

  Izzy picked up a green bottle with a bow at the top and laughed. “This is from Esther Gibson, has to be. Horace said he knew when she was half a block away because of her perfume. Emeraude.”

  “He’s right,” Birdie said. “Very . . . distinctive.”

  They laughed and Izzy pulled out a few others, reading the notes. It was a momentary distraction, a welcome bit of ordinariness in an unordinary day.

  An elaborately wrapped package caught her eye and she pulled it out and read the card. “May these begin and end your day with the same happiness as they do mine.”

  Nell busied herself at the sink as Izzy tore off the wrappings.

  “She outdid herself,” Izzy said. The box was elegant, the Chanel perfume and lotion resting in satin.

  Birdie and Nell walked over and looked at it.

  And then they stared at the box again.

  Horace was right. It all made sense.

  Nell headed for the drawer beneath the microwave. Her junk drawer, she called it. The envelope was still t
here, bumpy from the necklace it had held, and with one corner torn from being shoved in Janie’s glove compartment.

  Birdie pulled the other one out of the fanny pack, and Izzy cleared a place on the island where they could smooth them out.

  “They’re the same. And they both have the watermark—”

  “Both envelopes probably had money in them. Two payments. He took the money out and grabbed one to put the necklace in when he went to return it to Birdie.”

  Nell took a pencil and a thin piece of paper from the drawer and carefully placed the paper over the mark. She rubbed the lead back and forth, smoothly and evenly.

  They stood back and stared.

  “It’s probably time to call Ben,” Birdie said softly.

  Yes, it was time. Nell stepped into the den and called him on his cell. He was going to head down to the police station after a boring lunch with the yacht club’s investment officer. He’d pick up the fanny pack on his way and talk to the chief.

  “Are we crazy, Ben?” Nell asked.

  “There might be some mental deficiencies involved in all this, Nellie,” he said, “but they’re not yours. Not by a long shot.” He paused, his voice dropping the way it did when he was about to say something intimate. “Nell?”

  “Yes, my darling. I will be careful.”

  Chapter 34

  They had made one quick stop on the way to Dr. Lily’s office—at Izzy’s house to feed Red and find out if his nose worked as well as Horace’s had.

  It did.

  • • •

  It was quiet when Nell and Birdie followed Izzy into the waiting room. Two women sat reading magazines, and a third watched a video on taking care of one’s body.

  A receptionist looked up and greeted them with a smile and a “please take a seat.” Janie, recognizing their voices, immediately appeared in the doorway.

  She seemed better each day, Nell thought. Her color had come back and her smile was quick. But the lingering uncertainty of the murder and her loss were still there, a shadow, if not a storm cloud today. Nell wished she felt the same.

  On her own shoulders, the shadow felt more like a nor’easter.

  Cass walked in behind them. “Do you have room for me, too?”

  Janie laughed. “Next visit I think we put Izzy on a big video screen.” She checked her watch, then asked Izzy to follow her inside. “If the rest of you don’t mind waiting here, I’ll take Izzy in and call you when we’re ready.”

  Dr. Lily laughed when they all trailed into the examining room a short while later. It was good to see the weariness lift briefly from her eyes. Babies had a way of doing that.

  “I’m happy to report this baby is packing his bags and getting ready for the ride out. It’s any day now.”

  They all clapped, then looked at Izzy. She smiled cautiously. “Not quite ready. We’re almost there, though.”

  “Well, let’s check the heartbeat, just to say hello, shall we?” They passed the stethoscope around, each one listening, then acknowledging baby Perry with a loving pat on Izzy’s abdomen.

  Nell looked over at Lily, patiently watching the ritual. “How are you doing, Lily?” she asked.

  Lily leaned up against the wall, hugging her clipboard to her chest. “Honestly? I’ve had better days.”

  “And your father?”

  “Well—I think he’s doing all right. He can’t be with patients right now, for obvious reasons. And that’s killing him. He spends a lot of time walking back and forth along the beach at Paley’s Cove—just like Horace used to do—as if somehow he’ll find an answer there. And he’s rummaged through all his notes, racking his brain to figure out connections between Justin and him, Justin and this clinic, Justin and the missing morphine, though Justin was already dead when it was taken. It’s almost as if he wants to solve the crime himself, as if somehow he should have the key to it. He spent a lifetime doing that in medicine—finding correlations, coming up with hypotheses. I guess he thinks he should be able to do it with something as important as his own future.”

  “What kinds of connections?” Izzy asked.

  “He’s obsessed with the idea that someone stole morphine from his office, for starters. He blames himself for that—for leaving it in plain view. He was especially agitated about it these past couple days, even questioning cleaning staff and delivery people, the nurses. Janie is worried about him, and I had to ask him to stop. It was upsetting people so I asked him not to come in for a while. But you can’t please everyone. There are still patients wanting to talk to him about their tests—needing his clear, understandable explanations of things. He is so good at that.” She looked at the closed door as if she could see it happening. “Just a bit ago one of my scheduled patients came in early, hoping to talk to him. It’s a shame.”

  “It must be terrible for him, knowing he didn’t do anything wrong and not being able to do anything about it,” Nell said.

  “It is. He hears the rumors, though he pretends to ignore them. Yet . . . yet all he seems concerned about is me.” Her smile was sad. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had these kinds of emotions between us.”

  “In the meantime, you’re carrying the worry of it all on your shoulders,” Birdie said.

  Lily nodded. “I know my father. He’s dedicated and thoughtful, no matter what kind of appearance he presents. Yes, he went through a bad time in his life, but putting that aside, he cares deeply about life. Being falsely convicted of murdering someone would kill him. I mean that literally. It would, it would kill him.”

  Her voice quivered slightly, but she continued talking. “I can’t imagine who did this to Justin and Horace. It’s awful. But my father cannot die in prison for something he didn’t do. The police have to find the person who did it. I’ll do anything to help make that happen.”

  “Lily, we agree with you. Your father did not commit these awful crimes. We have a favor to ask of you that might help things,” Birdie said. She paused, then said, “Would ‘doing anything’ include letting us use your computer for a few minutes?”

  Lily frowned, thinking, wanting to do anything that might help her father. “Patient records are on the computers. You’d need a password. I . . . I can’t let you into those files. They’re confidential.”

  “Of course they are,” Nell said quickly. “We wouldn’t ask that of you, Lily. Call us crazy, but looking at your appointment calendar might be of great help to us. They’d be on your computer, right?”

  “You just want a date check?” She was surprised. “You want to know when patients had appointments . . . ?” She said the words slowly, processing the request, and knowing that Nell and Birdie were not telling her everything—just enough to ask a legitimate favor.

  “Yes,” Nell said. “Just to see what days people came in to see you, to talk with your father. It won’t take any time at all.”

  “My father has been thinking about calendars himself,” she said, more to herself than to the others. She looked up. “Appointments are pretty much public knowledge, I suppose. . . .”

  “We thought that might be the case,” Nell said, and slipped out the door before Lily could change her mind. Cass followed, offering moral support and technical assistance, should it be needed.

  They walked into the reception area where several computers were lined up against a wall, all of them humming and lit up, but without anyone sitting on the chairs in front of them.

  Nell and Cass sat next to each other looking at the blue-lit screen.

  At the desk, the receptionist who had welcomed them earlier looked over, then busied herself lining up patient files for the nurses to grab.

  The calendar program was easy to access. It was arranged by month and had codes that indicated the reason for the visit, the doctor seen, and time in and out. In minutes Nell and Cass had found the pages they needed. Cass clicked PRINT.

  The clinic’s door opened, but Nell barely heard it as she and Cass watched the printer pushing out their printouts. It wasn’t u
ntil her name was called that Nell looked up.

  Franklin Danvers stood on the other side of the receptionist desk, watching her. Nell’s breath caught in her throat.

  “Do you work here now, Nell?” His smile was guarded.

  Nell straightened up. “Sometimes I feel like I do, I’ve been in here so often recently.”

  “Are things all right with Izzy Perry?”

  “Yes. She’s almost ready to have her baby. Lily is checking her out right now. How is Tamara doing through all this? It’s been difficult, I know.”

  “She has an appointment today, a checkup, just to be sure everything’s all right. She insisted on coming back here. But I . . .”

  Nell waited for him to go on.

  He looked at her, his eyes harder now. “I want to switch doctors. I will insist on it once my wife is pregnant again. Being in a practice that once housed a murderer doesn’t seem wise.”

  The hardness in his voice startled Nell. Behind her, she heard Cass’ sharp intake of breath.

  Nell folded the printed papers in half and quickly slipped them into her purse. “I’m sorry you feel that way. I think—and I know Izzy and Sam do, too—that this is one of the finest practices on the North Shore. Izzy would never consider leaving here. You . . . you’ve gotten to know the doctors, you’ve spoken to Martin—”

  His eyebrows pulled together. “How do you know that?” he asked sharply.

  “Tamara mentioned once that Martin had been a help to you both, answering questions and explaining things.”

  Franklin ignored her answer and checked his watch.

  Nell stood and looked at him. “Dr. Seltzer isn’t in jail, Franklin. He hasn’t been accused of anything.”

  “It’s a technicality. He will be. He will be accused of two murders. And then he’ll be found guilty and sent away for the rest of his life.”

  The inner door opened and Tamara appeared in the doorframe, motioning for Franklin to join her. Dr. Lily was ready for them, she said. “She’ll answer all your questions, darling.”

  As Franklin turned away, Tamara noticed Nell and Cass. She smiled at them—a woman-to-woman kind of smile that begged for indulgence. Sometimes men are like that, it said. We humor them.