He looked over at a group of youngsters walking by, their eyes bright as they passed the Village Toy Store, then turned back to Nell. “But why dredge up all that old stuff? We gotta think about the present, about the holidays coming. Right? And that means that Santa Claus comes in Wednesday on the boat. See you there?”
With that he gave a nod of his furry hat, revved his engine, and drove on down the street.
Izzy had texted everyone Monday night.
She didn’t have any morning classes and the knitting room was free, so how about they meet for coffee and something from the new bakery over on Central?
No one had to ask why. The loose yarns were tangling up their lives. And knitters didn’t suffer loose yarns gladly. Sleep was interrupted, parties had been canceled, and the beds in Ravenswood-by-the-Sea needed warm bodies sleeping in them.
Nell picked up Birdie at nine on the dot. “What’s the racket over at Mary’s bed-and-breakfast?” she asked as Birdie climbed in the car.
“Racket? It can’t be Henrietta. . . . ”
“No, she’s basking in the pleasure of coming clean and having her memories shared. It looks like Mary’s work crew.”
“Mary said there were still some things that needed attention.”
“A drive-through can’t hurt,” Nell said, heading back out Birdie’s driveway to the street. “Be sure Mary’s okay.”
But they both knew it was more than that. Too much was still unresolved at Ravenswood-by-the-Sea to let even ordinary sounds go unchecked.
Nell turned into the drive and drove toward the house. Several men stood near the garage, dragging equipment out of the storage area. A truck was parked beside Mary’s small car.
Birdie opened her window. “You young men have done a tremendous job over here.”
One of the men doffed his hat, and Nell recognized the crew’s foreman, Tom Asner, a broad, muscular man with a boxer’s nose and a gentle smile.
Just then Mary came down the back porch steps. She wrapped her wool sweater around her and walked toward them, calling to the men. “Guys, Kevin just took some rolls from the oven and there’s plenty of hot coffee. Help yourself.”
“Final repairs?” Nell said.
Foreman Tom answered. “Oh, there’re some of them, too, but today’s more for takin’ things apart, right, Mary?”
“It’s the bed,” Mary said to Nell and Izzy, as if that explained everything. Her eyes sparkled like they did after publishing an especially heartwarming “About Town” column.
“The bed?” Nell looked at Birdie, and in the next second it dawned on them both what was being dismantled.
Enzo Pisano’s walnut bed.
“It’s going to Henrietta’s,” Birdie guessed.
“Yes. Where it belongs. And these fine gentlemen are going to carefully take it apart, piece by piece. . . . ”
“Just like Humpty-Dumpty,” Tom said. “Only this time it’ll be put back together just fine. Best-made piece of furniture I’ve ever seen. A privilege to work on it. We’re bringing in a guy from Boston—restoration expert—who’ll give us a hand over at the other house. Some Christmas present, wouldn’t you say?”
Nell smiled. An amazing Christmas present. “Does Henrietta know?”
Mary nodded. “Kevin made Irish breakfast scones and picked up some Italian pastries at Harry’s. We had a nice blending of cultures this morning, pastries, a few mimosas, and a pre-house warming for her new furniture.”
Birdie pressed a hand to her chest. Good news was delicious.
The men gathered up the toolboxes.
“Do the workmen keep their equipment here?” Nell asked.
“Usually, until they’re done.”
Tom called Mary over with a question, and Birdie and Nell watched as the men piled up large felt mats that would protect the pieces. Some of the long pieces wouldn’t make it around the circular staircase, one of the men explained, so they’d wrap them and lower them through the windows.
Two men walked back to the truck and began unstrapping a ladder.
“There’s the metal ladder,” Birdie said, looking at Nell. She called out through the open window. “Why do you drag that monster back and forth? Wouldn’t it be easier to leave it here until you’re done?”
The man shrugged, chewed on his tobacco. “Sure, easier. We left it here for a while, but last week they said to take it away. Needed the room. Something about kitchen equipment—a new table, appliances being delivered.”
“Kitchen equipment?”
“Yeah—they’re getting some new stuff. Heavy-duty. So Kevin said to take our big things away, including the ladder.”
Nell saw Mary look over, listening to the conversation.
“Coffee’ll get cold, guys,” she called out. “Kitchen door is open.”
The men lumbered off, and Mary waved to Birdie and Nell from the steps. “Close your window. It’s cold out,” she yelled, then disappeared around the corner of the house.
“If the ladder had stayed . . . ” The thought caused Nell and Birdie both to take a deep breath. Kevin sent the ladder back. Why?
“Well, the ladder didn’t stay. For whatever reason. And let’s only hope that no one feels guilty about it. Living with those deadly ‘if only’s’ is destructive,” Birdie said.
But when they arrived at Izzy’s shop, a box of koloches in hand, the feeling lingered. Nell felt she was drowning in “if only’s.” And what did it matter in the long run? If someone was going to murder a person, would any of that matter? Would they simply find another way, another time, another circumstance?
Mae was just opening the shop, turning the computer on and checking the cash drawer. She wore a cluster of holly in her salt-and-pepper hair, and the nose of her snowman lapel pin blinked every few seconds.
“Be prepared,” she greeted Birdie and Nell.
“Like a Boy Scout?”
“It couldn’t hurt.” Mae gave them an unreadable look and went back to her cash box.
They spotted Cass’ boots at the steps near the curved opening to the back room, and they heard the familiar voices of NPR anchors, pulling them into the day with news and radio interviews.
What they weren’t prepared for was the square body sitting in the big leather chair by the fireplace. Henrietta O’Neal sat with Purl curled up in her ample lap, her face glowing. She looked twenty years younger than she had a scant twenty-four hours before.
“What’s going on?” Nell asked, looking around for Izzy.
As if on cue, Izzy appeared through the alley door, carrying a brown cardboard container of Coffee’s strong brew. She looked at Nell and Birdie, lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. Her eyes told them she had no idea why Henrietta was sitting in her knitting room like a queen holding court.
“I’m here to help find the murderer,” Henrietta said, without preamble. “Mary Pisano needs to open that beautiful home to guests; she needs to get on with her life and with writing that sweet column of hers. I may have . . . slowed it down some. Now I need to help.”
“You’re sweet to offer,” Nell began. She gathered up the mugs and held each one while Izzy pressed the spigot. “But you’ve plenty going on at your own house, with that beautiful bed coming your way.”
“I certainly do.” Her eyes teared up, but she blinked the tears away and continued. “But I want to help with this. I’m fond of our fine police force, but sometimes they’re held back by their own fussy rules. We don’t have to put up with that rubbish.”
Nell held back a smile. That certainly described the way Henrietta operated. She handed her a coffee mug and set the platter of filled pastries on the table.
“Who do you think did it?” Cass asked. She sat cross-legged on the couch, a pile of colorful knit squares at her side. She bit into a poppy-seed koloche.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think, and then I’ll be off. It was someone who hated Pamela Pisano.” She poked her finger in the air. “Troy DeLuca simply got in the way. He made the mistake
of attaching himself to Pamela. He was sneaky. He wanted something.”
But not what he got, Nell thought. No matter how sneaky he was, he didn’t deserve that.
“Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I’d walk down Ravenswood Road, just like Enzo and I used to do. And I’d see him sneaking up those steps to the carriage house. Sometimes he’d be doing it in the middle of the day while the other workmen were pounding away.”
“And after Pamela died?”
“I’d see him then, too. I would have fired him, but Nancy said they’d paid him to paint. And he had to finish it.”
Henrietta scootched to the edge of the chair. “I’m a good snoop. And I’m even better when I’m motivated. I’ll be back. But one thing—Enzo worried about Pamela. About the way she played with men. He said it would get her killed one day.”
She was gone before they had a chance to comment. Her stocky figure moving from side to side, the walking stick tapping its way through the knitting store.
“Confirmation,” Birdie said.
“Trouble with men. But who could have hated her enough to kill her?
“Troy must have seen something, just as Nell suspected from the beginning. We know they were having an affair and he knew his way to the carriage house. He was there, waiting for her, probably to try to convince her of his worth as a model.”
“He saw the murder,” Izzy said. She wiped bits of fruit filling from the corner of her mouth.
“And he was blackmailing the murderer, not a wise thing to do, but it fits what we know of Troy,” Birdie said. “He was broke and not very smart.”
“The murderer had money.” Nell thought of the fancy car that nearly ran them down. And the show of cash at the Edge. Troy got plenty of money from someone. “Or at least a way to get it easily.”
“Maybe he asked for more and more, and pushed the person too hard.”
“The murderer needed a way to get in the house and into the kitchen to wait for her that night. All the Pisanos had keys, and it probably wouldn’t have been hard to get one, especially with all the deliveries, the equipment, the workmen in and out.” Cass grabbed another pastry.
“Someone who knew Pamela was going to be there alone that night,” Nell said.
They were silent for a moment, devouring the koloches. Drinking coffee. Following strands of yarn and thinking back to that night. Thinking of the people who knew schedules and traffic patterns.
Thinking of someone who actually worked there? But no one would say Kevin’s name out loud.
Nice people didn’t kill.
“The murderer had to have had access to the ladder to fiddle with it,” Cass said.
“And it seems too coincidental that the steel ladder that had been there all along was missing that night.” Izzy rolled a needle between her hands, her brows pulled together tightly.
“They needed the room in the garage,” Nell said, with more conviction than she felt. It was logical, she tried to convince herself.
Birdie began casting on stitches. Another soft square in a lavender wool. A soothing color. But her thoughts—lined up alongside Nell’s—were anything but soothing.
“I suppose that makes sense,” Izzy said.
“Maybe we need to revisit that night,” Nell said, anxious to move away from the ladder. Maybe there was something else they’d heard but hadn’t tended to. Perhaps in the repetition something would magically appear.
“Mary and Nancy both left early the night of the murder. And Mary was late getting back.” And if she hadn’t been late . . . The thought stuck there, uncomfortable. Why was Mary late getting back? Nell tried to remember. Dinner at the Gull. A bottle of wine. The restaurant was probably busy that night, with all the college kids home. Thursdays were party nights.
There it was again, the uncomfortable feeling of looking at something right in front of you and not seeing it.
“Troy was alone here when the ladder broke,” Cass said. “Convenient. In case he didn’t die from the fall, there’d be no one there to get him emergency help.”
“We have all the threads,” Izzy said, “but we’re not working them right. They’re still tangled. We need to know more about the man who died, the one who was obsessed with Pamela. Think outside the box. Think outside the bed-and-breakfast.”
But the man was dead—a dead-end road. And yet it didn’t feel that way. Nell thought back to the night Pamela was killed, the “I’m sorry” written in the snow. Someone wrote that message for her. They wanted Pamela to be sorry. For what . . . ?
“Pamela had a restraining order issued against the man. But it disappeared from the records, Tommy said. In a small town like this, you wouldn’t want people to think someone had taken out a restraining order on you. The guy had friends protecting him, maybe? So perhaps that’s the path we follow. Someone who is holding a grudge.”
“But why kill her?”
“Why, indeed. It sounds flimsy, doesn’t it? But maybe it’s not.”
“It doesn’t feel flimsy,” Izzy said. “We need to find out who this man was. His family. Siblings.”
“And why did the restraining order disappear?” Nell was uncomfortable. She sensed the others were, too. She suspected they were all protesting the direction in which they were going, examining friends and neighbors, people they worked with. And the uncertainty of what they’d find, whom they might hurt.
The clicking of knitting needles echoed loudly in the room.
“We’re an inch away,” Izzy said.
“Sometimes those inches are the most difficult.”
Especially when it meant a life.
“I wonder if Esther Gibson remembers any of this,” Nell said. The longtime police dispatcher had enough Sea Harbor happenings stored away in her memory to fill a dozen movies. Some probably X-rated. “I’ll talk to her.”
A short while later, Birdie left to teach her tap-dancing class at the retirement home. Maybe a visit to Dolores Pisano in the adjoining nursing home was in order. “She has some lucid moments,” she said.
“Good idea. But I need a sleuthing hiatus for a couple days,” Cass said. “Pete and I have the honor of bringing Santa into the harbor tomorrow on the Lady Lobster. You’ll all be there to greet us, I hope?”
Nell put her knitting away. “We all need a bit of Santa. We’ll be there—right in the middle of those sweet happy little folks.”
And maybe Santa would read the big folks’ thoughts and bring them a wish. An end to this turmoil. Even if that meant hurting people in her life. Even then.
Nell gathered her things and walked over to the back windows, looking out at the harbor. Sailboats bobbed in the cold sea, tiny Christmas lights outlining the sails. Fishermen lumbered along the wharf, dragging nets and hauling traps with practiced ease. Across the harbor, up on the bluff, the children’s park was filled with Santas big enough to climb on. A sleigh and reindeer alongside the snow-covered swings and monkey bars.
Familiar and comfortable. Carefree.
Izzy came up behind her. “It looks like a dozen other holiday seasons,” she said. “It just doesn’t feel that way.”
Nell nodded.
“We haven’t had time to talk much the last couple days. Alone, I mean.”
“No.”
“I’m proud of you, Aunt Nell. I know it’s killing you not to ask about Sam.”
Nell smiled. “You mean since committing your first felony in his home?”
“You’re presuming that mail tampering was my first?”
Nell chuckled. “I suppose I can’t be sure.”
Izzy moved closer, her arm brushing Nell’s. “Sam and I haven’t had much time to talk, either—he was gone yesterday—Boston again. But I told him about being at the house. I apologized for looking through his mail. Told him I’d seen something from a hospital.”
“And?”
“He asked if I had opened anything, and I said no—that I wanted to but didn’t. He laughed, and then he hugged me and told me he wouldn’t have me
arrested if I’d make him those burritos he loves.”
“That was it?”
“Yes. He said that things would work out, and that instead of worrying about imaginary things, I should concentrate on what I’m getting him for Christmas. So I’ve backed off. I want to get through Christmas. Then I can deal with this better. His secrecy—his personal life. I hate it, and I will have to deal with it. Just not right now.”
Secrecy. A looming presence in their lives these days. Nell slipped an arm around her niece’s waist and they stood together for a long time, wanting to think about nothing more complicated than the noses of harbor seals poking through the icy waters and watching the harbor life play out before them.
A calm and ordinary day.
Chapter 26
Each town did it in its own unique way, but Sea Harbor was sure its way was the best. As soon as new calendars appeared in kitchens, the Wednesday before Christmas was circled in red, right along with birthdays and anniversaries.
It was a special day—the day Santa Claus came to town.
The festivities began at twilight, when Fire Chief Alex Arcado arrived in his truck and together with his stalwart team prepared the fire pit on the harbor green. They lit the first log to great cheering from a crowd of children, bundled up like Eskimos and waiting patiently with sticks and marshmallows. Families stood at the ready, their eyes peeled for the first sighting of the jolly man in red.
Pete Halloran’s Fractured Fish band entertained with numerous rounds of “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the kids and grown-ups joining in, stomping boots and clapping mittened hands. Vendors passed out hot dogs and cups of chowder, lobster rolls, hot chocolate, and fish sandwiches on warm buttered hoagies.
Ben and Nell walked through the crowd toward the bonfire. They spotted Mary Pisano with Henrietta on her arm and waved them over. Agnes, dressed in a brilliant blue puffy coat, was on Henrietta’s other side. Her hair hung loose and full to her shoulders.
She looked ten years younger, Nell told her.
Agnes brushed away Nell’s compliments. “The magazine staff in New York isn’t shy about commenting on clothes or hair-styles. This is my one concession to keep them quiet and force them back to real work. And I told them as much. I’m not in this to look beautiful. I’m in it to publish a beautiful magazine.”
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