A Fatal Fleece (26 page)

“Or the police. He’s sticking to his story, saying his concern was for Gabby.”

“Do you believe him?” Cass asked.

“No,” Birdie said simply, but with a force that brought welcome laughter to the table. “He’s lying, and I told him so. But it got me nowhere—except maybe the bouquet of flowers he had delivered later.”

The laughter grew.

“When he came back here after being in Italy, something was
different with him. A worried look, and the secrets. There was something going on besides being here for Gabby.”

And the reason had something to do with Finnegan, they felt sure.

And Finnegan had been murdered.

“And then there’s Beverly Walden,” Izzy said. “Why did she really come back to Sea Harbor? Did it have anything to do with making sure she was first in line in Finn’s will?”

“I don’t trust her,” Cass said. “I don’t like her much, either.”

“That’s understandable. She’s trying to rip your inheritance away from you.”

“It’s not even that, though that seems to be driving her kind of crazy. But there’s something else, something sneaky going on there.”

All of them knew Cass’ feelings were colored by the circumstances. She was Finnegan’s protector. And looked on Beverly as the enemy, even when Finn was alive.

“I ran into her in the cheese store shortly before Finn died. She seemed happy with life that day.”

“Maybe that’s it,” Cass said. “One minute she’s happy; the next, devious and angry. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“She wanted Finnegan’s money,” Izzy said. “She’s made that obvious. Not very smart if she doesn’t want to appear as a suspect.”

“That’s the other thing about her. She doesn’t seem to grasp the situation. Izzy’s right—she’s calling attention to herself, trying to get Finn’s money. Could she be one of those amoral people who doesn’t have a conscience? All that stealing when she was a kid; not coming back when her own mother was dying?” Cass asked.

“But money didn’t seem to be such an issue when she first arrived,” Birdie said. “Finnegan told me that originally she turned down his offer to stay in that house he owns. It was like she didn’t want anything from him. And then she suddenly
did
.”

“What changed for her?”

They all thought about that. The rumors were that she had a man in her life. But, as Nell wisely said, how would that have stirred up this sudden desperate need for money?

“Does she owe someone money?” Izzy wondered.

“A very curious part of this is that Finnegan originally had her in his will. Maybe it was in a small way, not what she expected. But it was something,” Birdie said.

“Yes!” Izzy leaned forward. “And then he took her out of it. And Ben said it seemed Finn was angry when he did it.”

Nell thought back to the incident on the Palate’s deck. “Merry said Finn shouted at Beverly, accused her of hurting people.”

“What Finn said to her was awful. Not like him at all. He said something about her killing her own mother,” Cass said. “I don’t like her much, but that seemed harsh.”

“But he did mean that figuratively, of course,” Birdie said. “She broke her mother’s heart. But didn’t Finn say she was ruining another person’s life? Whose?”

“And is that why Finnegan took her out of his will?” Izzy asked. Her cheeks were flushed as if something finally made sense. Not completely, maybe, not in a way that explained murder, but it seemed to be a step in the right direction.

Cass spread honey butter on a freshly baked slice of herb bread. “All right, who could Beverly be hurting? Besides me, that is.”

“She won’t win that dispute, Cass.” Nell said. But they all knew her assurance wasn’t grounded in fact. Beverly very well might win. And the Halloran Lobster Company’s troubles would once again be pressing painfully for resolution.

A sudden gust of wind whipped Cass’ hair against her cheeks. She looked around the table. “You know what I hate most of all? I hate that you’ve all been pulled into this. I want to go back one short month. I want Finnegan to be hollering at me for forgetting to bring his soda bread and me hollering at him for spilling the buoy paint. I want to be happy for Danny that he’s having a great book tour. I want to finish knitting that damn hat that’s been sitting in my bag forever, and I want you three to be . . . to not be worried about me, to just be happy with me . . . to be . . .” Her voice broke off as Birdie silenced her with a gentle hug.

“We’re happy with you, sad with you, whatever the moment calls for.”

“We’re thick-and-thin friends—no worry on that score,” Izzy agreed. She took a drink of her margarita. “But as for that hat you were knitting? It’s a mess, anyway. So don’t bother finishing it.”

Cass swatted at Izzy and then they clinked their glasses, knowing deep down what it was Cass wanted, what they all wanted, and what they’d get, by hook or by crook.

Their summer back. Peace. And friendships not burdened with the awfulness of murder.

The waitress removed the empty plates and returned in minutes with what they’d all agreed would suit them perfectly: a thin-crust pizza nearly as big as the table and piled high with sweetly marinated and grilled shrimp, scallops, and vegetables—red peppers, zucchini, strips of eggplant and asparagus, wild mushrooms—and topped with chopped tomatoes and creamy goat cheese.

“Things are looking better already,” Cass said, sliding a huge slice onto her plate.

For a few minutes, the only sounds were sighs of pleasure, the soft crunch of pizza dough, and the lap of the waves against the rocks below.

Nell was the first to break the spell that the tangy, sweet shrimp had wrapped them in. “All right, so how far are we in sorting out this mess? Our thoughts are all over the place. We need focus.”

“Maybe. Maybe Mary Pisano has the right idea and we should pay more attention to what we see and hear and feel. Cass, you asked why Finn was so upset with Beverly. Who could she have been hurting? That’s question one. And then there’s the flip side—who could possibly hate Finnegan enough to kill him?”

Cass shook her head. “You know, that’s the hitch. Everyone complained about Finn, but I don’t know anyone who hated him. What was there to hate? Grumpiness?”

“What about some of the fishermen? Could there have been some kind of feud?”

“The weapon was a knife they all own,” Izzy added.

“We can rule the fishermen out. Those guys liked Finn and he liked them.”

“Beverly may fall in the feud category,” Birdie said quietly. A daughter hating a father was distasteful, difficult to talk about.

“So Beverly hated him, and she wanted his money,” Izzy said.

“And she could have gotten on his land easily that night. She lived a short walk away; no one would have seen her walking along the shore side,” Cass said. “She wouldn’t have a knife, maybe, but . . .”

“Gus carries those in the hardware store. It’d be easy to get one from him.”

“And as far as we know, she didn’t know she had been taken out of his will.”

“Okay, so Beverly is a likely suspect.”

“Who else?”

“Nick, no matter how we feel about him.”

Even Birdie agreed. Dishonesty wasn’t the same as murder. But something about her brother-in-law was not quite right.

“And the police have me listed, so I should be on it,” Cass said.

“No. Absolutely not,” Izzy said sharply. “You are the reason we’re doing this. So you can get on with your life.”

“The Delaneys?” Birdie suggested.

“They were at the Scaglias’ the night that Finn was killed,” Nell said. “So we know they were in town. I talked to Maeve at the hair salon last week, and she told me that she came down with some awful bug that night. D.J. took her to the ER for fluids. So that rules him out.”

“Davey?”

“He was at the party,” Izzy said. “I think he single-handedly finished off the beer Beatrice served. He left about the same time we did. Sam asked him about that big boat they have docked at the club, and he made a big show about how powerful it was.”

“Davey has tried to prove himself to his father his whole life. That’s not a healthy way to live,” Birdie said.

“Getting this land away from Finnegan would be a feather in his cap,” Nell said.

“But how would killing Finnegan make sure he got the land?” Izzy said. “Unless . . .”

Nell nodded, thinking along with Izzy. “Unless he knew that Finn’s daughter, once she got her inheritance, would sell it to him.”

“Beverly and Davey knew each other—we know that.”

“But how well, I wonder,” Izzy said.

The uncomfortable thought hung in the air like a spiderweb.

Finally, Birdie said, “We can definitely eliminate D.J. and Maeve, not that Maeve could kill anything bigger than a bug. Davey . . . He needs to stay there, for now at least. “

“And there’s the murky possibility that someone killed Finn out of revenge. Revenge for burying the unknown person in his backyard.”

“But that was so long ago that we have no idea who that person might be,” Birdie said, clearly enjoying this piece of the puzzle. “If we can figure out the real reason that body’s there—and I don’t think it’s because Finnegan killed anyone, for heaven’s sake—we can squash that whole rumor. It will make this a bit cleaner. Elimination is good.” She sat back in her chair.

“But it’s the squashing that might take some creativity,” Nell said.

“And we have more than enough of that to go around,” Birdie said happily.

Nell laughed. “All right, then. Is there anyone else we can think of whom Finn might have had problems with? You knew him better than anyone. What would he have done to make someone mad enough to kill him? Is there anyone else we haven’t thought of who would have benefited from his death?”

Cass took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Beatrice Scaglia was giving Finn fits about his land. She was somehow convinced if she could get the land away from him, turn it into a beautiful place, she’d be pleasing everyone—the mayor, the voters.”

“It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting political office that bad,” Nell said.

“But, weirdly, she does,” Cass said.

They agreed. They all knew Beatrice, knew her idiosyncrasies and her ambition. But like everyone else they knew, tagging those people as murderers was difficult.

Nell repeated the conversation from Izzy’s earlier that day. “Beatrice wasn’t contributing to the rumors, but she was enabling them. Letting people go on about the body they’d found in the grave and the possible connection to the dentist. Putting Finn in a terrible light.”

“That’s so silly,” Birdie said. “I knew Dr. Pulaski, poor man. Not much personality, but he knew how to fill cavities adequately.”

“I remember him vaguely,” Cass said. “For a while he was the only dentist in Sea Harbor. Pete and I loved going to see him because he always gave us lollipops when we were through. Ma used to say it was to ensure repeat business.”

“He was a character.” Birdie chuckled. In the next breath, the smile faded and she straightened up in her chair. “The photos,” she said. “Of course. I wonder if the police have thought of that.”

“Photos?”

“The ones in the paper of Finn’s poor house. There were a couple shots of the offices below—”

“The dental chair,” Nell said, climbing into her thoughts. “Are you thinking that where there’s a chair, there might be dental records?”

“And if the body they found is someone who lived around here, he might have gone to Dr. Pulaski.”

But something else was nagging at Birdie; they could see it clearly on her face.

“Birdie?”

She shook her head. “There’s something I’m forgetting about Dr. Pulaski. It’s right here”—she pointed to the side of her head—“but I can’t quite push it into focus.”

“You don’t think there was anything to the rumors about Moira and him?”

“No, no, no. Absolutely not. Moira and Finnegan were two of the most devoted people I’ve ever met. He adored his wife, and she him. And not to disparage the poor dentist, but he wasn’t exactly a Casanova.” Birdie wiped some sauce from her lips. “I remember Moira being nice to him, but Moira was sweet to everyone. No, this little itch up here in my head is something else. It will come to me. . . .”

Izzy cut the last giant piece of pizza into four parts and passed them around. She licked her fingers. “I think finding the body on Finn’s land is important, but it’s also a distraction.”

“I agree,” Cass said. “But we need to figure it out because I swear that man will come back and haunt me if people accuse him of something he didn’t do. And rumors about Moira being unfaithful? That would absolutely kill Finn. In his mind, unfaithfulness was probably the absolute worst crime a person could commit. I don’t know if it was something that happened in his early life or what, but he used to talk to me about it. Lecture me, I guess. He was so forceful about what he considered right and wrong. He won’t ever find peace until we take care of this for him.”

“So we will,” Nell said. “But we’ll also find out who ended his life so viciously. Between the four of us, we know nearly everyone in town—and Cass knows Finnegan better than anyone else. That’s all we need to move ahead with this.”

They paid their bill and walked into the evening air, the breeze ruffling hair and the waves sending salty spray up over the rocks.

“Invigorating,” Birdie said. And they all agreed.
The breeze, the dinner, and the resolutions.

They walked across the street toward the rocky bank and a view of the picture-perfect harbor. Dozens of sailboats rested like birds on the water, bobbing gently from side to side. The weather had brought out strollers and runners, families with children scampering up the rocks, young couples sitting at the very end of the road, bodies pressed together.

For a while they were quiet, the beauty of the scene sinking in around them while their private thoughts tugged at the images of Finnegan on the ground, a murderer fleeing. A stormy night. Picking it apart, pulling it into focus, each in her own way.

“The person who killed Finnegan had to have come in from the water side,” Cass said. She climbed onto a rock, found a level plane, and sat back, hugging her knees to her chest.