Murder in Merino

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “The artist used good materials. Some of the pigments have become dull over the years, but it doesn’t take away its beauty. I’m glad Jules has these. I just hope she gets to keep looking at them.”

  Izzy looked up from the painting. “She will—I am sure of that,” she said.

  Nell looked at her niece. She felt it, too. And the feeling grew each day, with each new snippet of conversation, each new insight into the man who was Jeffrey Meara and the people who were in his present—and in his past. Jules Ainsley was not a murderer. And the whole town would know it soon. She looked at what Ham had done with the painting and it matched that same feeling—that they were dusting off years of grime and grit and would soon have a clear idea of who killed a kind bartender.

  She handed the painting back to Ham, exchanging it for the second one. This one was more impressionistic than the first, but equally vibrant and filled with light. The elements were hazier, the shapes more amorphous, but it was clear where Penelope had sat or stood to paint it. She had set an easel on the sidewalk in the front of the house. The green shutters were there, the winding pathway between the garage and the house.

  She squinted, then looked closer. At first she thought she was looking at an enormous smiley face painted on the garage door.

  Izzy leaned over her shoulder for a closer look, then laughed when the image came into better focus.

  A laugh . . . followed by Nell’s gasp.

  It was a car. A British racing green car. A shiny Sprite, smiling at them with its round headlights and oval grille—exactly as it had done just days before.

  • • •

  Ham needed a little more time with the paintings, he said, to be sure they were protected.

  Nell agreed to leave them, along with a quick explanation that the car had belonged to Jeffrey, an explanation that conjured up more questions than answers. Nell promised to clarify it all at dinner that night.

  On the ride back to Izzy’s shop, Nell explained about the car she and Birdie had found a few days before in Jeffrey’s garage. At the time it had been little more than a curiosity and slight mystery. Where had Jeffrey gotten a Sprite? And why in heaven’s name—as Birdie was prone to say—didn’t the man drive it?

  Izzy listened, trying to connect the dots as Nell talked. Some were still missing, the dots scattered around in the air. But an image was appearing—emerging slowly, like a knitting motif as row after row of the pattern was carefully knit into the whole.

  Izzy climbed out of the car, then leaned back through the window. “Jules told me today that she’s beginning to understand what family means. She loved her mother greatly, she said, but there wasn’t much affection in their house when she was growing up. Her stepfather was a decent man, but never loving. How sad is that?”

  “I wonder if it was difficult for him to raise a child someone else fathered. You’d hope not. Or maybe he sensed the love Penelope had once had for Jules’s father—I’m convinced she did love him. Those paintings don’t lie.” She thought of little Abby, and the copious amounts of love showered on her from all sides, blood relatives or not. It didn’t always matter where it came from. As long as it came.

  Izzy hurried inside the shop and Nell sat there in her car for a minute, thinking through the events of the morning. And then she thought of Garrett Barros—still a bit of a loose dot, floating around aimlessly.

  Garrett . . . Nell started the car, and then an impulse took over, and, hoping Tommy Porter wasn’t lurking around the corner, she made a quick U-turn and headed for the Ocean’s Edge.

  • • •

  Cass was coming out of the restaurant with Pete and Willow as Nell walked up the steps.

  “What’s going on?” Nell asked. “Am I missing something?”

  “A business meeting,” Cass said curtly.

  “Pete and I thought Cass needed an intervention,” Willow said. She gave Cass a look that defied contradiction.

  “It didn’t work. She’s as stubborn as Ma,” Pete said. “Damn that Irish gene.”

  “They’re trying to take the lobster business away from me,” Cass said.

  “Don’t be nuts,” Pete said to Cass. Then he turned to Nell. “What we’re trying to do is convince Cass that she needs a life besides work.

  “I know she has you guys and knitting and all that wine you drink on Thursday nights—you’re great friends. But face it—for starters, she’s wicked bad at the knitting part. You should see the hats I get at Christmas. And you all have other lives, too. That’s what she needs. Balance. Cass needs to broaden her horizons. She needs to have more fun. She needs—”

  “Enough, Halloran,” Willow said quickly, breaking off his sentence and hoping to avoid embarrassment.

  “You don’t think Izzy, Birdie, and I are fun?” Nell teased, her affection for Pete and Willow growing by the second. They are crazy in love with each other, she thought, and they’re frustrated that Cass is messing up her life with Danny. At least in their opinion anyway. And, Nell had to admit with a twinge of guilt, she shared the sentiment.

  Pete looped an arm around Willow’s waist, having to lean down slightly to do it. Birdie had once described the small black-haired woman as a waif, and the description wasn’t far off. Except when she had first come to Sea Harbor, she was pale and rarely smiled, more of a Dickensian waif. The Willow they knew today, the nearly twenty-six-year-old fiber artist with a thriving gallery and a tall, gangly lobsterman wrapped around her finger, the woman who had a Sea Harbor tan, a blush on her cheeks, and laughed often and loud, was more of an Audrey Hepburn–type waif—charming and irresistible.

  “We’re off,” Pete said. “Oh, and we’ll miss dinner on the deck tonight. The Fractured Fish has a gig over at the Dog Bar in Gloucester. I’m hoping that Captain Joey guy will mention us on Good Morning Gloucester. Everyone on Cape Ann is reading that blog of his. It’d be great PR for the band. Maybe get us more Gloucester gigs. But anyway, save us some food?”

  “Always.” Nell laughed as they walked off.

  Pete didn’t turn around, just raised one fist in the air and bellowed a whoop.

  Nell looped an arm through Cass’s and asked if she had a minute before she went back to work. Together they walked back into the restaurant and Nell filled her in on the morning’s events.

  “Crazy,” she said, when Nell got around to the story of the Sprite. “So Jeffrey’s car has a connection to Jules’s house?”

  “At least the car visited the house at some point when the Brogans owned it.”

  “Didn’t Maeve also tell you he had found someone to give the car to?”

  “Yes. Maybe Jules? But why? And what is his connection to all this? And to Jules’s mother? I keep imagining possible scenarios, then tossing them away. But then they come back . . .”

  “The timing is right. Jeffrey was probably here in Sea Harbor that summer. And we know he wanted to talk to Jules about something.”

  “Yes . . .”

  “And Jules’s mother had a connection to that house,” Cass said. Then she took a deep breath. “Nell, you don’t think . . . Jules’s father . . . ?”

  Nell didn’t answer. She wasn’t ready to go there. Instead she motioned toward the bar, where Don Wooten stood talking to the bartender. “There’s Don. Let’s say hello.”

  Don didn’t seem especially happy to see Nell, and she knew it was a direct result of the last conversation she’d had with him at the yacht club. Ben thought she owed him an apology; perhaps he was right. But she had heard Don threaten Jeffrey just days before he died. And she was trying desperately to pull together anything and everything that would lessen Jules Ainsley’s burden.

  “Nell,” he said with a nod. Then, “Hi, Cass.”

  “Don, we’ve been friends for a long time—” Nell began.

  “I think I reminded you of that just recently.”

  �
��Yes, you did. And I’d like to apologize if I came down too hard on you. I know you couldn’t murder a flea, Don. I know that. But there are all these loose ends that are floating around, making it hard to get at the truth. I guess I was trying to tie off some of them. Friends?”

  Don hesitated for a minute, then shook his head and laughed. “Sure. Rachel would divorce me if we didn’t end this thing with a hug. She’s says I’m stubborn, I said you were outta line.”

  “Well, a hug eliminates all of the above.”

  They complied, Nell adding a kiss to his cheek, just as Rachel came around the corner, lifted an eyebrow, and walked over. “Hanky-panky?”

  Cass hooted. “I’m keeping an eye on them, Rachel.”

  “Good. Thanks, Cass.”

  “Are you two here for lunch? Dinner?” Don checked his watch. They were caught in between the two. Neither made good sense.

  “I had a question about one of the fellows who works here.”

  “Garrett Barros,” Don said.

  “Now you’re reading my mind?”

  “The police have talked to the poor kid three times now.”

  “He wasn’t here the afternoon that Jeffrey was killed,” Nell said. “He lived right next door to where he died. And some of the jobs Jeffrey gave him were not very desirable.”

  “All true. You’ve been doing a little bit of sleuthing, my friend,” Don said.

  “Is that wise, Nell?” It was Rachel, her face pulled into a worry. “This is a murder we’re talking about. And you can’t get away with asking questions in this town and not have people know about it.”

  Nell tried to brush her concern off. “You sound like Ben. But Jules Ainsley is getting a bad rap. And maybe Garrett Barros, too. It’s difficult to live your life under those kinds of clouds. And they desperately need to get back to living their lives. We all do.”

  “You’re right,” Don said. “We’re all frustrated. I look at the restaurant every night and worry about it, wanting to be sure the staff gets home safely, then wondering about the people eating here. Is one of them a murderer? It does crazy things to our heads.”

  “Yes, Don. That’s exactly it,” Nell said.

  Cass looked over and saw Garrett walking into the kitchen. She nudged Nell, who followed her look.

  “Would you mind if Cass and I talked to Garrett?” Nell asked Don.

  “Will you be nice to him?” Don answered, with a half smile. Then he motioned to a waiter to get Garrett from the kitchen and excused himself to answer a phone call.

  Rachel waved a good-bye, but Nell stopped her. “Rachel, a question before you leave. Do you remember any of Jeffrey’s other friends from high school? Karen mentioned there were three of them that were tight—”

  “Hmmm. I don’t remember that. But Karen would know better than I. I remember her keeping an eye on Stan, even back then. She would have known his friends—”

  Garrett appeared, ending the conversation, and Rachel moved toward friends waiting for her at a table.

  “Hi, Mrs. Endicott,” Garrett said. He looked at Cass. “Hi, Cass. We’re friends now, right?”

  “Gotcha,” Cass said.

  “I was over at Jules’s today,” Nell said. “You’ve done a magnificent job on her backyard. It was very nice of you to help her out.”

  Garrett’s smile grew and he stood a little straighter. “I like doing that. Kinda selfish, too. Now that it’s cleared I can use my binoculars to see all the way to the beach. Early mornings are the best time to see the shorebirds. Loons, sea ducks. Sometimes I even see migrating butterflies.”

  His voice was almost reverential as he described the sight. When Nell looked away, she realized Grace Danvers had come up and was standing next to Cass, listening, too. She was carrying several books.

  “Break time, Garrett,” she said when he finished. “Are you ready to hit the books?”

  Garrett looked at Nell and Cass sheepishly. “School time. She’s teaching me to read better.”

  Their puzzled looks brought an explanation from Grace. “Jeffrey Meara was helping Garrett with his reading. Somehow he got passed along in school without anyone noticing that he couldn’t read. After Jeffrey died, Don asked me if I could take over, and we’re having a good time. Right, Garrett? I’m not as good as Jeffrey, but close, he says.”

  Garrett beamed. “She teaches me to read and I teach her about snowy owls and grebes and alcids. Right?”

  “I think I get the better deal,” the hostess said, motioning toward the side door. It was a sunny day. They’d sit outside today.

  Nell and Cass watched the odd couple disappear from sight.

  “This must have been why he got the crummy jobs we heard about. It was what he could handle.”

  “A surprise around every corner,” Nell said. “And the question I had for Garrett—how he and Jeffrey got along—was answered without asking it.”

  Don Wooten was at the front door when they went to leave. “When Jeffrey was on his firing rampage, that guy was the one I wanted to fire first,” he said. “Jeffrey adamantly refused. I didn’t get it at first. He said the kid needed something to do to feel better about himself. He didn’t mind the jobs Jeffrey assigned him. He was grateful. Big Barros doesn’t show emotion much, but he was pretty broken up when Jeffrey died. I promised him that his job was safe. That we’d figure it all out.”

  Nell smiled. “And so you have, my friend,” she said.

  Chapter 34

  “Ben, did you ever study the Euthyphro in college?” Nell handed Ben the cutting board and a bowl of vegetables.

  “Graduate school. A business law professor had us read Plato’s dialogues to see how well we could mess them up.”

  “What do you remember about that one?”

  “That I had trouble spelling it.”

  Nell laughed. She poured freshly squeezed lime juice into the food processor. They’d agreed to keep the Friday-night dinner as simple as possible. Grilled coconut lime shrimp and a hearty couscous vegetable salad. The friends coming to dinner were in need of more than carefully prepared delicacies. Friendship and talk would go much further in aiding weary spirits.

  “It’s actually strange that I remember it at all,” Ben said. He pulled out the basket for the shrimp. “But I enjoyed the class and the professor. He wanted to pull out the ethical dilemmas, and then he wanted us to try to construct a justice system that was better than the Athenians’.”

  “No small task. I imagine you got an A.” She added the coconut, rum, honey, and milk to the processor.

  “Why are you suddenly interested in Plato?”

  “Jeffrey Meara was talking about Plato with Grace Danvers shortly before he died. Sparring with her, she said. They both loved philosophy and spent some of their breaks that way. But that week, right before he died, Jeffrey seemed obsessed with the Euthyphro’s theme—exploring the right thing to do in difficult situations. For example, if you thought someone close to you had done something wrong. Should you turn the person in—and upset their life—or let it pass for the sake of the relationship? To keep peace. Not ruin people’s lives.”

  “In the dialogue, Euthyphro turned his own father in, if I remember, because he’d let a slave die.”

  “Something like that. But it presented an ethical dilemma. Grace seemed to think Jeffrey’s interest was more personal than academic.”

  “That’s interesting.” Ben took the ice out of the freezer and filled the silver bowl. The furrows in his forehead deepened. “He was going to talk to Jules, but what could he possibly be telling her that would have dire consequences?”

  “Maybe that’s the question.”

  The sound of footsteps broke into the conversation and a group came in, all at once, not the ordinary way the Friday-night crowd appeared. Ben disappeared to get the grill and martinis started. Sam deposited Abby with Izzy and
he and Danny followed Ben outside to help. Birdie came in with Cass, talking before she reached the kitchen.

  Her afternoon with the old gals had been interesting.

  “They confirmed that the Brogans were the family who owned the Ridge Road house,” she said without preamble. “Stella was right. And yes, it was James, the patriarch, who then sold it. But it’s why he sold it that’s interesting.” She looked around at the expectant faces around the kitchen island.

  “There was one child in the family, James the Third. He went to school in Sea Harbor, Amelia Oliver said. She used to teach at the high school and remembered him. His parents were never around—they spent most of their time in Boston. Remember, this was forty years go. They probably had a houseful of servants to take care of things in the main house.”

  “Things, meaning their son?” Cass asked.

  “I suppose. But don’t forget that the memories of some of these ladies leave a little bit to be desired. But what Fiona Riley remembers about that summer is that the son was home from college, living in that little house. Apparently he didn’t like staying in the mansion over on the Point. And she vaguely remembers that he got in trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Nell said.

  “That’s what she remembered. But Amelia argued with Fiona. She said Jimmy Brogan was a wonderful young man.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Izzy asked.

  “Something big, Fiona insisted. But she couldn’t remember what. And then he died, she said.”

  “While so young? How awful,” Izzy said.

  Birdie nodded. “After the son’s death, the family immediately sold everything they owned in Sea Harbor and never returned. They even left furniture behind, Fiona said.”

  “They were grieving,” Nell said.

  “Maybe. But Bernice Risso thought it was their pride. They were older, quite aloof. And the whole thing with their son was tarnishing their good name.”

  “Did any of them remember how he died?”

  “It was all hush-hush, Bernice said. But the rumor was that he had killed himself.”

  “What a sad story,” Nell said. But the summer had been a happy one for Penelope Ainsley. What had happened?