“Daydreaming?” Birdie Favazza looked at Nell. A web of tiny lines fanned out from the octogenarian’s bright eyes and framed her small face. “I know that look, Nell dear. You’re thinking of lives beginning, new chapters. Not ending. I’m with you, dear friend.” She patted Nell on the arm. “We’d be much better off talking about weddings than cold cases.”
Nell pulled her attention back to the animated conversation Merry Jackson had instigated with the group. Of course Birdie knew what she was thinking. Years of friendship allowed certain privileges, like crawling into one another’s thoughts without an invitation.
“So, okay, we have someone at a quarry,” Merry was saying. “Maybe meeting a lover, maybe, or let’s say she was blackmailing someone and was meeting him that night for money. She needed money for college? Or maybe it was a guy out there instead.”
Merry’s ideas were pounced on by others as the quarry quickly turned into a wealthy industrialist’s swimming pool on a dark and stormy night and a band of unruly teens crawled over fences to skinny-dip in a stranger’s pool. Intrigue. Murder.
Danny sat back and smiled at imaginations that had run rampant.
By the time he had reined them back in, the crime was outlined in a dozen different ways, and Danny had made his point.
Real life can lead to fascinating fiction.
Chapter 2
It was an hour later, longer than the normal meeting time, when Danny finally wound up the discussion to a round of robust applause.
After Izzy reminded the group of the next book club meeting, people began to disperse, some heading back to the aisle with the MYSTERY sign posted on the end, and others making their way downstairs. Animated talk about the extravagant plot they’d fabricated filled the air.
“Interesting discussion, Danny,” Izzy said, collapsing chairs as the group thinned out. “Thanks.”
“It was fun. Maybe I should have dug up an older case, but it sure stimulated talk. I could build ten new plots from all those ideas.”
Cass handed Danny a chocolate chip cookie. “Why’d you pick that case?”
Danny shrugged. “No real reason. It’s interesting, that’s all, and I remembered it without having to do much research. I was in grad school when that happened, but I remember Mom and Dad talking about it when I came home that summer.”
“It was the talk of the town for a while,” Cass said. “I was away at college, but I lifeguarded at the yacht club over the summer. The high school kids were all into it. The girl was quiet, like they said, and not many people seemed to know her—but that didn’t stop the gossip. But then summer settled in. People moved on.”
“I brought it up in a J-school class once. Investigative reporting, I think it was. Those kinds of cases grab the attention of would-be reporters. They always think they could have solved it, given a chance.”
Esther Gibson was sitting in the back row, packing up her knitting bag, watching them. She caught the end of the conversation and grabbed her cane, pulling herself up off the chair. She picked up her bag and walked over, imposing herself firmly into the group. Her eyes locked onto Danny’s, her gaze steady and compelling. “Well, the investigative reporters didn’t solve the case, now, did they?” she said. “So it’s over. Finished.” Her white brows were pulled together, and her usual smile had disappeared.
Esther continued to look at Danny, letting her words settle in. Then without another word she turned and headed slowly to the stairs, one hand reaching out for the railing to balance herself. She hesitated there, as if she couldn’t remember what to do next. Then she looked back and focused again on the group. Her look was stern.
“Sometimes it’s best to let the dead stay buried, let the living live in peace,” she said. Her tone was measured and louder than usual.
A few lingering knitters, getting ready to leave, stopped chatting. People standing in the narrow aisles, leafing through books, paused. They all looked in Esther’s direction, surprised by the weight of her words.
“Forget about cold cases,” she said finally. “Leave it alone, for goodness’ sake.”
Before anyone could reply, Esther turned again and, with an agility that defied her bad back, made her way down the bookstore steps.
Archie Brandley’s eyebrows lifted as he looked after the disappearing police dispatcher. “Esther likes to have the last say, now, doesn’t she? Seems we hit a sore spot.”
A flash of memory pulled Birdie’s brows together. “Of course—that’s why she’s upset,” she murmured. Then she looked at the others and said simply, “Esther was a close friend of one of the families questioned in the case. She’s just protecting her flock. It’s what Esther does.”
Birdie’s words, said with comforting calmness, seemed to set people in motion once again. Sandals flopped down the wooden steps, and from below, the tinkling of the bell above the bookstore door rang cheerfully as people left.
Archie dismissed Izzy from folding the chairs—leave it to the cleaning crew, he said—and reminded them that his wife, Harriet, was downstairs at the cash register, only too happy to help anyone with a book purchase.
Nell held up several books she had pulled from the shelves—a book on sailing for Ben, another garden book. Archie nodded his approval.
Gradually the remaining book club members disappeared down the stairs and into the night. Archie straightened a stack of magazines on a table at the top of the stairs, scanned the loft area a final time, and then followed Nell and Birdie down the stairs.
Quiet filled the loft as Archie’s heavy footsteps faded away.
It was then, when the only sound in the room was the steady ticktock of the old grandfather clock near the stairs, that the attractive middle-aged woman emerged from the shadows. She was oblivious of the book she held in her hand, unaware of the cheery good-byes coming from the floor beneath. For a moment she stood at the window, staring down at the night shadows falling across Harbor Road. But she wasn’t seeing anything, not the gaslights or the laughing couples strolling along in the cool evening air. For a minute, all she saw was darkness.
She pressed one hand against her chest, calming a heart squeezed tightly in a body that suddenly seemed too small to hold it.
She hadn’t intended to listen to the group’s discussion. She’d come only to find a new book or two, something to pass the pleasant summer evenings in the makeshift apartment she was occupying. She’d been surprised when people began climbing the stairs with knitting bags in tow, and then had remembered the sign below. A KNITTING BOOK CLUB, she remembered reading.
Earlier, she had smiled at one or two people, strangers to her, before she’d wandered down the narrow book aisle, reading the spines studiously, straightening a book here and there, pulling two or three from the shelves and tucking them under her arm.
In the background, she’d heard the shuffling of chairs, people greeting one another, the clink of glasses and buzz of light conversation.
She’d leave shortly, before they began their meeting.
But in the next minute, before she could gather her things and leave the loft, the group had quieted down. A woman had begun speaking, welcoming people and mentioning cookies, lemon bars, and drinks on the table.
And then the deep timbre of a man’s voice had taken over. Pleasant and friendly.
She had looked around for a back exit. But the only way out was to walk in front of the attentive group, disturbing the discussion flow. And drawing attention to herself, something she didn’t do readily.
So she’d stayed hidden in the shadows, settling down on a wooden chair at the end of the aisle, a pile of books on her lap. She began leafing through pages, checking back covers. She had nowhere to be, and it was comfortable and cool here with a large ceiling fan purring above. The voices in the distance were comfortable, too, and she half listened, half read.
She thought she had recognized a few faces earlier that were once a remote backdrop in her life. Margaret, the deli owner’s wife. Esther Gibson. Nice people, she remem
bered.
Perhaps she’d made a good decision after all. She smiled into the musty-smelling air of old books and began to relax.
Relaxed.
Until the sounds that provided the pleasant background hum suddenly turned into real words—the way a baby’s cry became urgent when it was your baby—one that would register with startling, heart-jogging clarity.
The Markham Quarry, someone said.
The chill that traveled through her body nearly stopped her heart.
It happened around here. Fifteen years ago.
A familiar anguish rose inside her. The rope tightening around her chest, the difficulty breathing. The desire to flee.
But she couldn’t flee, not without running across a stage. So she stayed there in the hard wooden chair, frozen in place, until the eternal discussion ended, and finally, the last footsteps faded away.
Slowly the blood came back into her face and her mind began to clear.
Air. The night air would help. She walked slowly down the staircase, one hand gripping the polished railing.
On the first floor, Archie was lowering the blinds on the front door. Birdie Favazza stood at the checkout counter, listening patiently to Harriet Brandley’s review of Lily King’s new book, which she was attempting to purchase. Birdie saw a pretty woman walk down the stairs and absently looked over, smiled, then forced her attention back to Harriet’s comments.
The woman looked down and saw that she still clutched a book in her hand.
She quickly set it down on a table near the window, then straightened up and took a deep breath, forcing composure into her body.
Pushing a smile to her lips, she walked toward the door, nodding to Archie as she approached him.
Archie looked up, surprised. Where had the woman come from? He thought the loft was empty. He could have locked her in. But he pushed away his surprise and offered a smile instead.
But his smile went unnoticed as the woman, her head down again, hurried past him and through the open door. He looked out, but she was swallowed up by the night.
“Birdie, you know that lady?” Archie asked. His wide forehead wrinkled in a deep frown.
Birdie handed Harriet her credit card and looked up. “I don’t believe so, Archie.”
“She was upstairs, at the book meeting. Least that’s where she came from, though I didn’t see her up there. Damndest thing—I might have locked her in.”
“She’s probably vacationing up here. I hope she enjoyed the discussion. Your Danny did a fine job.”
“Sure he did. But you wouldn’t know it from the look on that woman’s face. Pale as a sheet, as if she’d seen a ghost.”
Chapter 3
Nell had asked them to come early Wednesday morning, while Izzy had a few hours off from the yarn shop and before Cass left to check her lobster traps or Birdie went off to the retirement home to teach her tap-dancing class.
Before the day got away from all of them.
She wanted their input on the backyard before she made any more decisions. It was looking perfect in her mind, but she wasn’t the one getting married, after all.
Birdie arrived first, carrying a white box of beignets. She walked onto the Endicott deck, set the pastries on the table, and joined Nell at the railing, her eyes scanning the yard.
“I think you missed your calling,” she said finally. “I’ve always loved this yard, even when your in-laws only used this place as a summer home. It welcomed people, whether it was for one of the senior Endicotts’ parties, or simply for kids to cut through on their way to the beach. It was everyone’s backyard. But this, what you’ve done, Nell—well, this is fit for a bride.”
Nell smiled, clearly pleased, and rested her hand on her friend’s smaller one.
Birdie’s eyes, still clear and bright after eighty or so years of good living, followed the curve of the old flagstone path as it wound its way back, past the small guest cottage, then around a granite boulder left stranded by the last ice age. The whole yard, shaded by pines and old oak trees, sloped down toward the woods and the sea beyond.
But it looked different today, and that was what Nell wanted them to see. The flagstone path had been given new life—the cracks filled in and patches of crabgrass tugged out. And the towering trees were shorn of branches broken by nor’easters. Nestled into shaded plots were flowering hydrangeas and red twig dogwoods, the carefully mulched areas around them dark and damp.
Nell smiled. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Still casual—like Izzy and Sam—but lush and lovely. I find myself wandering down the path, smelling the pines. Being happy.”
Birdie nodded. “Full of life. It’s a perfect spot in which to get married.”
“Who’s getting married?” Izzy breezed through the deck door and across to the two women. She hugged them both, then stood between them, her hands flat on the deck railing. “Oh, my,” she said, her voice hushed. “Oh, Aunt Nell . . .”
“What do you think?” Nell said.
“I think it’s just perfect,” she whispered.
Nell and Birdie both smiled at the catch in Izzy’s voice. Her emotions lived right on the surface these days. Once she and Sam had finally opened up to each other and made a commitment, something had shifted inside Izzy, obvious to all those around her. The guarded look she’d held in place through adolescence, college, and a brief law career evaporated, and Izzy gave full rein to her happiness. She wore it on her sleeve for the world to see. It wasn’t getting married that made the difference, she had told Nell. It was simply Sam. Sam and her. Suddenly, her world was different. She was different, essentially, deep down inside herself. She’d loved before, and been loved before, but not like this. Never like this.
Nell understood. She had felt the same way when she and Ben had decided to spend the rest of their lives together. She’d never been able to put it into words, but now she saw it written across her niece’s radiant face, and words didn’t seem necessary.
Nell pointed to a spot near the woods where thick, gnarled vines of an old grape arbor harbored a bench in a small clearing. “Claire suggested weaving some flowers into that old arbor. And big pots of yellow hydrangeas on the deck.”
The banging of the deck door announced Cass’ arrival. A few long strides and she stood next to Birdie. A lineup of women gazing out at the yard.
“I think you’re damn good at this gardening stuff, Nell. It’s great.”
Nell laughed. “I just take orders from my gardener.” “Gardener? Sounds uptown.”
“I told you about her. Claire Russell, the amazing woman I met at the nursery and stole right from under poor Fred Euclid’s nose.” Nell’s head went back and she laughed as she remembered the surprised look, then the sweet acquiescence as the nursery owner agreed to her request to borrow Claire, but only if it was part-time and only if she’d give him her mother’s bouillabaisse recipe. “In two weeks she’s done all this. And we’re not finished yet. She can talk a plant back to life faster than Cass can catch a lobster.”
“Do I know this wonder woman?” Cass lifted her Sox cap, shoved a handful of black hair through the band, and pushed it back on her head.
“I don’t know if you’ve met. She’s been working at the nursery since spring. And you don’t exactly hang around green plants, Cass. Your paths might not have crossed.”
“The name isn’t familiar to me, either,” Birdie added.
“Then she’s not real,” Izzy said. “Birdie knows everyone.”
“Maybe she’s a garden elf,” Cass offered. “No one can see her but Nell. Kind of like those elves that old shoemaker had. I always hoped they’d come out at night and clean my messy room when I was a kid.”
“Well, whoever she is, I love her,” Izzy said, her eyes misting over again. “And I love your backyard. And I—”
“Need a doughnut,” Cass finished. “This love stuff is getting to me.”
Izzy picked up the box of pastries before Cass got to them. “The lady doth protest too much.”<
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Cass grabbed the box back and teased back at her friend. “None of these for you, bride. Aren’t you supposed to be watching your weight? That’s what I see on TV. Brides are cranky, nervous, demanding—and skinny.”
“Not our Izzy,” Birdie said, settling the argument by taking the box herself and placing it back on the table. She opened it and took out the powdery beignets, placing them on a platter while Nell poured mugs of coffee. “The thought of Izzy dieting is ludicrous. She’ll be as willowy as sea grass, just like always. But she’ll never stop eating.”
“True,” Cass said. “Sam claims you eat more than he does, Iz.”
The others laughed but didn’t dispute it. Izzy Chambers loved to eat—and it would take more than a wedding to disrupt her appetite. She was sometimes cranky—Nell would give her that—like when a shipment of new needles was lost in transit or a nor’easter knocked out her electricity in the shop. But the wedding planning wouldn’t make her cranky. All that mattered was that Sam was there at the end of the day.
“Speaking of demanding,” Izzy said, looking over at Nell, “I talked to M.J. at her salon about hair appointments for the wedding.”
“Hair?” Cass wrinkled her forehead.
“For my mom. And some relatives. You can wear yours in that dirty Sox cap if you want. But that won’t work for some of the Chambers clan.”
“Nor me,” Birdie piped up, patting her short crop of white hair. Her eyes sparkled. “I’d like to look my finest on Izzy’s special day. Count me in for a fix.”
“M.J. now has a wedding coordinator—Tiffany Ciccolo, that tall, quiet girl who used to work the desk. She even has her own office, M.J. says. She’ll do all the arranging and make sure it’s all perfect. She suggested we go by later today to talk to her. Does that work for you, Aunt Nell?”
Before Nell could respond, the sound of squeaky wagon wheels coming around the side of the house diverted her attention. Nell swallowed a bite of beignet and grinned. “My gardening goddess is here.” She wiped off her hands and waved as a woman in a bright green tank top came into view. A blue sweater was tied around her shoulders. “You see, you naysayers? She’s as real as I am.”
The Wedding Shawl Page 2