A Fatal Fleece: A Seaside Knitters Mystery

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Nick is great with that little girl,” Mary said. “I watch them sometimes, wandering around the B and B’s back trails. They have a lovely kinship. With you and Nick beside her, Birdie, she’ll be fine.”

  Birdie forced a smile. “Well, it will be up to Nick to be beside her, I’m afraid. He thinks it’s time to take her to Maine—their original destination. I suppose he wants to get her out of all this mess. Perhaps it’s best.”

  Nell sat quietly, listening, wondering at Nick’s sudden move. He was thinking he’d be there a week, he had told Mary.

  Cass put down her coffee mug with such force, it sloshed across the table. With a swipe of her napkin, she soaked up the liquid. “No,” she said. “It’s not best she leave now.” She looked at Birdie and Nell. “You know I’m right, both of you. I haven’t taken her out on the Lady Lobster yet. And we haven’t looked for mussels or had a clambake. There’s another beanie class scheduled, and the garden party is coming up.”

  She looked from one to the other, seeking agreement.

  But there was no argument, of course. Cass was right. They weren’t ready for Gabby to walk out of their lives. But their world had changed.

  Murder did that.

  A while later, Nell stopped by the yarn shop, hoping to see Izzy, if just for a moment. Mae was at the counter, her glasses slipping down her nose, trying to deal with a return. Her nieces, Jillian and Rose, moved in and out of the Magic Room—Izzy’s name for the children’s playroom—calming preschoolers, answering customers’ questions, and helping someone find the perfect lightweight cotton blend for a summer sweater.

  Izzy? Nell mouthed to Mae over a customer’s head.

  “She took a break,” Mae said loudly. Then motioned Nell to the desk. She continued to punch the computer keys while she talked, her glasses slipping perilously close to the end of her long nose. “Willow called. She thought someone should go out to see Angus McPherran and talk to him about Finn. I told her she was a gem and it was a good idea. Those two were buddies, Angus and Finnegan. I saw them often, drinking beer at the end of the pier and talking about the good old days. She was looking for you, too, wondering if maybe you would want to go along.”

  Leave it to Willow and Izzy to think of the Old Man of the Sea. He was the one who had stood up for Finnegan at the city council meeting. And who gave Finn a warm bed when the nor’easters came and Finn had forgotten to pay his light bill. If he hadn’t already heard the latest news, it would be kinder to hear it from two friends and not from a newspaper report written by someone who might be more motivated by additional inches on the front page than by facts.

  “She just left, not two minutes ago. You could catch up with her at Willow’s gallery.”

  Nell checked her watch. She had a couple of hours before a board meeting at the Sea Harbor Historical Museum. Willow and Izzy didn’t really need her, but she was very fond of Angus.

  Besides, she wanted to see Izzy and Willow. Bad news did that. And good news. It brought them together for comfort or for celebration.

  Angus was sitting on a stone wall above the rocky coast, looking out to sea. His cabin, a neat two-bedroom home that smelled of pine and fresh air, was a few yards away. Window boxes overflowed with marigolds and geraniums, neatly planted and well cared for. The small house was all that he’d asked of the city when he donated the acres of land to them, the land that had become Anja Angelina Park, named after his cherished wife and Angie Archer, a young girl he had befriended. They were both gone now, but the park was a reminder of the beauty and love each of them had brought into old Angus’ life. And now it was there for the whole community to enjoy, complete with hiking trails and a community center that fit right into the woods, where Willow Adams and others taught art and music and cooking.

  The old man looked up as the three women approached, his weathered skin wrinkling into a sad smile. The old floppy hat that covered a meager head of thin white hair came off and he stood and bowed slightly. He was stooped these days, his white beard seeming to pull his shoulders forward, his body bending toward the earth.

  “It’s a sad day,” he said. He motioned for them to join him on the wall, and eased himself back down. Nell sat down beside him, while Willow and Izzy sat cross-legged on the ground.

  For a while they sat in silence, the pounding of the waves against the rocks and the wind whistling through the towering pines providing background for their thoughts.

  “There goes the Hinckley.” Angus pointed to a white sail sloping toward the sea near Sunrise Island.

  “Our Hinckley?” Nell said. She and Izzy squinted against the glare. But what they saw was a dot of a sailboat.

  “Yep. I know ’em all. That’s Sam and Ben. See the way she heels?”

  He fell silent again, and the others did, as well. The boat disappeared and they watched the parade of new ones—lobster boats off to work, whale-watching boats looking for a show. Yachts and sailboats, speedboats and small fishing vessels. The world Finn had left behind.

  Willow cupped one hand over her eyes against the sun’s glare and looked up at Angus. “He was a good man.”

  “Yep. And a good friend,” Angus said. “At least as much as he could be. He spent time with me in the winter when his heat went off. Crazy fool.”

  “I guess if he had sold the land, he could have had a decent place to live.”

  “I suppose.” Angus looked like he wanted to say more, but instead he turned his body sideways and looked out at the sea. “Finnegan had reasons for the things he did. Good reasons, I suspect.”

  “Do you have any idea who did this to him, Angus?” Nell asked.

  Angus was silent for so long that Nell thought she might have offended him, although she wasn’t sure how.

  Finally, he answered. “He made a lot of people mad. Especially when he got his righteous hackles up. Finnegan was a black-and-white fellow—though you’d never know it for the ruckus he made when they took his driver’s license away.” Angus shook his head and chuckled at the memory. “He was one furious fellow that day, even though he knew as well as anybody that it was the right thing to do. Elsewise, sure and he’d be killing someone with the way he drove that truck. The truck had stopped obeying him, he said. I guess it had.

  “But he wouldn’t have taken the license back if they’d offered it to him. He knew it was time; he just had to put on a show.

  “But when people connived or lied or messed up other people’s lives, that’s what he couldn’t tolerate, even if it was none of his damn business. He’d take himself off to the newspaper or city hall or anyone who’d listen. Confront the people himself. Remember when that old mayor, dead now, cheated on his wife? Finnegan let him know it’d be all over Mary Pisano’s column if he didn’t shape up.

  “Oh, he nudged the best of them. Finnegan stuck his nose in everything, though you didn’t always know it. Just the other day he saw someone—probably the same nut who tried to barge into his house a few weeks back—hanging around Canary Cove, so he started patrolling the streets over there. He was determined the guy was stealing from the artists.”

  Willow smiled, tracing a fancy pattern in the sand with a stick. “He checked my locks every night.” She laughed. “And sometimes he even got personal. One night when Pete was at my place late, Finn got on him, told him to mind his p’s and q’s’, treat me right and not go fooling around behind my back.”

  Nell laughed. “The last person on earth who would need such advice.”

  “I told him once he’d be a damn sight happier if he’d mind his own business and stop playing keeper of the commandments. It must be a difficult way to live, to think you’re always right,” Angus said.

  A simple man—one who in death was becoming very complicated.

  “So we don’t have a clue who murdered him?” Izzy said.

  “Wrong there, missy,” Angus said. “There’re lots of clues. They’re probably right there staring us in the face.”

  “The police’ll probably start wi
th the vagrant Finn messed up,” Willow said. “He’d be a likely suspect—”

  “I suppose they will.” Angus pushed himself off the wall and reached for his walking stick. “Time for my morning constitutional,” he said with a nod to the path that ran above the rocky shore.

  Izzy and Willow got up and brushed off their jeans. Nell gave Angus a hug.

  “As for those likely suspects, sometimes likely isn’t the key word,” he said, looking off to sea as if there might be some kind of answer there. In the distance, Sunrise Island appeared, a curving piece of land on the sea’s horizon. “Finnegan left us with a pile of pieces. Someone just needs to put them together.”

  They watched the old man walk slowly across the bumpy terrain. Nell hoped the walking stick would keep him safe. A pile of pieces. But when you worked a puzzle, the pieces were all laid out there in front of you, some with flat sides, some with irregular shapes. The pieces to Finnegan’s puzzle seemed to be scattered all across the town—with little or no shape.

  And she suspected Angus knew it was going to take careful eyesight to find the shapes that mattered.

  “I think he knows more than he’s saying,” Izzy said, climbing into the car beside Nell.

  “Maybe he’s just trying to sort through things himself, things Finnegan said to him,” Willow said from the backseat.

  Nell drove down the winding park road and headed toward Canary Cove. “Maybe it was the vagrant seeking revenge. Finnegan worked him over badly.”

  “A vagrant who is probably halfway across the country by now. Or Maine, where no one will ever find him.” Izzy nibbled on her bottom lip.

  “I’m sure the police have it under control,” Nell said automatically. It was Ben talking through her, she realized with a start. And she wasn’t at all sure she agreed with him. She drove slowly, the car moving automatically toward Canary Cove and Willow’s gallery. Her thoughts were like raw fleece, unformed clumps and threads, drifting clouds across her mind—and they all carried images of Finnegan.

  A sentimental Finnegan enjoying ice cream with a ten-year-old girl.

  A sweet Finnegan watching the garden grow.

  An angry Finnegan arguing with his daughter on the Palate’s deck.

  And a fiercely defensive Finnegan facing off with Nicholas Marietti . . .

  “Nell, stop!”

  Nell’s foot went automatically to the brake.

  Across Canary Cove Road, through the trees and brush and tangled weeds that guarded Finnegan’s land, a light spun around and moved slowly toward the gate.

  When it cleared the trees, they saw a patrol car with Tommy Porter behind the wheel. Sitting next to him was Father Lawrence Northcutt.

  Behind them, bumping along the rutted path, was an ambulance.

  Nell and Willow rolled down their windows as they stared at the procession of vehicles pulling out of the gate and turning onto the road.

  Father Larry spotted them from the passenger’s side of the car. He waved through the window but his expression didn’t invite conversation, nor did Tommy’s, his eyes on the road.

  Instead, the young patrolman turned the car toward Harbor Road, not pausing long enough for their unspoken questions to find words—or to get answers.

  But the ambulance drivers weren’t as discreet. Or perhaps they didn’t see the three women sitting inside the car idling on the easement.

  The men brought the ambulance to a stop at the gate, checking for traffic.

  And through the open windows, their careless words carried across the narrow road, loud and distinct.

  “Can you believe it?” a beefy-looking man wearing a white shirt asked the driver. His voice was coated with incredulity, with a tinge of excitement.

  “Who would’ve guessed the old coot had a body buried back there?”

  Chapter 17

  A body.

  The three women parted reluctantly at Willow’s gallery, the disturbing thought that someone had been buried in Finnegan’s yard hanging heavy over them. Someone, not just Finnegan, had died there.

  How? When? Why?

  And who?

  They carried the questions away with them, loud, banging noises in their heads, as they tried to resume the day’s ordinary responsibilities—a board meeting, a shop to manage, a gallery to run.

  The old building in which the historical museum was housed always needed something: paint, a roof, new display cases. And Laura Danvers always managed to find the right people to donate at just the right time. She was the youngest board president they’d ever had, and, in Nell’s opinion, one of the best. She ran meetings efficiently and always tried to keep things on topic.

  Nell had left messages for Ben, even though she knew he would still be out sailing. But after the sail, she told him, they were meeting at Birdie’s. Cocktails and talk, was all she said.

  Talk to put some sense into what was going on in the quiet town they loved.

  Laura was standing just inside the open front door, greeting people, when Nell walked up.

  “Just the person I’m looking for,” Laura said. She pulled Nell over to the side of the foyer. “My husband just called. Have you heard anything? Was there a body buried in Finnegan’s yard?”

  Before Nell could answer, Birdie walked through the door and hurried over.

  “What’s happening to this town?” she asked, and it was clear that the news was already rolling down Harbor Road. A tidal wave, Birdie said.

  “But they just . . .” Nell began, but realized immediately that news like this—coupled with talkative ambulance drivers—would take a nanosecond to travel through town. Dozens of people would have seen the ambulance going in and out of Finnegan’s gate. And Esther Gibson, though discreet when she needed to be, wouldn’t hesitate to pass along something that would surely be in the morning paper.

  “Do you think Finnegan knew a body was buried there?” Laura asked.

  They fell silent, and the next question went unspoken. Do you think Finnegan put it there?

  But Finnegan was dead. And perhaps he was the only one who knew the answers.

  Laura checked her watch, then ushered Nell and Birdie into the boardroom. Buried bodies wouldn’t deter the Sea Harbor Historical Museum board from beginning their meeting on time, not on Laura Danvers’ watch.

  But a man reported murdered one day, and the discovery of a body buried in his yard the next was too much even for Laura to control.

  The room was a beehive, the buzzing so loud the words were ripped loose of sentences, colliding like fireworks in the heated air.

  Body. Murder. Daughter. Land. Skeleton. Drifter.

  With valiant effort and fierce pounding of her antique gavel, Laura finally brought quiet to the usually sedate group.

  While talk then turned to housepainters and underwriters and fund-raisers, Nell sat back in her chair, pondering the ill-informed—but provocative—comments of well-intentioned women. They wanted what she wanted, what the whole town wanted: a return to the slow, easy summer that they had waited nine long months to enjoy.

  After the meeting, Nell left another message for Ben, knowing it would sit in his voice mail until they had returned to shore, but somehow the connection seemed important—and comforting.

  “Don’t forget—cocktails at Birdie’s when you bring Gabby home,” she said to the machine as she and Birdie walked down the steps.

  “Home,” Birdie echoed as Nell hung up. “It’s becoming that—Gabby’s home. I see her everywhere—in the flowers she and Harold planted along the walkway, the orange hot pad she crocheted for Ella, scrunchies on the bathroom sink, and music everywhere.”

  “Do you think Nick will reconsider and stay a few more days?”

  “I don’t know. This murder business seems to have bothered him more than I’d have thought.”

  “He probably wants to get Gabby away from it.”

  “That’s it, I’m sure. But somehow, I don’t know, it seems more personal. The whole Finnegan thing. That land.” Birdi
e stopped.

  Nell was quiet.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Nell. We saw Nick arguing with Finnegan. But I asked him about it, and it was as we thought. He wanted to meet the man Gabby talked about and spent time with.”

  Maybe. They both wanted it to be true.

  Nell took out her car keys and waved at Harold, patiently waiting at the curb in Birdie’s Lincoln. “It makes perfect sense—we would have done the same if we didn’t already know him. We’d have been staked out at his gate. But . . .”

  Birdie waited.

  “But Finn looked angry. Why? It doesn’t fit. He was a stickler for propriety and doing the right thing. You’d think he’d have welcomed Nick’s questions. Expected him to come calling.”

  “That’s what you would have thought.”

  “Birdie, there’s another thing. I think I saw Nick’s car parked on that dirt road alongside Finnegan’s property early yesterday morning.”

  Birdie took in a full breath and released it slowly, her chest moving in and out. Her eyes asked Nell to tell her more, but her face said she didn’t want to hear.

  “I didn’t see him. Only the car. So it might not have been his. But it was the same make—and a rental.”

  “Monday morning . . .”

  Mary’s words came back to them. He was an early riser. He had a key.

  “Finnegan was already dead on Monday. Why would Nick—”

  Why? But neither of them even knew how to articulate the whole question. Why did Nick go to see Finnegan? And why would he have gone over there after Finn died? Did he know about the body buried on the land? And why had he lied about not knowing the old fisherman?

  Harold honked lightly and pointed to the DO NOT PARK HERE sign near the car.

  Birdie gave Nell a quick hug and walked toward the car, her head turned toward Nell. “We’ll figure this out tonight over a glass of pinot gris, my friend,” she said softly. “Tomorrow’s supposed to be a sunny day. Let’s make it so.”

  Cass was the first to arrive at Birdie’s, her truck huffing and chugging around the drive.

  “You need a new muffler,” Harold hollered as Cass parked in the circle drive.