Death By Cashmere

by Goldenbaum, Sally

  “That’s horrible. A man with a child, a sick and pregnant wife.”

  “Ted thought so, too,” Birdie said. “He was quite vocal in his dislike for the family—Ben will tell you as much, Nell. His parents spent a lot of time up here during that time and they stepped right in and gave Ted work. He did carpentry work for us, too. And others followed, feeling bad for the unfortunate treatment he got. But Ted always felt violated, somehow. And he had already started to drink to ease the pain. Truth be known, I think that’s what killed him.”

  “How could Angie have blamed his death on the Framinghams? ” Cass asked.

  “Maybe they were kind of a secondary cause, at least in Angie’s mind,” Izzy said.

  The group fell silent and Ella brought up the heated tureen of soup. The smell of fresh oregano and thyme rose up with the steam and filled the room.

  Ella set it on a hot plate on a side table along with bowls. “Help yourselves, ladies,” she said. “I kept a taste back for Harold and me.” Ella slipped out the door and they heard the fading sound of her slippers on the steps.

  “She’s superstitious,” Birdie explained. “It’s good luck to wear slippers in the summer or some such thing.”

  “Maybe we could all use a pair of slippers,” Cass said.

  Nell walked over to the tureen and began scooping the creamy soup into bowls. Large chunks of crab meat floated in the pungent broth and sprigs of parsley, sliced onion, and broccoli added color to the mix.

  “I talked to Archie Brandley at the party last night,” Birdie said. “He’s happy Sam has moved into Angie’s place.”

  “Along with the rest of us,” Nell said.

  “He thinks Angie had an ax to grind here, and that’s why she came back.”

  Nell listened carefully. She was convinced of that. And that reason was enough to get her killed.

  “That would explain the fact that she never intended to stay,” Izzy said.

  “But she didn’t realize the danger in whatever it was she was doing.”

  “Or maybe she did and didn’t care,” Cass offered. She got up to refill her bowl.

  “So whatever it was threatened someone so terribly that he needed Angie dead.”

  “And Gideon knew about it,” Izzy said.

  “I think Gideon saw the whole thing. He didn’t kill Angie— he’d have had no reason to do that. But he was at the breakwater— people have already come forth saying they saw him headed that way.”

  “He was headed down that way to steal the lobsters,” Cass added.

  Nell nodded. “He was probably down on the ledge where he couldn’t be seen. He seemed to have mastered his side job. Maybe he didn’t know Angie died, not until it hit the news. But he could have put two and two together,” Nell said.

  “So he may have been blackmailing someone,” Izzy said.

  Cass nodded. “That makes sense. And whoever he was blackmailing killed Angie. And that someone was . . .”

  “Angie wanted to hurt Tony. That may be an important part of this,” Birdie said.

  “And then there’s Sal.” Nell filled them in on the conversation with Nancy. “It’s quite odd. When I went over to the county offices, Sal acted like he hardly knew Angie, which wasn’t at all true. And the phone call Nancy got adds more mystery to it.”

  “He loved her, according to Rachel Wooten,” Izzy asked.

  The four women pondered the thought of Sal Scaglia and Angie while finishing off their soup. “It’s hard to imagine Sal in the position of a Romeo. I don’t know,” Birdie said. “He’s so shy.”

  “What is it they say about the shy ones?” Cass asked. “Still waters. Aren’t they the ones to be careful of?”

  “What if Sal told Angie how he felt about her? And Sal was afraid she would tell Beatrice?” Izzy said.

  “Beatrice’s wrath would be awful to face,” Nell said. If Sal was bothering Angie, and she threatened to tell Beatrice, it could make Sal’s life awful. But murder?

  “I think Sal is hiding something,” Birdie said. “We need to find out what.” Later, after the soup tureen was bone dry and Ella’s key lime pie had disappeared, Birdie suggested a cup of decaf before they all headed home.

  Izzy stretched her arms and slipped her knitting back into her bag. “I think I may skip the coffee, Birdie,” she said. At that moment her purse jingled, and she reached in for her phone, checking the number. She frowned, then checked her watch. “It’s Sam—and it’s late. I hope Purl is all right—”

  Izzy clicked on the phone, said hello, and then fell silent.

  Nell read her expression as it moved from curiosity to surprise to dismay. “We’ll be right there, Sam,” she said, and snapped her phone closed.

  “It’s Angus,” Izzy said. “He came to the apartment above the shop disoriented, looking for Angie. And then his body folded up, and he collapsed on the floor right at Sam’s feet.”

  Chapter 29

  By the time they reached the Beverly Hospital, Angus had been admitted to the intensive-care unit and hooked up to monitors and tubes. Sam and Ben stood outside the swinging doors, their faces drawn and fingers wrapped around paper cups of cold coffee.

  “Ben had just stopped by the apartment to invite me out for a beer,” Sam explained.

  “Angus came up the back steps, mumbling something we couldn’t understand,” Ben continued. “His face was ashen, and he was asking for Angie. But before we could get him to sit down, he collapsed right at Sam’s feet.”

  “The medics arrived in minutes. Heart attack, they said. And a bad one.”

  Nell looked through the pane of glass separating them from the still figure. Angus lay unmoving against the white sheets. He looked peaceful, she thought. But the tubes connecting him up to machines told a different story.

  Nurses scurried back and forth, checking vital signs and the sacks of liquids hanging from metal posts. Finally a woman in a white jacket pushed through the doors and smiled at them. “Are you here for Mr. McPherron?” she asked.

  They nodded and moved to a small alcove of seats, where the doctor explained that the next twenty-four hours were the most critical.

  “But I think you all should leave. There isn’t anything you can do, and he needs his uninterrupted sleep more than anything.”

  “But you will call?” Nell asked.

  “Of course.” The doctor looked down at the chart to check her notes, then back at the group. “We found an envelope in his pocket with an address crossed off and Favazza, One Ocean View Drive scribbled in. Is that the correct address?”

  Birdie lifted her hand. “That’s my name and my home. Angus is staying with me for a while. There isn’t any other family.”

  The doctor nodded. “Then you will be our contact, Ms. Favazza. ”

  “That’s fine,” Birdie said, brushing a trace of moisture off her cheek.

  The doctor checked a message on her pager, then disappeared, her heels echoing along the white-walled hallway.

  Birdie got up and walked back to the window in the door. She stood up on her toes, peering through the window and spoke to no one in particular. “I’m not going anywhere until I know the old guy is out of the woods.” She looked back at the group, huddled in a semicircle behind her, and pulled her gray brows together in a stern look. “But you go on—all of you. Scat. I’ll call if there’s a change.”

  There was no arguing with Birdie, and every single one of them knew it.

  “Birdie’s right,” Ben said. “She’ll call us with news, and we can’t do anything here but get in the way.”

  They hugged Birdie good-bye, then headed out into the summer night. Ben climbed into Nell’s car, and Cass and Izzy followed Sam to his Volvo. With promises to spread news as soon as it arrived, the two cars pulled out of the hospital parking lot and headed home.

  Ben and Nell drove in weary silence, their mutual thoughts not needing expression. A short while later, they drove up the hill of their sleeping neighborhood and into the garage at 22 Sandswep
t Lane. “We’ve been up after midnight two nights in a row,” Ben said. “Think we’ll make it, Nellie?”

  “I think we will,” Nell said. “The question is, will Angus McPherron?”

  Birdie called Nell early the next morning to report that there hadn’t been any change. Angus was still alive. And that was about all the doctors would say. Harold had picked her up and taken her home to shower and get a few things done. She’d go back to the hospital later.

  Nell knew there was nothing she or Ben could do. Just wait. And hope that the phone would ring. Her day was full—but nothing that she couldn’t drop in a second if Angus needed them.

  A long shower brought life back into her bones, and after a quick cup of coffee with Ben, she drove down to the village to give Izzy an update on Angus—and then over to a committee meeting at the museum.

  The Seaside Knitting Studio was bustling with customers when Nell walked in, but Izzy wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  “You won’t find her here, Nell,” Mae said, speaking over the head of a customer. A curious smile lit the sales clerk’s face.

  “Is she sick, Mae?”

  “Maybe so. She sure doesn’t do this when she’s feeling normal, ” Mae said. “Prying her out of here is harder than nails out of granite.” Mae’s words lacked most R’s and Nell held back a smile. Ben lapsed into Boston-speak sometimes, too, but years of schooling and traveling had softened the effect. Mae’s dialogue held a bright tough color that Nell loved.

  “So where is she, Mae?”

  “Took the day off,” Mae said, relieving the next customer of an armful of yarn that she was cradling like a newborn.

  “On a Monday?” Nell asked.

  “I know—miracles happen. This one’s name happens to be Sam.” Mae waved at a group of regulars who were on their way into the back room to knit and gossip.

  “What’s up?”

  “Sam wanted to explore those old quarries on the Framingham land—see if it’d be a good place to take his class for a photo shoot.”

  “That’s a great idea. What made Izzy decide to go?”

  “She called Tony and asked him if he’d show Sam around, but he had some business meeting. So he told Izzy to go ahead and show Sam where the trails were. Seems she and Tony used to sneak their friends in at night to swim in the quarry pools when they were teenagers.”

  “There’s a reason we don’t know those things while they’re happening,” Nell said. The quarries were beautiful for photo ops—but very deep for night swimming and teenage antics. “Margarethe would have had a heart attack if she’d known they did things like that.”

  “And speaking of heart attacks,” Mae said, “how is our Angus doing? Sure surprised me when I heard the news at Coffee’s. Angus told me he had the heart of an ox.”

  “I guess you never know. He’s still holding on and we’re hoping for the best,” Nell said. “I’m off to a meeting, but please tell Izzy to give me a call.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot this,” Mae said. She thrust an envelope in Nell’s hand. “I opened it because I thought it was a bill for the studio. Property tax or some other kind of tax. They slap us with all kinds. The return address was the county offices. Had it clean open before I realized it wasn’t for the shop a’tall. You might want to ask Ben what to do with it. Shouldn’t have read it, I suppose . . .” Mae picked up a stack of receipts and began putting them in order.

  Nell looked curiously at the envelope—a white, legal-sized rectangle, with a typed shop address, but before she could examineit, the phone rang, pulling Mae’s attention away, and a noisy group of tourists crowded into the shop. Nell shoved the envelope in her pocket to read later and hurried off to her meeting.

  Nell crossed the street, dodging a young boy on a bike and waving at Mary Halloran as she walked up the hill toward Our Lady of the Seas. Probably lighting a few more candles for Cass, Nell thought and smiled at the thought. Cass was such a together young woman—and whether she married or not, she would have a good life, just as Nell felt sure Izzy would. And though she wouldn’t trade her own life with Ben for anything on earth, she admired Izzy and Cass and their friends who carved out lives they chose to lead, and not necessarily ones their mothers and grandmothers had accepted as the way things were. The world accommodated this generation differently, she thought. Not better or worse necessarily. But differently.

  When Nell’s cell phone rang, she glanced down, expecting Izzy or Ben’s name to pop up. It was Birdie.

  With bad news.

  Nell listened carefully, then closed her phone and slipped it into her bag. She walked slowly up the brick steps to the museum, the lump in her throat growing with each step.

  “Nell, you’re a bit early,” Nancy said, calling out from her office just inside the entrance.

  Nell turned toward her voice.

  Nancy took one look at Nell’s face and rose from her desk. “Nell, you look awful. What’s wrong? Come in here and sit down.”

  Nell walked into Nancy’s office and sat down on a chair near the desk. “I just heard something shocking, Nancy. And I thought I was about shocked out.”

  “Is Angus all right?”

  “No.” Birdie’s words circled around in Nell’s head, finally settling into the right order. Heavy and solid and awful. “Nancy, Angus McPherron was poisoned.”

  Now it was Nancy’s turn to sit down. “No, Nell. That’s impossible. I talked with him just last night, not long before he had the heart attack. He was fine.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “At his usual Sunday-night spot—the patio at the Edge. Angus is the most faithful diner they have. The hostess sets her clock by him. It wasn’t long after you and I talked.”

  “How did he look?”

  “Worried. Margarethe and I were meeting there to talk over that display case, and we watched him sit down. He wasn’t sick as far as I could see, though Margarethe remarked how pale he was.

  “He left before we did, and shortly after, we heard the sirens, and soon after that the news spread. A heart attack, we heard—in Angie Archer’s apartment. That caused quite a stir, as you can imagine. But poison, Nell? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Could he have eaten something?” Nell wondered out loud.

  “He has the same thing every Sunday. Clam chowder and pie. That sweet chef who came over from Rockport makes it just for him.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Just for a minute. The place was crowded—all Tony’s friends from Boston were there with him, so we chatted with them. Margarethe must have a sixth sense—she didn’t think Angus looked well, so we went over to say hello, like I said. I chatted with him while Margarethe went to check on his food—it hadn’t come yet and he seemed agitated. He was distracted the way he gets sometimes. Tired. But nothing unusual that I could see. Once his food came, we went back inside to finish our meeting. And that was that until we heard the sirens. A heart attack makes sense. Poison doesn’t.”

  “According to Birdie, a heart attack didn’t make sense. That’s why they checked further into the cause of Angus’s illness. At Birdie’s insistence, Angus had had a complete checkup just a coupleweeks before. The doctor said his arteries were as clear and clean as a new pipe and his heart muscles as strong as a much younger man’s. Angus was in great shape—I guess it’s all that walking he does. His weary mind was an emotional thing, the doc said, not a sign of senility. The only bright note in all this is that he isn’t dead. And there’s a good chance, Birdie said, that he might survive.”

  “Thank God for that. But surely you don’t think anyone in this town would poison Angus, Nell. Everyone knows him—he’s a fixture in Sea Harbor. And I can’t imagine him having an enemy. He’s sweet and gentle.”

  And maybe that’s the problem, Nell thought. Sometimes sweet and gentle isn’t good. Being slightly aware, cautious, standing up for yourself—those traits have a part to play in life, too.

  “Do you think there’s a connection betwe
en Angie’s death and this awful news about Angus?” Nancy asked.

  Nell nodded. “Yes, I do. It doesn’t all make sense yet, but I think all of these things are connected. I think they were started by Angie’s desire to right a wrong, and they have to be stopped before anything else happens. Dear Angus is the last straw.”

  Nancy moved the papers around on her desk and checked her watch, then looked at Nell, a worried expression on her face. “I guess we’d better move into the meeting room, Nell. But please let me know if you hear more about Angus.” She reached out a hand and squeezed Nell’s. “And, Nell?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  Nell followed Nancy through a door in her office that led directly into the boardroom. Nearly all the chairs were filled, and Nell hoped the meeting would start quickly to avoid talk of Angus. Though news passed quickly in Sea Harbor, she suspected the heart attack was now common knowledge, but not the poison. And she hoped it would stay that way, at least for a while.

  “A glorious party!”

  “A perfect night.”

  “The auction brought in enough to support the Arts Academy for two summers.”

  Nell took the one empty chair. The swirl of chatter allowed her unnoticed silence. Nell sat still and listened. Party talk. That she could handle without her heart aching.

  It was a minute before she realized that she was sitting next to Margarethe, who had taken a half-finished shawl out of her bag. It was oversized, more a blanket than a shawl. A TV wrap, as Izzy called them, made out of soft natural mohair.

  Nell touched the edges of the shawl. “Is it just we knitters who do that, I wonder? We see a beautiful yarn and our fingers are lured to it instantly.”

  Margarethe offered a smile, but her eyes were tired. “Maybe so,” she said.

  “As you can hear, the party was a grand success.”