A Holiday Yarn

by Goldenbaum, Sally

  “He didn’t,” Mary said sharply. Embarrassed at the tone of her own voice, she gave a short laugh. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be so outspoken, but I brought Kevin into this horrible mess. And we need to find out who the true perpetrator is and get Kevin out of the picture. He shouldn’t have to suffer such indignities.” She slapped one hand down on the island.

  Georgia jumped, then settled back down.

  Sometimes Mary Pisano seemed years older than she was. It wasn’t because of her looks, though years of being a fisherman’s wife—and those early years of helping her Ed down on the docks—had tanned her skin, along with adding a few sun-kissed furrows to her forehead. It was the way she put things, as if she had lived her youth in Jane Austen’s day. It was the way she looked at the world. An Elizabeth Bennett, perhaps, with a touch of Emma thrown in. An arranger of lives, a role she took on with some frequency in her newspaper column.

  “So you set the police straight, Kevin?” Ben asked.

  “Of course he did,” Mary answered quickly. “He had no interest whatsoever in Pamela. None. Zilch. I warned you about her, didn’t I, Kevin?” She spun her head around to look at him, then went on. “Finally I told Pamela to stay out of my kitchen. I told her I wasn’t paying Kevin for her to distract him, and, besides, I reminded her, he was almost ten years younger than she. I told her he’d quit if she didn’t stop bothering him, and then where would we be? Kevin’s food was the one thing that kept everyone from killing each other during those meetings.” A bright flush covered her cheeks as emotions spilled out of her.

  Georgia scratched at the door.

  “So what’s the problem?” Ben said. He walked toward the door to let the dog out.

  Mary waved him away. “Georgia won’t go out unless one of us says it’s okay—Kevin, me, Nancy—someone she knows and loves. Silly pup.”

  “I’ll let her out,” Kevin strode across the kitchen and disappeared through the door with Georgia close behind.

  Ben picked up the thread of conversation. “If Kevin and Pamela had nothing to do with each other, why would the police care?”

  “The police sometimes have a difficult time believing that someone would push a beautiful woman like Pamela away. But they would.” She shook her head. “Anyone who values his self-respect would. And besides that, until they find the real murderer, they’ll be bothering Kevin and me and lord knows who else around here. That’s the problem. As long as there are questions in people’s minds and fear in the community, whoever made up these posters will be using it against the opening of the bed-and-breakfast. And that’s a real problem.”

  “So we all have motivation to keep our eyes and ears open. Right?” Birdie asked. Her brows lifted into wispy bangs.

  A sudden banging outside drew their attention to the door.

  Kevin walked back in with the dog. “It’s just the painter. He finally showed up.”

  Mary nodded. “I don’t mind if he’s late. As long as he comes.”

  Kevin shrugged.

  The noise changed from a banging sound to heavy boots stomping up the back porch stairs.

  “There’s still some work to be done before we officially open,” Mary explained. She paused.

  Nell read into the pause and knew that the words “if we open” were dangling from Mary’s lips. She held them back and continued.

  “One of the guys is doing the painting touch-ups. He’s a good painter and needs the extra money.”

  Nell looked through the kitchen windows. A metal ladder was hoisted across one of them, banging against the house. Next a gloved hand grasped a rung.

  She squinted against the late-afternoon light. A man leaned over and picked up a bucket of paint.

  His profile filled the windowpane.

  That’s it, she thought, her memory finally clearing. She’d seen him right here one day when she and Izzy had stopped to talk about colors for the quilts with Mary and Nancy Hughes.

  As the man pulled himself upright, he glanced in the kitchen window and caught Nell staring at him.

  It happened quickly, before Nell could look away.

  He seemed amused, and a sly smile curved his lips. It was the smile of someone used to being looked at, admired. Of someone who knew exactly how people responded to him.

  He winked.

  Nell felt shivers travel up and down her arms.

  For the second time that day, she found herself pulling her stare away from the ponytailed man.

  Troy DeLuca. The model, as Izzy had said.

  And, so it seemed, Mary Pisano’s painter.

  When she looked back, he was gone, the slight shaking of the ladder the only sign that he’d been there at all.

  Chapter 10

  They had stayed longer than they’d intended at Ravenswood-by-the-Sea, but the time had been well spent. Both Mary and Kevin needed to talk.

  “It doesn’t make sense to me that the police are concentrating on Kevin,” Nell said. She followed Ben into the warmth of their kitchen, glad to be home. Sunday evenings were for settling in, for soup and bread and the comfort of Ben.

  “He’s kind of a quiet guy, but it was clear to me he had no use for Pamela,” Ben said.

  “I don’t think he was alone in his feelings.”

  “No. But they need to talk to everyone. Who knows? Jerry will probably be calling you again. You spent time with Pamela that day.”

  Nell thought about Ben’s comment while he retreated to his den and she busied herself in the kitchen, switching on lights and taking a pot of homemade soup from the refrigerator. She lit a burner beneath the soup and stirred it absently, mixing mushrooms and tofu with the wine-flavored base.

  She and Birdie had been questioned the night of the murder, of course. But what would she say to Chief Thompson if he questioned her about earlier that day? Nothing of interest or importance, certainly.

  She and Pamela had met by chance, and she hadn’t found the time with Pamela unpleasant. The opposite, in fact. She was interesting and opinionated, and Nell found the combination a nice one, no matter what others thought.

  She didn’t know why Pamela had been over in Canary Cove that morning, but she herself was there, wasn’t she? And without a good reason, other than Polly’s scones—which were worth traveling much farther than Canary Cove for.

  And then she remembered the ending of the conversation, and sweet Tommy Porter’s face as he looked at Pamela Pisano through the tea-shop window.

  It was an understandable look. His brother was one of the many notches in Pamela’s belt. Played with and tossed aside.

  At the time, it had meant nothing.

  But now?

  And the look on Pamela’s face, when she abandoned her car and walked on down the street. Her face lifted in greeting?

  She wrapped the croissants in foil and put them in the warming oven.

  Ordinary gestures that suddenly took on more ominous meanings.

  Nell looked out the window at the fading light. That was the thing about winter that she didn’t like—the early onset of darkness.

  Gaslights outlined small piles of snow lining the flagstone walkway in the backyard. The snow looked gray in the low light, the gray of old snow.

  Christmas lights turned on beyond the woods that filled the back of their property—the Endicott Woods, as they’d been called for a generation. They blinked behind the waving branches of the trees along Sand Beach Drive.

  Nell imagined sweet young voices singing about Rudolph and Frosty. She and Ben had seen the carolers on their way home—a Brownie troop walking from house to house, their eyes filled with Christmas. Their young voices holding hope, promise, and peace.

  But it was hard to hear the joy and innocence, though she knew it was there.

  That’s what murder did to a town.

  It masked its innocence.

  Chapter 11

  The Monday cookie exchange, scheduled to start as the work-day wound down, had already begun when Nell walked into Izzy’s yarn shop. Voices,
music, and laughter floated up the steps from the back room.

  Mae Anderson’s niece, Jillian, covered her ears.

  “Can you believe, like, how noisy they are, Miz Endicott? And they say teens squeal. Hah!”

  Nell laughed. “But they’re good sounds, right, Jill?”

  “I guess. Though if I hear ‘Winter Wonderland’ one more time, I will, like, scream.” The young salesclerk slipped a skein of yarn and receipt into a store bag and handed it to a customer. Then she leaned across the checkout counter, her long brown hair falling across her face as it came up close to Nell’s.

  “It’s awful, isn’t it? Like, I love Kevin Sullivan. He’s the coolest guy in the whole world. He coached our swim team last summer. No way he could have killed that lady. You don’t think he did it, do you?”

  Nell stepped back, startled. It was a scant thirty-six hours since the police report was released. And just a day after Kevin had been questioned—not even officially—just the normal rundown with people who might have seen something. What kind of texting or tweeting passed rumors around that quickly?

  “No, Jillian, I don’t think Kevin Sullivan had anything to do with it. Where did you hear such silly talk?”

  “My friend Ace is working over at the B and B, helping get it ready. He shovels snow and stuff. He’s kinda lazy, but Miz Pisano hired him anyway. I think she felt sorry for him because he needs the money. Anyway, he says the police were questioning Kevin. He saw them through the window. Kevin looked worried, Ace said. And he saw Kevin yelling at the lady one day. But, hey, I yell at my sister all the time, but I wouldn’t, like, kill her.”

  Nell shook her head. Well, it was a relief that the suspicion was so superficial. That kind of ungrounded gossip would hopefully turn into discarded rumor by tomorrow.

  But when she headed back to the rear of the shop, an undefined weight pressed down on Nell’s shoulders. The heaviness of concern for friends and neighbors, for good people whose lives could get caught up in circumstances and tossed around like a ship in a winter storm. She brushed away the feelings as best she could and smiled into the room filled with yarn and food and friendship and the delicious smells of snickerdoodles and gingerbread cookies.

  “Look at this, Aunt Nell,” Izzy called out. “One hundred and fifty squares ready to go to Soweto.” She waved a fist in the air. “Woo-hoo, knitters!”

  Cheers rippled through the crowd. Nell wove her way to the wooden table in the middle of the room. Piled high were stacks of colorful eight-inch squares, one more beautiful than the next. Izzy’s devoted clientele took to the knit-a-square project for the group called KasCare with the same zeal and dedication they used to knit up cashmere sweaters and lacy silk shawls. Some of the squares had intricate cables going up the center; others boasted soft primary colors, knit in solids or fanciful designs. Nell imagined the beautiful children in Africa—their huge eyes and round, dark faces—cuddling beneath the blankets knit from the patches, warm and wrapped in the love that went along with every piece.

  “Terrific, right?” Izzy said. “I can’t believe that people have taken the time to do this in the middle of the holiday rush.”

  “It’s the perfect time to think of someone else.” Nell fingered a square bordered with jungle animals knit in primary colors.

  Across the room, Beatrice Scaglia waved to Izzy that she needed help. Nell watched the councilwoman demand Izzy’s full attention, her fingers flapping a square in the air.

  Beatrice was complicated, but over the years, Nell had decided that her heart—if not her actions—was nearly always in the right place. Taking in her unemployed relative for one thing. After her chance encounter with him the day before, Nell wasn’t sure she’d be so generous. There was something about Troy DeLuca that put her on edge. Perhaps his cocky air, though Nell admitted to Birdie later that the cockiness might have been colored by her own embarrassment at being caught staring at him.

  “I’ve gained ten pounds just by walking into this room,” Cass whispered beside her. “Check it out, Nell. Ben will be in hog heaven when you go home tonight. Danny wanted to come to knit, but I wouldn’t let him. He’d eat too much.”

  A floor-to-ceiling bookcase ran along one wall in the back room of Izzy’s shop. Normally it was littered with skeins of yarn and knitting gadgets, patterns, framed photographs, and CDs, but today the counter that separated the bookshelves from the cabinets below was filled from end to end with platters of homemade holiday cookies—from decorated Santas and buttery spritz blossoms, to chocolate peanut butter drops and cinnamon-sugar sticks. A linen-lined basket at the end was brimming with chocolate coin cookies for Hanukkah, each one wrapped in gold foil. Izzy had taken a few cookies from each plate and placed them on a tray for nibbling while knitting. Before leaving, they’d all walk the cookie-lined path and fill their take-home baskets with the rest.

  “I’m always amazed and inspired at the creative things busy people come up with,” Nell said, squeezing her own platter in between a plate of macaroons and frosted reindeer, complete with cherry noses.

  “And even some not-so-creative people—but certainly enterprising—like me.” Cass pointed to a plate of red lobster-shaped Christmas cookies. “Harry Garozzo made them for me,” she whispered, then slipped away to help Izzy pass out scrap yarn for new squares.

  Nell laughed and looked back at the array of sweets. How interesting, the abundant comfort that homemade cookies could bring to a room. Eggs, butter, flour—medicine of the gods. She looked around the room, at heads bowed sharing family news, fingers reverently touching soft yarn, smiles flittering across lined faces.

  In the midst of it, Izzy moved from group to group, her long, lean body bending to offer praise for a newly finished square. Her fingers pointing out a fresh design. A pat on the shoulder. She offered warm cider or soft drinks, a glass of wine or cup of coffee. The perfect hostess. But it wasn’t a role she played. It was simply Izzy.

  “Our Izzy looks tired,” Birdie said, coming up to Nell and motioning her over to the window seat where Purl was saving their places, the long tabby body stretching from one pillow onto the next.

  Nell nodded. “Tired. Or concerned.”

  “Or both.”

  Birdie handed Nell a glass of hot cider, and the two settled down on plush pillows, their backs to the window framing the winter sea, with Purl now curled into a ball between them.

  Birdie pulled her thick red sweater around her. “What’s going on with Isabel?”

  “It involves Sam, but I haven’t been able to make sense of it. Three weeks ago Sam and Izzy both had that magical look of expectation, of wonder, or so it seemed to me. And I don’t think it was from holiday decorations or the mayor lighting the Christmas tree, or the music. It was more than that, an intimate something that was hard to define. I truly half expected an announcement.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know. They seem to have issues.”

  “Of the heart.” Birdie’s small white head moved with her words, and her eyes sought out Izzy. “It’s difficult when our emotions are being tugged in such disparate directions. Love. Murder. They simply don’t fit well in the same house.”

  Birdie had intended to speak the words softly, but the hardness of “murder” carried the word far enough to pull Rebecca Early’s attention away from her knit square.

  The jewelry artist leaned over the arm of a leather chair, bringing her head close to Nell and Birdie. “I saw her the day she was killed. She was as close to me as the two of you.”

  Rebecca’s silky blond hair fell over her shoulder, and her brows pulled together. “It’s awful. No one deserves an end like that; I don’t care who they are or what they’ve done.”

  “You saw Pamela that morning?”

  “Yes, not too long after I spotted you, Nell, heading to Polly’s for one of her amazing scones, I supposed. A short while after that Pamela stopped in the gallery.”

  Nell remembered Pamela changing directions, heading down
the sidewalk. She assumed Pamela had seen someone she wanted to talk to. “Did she seem okay?”

  There it was again. That irrational desire to pull out a reason, an emotion, something that would make sense of a woman being happy and ordinary and alive. And hours later, murdered.

  “I’ve gone over the conversation often—believe me. She seemed happy, in that overconfident way of hers. Pamela comes to my studio whenever she’s in town—she loves jewelry, and I always hoped she’d find something to feature in Fashion Monthly. I’m not much of a self-promoter, but I jumped in this time and asked her if she would consider using some of my jewelry in an issue. She was interested. She tried a few things on. A necklace and some of those long drop earrings that I’ve made for you, Nell.”

  “Did she buy them?” Birdie asked.

  Rebecca nodded. “She bought several things. I would have given them to her if it meant they’d show up in her magazine.”

  “Maybe they’ll show up anyway. Her cousin Agnes seems to be filling in at the helm, from what we can gather.”

  “Agnes Pisano? Oh, my, that’s a surprise. I don’t exactly see Agnes as being very fashion conscious.”

  “Maybe it’s just an interim thing. So what did she pick out?”

  “Well, not as much as she might have if we hadn’t been interrupted.”

  “More customers?”

  “No, that blond guy who’s been staying with the Scaglias followed her in. They had been talking on the sidewalk earlier. He was upset; I could tell. A vein in his overly tan forehead was throbbing, but he was smiling, trying to be nice.”

  “He was upset with Pamela?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. Their conversation didn’t make a lot of sense to me, probably because part of it had occurred on the sidewalk. He was almost ingratiating himself to Pamela, I thought. He kept saying he’d be perfect, and he’d do anything she wanted.” Rebecca chuckled. “And this was all with me standing there behind a felt pad filled with necklaces.