A Finely Knit Murder

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Was he from around here?”

  “I don’t think so. He was handsome in a kind of all-American way. Dark hair—with that sexy five o’clock shadow, sort of like the guy in Mad Men? He didn’t keep a boat here, at least I don’t think so. Though they may have rented one a few times.” She furrowed her brow, trying to come up with something more helpful. “There are so many people who come and go,” she said apologetically.

  “Of course. We understand.”

  “I might be able to re-create it in my head, just give me a little time. I can also check the guesthouse log when I’m back in my office. I think they were here a couple weekends. I’ll be in touch.”

  “That would be helpful. Thanks, Liz. It might be important.”

  Cass listened to the conversation, then looked at Birdie, who was doing the same. Listening. Processing. Trying to slip another piece of information into an already crowded picture.

  Nell thanked Liz and watched her walk away, a sudden heaviness weighing her down. And in her head she thought she heard a noise, like a large thump, something falling into place. And she wasn’t at all sure if it made her happy or sad.

  Liz left and they ate their lobster rolls in silence, the gentle waves a deceptive background as they thought about Blythe Westerland, about the men in her life, and about the reason why one of them might have killed her.

  Chapter 31

  N ell dropped Cass at the dock where she was meeting Pete to check something out on one of the lobster boats.

  Pete was in the parking lot talking to Willow when they pulled up. He walked over to the car and leaned in through the open window.

  “Hey, if you’re free and easy tonight, come on over to the Gull. Merry, Andy, and I are jamming. It’s for a good cause.”

  “What is the cause?” Birdie asked.

  “Us,” Pete said. “Jake Risso is getting dotty—or maybe it’s because his son is the drummer—but no matter, he pays us nicely.”

  They laughed. Jake had owned the Gull for longer than anyone could remember, and in spite of his gruffness, he was a generous soul.

  “Seriously, though, we’ll be passing a hat for that Big Brother sailing thing that Ben and Sam are doing next spring. You’ll feel like losers if you don’t come.”

  “Of course we’ll come.” Somewhere along the way, Ben had mentioned it, and then they had both promptly forgotten about it. But they’d show up, even though a noisy bar might not be the way to end the week they had had.

  “Hey, hairy Harry stopped by the dock, wondering if you’d moved,” he said to Cass. “Seems you’re elusive.”

  “And you said . . .”

  “That you’d be around. He said you had plans together tonight, but I told him you were coming to the Gull.”

  Willow pulled him out of the window. “Sorry, Cass. I don’t know when your baby brother decided he’d make a good social secretary, but Harry was okay with it. He’d come, too, he said, and could you pick him up? His Bimmer is being checked.”

  Cass shook her head as if dismissing her brother from her life forever. She slid out of the backseat. “It’s so nice to have guardians,” she mumbled in fake annoyance, and then she waved good-bye to Nell and Birdie.

  * * *

  Nell drove up Harbor Road toward Birdie’s neighborhood, maneuvering the twists and turns in the forested road as she wondered about Cass. She was so difficult to read sometimes. She had bantered with Danny, and seemed happy about seeing Harry. She seemed oddly content for reasons neither of them could fathom. But Cass was Cass. And they loved her.

  Content would suffice for now. It was the only choice they had.

  “Before you drop me off, let’s check to see if Mary is at the B and B,” Birdie said. “Perhaps Bob is back by now and we can relieve Danny’s mind. He seemed genuinely worried.”

  Nell agreed and drove up the long driveway. She pulled into the small parking lot beside the sprawling bed-and-breakfast.

  Mary’s car was there, along with several others with out-of-state licenses. And at the far end, Bob Chadwick’s Subaru sat in the shade of a gnarled old elm tree.

  They parked and started walking across the lot when a back door slammed and Mary came out of the inn, meeting them on the back porch.

  “No, he’s not back,” she said, before anyone could ask. “Are we to be worried about this?”

  The diminutive inn owner wore jeans and a plaid shirt, looking as though she’d been cleaning. “Ben has called, then Father Larry, then Danny, and now here you two are. This means ‘worry’ in my mind. She tapped her head, her short hair flying. She motioned for them to follow her through the back door.

  “It’s simply odd, don’t you think?” Birdie said to her back.

  Mary didn’t answer. They walked into the large kitchen that anchored a portion of the back half of the bed-and-breakfast. Mary kept coffee, muffins, tea, and whatever else had sounded good to her that day at the guests’ disposal. She poured three cups of coffee and pulled stools up to the long stainless steel counter that ran through the middle of the room.

  “Bob got in yesterday, and he wasn’t his usual, friendly self. Nice, gracious, but he clearly had something on his mind. I asked if he was okay and he said he hadn’t slept well, so at first I left well enough alone. I try not to intrude on my guests’ personal business—or otherwise—but Bob is slowly becoming more than a guest. Maybe because of the reason bringing him here. It is difficult for him; I can tell.”

  Nell poured a stream of half-and-half into her coffee and stirred it slowly. “We all desperately need closure. And Bob needs it in an even more personal way.”

  Mary agreed. “I could tell he wasn’t quite himself the minute he walked through the door. He put his things up in his room and came back down for something to drink, so I made him some chamomile tea and sat down with him. We talked about Blythe—he hadn’t expressed much emotion before, but yesterday I could tell that he did care about her in his own way—sometimes blood does that. It’s like that with me and Teresa. She’s goofy sometimes, but she’s family. Anyway, maybe planning the funeral triggered Bob’s emotions. I think he understood Blythe, and knew that the life—the family—she was born into didn’t give her much of a start in life.”

  “Danny said something similar,” Nell said. “Bob appeared a little cavalier when we first met him, but once he realized our intent wasn’t to shed a bad light on Blythe but only to find out who did this horrible thing, he warmed up a little.”

  Mary agreed. “He mentioned Danny—he’s meeting him for dinner tonight, I think. Danny got him thinking about Blythe’s murder in a different way, he said. A more personal way. To look at ordinary things that might not have been ordinary beneath the surface. Appointments, meetings. Anything. Bob said it was good advice. He was up all night thinking about it and things were coming together. The dots were starting to connect.”

  “That’s curious,” Nell said. “Do you have any idea what he meant?”

  “No.” Mary sat thoughtfully, her feet barely touching the rungs on the stool. She held the string of her tea bag with her fingertips, dipping it in and out of the cup. “Blythe wasn’t evil, he told me. And even if it was painful and unfair to someone else, she did what she had to do for herself.”

  “I wonder what it was he was referring to,” Nell said, echoing what each of them was thinking. He didn’t seem to be talking about relationships ending or an attempt to have a headmistress or teacher fired. They were pieces that didn’t fit smoothly into the puzzle, their edges too big or too small. She’d done something for herself, something that was painful—maybe unbearable?—to someone else.

  Mary thought about the conversation more carefully. “Bob agreed that she treated people carelessly sometimes—much the way she’d been treated growing up. People didn’t like her because of that. But he also indicated she’d done something recently, something that
would have been hard for someone to forgive. He seemed to fumble with the words, as if his own thoughts weren’t clear about it.”

  “Someone who lives here in Sea Harbor?”

  “I think so. And then he got up and said he needed to settle it. He shouldn’t be sitting around. He was resolute, determined. Not just a man going out for a sandwich. I reminded him to take his key—”

  Birdie and Nell smiled. Mary’s thick gold rings with the name of her bed-and-breakfast on them, along with the room number, were not always welcomed by her guests. They were heavy and bulky—and created lumps in men’s back pockets. But hard to lose, was Mary’s rationale.

  “I heard him leave a little while later,” Mary said.

  “So he was meeting someone?”

  “Yes, he was going to meet with someone. And though I nudged, he didn’t mention who.”

  She reached for a beat-up brown folder, tied with a cloth string, and pushed it across the shiny surface to Nell. “This was in his room. Danny and Ben’s names are scribbled on it. Along with a couple of meeting times.”

  “He was having dinner with Danny tonight. And meeting with Ben tomorrow,” Nell said. And both men had encouraged him to bring some of Blythe’s personal papers with him.

  “I thought there might be something in it to tell me where he went yesterday and when he was coming back. The inn is getting booked up with leaf peepers and he forgot to tell me how long he was staying this time. But it wasn’t helpful. It’s mostly a packet of bills, financial mishmash, papers.”

  Nell held back her surprise that Mary had gone through the papers—but then, maybe she’d have done the same thing if a guest in an inn she owned had disappeared and she had no idea if and when he was coming back—and if he was going to pay his bill. She picked up the envelope. “It’s some papers needed to finish up the will business. Bills, mortgages, that sort of thing. I’ll take it to them.”

  Mary looked at the packet. “Good. But I think it’s more than bills. Maybe you can make some sense out of it.”

  * * *

  The crowd at the Gull was large, noisy, and sent even Pete’s most devoted fans to the roof of the popular bar. Because of an unexpected north wind, it was chilly and they had the wide space with the view of the harbor to themselves, for a while, anyway.

  Ben and Nell settled in next to Birdie at the round rooftop table next to a large heater. Izzy and Sam sat across from them. They had invited Elizabeth, but she was staying close to home. Nell wondered if perhaps Jerry was checking in after hours, ignoring the boundaries Elizabeth had set.

  She hoped so.

  “Cass and Harry are downstairs,” Izzy said. “They’re listening to the band up close for a while.”

  “Making sure Pete knows they’re there,” Ben said.

  “Probably. But Harry hadn’t heard the band before, and he wanted to get the full effect,” Sam said.

  “And you don’t have to talk down there. It’s so dang noisy,” Izzy added. “Harry isn’t much of a talker. And Cass seemed to have something on her mind.”

  Harry wasn’t much of a talker, that was true, but he had shared personal feelings with Nell, and she was nearly a stranger. She knew people often did that, shared things with strangers. Had he shared the same thoughts with Cass? Nell imagined her response, probably pulling away at the intimate conversation. Or would she have? None of them were sure of how she felt about the relationship. She’d been to his house, Nell knew. Even helped him fix some walls. But were they to the “do you want children?” stage?

  Deep down, she hoped not, but it was Cass’s business, Cass’s heart. Not hers.

  “He may not talk much,” Ben said. “But he sails.”

  “Which covers a multitude of sins, I guess?” Izzy asked.

  “Yep,” said Sam.

  They tried to keep up the banter, to act as if life were normal, but in an hour it had grown old.

  And beneath the words ran a silent river of thought of Bob Chadwick.

  He hadn’t checked in with anyone. He seemed to have disappeared, leaving his car, his room, and a concerned innkeeper behind. Ben had called the chief but tried to act as though it was a personal inquiry—not a police matter.

  But Jerry sensed his concern—and shared it. Bob was the only one with direct family connections to Blythe, and hopes still hinged on what he could tell them about his cousin. They weren’t finished talking with him. He understood why Ben didn’t want to exaggerate the man’s absence—there had been enough exaggeration and innuendo in Sea Harbor in the last few days to last several years.

  They agreed it wasn’t unusual for a man to go AWOL for a couple of days, especially considering what was on Bob’s plate.

  If only the Subaru had left with him, it would be so much easier to believe their own reasoning.

  The conversation ended with a promise to keep in touch, and Jerry’s promise to do a little poking around on his own.

  Danny had begged off the Gull gathering. He was still hopeful he’d get a call that Bob was just running late for dinner. They were going to meet at the yacht club. He was going to hang out there for a while and see if Bob showed up.

  From the large speakers in each corner of the rooftop, the Fractured Fish—Pete, Merry, and Andy—entertained the crowd, encouraging sing-alongs with an array of tunes that hit every age group in the entire town. The hat was passed around several times, upstairs and down, and was full with each go-round. The Big Brothers sailing club would thrive.

  Cass and Harry had come up to the roof, but sat at the end of the table, separated from the others by Harry’s quiet manner.

  Nell moved down on the bench until she was just across from Cass. But it was to Harry she spoke. “How is the cottage coming?”

  Harry rubbed his mustache with one finger. “It’s getting there,” he said. “I’m heading back to Boston soon.” He looked at Cass. “But I’ll be back often, you can bet on that,” he said.

  “Well, good. I’m sorry you weren’t here at a better time, Harry. Fall is usually one of our favorite seasons. Filled with color and a sense of peace. This week hasn’t been like that at all. It’s been rough.”

  He nodded. “Rough. Yes.” He glanced at Cass. She was actively attacking a Gull double burger—and winning. He looked back at Nell.

  Nell held his gaze and in the silence she saw something she hadn’t noticed in the time Harry Winthrop had been in Sea Harbor, sharing their days. The man who had moved into Cass’s life and seemed to be staying there.

  What she saw surprised her.

  She saw a profound sadness.

  Chapter 32

  B en was working on understanding, but he didn’t see the significance in what Nell had seen in Harry Winthrop’s eyes. He pulled on a shirt and jeans and gave his hair a quick brush.

  “I’m not sure, either,” Nell admitted, watching him from their bed. Ben had his mind on other things, she knew. A will with one of its benefactors missing, a friend who happened to be the police chief who was under great stress to find a murderer. And she knew he harbored hidden concern about her, hoping she’d stay safe. Everyone was on edge.

  She thought back to the night, to the week, all the way back to a party at a lovely school—a party that had ended in murder.

  Dots. All sorts of them. Enough to fill a canvas. With a myriad of lines connecting them.

  “I’m worried about Bob,” Ben called from the bathroom, where he stood at the mirror, a razor in one hand and his chin white and frothy. “Danny is, too. He texted that he’d tried to reach him all night, even drove around a little, checking a couple restaurants and bars.” He was trying to convince himself that their worry was foolish. They really didn’t know the guy that well. “Maybe the whole mess got to him and he went drinking.”

  But neither of them believed that to be the case.

  By the time Nell took a quick sh
ower, dressed, and walked into the kitchen, Ben had the coffee on and was rechecking his messages.

  “Anything?” Nell asked.

  He shook his head. “I need to go over to the club.” He checked his watch. “Liz thinks someone’s been messing with the keys and they want people to check their boats. I’m picking Sam up on the way.”

  “She mentioned that to us.” Nell repeated what she knew and that Liz pretended she wasn’t concerned, but she was. The club was small, the members friendly—something she and Ben had always appreciated. People treated each other—and each other’s property—with respect.

  “Liz seems to think there might be a need to initiate some security, new protocols. Members won’t be happy about it. They like the trust factor.”

  Ben grabbed his keys and kissed her on the cheek. He waved a hand toward the papers. “What’s all that?”

  Nell explained.

  “Good, glad he remembered. I asked him to bring bills and financial papers so I can figure the will out. Danny and I also thought, who knows, there might be something there that will give us a better look at who Blythe was when she wasn’t arguing at a school board meeting or dictating relationships. If you get a chance, maybe you can sort through them and pull out what I might need.”

  Ben left, then stuck his head back into the kitchen. “Almost forgot. Birdie’s on her way over. She was skipping Annabelle’s today and bringing coffee cakes and knitting.”

  Nell frowned. She knew Birdie. Sudden changes to rituals meant more than buttery coffee cake. Which was why she wasn’t at all surprised when Izzy, Abby, and Birdie showed up at the same time.

  Abby had been up for hours already, Izzy said, and she settled her down upstairs for a morning nap.

  “Is Cass coming?”

  “Yes,” Cass called from the front hall, and walked in with a bag of apples. She wore jeans and an old paint-spattered sweatshirt.