Murder Wears Mittens

by Sally Goldenbaum

  Nell tried to imagine Kayla with long hair. She had delicate features, but if she wanted to look tough, the choppy hairstyle had helped achieve it. Still, she had seen her earlier that evening standing alone, looking across the dining hall, her thoughts somewhere else. And Nell had glimpsed a beautiful, vulnerable woman hidden somewhere in the baggy jeans and apron.

  “Do you think someone gave her a ride home tonight?” Nell had offered one, but Kayla said no, she didn’t need one. And Nell hadn’t pushed, slightly uncomfortable with the fact that she knew more about Kayla and her life than the young woman realized, including that her car was sitting in Pickard’s Auto repair, waiting to be fixed. It felt sneaky somehow that she knew those things when she and Kayla were virtual strangers.

  “I don’t know. She’s pretty self-reliant and doesn’t accept help easily. I get the impression she’s been around the block a few times.”

  “How long has she been volunteering here?”

  “A while. Before the renovation, I think. When was that? Around Christmas, maybe. Kayla mostly does meal deliveries, taking food to people who can’t make it to the cafe. The reporter seemed interested in the delivery program, too, and he glommed onto Kayla, asking her questions for his article. Following her around. He even went along with her on a couple of deliveries. Meal deliveries ‘intrigued’ him, he said—but we all suspected it was Kayla who intrigued him, since meal deliveries to folks who need them is nothing new at all. People do it everywhere. And that was before she cut her hair. She was a knockout and got second looks from lots of guys. Anyway, her car has been on the fritz so she’s been helping inside the café lately.”

  “I’m surprised she has the time. I know she’s a waitress at the Ocean’s Edge, too. Not to mention caring for two little kids.”

  “Yes,” Laura said. “She juggles it all. In my opinion, she should have been home tonight, lying on a sofa and taking care of whatever happened to her. Did you notice her forehead?”

  Nell nodded. She had wondered the same thing, although Kayla seemed to handle it in stride.

  Laura went on. “Sister Fiona is over there tonight, she said, so I guess that’s okay. She did say Sister didn’t want her to come tonight, but Kayla insisted. It seems important to her to keep things normal for the kids. Anyway, Sister Fiona was bringing them ice cream.”

  Of course she was, Nell thought. They walked in companionable silence through the parking lot, stopping at Laura’s car while she rummaged in her bag for her keys. “I assumed you knew Kayla, Nell. I guess because Gabby knows her.”

  “Gabby?”

  “Gabby and Daisy. Kayla seems more comfortable around them than some of the others in the cafe. I think she likes their youth and uninhibitedness, if that’s a word.”

  Nell chuckled. “Those two could make anyone comfortable. And I can understand it. Kayla seems so private, and Gabby and Daisy accept everyone exactly as they are, not probing, not expecting them to be someone else.”

  “That’s it,” Laura said. “You’re spot on. I’ve known Kayla all these months yet I know little about her, and she probably knows I want to know more. I drop little questions here and there, just like you normally do when you’re getting to know someone. I haven’t made much progress, but the girls don’t seem to need to ask anything. They tell her jokes, kid around with her. So you don’t know her either?”

  “No, I hadn’t met her before tonight. But I met her children the other day so I know of her. And I know she works hard to support them. Being a single parent has to be difficult, especially when you’re relatively new in town and don’t have a support system. I’m impressed that she carves out extra time to volunteer.”

  “Well, it isn’t exactly her choice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kayla helps out because Sister Fiona thought she should.”

  “As a favor?”

  “Not exactly a favor, I don’t think,” Laura said. “You know how Sister Fiona can be.”

  Nell wasn’t sure which way to go with that. She said, “I know Fiona has a big heart. But I’m not sure that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Yes, well, she is all that for sure,” Laura said. She looked slightly embarrassed, as if she were saying something inappropriate. “She’s encouraged lots of good people—you’re a prime example—to volunteer for her endless projects. But she didn’t really ask Kayla to volunteer. She told her to work here. She insisted on it. So Kayla’s here once a week, without fail. And more power to her; she takes it very seriously and never misses a shift.”

  Nell didn’t hide her surprise. “Do you know why?”

  “No. I try not to second-guess Sister Fiona. No matter how crazy some of her ideas are, she always seems to have a rationale for what she does. And for some reason—probably because Kayla isn’t crazy about crowds—she wanted her to be a part of the team that delivers food to people in their homes. She even picked the person to whom she wanted Kayla to deliver.”

  “Dolores Cardozo,” Nell said softly, the words slipping out without intent.

  “Yes,” Laura said. “How did you know?”

  Chapter 10

  One thing the Sea Harbor Gazette was known for was its effusive, elaborate obituaries of residents who had died. The smallest traces of goodness were uncovered and revealed in elegant and exaggerated prose, sending the deceased off in fine fashion.

  And Dolores Francesca Maria Cardozo would be no exception, no matter that a peculiar announcement appeared about her death one day, and the manner of her death in frightening headlines the next.

  “Dolores deserved to be remembered for living, not for the horrible way she died,” Mary Pisano explained to anyone who asked. And on Wednesday, she practiced what she preached, and took it upon herself to honor the woman she’d been researching for the last many hours, and to send Dolores off in a fitting, if not surprising, fashion.

  SEA HARBOR MOURNS BENEFICENT BENEFACTOR

  Dolores Francesca Maria Cardozo lived a quiet life in a small, nondescript cottage bereft of worldly luxuries. She considered the beauty of nature, including the old north quarry at the far edge of her property, the sky, and the ocean breeze the only luxuries her soul and spirit needed to soar.

  Dolores was seen daily by many, a fixture on our amazing landscape, but known by only a few. Dolores walked everywhere, every day, no matter the season or the weather. Sometimes she traveled as far adrift as Dogtown or Gloucester’s Ravenswood Park, her strong, slender body and long white ponytail recognized by all she passed, her only companion her signature hand-carved walking stick.

  A generous and humble resident of our city, Dolores may be remembered best for her generosity to those in need and for her anonymous gifts, only in death becoming known to many of us. Few in Sea Harbor, whether knowingly or not, have gone untouched by Dolores’s beneficence. Such humbleness of spirit is a legacy not soon to be forgotten.

  Dolores was the daughter of Antonio and Anna Cardozo. She followed in her father’s footsteps, working as a brilliant accountant in a Sea Harbor factory. She maintained a residence in Sea Harbor all her life. A devoted member of Our Lady of Safe Seas Church, Dolores will be remembered and prayed for at a service to be announced soon.

  “Mary has always been very good at headline alliteration,” Birdie said.

  She scanned the Endicotts’ paper again, then dropped it on the coffee table in Nell’s family room.

  Birdie always read the paper before her early morning walk, but today had been an exception, a crowded day that canceled out both the early walk and the morning paper. “I don’t know how Mary gets her information before other breathing souls, but she seems to be good at it. From what Ben and I learned today, most of what she said is accurate. Except for all the personal gibberish. If you ever let Mary Pisano write an obituary for me, Nell Endicott, I will haunt you the rest of your life.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to do it so you’ll be around forever.” Nell smiled, but her thoughts were more on how tired
Birdie looked than her threats from the grave. She seemed to disappear in the overstuffed sofa, her small head sinking back into the cushions. She opened the deck doors, ushering in a cool, late afternoon breeze. It brought some color back to Birdie’s cheeks. She had read the paper early that morning and was still trying to make sense of Mary Pisano’s words and innuendoes.

  “So I can assume your meeting with Elliott Danvers was productive?” She looked from Birdie to Ben, who had joined them, stretching out in a well-used leather chair near the fireplace. He’d offered to give Birdie a lift to the meeting. I’ll be an extra set of ears, he’d said.

  I’d have dragged you along, had you not offered, Birdie had replied.

  And if she hadn’t, Nell would have urged him to go—Ben had been executor for more wills than she could count, and every now and then Birdie’s hearing wasn’t at its prime.

  “We learned a lot,” Ben said, but his tone indicated it might not have been as simple as he had promised Birdie it would be. “Dolores’s will and testament isn’t one of those complicated ones that create suspense in TV mysteries. It was done correctly. Uncomplicated on the surface. But Mary Pisano was on the right track: Dolores Cardozo was a millionaire.”

  “The food pantry millionaire,” Nell said. “Such an irony.”

  “It’s odd that so many of her meals came from there,” Ben agreed. “But maybe she hated to cook and didn’t like to go out at night. The Bountiful Bowl filled her needs.” The thought was amusing to Ben, whose love for fine food was significant. “Think about it, she could have afforded a five-star dinner from Duckworth’s Bistro every single night. And the chauffer to pick it up.” He shook his head and laughed.

  Birdie picked up her coffee mug. “Elliott has handled her accounts for years, and his father before him. Of course, it was all confidential so no one else knew of the wealth she was amassing, nor what she was doing with it.”

  “Did she inherit the money?” Nell asked.

  “She was an accountant where her father had also worked. She started investing back when she was a young woman, and got a pension when she retired. She was an absolute genius with numbers, Elliott said—a human calculator—but also with an ability to assess and make enviable financial judgments. He’d have hired her in a heartbeat if he could have, he said. And she made all her own decisions. I suppose it’s an understatement to say she didn’t spend the money on herself.”

  “It’s almost as if this woman is coming to life in front of us, layer by layer,” Nell said. “Sometimes we think we know everything about everyone in Sea Harbor, and here’s a wealthy financial genius, living in a small house on the edge of our town.”

  “She was definitely all those things, but like all of us, she had a few quirks,” Birdie said. “Like the money stashed around the house.”

  “Some people find peace of mind in keeping supplies of water and dry food in a basement pantry somewhere, just in case of some catastrophe,” Ben said. “Maybe Dolores found security in neat, banded stacks of fifty-dollar bills.”

  Nell sat down next to Birdie, still smiling at the thought of filling the beautiful pottery pieces Jane Brewster had given her with bills. “What about her family?” she asked.

  “Her parents died when Dolores was in her twenties,” Ben said. “It was a terrible accident after a company party, but wasn’t anyone’s fault. A tree fell across a road. There was a sister no one knows much about, but she died, too. Dolores’s life was quiet, as we’re all so aware of, and kind of a mystery. She lived in our midst, benefiting our town, and we didn’t know her.”

  “It’s also a mystery why Dolores chose me as her executor. There’s something back in the dark murky shadows of my head that tells me there’s a connection but who knows if it will ever see the light of day? Elliott wasn’t sure. He asked her once but all she did was mutter something about it being an appropriate decision, and it wasn’t any of his—here Dolores added some colorful words—business. Of course Elliott, the gentleman that he is, backed off.”

  “That reminds me of something. I told you I met Kayla at the Bountiful Bowl?”

  Birdie nodded.

  “Well, I forgot to mention that she recognized your name when I told her about the four of us going to the house with the kids’ clothes.”

  “Well, I suppose that happens. And I often eat at the Ocean’s Edge, where she works.”

  “No, she said that someone told her about you. And about your husband, Sonny. She started to say a name, but stopped short of it. I strongly suspect it was Dolores Cardozo who told her about you.”

  Now she had Birdie’s attention. She sat up straight. “Maybe Kayla misunderstood. Sonny has been dead for over forty years.”

  “I don’t know, Birdie. Her hearing seems fine.”

  Birdie shook her head. “I can’t worry about why that might have happened, not right now. What I know about Dolores Cardozo is probably more worthy of attention.” Birdie pulled a file folder from her large bag and set it on the coffee table. She looked at it as if it were a living thing, about to pounce. “And this is it. Or at least what she wanted me to know, once she was no longer with us.”

  Ben sat quietly, rubbing his temples.

  “But you said it’s not complicated, isn’t that right?” Nell asked Ben, who didn’t look like anything about the afternoon had been uncomplicated. “It won’t keep Birdie up at night?”

  Nell’s question hung in the air, unanswered.

  Birdie looked up and checked the hand-carved grandfather clock near the fireplace. Elongated mermaids’ fingers held the clock face lovingly. It was after five o’clock.

  Ben nodded, reading her mind. “Would you like a glass of wine, Nellie? I’m thinking Birdie and I might like martinis. It’s been a long day.”

  “Two olives, please,” Birdie said. She leaned back again and closed her eyes, her small, veined hands resting in her lap. The edges of her mouth lifted automatically into a half smile. No matter what swirled around her, the semblance of peace was always there in her expression, but today there was also concern.

  Ben returned with their drinks on a wooden tray. He’d piled cheese sticks and crackers in a small bowl and added a wedge of Brie and bowl of grapes. “I’ve been trained well,” he said with a smile at Nell’s pleased look, and passed around the glasses.

  Nell took a drink and was quiet for as long as she could be. She sensed Birdie and Ben’s weariness, but her own need to bring clarity to the conversation was winning out. She waited until several cheese sticks had disappeared, a cracker or two smeared with Brie, and healthy-sized sips of martini taken.

  Then she pushed for details. “Back to Dolores’s will. The one that will not complicate Birdie’s life and will not interfere with the knitting project awaiting us.” She took a sip of wine and waited.

  “Ah, that one,” Ben said. He rubbed one finger along the edge of the martini glass, his mind humming along with the glass. “Under normal circumstances Dolores’s last will and testament would be uncomplicated. She was precise and careful, listing every material thing that composed her simple life. And she was on top of every dollar—every cent—even what was scattered around her house. She knew every transaction made to the nonprofits she gave money to. That, and the generous spirit with which she was ‘relieving’ herself of her money—that was the term she used with Elliott—was done in the most efficient ways of a well-written will, leaving the task of handling it relatively easy: beneficiaries would be notified, probate processed, and that would be that, as long as no one was contesting the will. Probably the most complicated part of the estate is the land. The house is worth nothing, but the land it sits on is more extensive than I realized and worth a big chunk of money. It’s no wonder so many contractors have been interested in it. As for the rest of the estate, it’s stocks and bonds and bank accounts, all listed in clear and uncontestable bequests.” Ben paused to take a drink, then sat back in the chair, his hands clasped behind his head, and continued.

  “B
ut Dolores’s death didn’t happen under normal circumstances and that’s where it all gets tricky. Not as far as Birdie is concerned. But because Dolores didn’t die naturally, the will itself will be considered a part of the police investigation, and that complicates things.”

  “Why?” Nell asked.

  Birdie leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She looked at Nell, a small resigned smile on her face. “The police will want to look at anyone named in the will—especially if they are inheriting a sizable amount of money.”

  Nell hadn’t considered that. Perhaps she should have. It was an uncomfortable consequence, but of course it made sense. “The beneficiaries become suspects in a murder,” she said. “They have an automatic motive. Money.”

  “Hypothetically. At the least, they will be asked for alibis, accessibility—all those things we watch for on Rizzoli & Isles reruns,” Birdie said. “Even though they supposedly didn’t know they were in the will. Leaks happen.”

  They considered the irony of it all. The recipients of a woman’s largesse, through no fault of their own, were now saddled with suspicion. An inheritance with a long, tangled string, and at its end might be something ugly: a motive for murder.

  “Are there many beneficiaries?” Nell asked.

  “There are two groups: individuals and organizations,” Ben said. “The organizations are all nonprofits and charities. And all but one are simple bequests with an exact amount stipulated. The odd one is a trust that Dolores established earlier this year. She gave it great thought and it’s significant. It was clear from the way she handled her money that Dolores wasn’t after praise or thank-yous for her generosity. For years the bank had been parceling out money to Sea Harbor organizations, always anonymously. That new roof the library got last year? Dolores. The new playroom the free health clinic needed? The expenses associated with turning the old food pantry into the Bountiful Bowl Café?”