Moon Spinners

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “What did Danny Brandley contribute to the conversation about Sophia?” she asked out loud. How would he have handled the conversation? As a stranger? Disinterested? Someone who had never heard of the woman? Or someone who might have known her well?

  Gracie thought about the question for a minute, then said, “He was polite. He listened to the rest of us make all our suppositions and present our theories. Then he ordered drinks for all of us. But now that you ask, he didn’t really say a word.”

  Chapter 28

  Nell showered and slipped into a sleeveless blouse and cotton slacks, then joined Ben for a quick cup of coffee before heading to the hospital to check on Ella. She would pick up some flowers on the way and maybe some magazines from Archie’s.

  The run with Izzy had been a good jump start to the day, even though the encounter with Davey Delaney sent a shiver of fear up and down her spine. “He was almost menacing,” she said to Ben.

  “Probably because you showed up at a bad time. But Gracie knows him. If she’s not afraid, it’s probably okay.”

  He listened while Nell repeated the rest of the conversation they’d had about Sophia’s request to see Gracie that Saturday.

  “Do you think Sophia wanted to counsel Gracie on handling her mother’s allowance?”

  Ben took off his reading glasses and frowned. “Frankly, no. That wouldn’t have been urgent. But the grandparents put quite a burden on Gracie, whether she’ll need advice or not.”

  “I agree. I can’t imagine her having to say no to her mother. Gracie indicated there were other things the lawyers laid out when they told her about this, but she hesitated to go into them.”

  Ben frowned. “I wonder what they were. I wonder if there was another provision in the will, one for Gracie? Alphonso said his parents were crazy about her. They were such planners—it seems they would have made sure she was taken care of too.”

  Nell lifted her brows at the thought. “Perhaps . . .”

  “But that still doesn’t answer your question about why Sophia wanted to talk to her that next day.”

  “Here is my problem with it—and Izzy had the same concern. Would I cancel a hair appointment for something that could just as easily be done the day before or later that day or, frankly, at any time? Sophia knew about the will provision for six months—or at least Gracie did. Why was it so urgent she talk to Gracie about it that day? At that time? Hair appointments are hard to get, and Sophia anchored her calendar by hers.”

  “My barber gets me in on ten minutes’ notice, Nell—so the appointment thing doesn’t resonate with me. But I see your point. It doesn’t sound like an urgent conversation—and not something she’d have to mention that night during a party.” He looked over at Nell. “Okay, Nellie, I know that face. What are you thinking?”

  Nell was silent. She tried to put herself in Sophia’s shoes, then Gracie’s. Then Sophia’s again. Sophia cared about her niece. Did she know something about the restaurant that she had to warn Gracie about? The restaurant and her mother seemed to be the two big things going on in her life. And a divorce. A friendly divorce that might not even happen, from all appearances. The fire . . . could Sophia have suspected someone might be out to harm her niece?

  Nell looked up, shrugged her shoulders, and sighed. “I think we’re getting closer. I hope . . .” A niggling feeling—like a pesky gnat—rested just on the edge of her consciousness. It was irritating and real, and it was so small that none of them could see it.

  Nell picked up Birdie and headed for the Gloucester hospital.

  “Ella is remarkable,” Birdie said. “Harold said she’s in pain but quite brave and uncomplaining.”

  “As we would expect. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ella complain about anything.”

  “Until she met Sophia. Then she seemed to take a definite stand on things. I think Harold would argue with you mightily if you claimed she never complained.”

  Nell laughed. “But I think that might have been good for her. And good for Harold in the long run. They’re two people, not one, and should act that way.”

  They found a parking place close to the main entrance and made their way to Ella’s private room. It was so filled with flowers that at first they didn’t see the slender woman sitting up against the white sheets, her arm in a cast.

  “Ella,” Birdie said, moving aside a giant bouquet of daffodils that sat on the tray table. “There you are.”

  “Can you believe these flowers?”

  “Who are they from?”

  “The whole town, that’s who. People I never met, people I don’t know. Archie at the bookstore and even the Garozzos. Can you imagine?”

  Nell could. She remembered when Angus McPherran was in the hospital a couple years before—an old man who thought the town had passed him by. The same thing happened. People came out of the woodwork to help. And with Mary Pisano making sure everyone knew where—and who—Ella was, she became the astounded recipient of small-town generosity.

  “They’re beautiful. And you deserve them,” Nell said.

  “I’m not so sure of that, Mrs. Endicott.”

  “Now, don’t you think we’re beyond the ‘Mrs.’ Endicott? I think the dozens of years we’ve known each other merit a ‘Nell,’ don’t you?”

  Ella’s smile was slow, and Nell suspected there were some pain medications making a smile even possible.

  “Nell,” she said. The word slipped across her lips. “I like that.”

  Harold limped into the room with a sack of bagels and his face lit up when he saw Birdie and Nell. “What do you think of my gal? Look at these flowers!”

  Harold looked like a new man. The frown was gone. Almost losing someone you love can do that for you, Nell thought.

  “Miss Birdie,” Ella said, her eyes widening. “About your car—Harold won’t talk to me about it. But the doctor said I was driving a car. That’s impossible.”

  “The car will be fine, and you will be fine.” Birdie moved to the side of the bed and kissed Ella lightly on the forehead. “And yes, I would have said it was impossible two days ago. But you have done the impossible, Ella. Twice. First, driven the car. And second, lived to tell about it. It must have taken something mighty important to get you into that old Lincoln.”

  A frown added to the wrinkles creasing Ella’s brow. Her head moved across the prop of pillows behind her. “I . . . I simply can’t remember clearly. It was Wednesday, Harold said. I keep saying to myself, ‘Wednesday, what was Wednesday?’

  “And I was driving a car. I don’t even like cars, except to get me to church and to the store.” Ella looked out the second-story hospital window, out across the treetops, her mind wandering. “Sophia didn’t like cars either, especially the fancy red car.”

  She sounded as if she were talking to herself, unaware of others in the room. Nell looked over at Harold. Instead of his jaw setting, his eyes narrowing, Nell saw a husband in love with his wife. Listening to her carefully.

  “He gave it to her because he had hurt her,” Ella went on. “As if a car would help a wound so deep.” Ella sat up slightly, then winced as she moved her arm unintentionally. She settled back but her eyes were still seeing something beyond the windows that the rest of them were not privy to.

  “Sophia loved sitting in a hammock, not a car. Never a car.” She listened to the rustling of the treetops, as if imagining her friend swaying in a hammock beneath the branches, peaceful, her eyes closed. “If only she could have died in a hammock,” she murmured to herself.

  She fell asleep, and Birdie and Nell took Harold down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee.

  Stella met them at the elevator. “How’s she doing today?”

  “Sleeping,” Harold said.

  “I’ll go sit with her until you come back. Just in case she wakes up,” Stella said.

  “Such a good girl,” Harold said as the elevator doors closed.

  “Yes, she is, Harold. And don’t you forget it,” Birdie said.

 
; Harold confessed he hadn’t eaten yet that day, and they insisted he fill a plate, then sit with them. Stella would take care of things nicely.

  “So has she remembered anything, Harold?”

  “She drifts off some, talks about some things that don’t make sense. But the past three or four days seem to be lost to her,” Harold said between bites of a hamburger and omelet, both piled together on a plate. French fries were stacked on the side. “Ella doesn’t let me eat these,” he confessed and dug into the fries happily.

  “Did she do anything remarkable those days that you remember?”

  “Just the usual—the things she’s been doing since her friend died. Walking. And reading that book.”

  “What book?” Nell asked.

  “It was poetry, Ella said. Sophia’s book.”

  Nell and Birdie looked at each other over Harold’s head as he dug into a bacon omelet covered with melted cheese.

  Sophia’s poetry book?

  When they returned to Ella’s room, Stella was holding a glass of water and a straw, helping steer it to her patient’s mouth. “Ella’s scolded me so I know she’s on the road to recovery.”

  “I don’t scold you,” Ella retorted.

  “Ella, you have been scolding Stella since the day she walked into my house,” Birdie countered.

  Ella sat back and looked from Stella to Birdie, then back again. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “What? What’s that face, Ella?” Stella asked. “Now I’m, like, making you cry?” She handed her a tissue. “Geesh.”

  Ella took it and dabbed at her eyes. “Birdie is right. I was downright nasty to you. I couldn’t take it out on the people I should have. Not your sister, not Alphonso. And I thought maybe somehow, maybe you helped her, maybe you were somehow to blame, at least a little bit, because she was your sister . . .”

  “Oh, Ella, I am as mad at Liz as you are. It’s, like, awful, what they did. It wasn’t fair to Sophia, so sleazy. But it’s done. It’s over. And Liz is my sister. I love her, you know?”

  “We never know the whole story, everything that goes on between people, do we?” Birdie mused.

  “Ella,” Nell asked, “do you think that Liz and Alphonso had anything to do with Sophia’s murder?” Nell realized it might not be delicate asking that question in front of Stella. But it was on all their minds. She thought she knew the answer, and getting it out in the open would be a good thing.

  The silence went on for seconds longer than was comfortable, and Harold finally got up and moved over to Ella’s side. “Do you need another pill, Ella?”

  She shook her head, then turned toward Nell. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “At first I was sure Alphonso killed her. I wanted it to be him because I hated him so. Sophia never talked about Liz to me, but I knew her feelings about divorce.”

  “So she didn’t tell you about the affair?” Stella asked.

  “No. Sophia didn’t tell me things like that. Intimate things.”

  “Then how did you know?”

  “I saw them. Sophia went to Argentina to visit her family. I was missing her, and I went walking in the woods where we would sometimes talk. They came driving up to the house in that red car—he had just bought it. At first I didn’t know who was with Alphonso. I couldn’t see and thought maybe Sophia had come home early. I was excited, and I started out across the clearing. And then I saw them, her blond hair. She was crying, and he was holding her so close I don’t know how she could breathe.”

  “Did they see you?”

  “Not at first. But then Alphonso heard me, and he looked up—and that’s when I saw who it was. I turned and ran away.”

  “Did you tell Sophia what you saw?” Birdie asked.

  “I didn’t know what to do. So I talked to Father Northcutt about it in the confessional. What was the right thing to do? Sophia was so proud, I don’t know if we could have been friends after that if I had told her. Father Larry agreed. So I didn’t tell her.”

  But Alphonso wouldn’t have known that, Nell thought. So he probably told her himself. And gave her a brilliant red Ferrari, one that Liz Palazola would never sit in again.

  She wondered if Ella had told anyone else about the affair. She was such a quiet woman, and wouldn’t have done it to spread gossip. There was the anonymous caller that Esther had told them about, someone who had sounded strangely like Ella Sampson.

  “Ella, the police said someone called them about Alphonso’s . . . well, his relationship . . .”

  “I was so angry,” Ella blurted out, the sudden pinking of her cheeks a contrast to the rest of her pale body. “I thought they should know.”

  Nell looked over at Stella. She was a mixture of emotions. Nell hoped that mixed up in them was understanding for her sister. Birdie was right. You never knew it all, only what you could see from the outside looking in.

  “You’re thinking about Atticus Finch again, aren’t you?” Birdie said after they said their good-byes and walked down to the parking lot.

  “A mixture of Birdie Favazza and Atticus Finch, you might say.”

  Birdie took her arm. “There isn’t a smidgen of what I know about Liz Palazola that makes me think she brought on the affair or encouraged it. Maybe neither of them did. Who knows how these things go? Who knows what Alphonso and Sophia’s marriage was like, or if she was really heartbroken about the breakup?”

  “Sometimes things happen,” Nell agreed. “Even when they shouldn’t.”

  “You live with them, make the best of it.”

  “And pray to God they don’t lead to murder.”

  Chapter 29

  Nell drove up the long Favazza driveway and pulled the car to a stop while Birdie climbed out. She was almost to the door when Nell rolled down her window and rested her arms on the frame.

  “Birdie,” she called out, “I was wondering where the Lincoln is.”

  “With its adopted father—Shelby Pickard, the best mechanic in town.”

  “At his garage?”

  “Yes. It has quite a bruise on its front bumper. Lots of scratches. Shelby will nurse it back to health, and no one will be the wiser. He’s fixed a couple of my own inflicted scratches and dents from time to time. Why?”

  “Harold mentioned that Ella had Sophia’s book with her when she left the house.”

  “The poetry book?”

  “It sounds like that’s the one. If Sophia wrote poetry in the book, maybe she wrote other things, too. Sometimes I do that in my own journal—I’ll write short essays or thoughts or work through problems by writing them down. If I want to remember something, I might jot that down, a name, an address.”

  “So you think Sophia might have done that?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And if she had the book with her, it could be in my car.”

  “Again, it’s possible.”

  “The police gave me a handful of things they found at the accident—Ella’s smashed cell phone and her sweater—but they wouldn’t have emptied the car out.” She checked her watch. “I’m teaching a tap class at the retirement home at three. I’ll run by Shelby’s after that and if we can find it, I’ll bring it with me to dinner tonight—along with a fine sauvignon blanc that I brought up from the wine cellar this week.” With a wave she disappeared inside.

  Thankfully Friday cookouts were as much Ben’s doing as hers, and he’d be sure to have the coals, ice, and martini fixings ready. The chunks of tuna for the kabobs were already swimming in marinade, and she’d find everything else she needed with a quick stop at the store.

  Nell headed down Harbor Road toward the market, stopping at the red light. But when it changed, Nell made a detour.

  Afterward she wouldn’t be able to explain to Ben why she’d done it.

  Maybe it was the realization that Julianne Santos had been in jail an awfully long time. And calm or not, it wasn’t a very pleasant place to be.

  She’d have to stop at the Seaside Knitting Studio first, but with a little input fr
om Izzy, she’d be on her way in no time.

  A hat, Izzy had insisted. It would be the perfect project. But it had to be a pretty one, a happy hat. They found a pattern for the perfect one, an easy roll-brim hat. And Purl herself decided the yarn by leaping into a basket of cashmere wool blends that came in glorious colors. Purl nuzzled her head down, then looked up as if to say, “So? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  They picked out a brilliant orange yarn with a rich pink accent. Nell tucked the yarn and pattern, along with the needles, into a canvas bag Izzy donated to the cause, and Nell was set to go.

  At the door Izzy stopped her with a hand on her aunt’s arm.

  “What, sweetie?” Nell asked, her brows lifting. She thought she had everything she needed. She looked down at the bag.

  But Izzy just shook her head, and then she wrapped her aunt in a fierce hug and sent her on her way.

  She hadn’t checked jail times, but they hadn’t moved Julianne from the local jail yet, and she was confident that if Tommy Porter hadn’t arrested her for speeding along Harbor Road the other night, he wouldn’t put up too much of a fuss over visiting hours. Besides, she knew Esther Gibson had the Friday shift. None of the men on the force would dare say no to Esther.

  A medium-sized woman with blond streaks in her salt-and-pepper hair was walking down the steps as Nell approached the stone building. She looked Nell directly in the eyes, as one would a friend, and smiled. For a second Nell thought it was someone she knew—the smile was welcoming. But then, with a slight, knowing tilt of her head, the woman continued on down the steps.

  Nell watched her walk to the parking lot, then disappear from sight. No, it wasn’t anyone she knew. But perhaps someone she would like to know.

  The visitors’ room, as they called the small room behind the front desk, was in use, so after Nell explained to a gleeful Esther what she was about to do, a uniformed woman with a gun in her belt led Nell directly to Julianne Santos’ cell.

  “Hello, Nell,” Julianne said. She had been sitting at a desk, writing, and stood when the guard ushered Nell inside.