A Fatal Fleece: A Seaside Knitters Mystery

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Yet it’s good that he takes pride in his job, no matter if it’s just signing people in and out,” Birdie said.

  “I suppose.” Cass frowned. “But something’s not right. I feel it. Beatrice . . . She looked strange.”

  “It’s because you need caffeine, Catherine. Next stop, Coffee’s.”

  It wasn’t just a lack of caffeine, and they all knew it. But a double latte would certainly help.

  The line in the coffee shop was short at that late hour of the morning, and in minutes they were headed back outside with Coffee’s signature blue and green cups in hand.

  “Ahh,” Cass said, breathing in the smell. “I’ll soon be human again.”

  They walked through the patio, headed toward Nell’s car, when a hand on Cass’ shoulder caused her to jump. Her cup tumbled to the ground, a river of brown liquid flowing under a nearby table.

  She stared up at Davey Delaney.

  “What are you trying to do, Delaney? You scared the bejeezus out of me.” She looked down at the now-empty cup. “And I needed that coffee. Desperately!”

  Davey’s face fell, chagrined. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re awfully jumpy, though. I barely touched you. Maybe you’ve had too much caffeine.”

  He stopped a young man clearing tables and asked him to bring another cup. “My tab,” he added, and turned an unexpectedly apologetic face back to the three women.

  “So, what do you want?” Cass asked, her tone softening, but only a little.

  Davey apologized again. Then tried to explain. “I just wanted to tell you I’m glad old man Finnegan picked you.”

  “Picked me?” Cass said.

  “You know. To have his money. Handle his property. It’ll be done right now.”

  Birdie moved closer to Davey, her eyes kind but her voice with the serious “listen to me” tone that no one in Sea Harbor ignored. Even Davey Delaney.

  “Davey, what are you trying to say?”

  “Just that, Miss Birdie.” His face was less bold when he looked at her. Like a child before the principal. Respectful with just a twinge of fear, Nell thought.

  “I think Cass’ll do what Beverly Walden would never have done. No disrespect for the dead intended.”

  “Didn’t you tell Izzy you didn’t know Beverly Walden?” Nell asked.

  Davey shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t know her. Not really. That was the truth. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be connected to her now that she’s dead.”

  Then he looked at Nell. “You’re still upset with me from the other night. I know I wasn’t exactly nice to you at the Scaglias’. In fact, my dad said I was a jerk. A forty-five-year-old jerk who’d had too many beers, was how he put it. I was in a bad mood. My wife was away; one of my kids was sick. I didn’t want to be at that party watching Beatrice Scaglia be a peacock, trying to get everyone to do exactly what she wants, when she wants it, how she wants it. If you think I was hard on Finnegan, look into that lady’s behavior.”

  Birdie brought the conversation back to Finn’s will. “What did you mean about Beverly Walden?”

  “I just meant that if she’d been Finnegan’s heir, it would have been a damn shame.”

  Birdie frowned. “Why? How can you say that about someone you don’t know?”

  “Okay, so I met her. But didn’t really know her. I tried to. I tried to be nice to her. My wife told me to. Kristen said if I didn’t start acting gracious to people, I’d never get anywhere with the new projects I was trying to land. So I followed her advice and tried to be nice to Beverly because I thought she was going to get Finn’s land. And I wanted it. There. I said it. That’s the honest truth.”

  He looked at Cass. “You’re different. You’ll think about it and do what makes sense. If I have a piece of that, it’d be great.” His lips lifted in a half smile. “But no matter what, you’ll figure it out. But Beverly was a different kettle of fish. She didn’t know the town, didn’t care about it, didn’t know us. I took her to dinner once, tried to get on her good side. Even had Kristen send her flowers. Sort of an investment, I guess. Kristen said I could write it off.”

  “What was her response?” Cass asked.

  “She liked the flowers. But the fact is, she didn’t care what happened to the land. I finally figured that out. She would have taken the highest offer she got, even if it meant someone was going to build a nuclear power plant on that land. There was something sad about her. I think she thought Finn’s money would help her turn her life around. Maybe run off with some guy.”

  “Some guy?” Nell said.

  “Whoever it was she was having an affair with. She was crazy about the guy. She talked about him as if he were some kind of Adonis, and from what she said, he felt the same.” Davey shrugged. “Some guys like to be needed. And that lady was definitely needy—that much I know about her.”

  They left Davey on Coffee’s patio and walked across the street in silence. An uncomfortable feeling was closing in on them, like a vise.

  “Do you believe him?” Cass finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nell said.

  “Not to disparage poor Davey, but I’m not sure he could make that up,” Birdie said. “It would be a very creative lie. Though he’s great with a hammer, he’s not terribly clever, I don’t think.”

  “He knew she was having an affair. It sounds like she was becoming more open about it,” Cass said.

  “Which might not have been comfortable to the other person involved,” Nell said, picking up on Cass’ thought.

  “But . . .” Nell began. The end of her thought hung there in the air, unspoken.

  Uncomfortable enough to kill?

  Chapter 39

  After a quick lunch at the Artist’s Palate, they went their separate ways—Birdie to meet Nick and Gabby for a whale-watching tour, and Cass to meet with her mother. “Our weekly catch-up time,” she explained, which meant Mary Halloran would take notes on everything going on in her daughter and son’s lives, sprinkling the list bountifully with advice.

  Nell went to a monthly meeting of grant writers over in Gloucester, and finally returned to an empty house, drained.

  The quiet settled in all around her, comforting her, muting the suspicions and thoughts that had permeated the hours before.

  Davey Delaney had seemed sincere today, but the day she’d seen him across from the garden, watching Finnegan, he’d looked fierce. And then there was the barely controlled anger he’d exhibited at the city council meeting. The thoughts tumbled on top of one another, the events mixing up in her mind.

  She made herself a cup of tea, pushing the thoughts away, and climbed up on a stool at the kitchen island. She pulled the laptop over and turned it on to check e-mails. Normalcy.

  But it was Sam’s photos that popped up first. He had taken the CD but left the photos on the screen, presenting in their very ordinariness the grandeur of a seaside town. Nell rested her elbows on the butcher block and flipped through the photos, smiling at the beauty Sam had seen in his lens and preserved with a click.

  The faces of the fishermen, the men and women who braved the sea, who read the water, communed with it, held her captive. People who wanted no other life. Like Finnegan, she thought, wishing she’d known him and his wife in their younger years. A gentle, soft man with a crusty outside, like a loaf of perfectly baked Irish peasant bread.

  She continued clicking through, pausing now and then, so immersed in the photos that at first she was unaware that Izzy had come in. She came up beside her aunt, watching the images slide by.

  A new set of photos showed a contrast to fishermen and beachgoers. Around a council table sat city leaders, their faces reflecting the onus of keeping a town healthy and whole. A close-up of Beatrice Scaglia was a portrait of concern and compassion. But a clenched fist on the table showed something else.

  Gabby had come in with Birdie and made herself comfortable at the other end of the island, pouring out he
r bag of sea glass and sorting through the pink and green and blue pieces.

  “These photos are lovely,” Birdie said, standing next to Izzy. She pointed to one. “Can you pause that one, Nell?”

  They were back at the yacht club dock and a close-up of a beautiful, sleek boat with the Delaney name written across the side. “Now, what kind of a name is that for a boat?” Cass asked, coming up behind Izzy. “Shouldn’t it be something fanciful, like the Lady Lobster?”

  “D.J. probably had it painted on before he gave them the boat. Good marketing. I can’t imagine Kristen picking it.” They pulled the photo in close and saw the signs of fun—inner tubes and sun hats, boogie boards and coolers on the deck. “Family life,” Nell said.

  “Speaking of which,” Cass said, and filled Izzy in on the talk they’d had with Davey Delaney. “He didn’t lie, he said. He didn’t really know Beverly Warden. I suppose not. Not in the biblical sense anyway.”

  “Do you believe him?” Izzy asked.

  Birdie sighed. “It’s hard to say.” She pointed to the monitor as another boat came into view. “There. Look at that one.”

  “Can you get in closer on that one?” Cass asked.

  Nell enlarged the shot until the aft deck filled the screen.

  As the image enlarged, the photo grew grainy and hard to see.

  But in all its fuzzy definition, Nell could see one thing clearly: the pieces falling into place so loudly she could hear them.

  Behind her, even before she heard Izzy’s gasp, she knew Birdie, Cass, and Izzy felt the same.

  “We need an expert,” Cass said in a quiet voice.

  “I have one you can borrow.” Izzy turned to see Sam and Ben coming across the room.

  The men were full of the excitement of the sail. Sam carried two flat boxes smelling of basil, garlic and tomatoes.

  Gabby jumped up, scattering her sea glass. “Pizza!”

  Nell glanced at the computer, then moved it, still open, to Ben’s den. To be continued, she thought, preferably without a coating of cheese. And soon.

  “Great day for a sail,” Ben was telling anyone who would listen. He headed to the refrigerator and pulled out some beers, while Izzy unwrapped the pizza and took plates from the cupboard.

  Nell examined Gabby’s neat row of sea glass, the smooth pieces creating a rainbow across the butcher-block top. “They’re so beautiful,” she said. “Are they all from Sunrise Island?”

  Gabby nodded. “Angus says to look at them carefully. Every single one. And they’ll tell us things.” She picked one up and frowned. “But this is just a piece of plain glass. I picked it up by mistake. See?” She showed Nell the curved piece of clear glass. “It hasn’t been tumbled by the water like the others.”

  Nell looked at it carefully, then held it up and looked through it. On the other side, a letter on the pizza box loomed large. Nell looked through it again. Again, the letter was magnified.

  “May I have this one, Gabby?” she asked.

  Gabby laughed. “You need a beautiful one, not that one.” She handed Nell a smooth pink oval.

  “Thank you, sweetie. Angus would be proud of you.” Nell carried the oval, along with the piece of clear glass, to the safety of a jar on her windowsill.

  Once again, the Old Man of the Sea’s wisdom spoke to them.

  Look at each piece carefully, and they’ll tell us things.

  And they did.

  Gabby was yawning by the time they’d finished hot-fudge sundaes. Birdie suggested making it an early night. At least for the three whale watchers. “The rest of you can do what you want,” she said, and she told Nell she’d talk to her first thing in the morning.

  They hadn’t wanted to discuss the day’s happenings with Gabby there, but the instant the door closed, Cass and Nell spilled their day out on the table. Sometimes saying things aloud uncovered hidden details.

  “Jerry Thompson was with us on the boat today,” Ben said. “He was discreet, like he is, but said a few things. Did you know that Beverly had promised Beatrice Scaglia she’d work with her on plans for the land she was to inherit? There was an e-mail on the city system saying as much.”

  “I suppose that doesn’t surprise me,” Nell said. “Did Jerry say what their focus is now that Beverly is dead?”

  “Her life,” he said.

  “Life?” Izzy asked.

  “Affair,” Sam said. “Some of the holes are plugged, but there are missing pieces. Important ones.”

  “Like proof,” Ben said. “They can come up with everything but that.”

  “I can’t . . . I just can’t get my arms around this,” Nell said. “And we could all be dead wrong.”

  “Sure,” Ben said. “We could.”

  Nell got the computer and brought it to the kitchen island. Sam’s slide show came into focus. They explained what they thought and what they needed: a close-up that wasn’t fuzzy. Using his magic, Sam made it happen.

  As they all stared at the photos, silence filled the room so loudly Nell wanted to cover her ears. They looked at one picture, then another, squinting, then tilting their heads. It was clear but not clear.

  “Are we reading into it?” Izzy asked.

  But there was no easy answer, and they turned off the computer. “Maybe we’ll see things more clearly tomorrow,” Ben said.

  “Maybe tomorrow will tell us we’re climbing up the wrong tree,” Izzy said. “I want that to be what we hear. And yet I can’t bear for it to be what we hear. This needs to be over.”

  Nell walked over to the kitchen window and returned with the piece of glass that Gabby had found on the beach. She explained where it came from—Sunrise Island—then passed it around.

  When it came back to Ben, he took it into his den and put it into the small safe beneath his desk. “Till tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll see. It could be just a piece of broken glass, you know.”

  The next day was cool and rainy—a needed rain, the weatherman said. And somehow Nell felt it appropriate. It matched her spirits. And the garden certainly needed it.

  She dressed in stretchy slacks and a light knit sweater, grabbed her rain jacket, and headed down to Izzy’s. Gabby’s sweater was blocked and ready for buttons. Buttons. Yarn. Izzy’s shop. Perfect escapes from thoughts of murder.

  Cass was already there, along with a cardboard carafe of Colombian blend that she’d picked up at Coffee’s. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said to Nell. “How about you?”

  Before she could answer, they saw the Lincoln Town Car pull up. Birdie got out, hurrying in between raindrops as Harold drove away.

  She shook the rain from her head, her white hair fluffing out. “I don’t think we need phones any longer. It seems all we have to do is think, and voilà—here we all are.”

  “Confused and desperate—”

  Nell’s cell phone rang before Cass had poured the fourth coffee.

  It was Jane Brewster.

  “Nell, meet me at the Arts Association office. There’s something here I need someone else to look at.” Her voice was loud and urgent, and they all heard the message, standing feet away.

  Nell drove, and they reached the arts office just as the heavens broke loose. Jane had left the door unlocked, and they rushed in, stomping water from their shoes on the rubber mat.

  “In here,” Jane called from the boardroom in the back. All along the walls were paintings of different sizes, some still wrapped in brown paper, others leaning against the wall, their landscapes or waterscapes or abstract art muted today in the low light.

  “This is the artwork donated to the public auction that the community center is holding later this summer. We’ve been stacking them in here, but Willow, Ham, and I finally got around to organizing them last night. I had almost forgotten that Beverly had donated a painting. She left it here shortly before she died, and in the confusion, we forgot about it. I unwrapped it this morning.”

  She pointed toward a painting directly behind Izzy. It was a large oil filled with brilliant colors.
Greens and blues and a bright white-yellow that looked like light pouring through the canvas from behind. It was a joyful painting, without some of the heaviness they’d seen in Beverly’s earlier works.

  And then they saw what Jane had seen. There it was, tucked away in the blues and greens and golden sunlight. They saw what Beverly Warden had painted, and what everyone would see when the paintings were displayed, what Beverly wanted everyone to see.

  Jane wrapped the painting up in heavy plastic and taped it back together, then helped them put it in the back of Nell’s car. Nell called Ben and told him what was happening.

  The trip back to Harbor Road was anxious, but beneath the anxiety was hope. Hope that soon, very soon, the nightmare would be over.

  “Ben will meet us at the police station,” Nell said.

  They drove into the visitors’ parking lot between the police station and city offices just as Janie Levin pulled in beside them. She jumped out of the car, her yellow umbrella springing into action.

  “Are you coming to visit me again?” she yelled through Birdie’s window. “I hope so. That’s the loneliest office known to man.”

  Birdie rolled down the window. “You’re working for Sal today?”

  Janie looked around to see if anyone was close by, then stuck her head through the window and whispered, “It’s a huge secret. I’m not supposed to tell.”

  But Janie told.

  They were out of the parking lot and headed toward the yacht club before Birdie got the window back up. She wiped the rain from her face and dialed the necessary numbers. Hurry was the message she left.

  Nell pulled up in the yacht club parking lot and they piled out into the rain, pulling their slickers tight and rushing down to the dock. She pointed to a red Saab. “Beatrice,” she shouted over the rain.

  With Nell in the lead, they rushed to the dock, pointing to where she remembered the boat being moored. Peering through the sheets of rain, they finally saw and heard it: lights and the purr of an engine, idling in preparation. Standing on the dock, dressed in soaking-wet exercise gear, was Beatrice Scaglia.

  Screaming.