A Fatal Fleece (39 page)

“Well, it will be in the book, so maybe that will trigger a memory,” Cass said.

“Of course. That’s right. Do you know when she was here? What day or week?” He reached for the notebook.

“She was here several times over the last month or two,” Nell said. “As many as ten, I think.”

Sal’s frown deepened. “Odd,” he murmured. He put his glasses back on and opened the book. Carefully, he turned page after page, slowly running his finger down each line. After covering two weeks, he looked up and shook his head. “I don’t see her name. Could she have signed in with a different one?”

Nell looked at Birdie. “That’s crazy. We saw her name . . . Maybe earlier?” she suggested.

Sal dutifully turned several more pages, and again, line by line, searched for Beverly’s name. Finally, he looked up. “I’m sorry. I don’t see it anywhere.” He rubbed his forehead.

“So, you don’t remember her ever being in the office?”

“No. Maybe if I looked at the newspaper photo again,” he offered. “I’ve had some help this summer so I could take a day off every now and then. Let me ask Janie and get back to you.”

“May I?” Nell took the book out of Sal’s hands before he could protest. She flipped through it, frowned, then looked again more carefully. Finally, she closed the book and handed it back to him. “Maybe we were mistaken. We’re sorry for wasting your time, Sal.”

“It’s always a pleasure to have you come in,” he said. “It’s usually quiet in here.”

They turned to go, and then Nell remembered the photograph. She pulled the photo envelope from her purse. “I almost forgot. Sam Perry asked me to give you this.”

Sal took the envelope and pulled out the photograph of his boat. His face brightened as he looked at the photo, his usual quiet demeanor melting into one of pure pride. Sam had mounted the photo on foam core, ready to be matted and framed.

“May I see?” Cass asked.

Sal handed it to her, a proud parent showing off a snapshot of a newborn.

“What a beauty,” Cass said.

Sam had captured in crisp detail the polished teak trim of the deck, the leather seats and shiny chrome accents, its deep blue sheen. Cass looked at it closely, then handed it back. “I’d love to go out on her sometime.”

“Just name the day,” Sal said, taking the photo back and looking at it again. “Sam’s good. He captures everything.” He held it closer, pushing his glasses up his nose. A puzzled look shadowed his face. Then quickly he slipped the photo back into the envelope and looked up. “Thanks, Nell. And thank Sam for me. Now I guess I’d better get back to work.”

He looked down at his desk, empty except for a book on sailing in one corner and the sign-in notebook on the other.

“All right, Nell. What did you see when you looked at that sign-in notebook?” Birdie asked as they walked outside and down the steps, three abreast.

“Someone tore the original pages out, the ones with Beverly’s name on them.”

“Are you sure? It looked legit to me,” Cass said.

“You were looking at it upside down. I could see a few rough edges where the original pages had been. It was picked clean, but not entirely.”

“That’s odd. Anyone, even Beverly Walden, has a right to look at deeds.” They turned the corner onto Harbor Road.

“Beatrice . . .” Birdie murmured.

“She looked guilty of something. Or concerned, maybe?” Nell said.

“Why wouldn’t she want us to know Beverly was in the office? Or was it the deeds she was looking at that someone didn’t want noticed?” Birdie said.

“But we saw those. And they were almost silly. It looked like she jotted down anything, just because it was required. We’ve all done that, I suppose, when we have to sign in or out somewhere, just to make it go fast.”

“Sure, I’ve done that. Especially if the request for information seems foolish. Like, who cares what deeds I want to look at? Deeds are public information. I think it’s Sal Scaglia’s quest for control and perfection, covering every little thing. But it’s actually kind of silly.”

Nell looked at Cass. “You have a point. Sal’s mostly there to be sure people know how to use the computers. He must get terribly bored.”

“Yet it’s good that he takes pride in his job, no matter if it’s just signing people in and out,” Birdie said.

“I suppose.” Cass frowned. “But something’s not right. I feel it. Beatrice . . . She looked strange.”

“It’s because you need caffeine, Catherine. Next stop, Coffee’s.”

It wasn’t just a lack of caffeine, and they all knew it. But a double latte would certainly help.

The line in the coffee shop was short at that late hour of the morning, and in minutes they were headed back outside with Coffee’s signature blue and green cups in hand.

“Ahh,” Cass said, breathing in the smell. “I’ll soon be human again.”

They walked through the patio, headed toward Nell’s car, when a hand on Cass’ shoulder caused her to jump. Her cup tumbled to the ground, a river of brown liquid flowing under a nearby table.

She stared up at Davey Delaney.

“What are you trying to do, Delaney? You scared the bejeezus out of me.” She looked down at the now-empty cup. “And I needed that coffee. Desperately!”

Davey’s face fell, chagrined. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You’re awfully jumpy, though. I barely touched you. Maybe you’ve had too much caffeine.”

He stopped a young man clearing tables and asked him to bring another cup. “My tab,” he added, and turned an unexpectedly apologetic face back to the three women.

“So, what do you want?” Cass asked, her tone softening, but only a little.

Davey apologized again. Then tried to explain. “I just wanted to tell you I’m glad old man Finnegan picked you.”

“Picked me?” Cass said.

“You know. To have his money. Handle his property. It’ll be done right now.”

Birdie moved closer to Davey, her eyes kind but her voice with the serious “listen to me” tone that no one in Sea Harbor ignored. Even Davey Delaney.

“Davey, what are you trying to say?”

“Just that, Miss Birdie.” His face was less bold when he looked at her. Like a child before the principal.
Respectful with just a twinge of fear,
Nell thought.

“I think Cass’ll do what Beverly Walden would never have done. No disrespect for the dead intended.”

“Didn’t you tell Izzy you didn’t know Beverly Walden?” Nell asked.

Davey shifted from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t know her. Not really. That was the truth. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be connected to her now that she’s dead.”

Then he looked at Nell. “You’re still upset with me from the other night. I know I wasn’t exactly nice to you at the Scaglias’. In fact, my dad said I was a jerk. A forty-five-year-old jerk who’d had too many beers, was how he put it. I was in a bad mood. My wife was away; one of my kids was sick. I didn’t want to be at that party watching Beatrice Scaglia be a peacock, trying to get everyone to do exactly what she wants, when she wants it, how she wants it. If you think I was hard on Finnegan, look into that lady’s behavior.”

Birdie brought the conversation back to Finn’s will. “What did you mean about Beverly Walden?”

“I just meant that if she’d been Finnegan’s heir, it would have been a damn shame.”

Birdie frowned. “Why? How can you say that about someone you don’t know?”

“Okay, so I met her. But didn’t really know her. I tried to. I tried to be nice to her. My wife told me to. Kristen said if I didn’t start acting gracious to people, I’d never get anywhere with the new projects I was trying to land. So I followed her advice and tried to be nice to Beverly because I thought she was going to get Finn’s land. And I wanted it. There. I said it. That’s the honest truth.”

He looked at Cass. “You’re different. You’ll think about it and do what makes sense. If I have a piece of that, it’d be great.” His lips lifted in a half smile. “But no matter what, you’ll figure it out. But Beverly was a different kettle of fish. She didn’t know the town, didn’t care about it, didn’t know us. I took her to dinner once, tried to get on her good side. Even had Kristen send her flowers. Sort of an investment, I guess. Kristen said I could write it off.”

“What was her response?” Cass asked.

“She liked the flowers. But the fact is, she didn’t care what happened to the land. I finally figured that out. She would have taken the highest offer she got, even if it meant someone was going to build a nuclear power plant on that land. There was something sad about her. I think she thought Finn’s money would help her turn her life around. Maybe run off with some guy.”

“Some guy?” Nell said.

“Whoever it was she was having an affair with. She was crazy about the guy. She talked about him as if he were some kind of Adonis, and from what she said, he felt the same.” Davey shrugged. “Some guys like to be needed. And that lady was definitely needy—that much I know about her.”

They left Davey on Coffee’s patio and walked across the street in silence. An uncomfortable feeling was closing in on them, like a vise.

“Do you believe him?” Cass finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Nell said.

“Not to disparage poor Davey, but I’m not sure he could make that up,” Birdie said. “It would be a very creative lie. Though he’s great with a hammer, he’s not terribly clever, I don’t think.”

“He knew she was having an affair. It sounds like she was becoming more open about it,” Cass said.

“Which might not have been comfortable to the other person involved,” Nell said, picking up on Cass’ thought.

“But . . .” Nell began. The end of her thought hung there in the air, unspoken.

Uncomfortable enough to kill?

Chapter 39

A
fter a quick lunch at the Artist’s Palate, they went their separate ways—Birdie to meet Nick and Gabby for a whale-watching tour, and Cass to meet with her mother. “Our weekly catch-up time,” she explained, which meant Mary Halloran would take notes on everything going on in her daughter and son’s lives, sprinkling the list bountifully with advice.

Nell went to a monthly meeting of grant writers over in Gloucester, and finally returned to an empty house, drained.

The quiet settled in all around her, comforting her, muting the suspicions and thoughts that had permeated the hours before.

Davey Delaney had seemed sincere today, but the day she’d seen him across from the garden, watching Finnegan, he’d looked fierce. And then there was the barely controlled anger he’d exhibited at the city council meeting. The thoughts tumbled on top of one another, the events mixing up in her mind.

She made herself a cup of tea, pushing the thoughts away, and climbed up on a stool at the kitchen island. She pulled the laptop over and turned it on to check e-mails.
Normalcy
.

But it was Sam’s photos that popped up first. He had taken the CD but left the photos on the screen, presenting in their very ordinariness the grandeur of a seaside town. Nell rested her elbows on the butcher block and flipped through the photos, smiling at the beauty Sam had seen in his lens and preserved with a click.

The faces of the fishermen, the men and women who braved the sea,
who read the water, communed with it, held her captive. People who wanted no other life.
Like Finnegan,
she thought, wishing she’d known him and his wife in their younger years. A gentle, soft man with a crusty outside, like a loaf of perfectly baked Irish peasant bread.

She continued clicking through, pausing now and then, so immersed in the photos that at first she was unaware that Izzy had come in. She came up beside her aunt, watching the images slide by.

A new set of photos showed a contrast to fishermen and beachgoers. Around a council table sat city leaders, their faces reflecting the onus of keeping a town healthy and whole. A close-up of Beatrice Scaglia was a portrait of concern and compassion. But a clenched fist on the table showed something else.

Gabby had come in with Birdie and made herself comfortable at the other end of the island, pouring out her bag of sea glass and sorting through the pink and green and blue pieces.

“These photos are lovely,” Birdie said, standing next to Izzy. She pointed to one. “Can you pause that one, Nell?”

They were back at the yacht club dock and a close-up of a beautiful, sleek boat with the Delaney name written across the side. “Now, what kind of a name is that for a boat?” Cass asked, coming up behind Izzy. “Shouldn’t it be something fanciful, like the
Lady Lobster
?”

“D.J. probably had it painted on before he gave them the boat. Good marketing. I can’t imagine Kristen picking it.” They pulled the photo in close and saw the signs of fun—inner tubes and sun hats, boogie boards and coolers on the deck. “Family life,” Nell said.

“Speaking of which,” Cass said, and filled Izzy in on the talk they’d had with Davey Delaney. “He didn’t lie, he said. He didn’t
really
know Beverly Warden. I suppose not. Not in the biblical sense anyway.”

“Do you believe him?” Izzy asked.

Birdie sighed. “It’s hard to say.” She pointed to the monitor as another boat came into view. “There. Look at that one.”

“Can you get in closer on that one?” Cass asked.

Nell enlarged the shot until the aft deck filled the screen.

As the image enlarged, the photo grew grainy and hard to see.

But in all its fuzzy definition, Nell could see one thing clearly: the pieces falling into place so loudly she could hear them.

Behind her, even before she heard Izzy’s gasp, she knew Birdie, Cass, and Izzy felt the same.

“We need an expert,” Cass said in a quiet voice.

“I have one you can borrow.” Izzy turned to see Sam and Ben coming across the room.

The men were full of the excitement of the sail. Sam carried two flat boxes smelling of basil, garlic and tomatoes.

Gabby jumped up, scattering her sea glass. “Pizza!”

Nell glanced at the computer, then moved it, still open, to Ben’s den.
To be continued,
she thought, preferably without a coating of cheese.
And soon.