A Fatal Fleece: A Seaside Knitters Mystery

by Sally Goldenbaum

  But by the time she reached the post office and parked the car, no answers stared her in the face, only a list of questions as long as Harbor Road.

  Nell gathered the packages she was sending off to her sister and climbed the wide stone steps, her mind still cluttered but a new determination adding direction to her questions.

  The serpentine line inside the post office was long but moving quickly. Nell spotted Mary Halloran at the front. Her silvery head of hair, pulled back in a neat bun, bobbed as she spoke with the postal worker and emptied a cloth bag filled with mail. Church business, Nell surmised. Bills, thank-yous, and notes to the sick. She was Father Northcutt’s right-hand woman and, most parishioners thought, was the one who really ran things at Our Lady of Safe Seas. Father Northcutt agreed.

  Mary turned, nodded to people in line as she headed toward the door, then spotted Nell.

  “Nell, darlin’,” she said, a look of relief flushing her round, pale face. She gave Nell a quick hug.

  “Come, dear,” she said, tugging Nell free of her coveted spot in line. “We need to talk.” A small, kindhearted woman, Mary Halloran’s size belied her determination and strength; requests were rarely protested.

  Nell followed her into the post office foyer.

  Her usual smiling eyes were clouded with worry. “It’s Catherine. We need to help her,” Mary said.

  “She’s strong, Mary. Just like her mother.”

  Mary brushed away the words with her hand. “There’re the business worries—she takes those all on herself, just like Patrick did. But now Finnegan’s murder on top of it. The suspicions, the police? Good lord.”

  “It’s routine business with the police. No one thinks Cass could possibly have had anything to do with his death.”

  “Of course she didn’t. She loved Finn. But it will never be better until we find the man who killed him. And if anything could make it worse, it has. Now they’re saying our Finn killed someone and buried him back there in that mess of a yard. It’s a double nightmare, Nell.”

  Nell’s concern over Cass had blurred the added burden the rumors about Finn brought to those who loved him. Mary would be devastated by her friend’s memory being sullied in so scurrilous a way.

  “It’s an awful sin to say those things about Finn,” Mary said, her head nodding and her eyes demanding help. “He won’t rest in peace until we stop the terrible talk.”

  Nell nodded, feeling suddenly helpless. Mary was right, at least about the stigma on Finn’s memory. “Hopefully we’ll find out who was buried back there soon—and that there’s a logical reason for it—and the rumors will disappear in a flash.”

  Mary’s attention seemed to flag, her eyes filling again with concern. She looked out the post office window at the cars going by, people walking by.

  “Finnegan must have loved the Hallorans dearly to hand everything he owned over to Cass,” Nell said softly. “He was giving it to all of you.”

  Mary’s eyes filled. “Now, isn’t that just like our dear Finn? That crazy man. He knew the troubles we had, that one. Always trying to help. Always, always, always.”

  “Some think it was your Irish stew,” Nell said, trying to coax a smile from her friend’s face.

  Mary chuckled at that. “I don’t understand him leaving that daughter of his out in the cold the way he did, but he must have had a reason. Finn didn’t have a mean bone in his body. She did something that disturbed him greatly.”

  “Did he talk to you about Beverly?”

  “Never. Nor did Moira. Not since the day Beverly ran away with a fistful of their money and broke her mother’s heart right in half. Father Larry tells me she’s contesting the will, wanting her fair share. Well, whatever the good lord wants.”

  She paused, then with the old sparkle returning to her eyes, added, “And I am fairly sure he wants the Halloran company to be healthy and strong again.”

  Mary reached into her purse and rummaged through it until she found what she was looking for: a folded roll of bills, secured with a rubber band. She pressed it into Nell’s hand.

  “What’s this?” Nell stared at the money.

  “It’s to take Catherine out for an evening and make her forget about her worries, about Finn’s death, the police questioning her, the inheritance, Beverly Walden—every single bit of it. She won’t let me help, stubborn girl. She doesn’t want anyone’s help. Even pushes that sweet Danny boy away.”

  “Cass has an awful time accepting help. It seems to frighten her, as if it will make her weak or dependent, especially with Danny. But if there’s anything good coming out of this mess, it might be with the two of them. I think she’s letting Danny back in, at least a crack. Cass might be admitting she needs him.”

  Mary brightened. “He’s a good boy and wants what’s best for Cass. What’s best is him, I told him.”

  Nell held the money up in the air. “Now, about this . . .”

  Mary put one hand on Nell’s arm and looked directly into her eyes, insisting Nell listen. “I know for a fact that Cass listens to you—and to the girls. She tells you things she thinks will worry her mother. She’s not eating. A good meal, a glass of wine. Please . . . take care of my girl, Nell.” She dropped her gaze and sighed. “They say that they cut the umbilical cord at birth, but they don’t. Not really.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Mary. Cass needs an evening out, away from lobsters, boats, and the rest of this mess.” She hugged her tightly. “It will happen.”

  As Mary turned away, Nell slipped the money back into her friend’s purse.

  Chapter 25

  It took Nell little time to make it happen—a few text messages, a call to Birdie. And calendars were immediately cleared for the next night.

  “Ladies’ night out—yes!” was Izzy’s immediate response. They all needed it, not just Cass, and not just to relax. They needed to be together to put order into the chaos that was becoming their summer, and time to figure out what to do about it. So far, their efforts had yielded few results and way too many questions.

  It was Birdie’s idea to leave Sea Harbor, so they did, heading out in Nell’s CRV, leaving drifters, gossip, and ominous graves behind them. Exploring them from a distance might help them think outside the box, they all agreed.

  “It’s getting more difficult to simply up and leave,” Birdie remarked from the passenger’s seat.

  “Grandchildren will do that to you,” Cass said.

  “And husbands. I practically had to turn my passport over to Sam,” Izzy said. “You’d think we were going to Sin City instead of Rockport.”

  They laughed. The sleepy town on the farthest tip of Cape Ann was not known for its wild night life. But it was not Sea Harbor, and that’s what they needed. A big, wide deck where they could pull out their knitting, order dinner, and not run into their next-door neighbors. On a quiet weeknight, their chances were good of finding such a place.

  And they did, at the end of Bearskin Neck, the rocky piece of land filled with tiny shops that jutted out into the water. White market umbrellas, roomy tables, and the feeling that they were floating out to sea suited their mood, and in minutes they were settled in with a plate of tiny lobster tacos in front of them, a pitcher of margaritas and iced tea nearby.

  Nell filled them in quickly on Ned Smith—and Ben’s opinion of his guilt.

  “So he probably didn’t do it,” Birdie said. “But someone did.”

  “It’s someone with a face. And, mostly likely, a face we know,” Nell said.

  Izzy pulled the soft pastel yarn out of her purse and, without looking, began knitting the ankle of her sock, the lacy ribbon pattern taking shape beneath her quick-moving fingers. Her thoughts seemed to parallel the rhythm of her needles. “So we think about faces, about people. Anyone who might have had suspicious connections to Finn.” She looked over at Birdie. “This is hard, because I know you like Nick a lot. I do, too. But . . .”

  Birdie nodded. “I like him very much. But he’s not been honest
; that much I know. I talked to him about it again today. He’d had another ‘meeting,’ as he called it, with the police. They don’t call people in for their entertainment, I said. No, they don’t, he said. And then there was that look, the one that told me not to worry.” She sighed. “I hate the lie, but I trust the man. Don’t worry, he said. It’s fine.”

  “Yet it isn’t fine, not until he can explain it. He argued with Finn. He was on his property. And he refuses to tell you why,” Nell said.

  “Or the police. He’s sticking to his story, saying his concern was for Gabby.”

  “Do you believe him?” Cass asked.

  “No,” Birdie said simply, but with a force that brought welcome laughter to the table. “He’s lying, and I told him so. But it got me nowhere—except maybe the bouquet of flowers he had delivered later.”

  The laughter grew.

  “When he came back here after being in Italy, something was different with him. A worried look, and the secrets. There was something going on besides being here for Gabby.”

  And the reason had something to do with Finnegan, they felt sure.

  And Finnegan had been murdered.

  “And then there’s Beverly Walden,” Izzy said. “Why did she really come back to Sea Harbor? Did it have anything to do with making sure she was first in line in Finn’s will?”

  “I don’t trust her,” Cass said. “I don’t like her much, either.”

  “That’s understandable. She’s trying to rip your inheritance away from you.”

  “It’s not even that, though that seems to be driving her kind of crazy. But there’s something else, something sneaky going on there.”

  All of them knew Cass’ feelings were colored by the circumstances. She was Finnegan’s protector. And looked on Beverly as the enemy, even when Finn was alive.

  “I ran into her in the cheese store shortly before Finn died. She seemed happy with life that day.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Cass said. “One minute she’s happy; the next, devious and angry. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

  “She wanted Finnegan’s money,” Izzy said. “She’s made that obvious. Not very smart if she doesn’t want to appear as a suspect.”

  “That’s the other thing about her. She doesn’t seem to grasp the situation. Izzy’s right—she’s calling attention to herself, trying to get Finn’s money. Could she be one of those amoral people who doesn’t have a conscience? All that stealing when she was a kid; not coming back when her own mother was dying?” Cass asked.

  “But money didn’t seem to be such an issue when she first arrived,” Birdie said. “Finnegan told me that originally she turned down his offer to stay in that house he owns. It was like she didn’t want anything from him. And then she suddenly did.”

  “What changed for her?”

  They all thought about that. The rumors were that she had a man in her life. But, as Nell wisely said, how would that have stirred up this sudden desperate need for money?

  “Does she owe someone money?” Izzy wondered.

  “A very curious part of this is that Finnegan originally had her in his will. Maybe it was in a small way, not what she expected. But it was something,” Birdie said.

  “Yes!” Izzy leaned forward. “And then he took her out of it. And Ben said it seemed Finn was angry when he did it.”

  Nell thought back to the incident on the Palate’s deck. “Merry said Finn shouted at Beverly, accused her of hurting people.”

  “What Finn said to her was awful. Not like him at all. He said something about her killing her own mother,” Cass said. “I don’t like her much, but that seemed harsh.”

  “But he did mean that figuratively, of course,” Birdie said. “She broke her mother’s heart. But didn’t Finn say she was ruining another person’s life? Whose?”

  “And is that why Finnegan took her out of his will?” Izzy asked. Her cheeks were flushed as if something finally made sense. Not completely, maybe, not in a way that explained murder, but it seemed to be a step in the right direction.

  Cass spread honey butter on a freshly baked slice of herb bread. “All right, who could Beverly be hurting? Besides me, that is.”

  “She won’t win that dispute, Cass.” Nell said. But they all knew her assurance wasn’t grounded in fact. Beverly very well might win. And the Halloran Lobster Company’s troubles would once again be pressing painfully for resolution.

  A sudden gust of wind whipped Cass’ hair against her cheeks. She looked around the table. “You know what I hate most of all? I hate that you’ve all been pulled into this. I want to go back one short month. I want Finnegan to be hollering at me for forgetting to bring his soda bread and me hollering at him for spilling the buoy paint. I want to be happy for Danny that he’s having a great book tour. I want to finish knitting that damn hat that’s been sitting in my bag forever, and I want you three to be . . . to not be worried about me, to just be happy with me . . . to be . . .” Her voice broke off as Birdie silenced her with a gentle hug.

  “We’re happy with you, sad with you, whatever the moment calls for.”

  “We’re thick-and-thin friends—no worry on that score,” Izzy agreed. She took a drink of her margarita. “But as for that hat you were knitting? It’s a mess, anyway. So don’t bother finishing it.”

  Cass swatted at Izzy and then they clinked their glasses, knowing deep down what it was Cass wanted, what they all wanted, and what they’d get, by hook or by crook.

  Their summer back. Peace. And friendships not burdened with the awfulness of murder.

  The waitress removed the empty plates and returned in minutes with what they’d all agreed would suit them perfectly: a thin-crust pizza nearly as big as the table and piled high with sweetly marinated and grilled shrimp, scallops, and vegetables—red peppers, zucchini, strips of eggplant and asparagus, wild mushrooms—and topped with chopped tomatoes and creamy goat cheese.

  “Things are looking better already,” Cass said, sliding a huge slice onto her plate.

  For a few minutes, the only sounds were sighs of pleasure, the soft crunch of pizza dough, and the lap of the waves against the rocks below.

  Nell was the first to break the spell that the tangy, sweet shrimp had wrapped them in. “All right, so how far are we in sorting out this mess? Our thoughts are all over the place. We need focus.”

  “Maybe. Maybe Mary Pisano has the right idea and we should pay more attention to what we see and hear and feel. Cass, you asked why Finn was so upset with Beverly. Who could she have been hurting? That’s question one. And then there’s the flip side—who could possibly hate Finnegan enough to kill him?”

  Cass shook her head. “You know, that’s the hitch. Everyone complained about Finn, but I don’t know anyone who hated him. What was there to hate? Grumpiness?”

  “What about some of the fishermen? Could there have been some kind of feud?”

  “The weapon was a knife they all own,” Izzy added.

  “We can rule the fishermen out. Those guys liked Finn and he liked them.”

  “Beverly may fall in the feud category,” Birdie said quietly. A daughter hating a father was distasteful, difficult to talk about.

  “So Beverly hated him, and she wanted his money,” Izzy said.

  “And she could have gotten on his land easily that night. She lived a short walk away; no one would have seen her walking along the shore side,” Cass said. “She wouldn’t have a knife, maybe, but . . .”

  “Gus carries those in the hardware store. It’d be easy to get one from him.”

  “And as far as we know, she didn’t know she had been taken out of his will.”

  “Okay, so Beverly is a likely suspect.”

  “Who else?”

  “Nick, no matter how we feel about him.”

  Even Birdie agreed. Dishonesty wasn’t the same as murder. But something about her brother-in-law was not quite right.

  “And the police have me listed, so I should be on it,” Cass said.


  “No. Absolutely not,” Izzy said sharply. “You are the reason we’re doing this. So you can get on with your life.”

  “The Delaneys?” Birdie suggested.

  “They were at the Scaglias’ the night that Finn was killed,” Nell said. “So we know they were in town. I talked to Maeve at the hair salon last week, and she told me that she came down with some awful bug that night. D.J. took her to the ER for fluids. So that rules him out.”

  “Davey?”

  “He was at the party,” Izzy said. “I think he single-handedly finished off the beer Beatrice served. He left about the same time we did. Sam asked him about that big boat they have docked at the club, and he made a big show about how powerful it was.”

  “Davey has tried to prove himself to his father his whole life. That’s not a healthy way to live,” Birdie said.

  “Getting this land away from Finnegan would be a feather in his cap,” Nell said.

  “But how would killing Finnegan make sure he got the land?” Izzy said. “Unless . . .”

  Nell nodded, thinking along with Izzy. “Unless he knew that Finn’s daughter, once she got her inheritance, would sell it to him.”

  “Beverly and Davey knew each other—we know that.”

  “But how well, I wonder,” Izzy said.

  The uncomfortable thought hung in the air like a spiderweb.

  Finally, Birdie said, “We can definitely eliminate D.J. and Maeve, not that Maeve could kill anything bigger than a bug. Davey . . . He needs to stay there, for now at least. “

  “And there’s the murky possibility that someone killed Finn out of revenge. Revenge for burying the unknown person in his backyard.”

  “But that was so long ago that we have no idea who that person might be,” Birdie said, clearly enjoying this piece of the puzzle. “If we can figure out the real reason that body’s there—and I don’t think it’s because Finnegan killed anyone, for heaven’s sake—we can squash that whole rumor. It will make this a bit cleaner. Elimination is good.” She sat back in her chair.