Moon Spinners

by Sally Goldenbaum

  Nell glanced over at Birdie as they pulled into her long drive off Ravenswood Road. She was sitting quietly, gazing out the window with a pensive look on her face.

  “A penny for your thoughts, Birdie.”

  Birdie’s laugh was halfhearted. “They’re not worth that.” She snapped free of her seat belt and opened the car door. “Would you like a nightcap? I could use the company.”

  Nell paused. She’d told Ben she’d be home in twenty minutes, but then, Ben knew that she and Birdie often forgot about time when they were busy solving the world’s problems. He had nodded wisely and told her he’d be there when she got there—whenever that might be.

  “Let’s do that,” Nell said and turned off the ignition.

  Birdie stood beside the car and looked over toward the carriage house. It sat above one of her two garages. Sonny used to fix his car parts in it, and Birdie kept it sparkling clean. The lights were on in the apartment, and through the glare, Birdie and Nell saw Harold hobbling slowly across the room like an injured ghost. He walked toward the window, spotted them in the drive, and pushed the casement windows open. Birdie thought she heard music. Rock music—not a usual choice for Harold.

  “She’s gone,” Harold shouted down to the drive.

  “Who’s gone?” Nell turned to Birdie.

  “Ella,” Birdie said quietly. She walked closer to the carriage house. “Did you let Stella know?”

  “Stella is an abrupt young lady, Miss Birdie. And she’s making so much racket. I won’t be able to sleep.”

  He cast his eyes downward to the garage below his home.

  Although the large garage doors were shut, yellow beams of light poured through the small windows. And with attention turned in that direction, Birdie realized that the garage was the source of the screeching electric guitars and banging drums, not Harold’s apartment.

  “You sit back down, Harold,” Birdie called. “Put your foot up on that stool I brought you. I’ll take care of it.”

  Birdie hurried toward the garage and grabbed the handle of one of the doors. The door was three times taller than she was, but she tugged until it swung wide open. Instantly the recorded sounds of the electric guitar filled the night air. Inside, sitting cross-legged on the cement floor, her face smudged with dirt and her head moving from side to side to the music, was Stella Palazola.

  At first Stella was so absorbed in the music and twisting a stuck cap on the riding lawn mower that she didn’t realize she wasn’t alone.

  “Stella?” Birdie said.

  Stella jumped. Her glasses slid down her nose. “Miz Birdie! Where the he—heck did you come from?” She smiled at Nell and pushed her glasses back in place. “Hi, Miz Endicott. Were you guys standing there long?”

  “No, dear, we just got home. What are you doing?” Birdie eyed the nuts and bolts scattered across the floor.

  “Fixing this machine. Harold can’t mow and I might as well do it, but the mower is broken.”

  Birdie shook her head. “You don’t need to do that, Stella.”

  “I want to. There’s not enough to do around here. Ella chases me out of the kitchen every chance she gets and revacuums any room I touch. I might as well do this. Harold can’t get down the stairs fast enough to stop me, and I like fixing things. Our dad taught Liz everything you’d ever want to know about keeping things working. She’s an expert—way better than our brothers at car repairs. Liz can fix anything. She’s taught me a little here and there.”

  Nell watched Birdie’s small body sigh. Her normally smooth and peaceful household was losing its calm. She hoped for Birdie’s sake that Harold was up and around soon.

  “Stella, Harold says Ella is gone,” Birdie said.

  “She just went for a walk, is all. I saw her leave, carrying that big leather book with her like it was a Bible. Maybe she’ll meditate or something and come back nice.”

  “Stella and Ella don’t like each other much,” Birdie explained to Nell. “I think it’s because their names sound too much alike.”

  Stella frowned at Birdie, ignoring her attempt at humor. “She’s just nasty. And she’s especially mean now that Mrs. Santos is dead. It’s making Harold as cranky as a trapped lobster.”

  “Why would it affect Harold?” Nell asked.

  Birdie answered. “That once-sweet man is jealous. He’s always depended so on Ella—and she on him—and he didn’t like God or Sophia or anyone else taking his place. It was an odd friendship, but a real one.”

  “Harold hated it,” Stella blurted out. “He didn’t like Ella spending all that time away from him. In fact, he didn’t much like Mrs. Santos.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s true,” Birdie conceded.

  Stella wiped her hands on a rag and stood up. She looked at the lawn mower proudly. “I think I got this baby working again.”

  Birdie managed a smile. “Stella, dear, why don’t you go on home now? Or go out and meet your friends. Have some fun. You work too hard sometimes.” Birdie pressed some extra bills into Stella’s hand.

  Stella looked down, then frowned at her employer. She shoved the money into the pockets of her jeans and then impulsively collected Birdie’s small frame in her arms and gave her a tight squeeze.

  “I want to be just like you when I’m old, Miz Birdie,” she said.

  “Thank you, dear. Now would you please tell Harold that Ella just went out for a walk, and Nell and I will make sure everything is fine?”

  When Stella had collected her things, yelled up at Harold, and driven off in the small Volkswagen her sister had given her for her high school graduation, Birdie took Nell’s arm and walked her over to the main house.

  They settled into overstuffed wicker furniture in the back sunroom—a charming addition that allowed access to the outdoors on three sides, even when the weather turned chilly. In winter Birdie filled it with golden grasses and mums and tropical plants, but in summer the pots were filled with wildflowers, tall lilies, and roses.

  Nell buttoned her sweater against the early-June breeze coming through the open windows. Soon sounds of Segovia’s guitar filled the small room.

  “There. Time to relax.” Birdie lit the hurricane lamps, then poured two glasses of wine and held one up. “To my crazy household,” she said, lifting her glass.

  Nell laughed and clinked her glass against Birdie’s. “It’s a little energetic, true. But if you didn’t seem worried about it, I’d find the whole thing entertaining.”

  Birdie leaned to the side and pulled a ball of yarn from the knitting basket beside the couch. She fingered the soft wool absently and settled back into the chair. “Some days it seems humorous. Some not so. Ella has been acting peculiar. Sophia’s death has not only saddened her, but depressed her, too. I’m wondering if I should take her to a doctor.”

  “Not that she would let you. Those two are stubborn.”

  “Stubborn isn’t the word for it. I love them dearly, but sometimes they are challenging. I know for a fact Harold will hobble down those steps tomorrow and redo every bit of work Stella did on that lawn mower. He won’t let anyone challenge his mechanical skills.”

  “Harold has always seemed so dear. The thought of him being jealous of Ella’s time surprises me.”

  “They’re both dear—but they have their idiosyncrasies. When Harold came to work for us after he married Ella, they pretty much kept to themselves. Sonny and I became their family, I guess you’d say, and they seemed perfectly content with that. Stella was right about Harold wanting Ella all to himself. And for all those years she didn’t seem to mind a bit.”

  Outside the wind picked up and tossed pine needles against the window. The warm rush of the wine and cleansing breeze felt good against the emotional heat of the past week. Nell sat back in the chair and sipped her wine, her thoughts on the sweet couple that had been part of Birdie’s life longer than Nell had been.

  “So her friendship with Sophia must have been quite a change in their lives, especially for Harold,” Nell said.<
br />
  “It wasn’t that Sophia and Ella played bridge every day or were on the phone constantly.” Birdie picked up a pair of bamboo needles and began casting on the first row of a sweater Izzy had talked her into trying. It was a swingy cardigan the color of the sky on a clear day. She was eager to get some inches on it so she could imagine the finished project.

  “But they went to daily Mass together.”

  “That’s true—and occasionally they’d walk in the woods when Harold was napping. Ella would sneak out, I guess you’d say. Stella teased her about it last week, which didn’t settle nicely.”

  The thought of the elegant Sophia and the quiet Ella acting like teenagers made both women laugh. Birdie poured them each another inch of wine and leaned her head back against the chair. “I suppose everyone needs a friend. What would the four of us do without our Thursday nights? And we certainly are a good match for Ella and Sophia in blending differences. We’re the most unlikely quartet in town.”

  Nell laughed. They certainly were that. Dear friends . . . and as different as the colors of the sea. Nell had brought Izzy dinner at the Seaside Knitting Studio that memorable Thursday night a few years ago, knowing her niece would be working late. Birdie had come by for several hanks of Peruvian mohair that Izzy had ordered for her. Cass was lured in by the enticing aroma of garlic, herbs, and butter in Nell’s clam pasta.

  And so the four women had settled into an unlikely friendship, one nurtured by Nell’s soups and pastas and grilled vegetables, by Birdie’s fine pinots, and by Thursday evenings spent knitting, talking, laughing, and shedding an occasional tear in Izzy’s cozy back room. It was a friendship that had become as sacred to them as Sophia and Ella’s visits to Our Lady of the Seas church.

  Nell paused, her wineglass raised midair. She frowned, then turned and looked out the window. “Birdie, do you hear that?”

  “The wind?”

  “No. Voices.”

  Birdie pushed the button on the remote and silenced the simmering sounds of Segovia’s guitar. She frowned and turned to look outside.

  The sky was dark now, but gaslights lit the drive and surrounding grounds. “I don’t see anyone out here.”

  “There, I hear it again. It sounds like someone’s in trouble.”

  Wordlessly, the two women moved as one out the back door and across the drive.

  “I wonder if Ella is back,” Nell said out loud. Harold’s lights were still on, but he wasn’t at the window.

  The sound of voices was louder now, but still muffled and indecipherable.

  “It’s over there,” Birdie said, pointing toward the woods. “There’s a path next to the carriage house that leads to the Santoses’ property.”

  “It sounds like a woman. Ella must be out there, but who would she be talking to?”

  “¡Que la mató!”

  The voice was louder now, and clearly Ella’s.

  With the moon lighting their steps, they hurried toward the voice, avoiding tree roots and fallen branches that straddled the pine-strewn path.

  Just before they reached a curve that marked the end of Birdie’s land and the beginning of the Santos property, they were stopped by a man’s voice.

  “Go home, Ella. I’ll walk with you so you are safe. It’s dark.”

  It was Alphonso Santos, his voice low and controlled. Birdie and Nell stepped into the darkness of an apple tree grove and peered out into the small clearing.

  “Don’t touch me.” Ella’s back was to Nell and Birdie, but they could see the shadow of her hands, out in front of her, as if warding off evil.

  “I won’t hurt you, Ella. But you can’t keep coming here like this, to my home.”

  “Sophia’s home,” Ella said, her voice muffled.

  “Of course. Sophia’s home. But she’s gone, Ella. She’s not here. Sophia died.”

  He spoke as if it were a child standing in front of him, his voice calm and measured.

  Birdie and Nell looked at each other, puzzled by the scene unfolding in front of them. They held their silence. Waited.

  Finally Ella spoke again, her voice a hiss in the night. She flung her words toward Alphonso with a vengeance.

  “You killed her,” Ella said. “Que la mató.”

  Before Alphonso could speak or Birdie or Nell could react, Ella spun and ran back through the woods, never seeing the two figures standing beneath the trees.

  Chapter 11

  “An evening away. Dinner and drinks. It can be beer and burgers, hot dogs. But we’re going.”

  Ben was adamant, and Nell agreed. The week was taking a toll, and a Wednesday night away from Sea Harbor might be just what the doctor ordered. Putting a bridge and a strip of highway between them and the rapidly accumulating pile of rumors about Sophia Santos would be a good thing.

  “If any of our friends want to run away with us,” Ben told Nell, “they’re welcome. But I, for one, am going—and I prefer it not be alone.”

  In the end it was Izzy and Sam who showed up at 22 Sandswept Lane and joined Ben and Nell for the ride into the city.

  Izzy shared Ben’s need to escape. “The rumors in the yarn shop were so loud I nearly wore earplugs. All I heard all day were motivations for killing Sophia Santos, a woman I can’t imagine anyone wanting dead.” Izzy climbed into the backseat of the CRV. “One thing everyone seemed to agree on is that the murderer had something against the Santos family. I think the fact that no one thinks it’s a crazed murderer wandering the streets is making people less afraid than they’d otherwise be.”

  Nell had noticed the same thing earlier that day when she’d had her hair trimmed at M.J.’s Salon. There was talk of Sophia’s crash and the expected expressions of sadness. But the heart of the discussion was a curiosity about who could possibly have disliked Sophia enough to do such a terrible thing. Surely no one they knew. The police would figure out who did it. Surely.

  “One person who hated another,” Harriet Brandley had announced with some authority as a dark brown dye was brushed onto her graying head. Harriet and Archie had plenty of books in their Sea Harbor bookshop that detailed similar stories, she had explained to those around her. Two people. One crime. And that left everyone else in the town safe and sound. And in that manner, a safety net was carefully built around the residents of Sea Harbor.

  Nell wondered at the well-intended logic of the conversations. The fact that a murderer could still be walking the streets of Sea Harbor—perhaps sitting right there in the salon, listening to all the chatter while waiting for a color treatment or a cut—somehow didn’t play into the conversations—or was intentionally left out. A shield, was how Ben explained it. People play mind games to protect themselves.

  Ben pulled the CRV onto 128 and headed west. “The police are encouraging that kind of thinking to keep the level of worry down. Maybe they’ve bought into it a little themselves, although they are checking all leads.”

  “What could Sophia have done that would make someone kill her?” Nell asked, a question someone seemed to ask hourly.

  What, indeed? The answer wouldn’t be simple. She suspected they were only just beginning to know who Sophia really was. But the fact that people closely connected to Nell’s life were already affected by this tragedy—Ella and Gracie, especially—made Nell hope it was resolved soon.

  “Birdie and I overheard an interesting conversation last night,” Nell said aloud. She detailed the encounter between Alphonso and Ella in the clearing.

  “Ella accused Alphonso of murdering Sophia?”

  “That part isn’t so unusual, Iz.” Ben pulled onto the highway. “They usually look at family members first in murder cases. Ella probably watches a lot of television—she knows that, too.”

  “I think it’s strange that Ella would attack him that way. What does she know? Gracie was a better witness to that relationship, I think, and she hasn’t painted it as dysfunctional—though she did say that it seemed to her Sophia visited their Beacon Hill place more often since they had that ba
d argument in the spring.”

  “Sometimes people kill out of—or for—love,” Nell observed. She looked out the window as the trees gave way to shopping malls and highway intersections. Ben merged onto 93 and headed south.

  “But how does Birdie’s housekeeper fit into all this?” Sam asked.

  Nell repeated the story of their friendship, and Ella’s grief over Sophia’s death.

  “I’ve seen them together a couple of times, walking down Harbor Road in the morning as I’d open the shop,” Izzy said. “They were always talking, gesturing, happy to be together.”

  “Speaking rapid Spanish. I’m sure it was nice for Sophia to have someone to talk with in her native language.”

  “Losing her friend must have been difficult. But I don’t understand why Ella would lash out at Alphonso.” Izzy leaned forward again, her face intent. “Do you think she knows something, Aunt Nell?”

  Nell had wondered the same thing. Ella didn’t seem the type to throw blame around haphazardly. Nell suspected there was more to it than a grief-stricken friend seeking to place blame on someone.

  “Okay, folks,” Ben interrupted. “I’m taking this next exit and heading toward Somerville. Or Cambridge? You have exactly eight minutes to let me know where we’re going.”

  “A place that’s not fancy or noisy,” Nell suggested, “but has tasty food.”

  “And out of the way, so we won’t see anyone we know,” Izzy added.

  “Give me a pint of Guinness and some curry fries and I’ll be a happy man,” Sam said, his words measured and suggestive. He lifted a brow.

  The others laughed at Sam’s subtle suggestion.

  “The Thirsty Scholar Pub it is, then.” Ben headed toward Beacon Street and the pub that had become Sam’s second home when he lived in Somerville—one of the best-kept secrets in Boston, a reviewer had said—which was one of the things Sam liked about it. Ben maneuvered the car through the narrow streets, past the student apartment buildings and small homes, and pulled into a space between two Jeeps.