A Fatal Fleece (21 page)

“And given her an amazing grandmother,” Cass added.

“Well, thank you, Catherine.”

No matter that it wasn’t a result of shared blood or genes, Gabby was Birdie’s granddaughter, and the tie was already as tight as if she’d given birth to her herself.

“Gabby will handle this fine. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about.” Nell took the wrap off a basket of warm goat cheese croutons and set it beside the soup spoons, then began ladling a cool, summery squash soup into bowls.

“Mint,” Cass said.

“Garlic,” Izzy said.

“Fine wine.”

Nell smiled at the weekly ritual of guessing ingredients. “Soupe au pistou. And you’re all correct.”

Nell spooned a dollop of the mint and garlic pistou on top of each serving, then swirled it into the soup. “Amazing, Aunt Nell.” Izzy looped one arm around her aunt’s waist and savored the smell. “Mint. It’s perfect for tonight. Fresh and green. Something to clear our heads.”

Next came a helping of sautéed shrimp atop each bowl. “It’s ready to go, but don’t touch this container,” Nell warned, snapping
a lid on a smaller bowl. She looked at Cass with a knowing smile. “Mae and her nieces are out front, stocking cubbies. This is for them.”

Cass laughed. “Me, steal food from hungry teens? Never.” She took a hunk of warm bread from a basket.

“I wonder how Nick will spend this time,” Izzy said.

“His detainment?” Birdie laughed. “I don’t think he’ll have a problem. He loves Sea Harbor.” She wiped the corner of her mouth.

“He met with Ben this afternoon,” Nell said. “They were in the den when I got home.”

“He needed to talk through this mess with someone, and Ben is a good listener. A good listener with a law degree is even better, considering the circumstances.”

“What’s the scuttlebutt in the shop?” Cass asked Izzy.

“People are obsessed with the idea that someone was buried on Finnegan’s land. The younger kids—Jillian and Rose’s friends—have dramatized it into an episode of
True Blood
, vampires and all. There’re all sorts of guessing games going on about who it might be. Was it a guy who disappeared twenty years ago? Or the result of a lovers’ quarrel? Kids trespassed on that land all the time. Was it some runaway teen who accidentally died there? Danny would have a field day following some of the story lines.”

“But there’s more serious talk, and that’s what’s awful. People wondering how someone ended up in a grave, dead,” Cass said. “Did Finnegan kill the person?”

Nell confirmed she had heard the same rumor in the checkout line at Shaw’s.

“As if that old man could kill anyone. He was so righteous, he drove people crazy,” Izzy said.

“It’s interesting that it’s the grave—and not Finnegan’s murder—that people are talking about,” Nell said.

“People are connecting the two. Someone came back to seek revenge on what Finn did a long time ago. Maybe it was a guy he killed, and the wife has come back to get revenge. It’s made-for-TV fare,” Izzy said.

“I don’t think most people believe it. It’s flimsy,” Nell said.

Birdie agreed.

“I heard some moms say they won’t let their kids go over to Canary Cove until the person is caught,” Izzy said. “People are frightened.”

“That’s not a good thing for Canary Cove business,” Birdie said. “And not a logical reaction, really. Whoever killed him is probably not spending time around Canary Cove.”

“Probably not, but I understand the fear. We know so little about what happened.” Nell put her empty bowl on the tray, wiped her hands, and took out Gabby’s sweater.

“Have you heard any names thrown out there of who might have done it?” Cass asked.

Izzy refilled wineglasses and collected the empty bowls. “In spite of the gossip, people are being cautious, I think. They don’t want to be disrespectful. Finn hasn’t even been buried yet. And even though there were a lot of people upset over his property—and many others wanting to get their hands on it—there are also people like us. People who liked Finnegan and liked what he added to our town. He’s left a void. People are genuinely sad about his death.”

“Murder,” Cass corrected.

“Homicide.” Izzy, the lawyer, shot back.

“Whatever. Someone cut him with a knife. Someone wanted to hurt him—badly.”

“So who? Who would possibly dislike Finnegan enough to harm him?” Birdie asked.

Cass walked over for a second bowl of soup. “What would they gain from it?”

Did Cass really not discern what could be gained by killing Finnegan? For those who looked at facts and not emotions—people like the police investigating the case—what people could gain from killing Finnegan was simple. Money.

The most common motive in the world.

And right now, for all Finnegan’s wonderful intentions, he had hoisted Cass Halloran to the top of that list.

The clunk of sandals on the steps announced Jillian and Rose Anderson. “Food? Aunt Mae said you were sharing, Mrs. Endicott.” Jillian, the more talkative twin bounded over to the table with Rose close behind.

Nell laughed. The teenagers added a whole new population to the shop in summer months, and certainly increased the decibel level with their music, giggles, and friends who stopped in many times a day when their friends were working.

“You’re, like, the best cook I know,” Rose said. “Everyone says so.”

“So can you guys believe all this stuff going on around town?” Jillian asked. “Our mom is freaked. She doesn’t even want us to go out at night, but she does, because it would be pretty awful for her if we were at home all the time.” She laughed. “She’d go, like, crazy.”

“We’re super careful, though,” Rose assured them.

“Some of our friends got a look at the guy.” Jillian peeled the top off the food bowl.

“What do you mean? What guy?” Cass asked.

“The murderer,” Rose said solemnly, dipping a spoon into the soup. She bit into a piece of shrimp, closing her eyes. “This is incredible,” she murmured.

“You know, Finnegan’s murderer.” Jillian stepped in, her eyes bright with excitement. “It was a few days ago, not the day it happened, but it must have been the same guy. Had to have been.”

“What happened?” Izzy tried to pull the twins’ talk into logical order. Or at least something they could understand. “Someone saw something—or someone—who might have murdered Finnegan? Where? And who?”

Rose pulled out a chair at the long table and was content to enjoy her soup, but Jillian jumped into the discussion fully.

“See, it was these guys we hang out with, friends from school. You know Oliver Porter—he’s Officer Porter’s cousin, and—”

Rose looked up. “Jason McClucken.”

“Oh yeah, and Camden Gibson. Those three. They’re always together.”

“Where were they?”

“Down near the Canary Cove shore. They go fishing off the old docks down there sometimes.”

“They’re not supposed to,” Rose said wisely, pausing with a spoonful of soup in midair. “Those docks are old and rickety, and besides that, it’s private property.”

Jillian’s ponytail flew as she turned to look at her sister. “But lots of kids do it—you know they do, Rose.”

“What did they see?” Suddenly the picture of three boys going fishing was playing out in front of Nell too clearly, with too much familiarity. Déjà vu in 3-D.

“They go down that old access road,” Jillian said, “the one between the Arts Association office and Finnegan’s. Once they’re at the water’s edge, they can scoot around the fence and along the shore—go all the way around Canary Cove, if they want to.”

“But they don’t go that far,” Rose said. “And the other day they just went down to the end of the road, around the fence, and over to the dock.”

“Finnegan’s dock?”

Rose nodded. “They figured they could do it, you know, now that he wasn’t there to chase them off with his BB gun.”

“But while they were sitting out there”—Jillian was reaching the climax of the story now, and her words took on the tone of an actress on a stage—“they spotted a man going through the bushes. He hadn’t seen them because he was farther in, behind a bunch of trees and shrubs. So they decided to spy on him. It was a great game, Oliver said. They watched him go into the house—that place Finnegan lived. They heard noises coming from inside and could see a flashlight every now and then, flashing in the windows. A while later the guy came back out. Oliver thought he was carrying something. Anyway, he went back through the bushes and around the end of the fence. I guess it was how he got in, just like the guys.”

Nell took a deep breath. “Did they know who it was?”

“They didn’t get a good look. They were afraid if they got too close he’d see them and shoot them or something.” Rose helped
herself to the last roll. She smothered it with butter, then licked her fingers clean.

“Was he young?”

“Oliver said old. Well, not old like Finnegan or the Old Man of the Sea, but old like . . .”

“Like me?” Nell said.

“Maybe. Maybe a little older,” Jillian said with great seriousness. “He had gray hair. But he wasn’t hunched over or anything.”

“Then what happened?” Birdie asked, the words sticking uncomfortably in her throat.

“Well, then Jason—I think it was Jason; maybe Oliver—snuck over to the fence to see where he went. The guy was moving fast and was, like, almost to the end of the drive before Jason got around the fence.”

“And that’s it?”

“Yep. He got into a blue car and drove away. That’s it. How’s that for weird?”

Chapter 20

B
en hadn’t heard about anyone who had gone onto Finn’s property and into his house. No, it hadn’t come up when he’d talked to Nick.

Nell sat back against a post on the floor of the yacht club dock that held Sam and Ben’s still-unnamed sailboat. She bent her knees and wrapped her arms around them, the morning sun warm and soothing on her bare arms. The egg sandwiches she’d brought over to the two sailors had been most welcome, and the few remaining crumbs were welcomed by a pair of swooping gulls. The yacht club café wouldn’t be open for another hour, and Nell’s coffee had helped them all think more clearly.

Ben took a drink, but Nell knew from the deep furrows between his eyes that he found the story disturbing. If the trespasser was, in fact, Nick Marietti, then he hadn’t been completely honest with Ben. If it wasn’t true, there was a completely unknown person trespassing on Finnegan’s property just two days after his death.

“Someone wanted something from Finnegan. But desperately enough to kill for it?”

“And you think that someone is Nicholas Marietti?” Sam reached for a bucket of water and a sponge.

“It’s difficult for me to go there. I like him—but I don’t like what Nell’s saying.”

“What the teenagers are saying,” Nell corrected. “Maybe it wasn’t Nick.”

But it sounds like Nick.

Ben handed his mug to Nell, then picked up a hose, adjusted the spray, and began hosing down the side of the boat. He and Sam had taken it out early, before the world was awake, to test a new computer they’d just installed. And Sam, as always, brought his camera to record the beauty of the sea or a whale’s nose or a gull doing ballet on a wave.

It’s like a baby to them,
Nell thought. This sleek, beautiful vessel, nurtured and lovingly cared for. Ben said being on the boat helped him think. Relax. Slow down. Be at one with the sea. And Nell knew it was a tonic that she’d never be able to find for him in the drugstore, so she embraced it, though she didn’t completely understand it. All around them were other yachts and sailboats, equally loved and pampered. A neighborhood of boats.

She looked over at a sleek sailboat moored next to Ben and Sam’s.

“Delaney’s,” Ben said, following her look. “She’s a beauty.”

“D.J.? I didn’t know he was a sailor.”

“No, the other family. D.J.’s son, Davey. The young kids are out here a lot, learning how to handle the sails, helping Davey’s wife, Kristen, spruce it up.”

The wind tossed her hair as she admired the sailing vessel, the small dinghy hugging its side. She tamed the hair back with her hand, her thoughts boomeranging from beautiful boats to more troubling scenarios.

“It’s difficult to appreciate beauty with everything that’s going on—this murder, the innuendos. Even teenagers are inventing their own versions of what might have happened.”

“The trespassing story could be absolutely correct, and it still wouldn’t mean the guy—whoever he was—killed Finnegan,” Ben said.

Sam agreed. “But it’s too closely connected to Finnegan to just dismiss it, I guess.”

“According to Jillian and Rose, the boys went to the police yesterday. They didn’t go right away because they didn’t think too much of it at first. Some man sneaking into a dead man’s house didn’t seem like a terrible thing to them, I guess.”

Sam squeezed the water from his sponge and dropped it into
the bucket. “That’s because they were trespassing themselves.” He picked up his camera and began fiddling with the lens, then aimed and snapped a shot of Nell.

Ben finished spraying the last section of the boat and turned off the hose. “I don’t know if the police will tie the story to Nick. We don’t even know for sure if it
was
Nick. But I’m going to tell him what the kids think they saw. And if there’s a connection, he can get to the police before they get to him.”

Nell listened, trying to squeeze the pieces together in a way that would take Nick out of the picture.

“I still can’t see Nick Marietti doing anything unsavory,” Ben said, helping Nell to her feet. “Maybe there’s something he’s not telling us, but I’d like to trust he has a good reason for it.”

“How’s Birdie doing with all this?” Sam asked. He picked up wrappers from their sandwiches and shoved them in a plastic bag.

“Birdie’s a rock. And nobody’s fool. But she feels just like Ben does—Nick is honorable—but might be holding something back.”

“Not to change the subject, but I need to get showered and changed. Father Northcutt and I are meeting this morning to go over the documents again, and if the others have come, we’ll look at those, too.”

“What do you expect to find?”