A Fatal Fleece (40 page)

“Great day for a sail,” Ben was telling anyone who would listen. He headed to the refrigerator and pulled out some beers, while Izzy unwrapped the pizza and took plates from the cupboard.

Nell examined Gabby’s neat row of sea glass, the smooth pieces creating a rainbow across the butcher-block top. “They’re so beautiful,” she said. “Are they all from Sunrise Island?”

Gabby nodded. “Angus says to look at them carefully. Every single one. And they’ll tell us things.” She picked one up and frowned. “But this is just a piece of plain glass. I picked it up by mistake. See?” She showed Nell the curved piece of clear glass. “It hasn’t been tumbled by the water like the others.”

Nell looked at it carefully, then held it up and looked through it. On the other side, a letter on the pizza box loomed large. Nell looked through it again. Again, the letter was magnified.

“May I have this one, Gabby?” she asked.

Gabby laughed. “You need a beautiful one, not that one.” She handed Nell a smooth pink oval.

“Thank you, sweetie. Angus would be proud of you.” Nell carried the oval, along with the piece of clear glass, to the safety of a jar on her windowsill.

Once again, the Old Man of the Sea’s wisdom spoke to them.

Look at each piece carefully, and they’ll tell us things.

And they did.

Gabby was yawning by the time they’d finished hot-fudge sundaes. Birdie suggested making it an early night. At least for the three whale watchers. “The rest of you can do what you want,” she said, and she told Nell she’d talk to her first thing in the morning.

They hadn’t wanted to discuss the day’s happenings with Gabby there, but the instant the door closed, Cass and Nell spilled their day out on the table. Sometimes saying things aloud uncovered hidden details.

“Jerry Thompson was with us on the boat today,” Ben said. “He was discreet, like he is, but said a few things. Did you know that Beverly had promised Beatrice Scaglia she’d work with her on plans for the land she was to inherit? There was an e-mail on the city system saying as much.”

“I suppose that doesn’t surprise me,” Nell said. “Did Jerry say what their focus is now that Beverly is dead?”

“Her life,” he said.

“Life?” Izzy asked.

“Affair,” Sam said. “Some of the holes are plugged, but there are missing pieces. Important ones.”

“Like proof,” Ben said. “They can come up with everything but that.”

“I can’t . . . I just can’t get my arms around this,” Nell said. “And we could all be dead wrong.”

“Sure,” Ben said. “We could.”

Nell got the computer and brought it to the kitchen island. Sam’s slide show came into focus. They explained what they thought and what they needed: a close-up that wasn’t fuzzy. Using his magic, Sam made it happen.

As they all stared at the photos, silence filled the room so loudly Nell wanted to cover her ears. They looked at one picture, then another, squinting, then tilting their heads. It was clear but not clear.

“Are we reading into it?” Izzy asked.

But there was no easy answer, and they turned off the computer. “Maybe we’ll see things more clearly tomorrow,” Ben said.

“Maybe tomorrow will tell us we’re climbing up the wrong tree,” Izzy said. “I want that to be what we hear. And yet I can’t bear for it to be what we hear. This needs to be over.”

Nell walked over to the kitchen window and returned with the piece of glass that Gabby had found on the beach. She explained where it came from—Sunrise Island—then passed it around.

When it came back to Ben, he took it into his den and put it into the small safe beneath his desk. “Till tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll see. It could be just a piece of broken glass, you know.”

The next day was cool and rainy—a needed rain, the weatherman said. And somehow Nell felt it appropriate. It matched her spirits. And the garden certainly needed it.

She dressed in stretchy slacks and a light knit sweater, grabbed her rain jacket, and headed down to Izzy’s. Gabby’s sweater was blocked and ready for buttons.
Buttons. Yarn.
Izzy’s shop.
Perfect escapes from thoughts of murder.

Cass was already there, along with a cardboard carafe of Colombian blend that she’d picked up at Coffee’s. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said to Nell. “How about you?”

Before she could answer, they saw the Lincoln Town Car pull up. Birdie got out, hurrying in between raindrops as Harold drove away.

She shook the rain from her head, her white hair fluffing out. “I don’t think we need phones any longer. It seems all we have to do is think, and voilà—here we all are.”

“Confused and desperate—”

Nell’s cell phone rang before Cass had poured the fourth coffee.

It was Jane Brewster.

“Nell, meet me at the Arts Association office. There’s something here I need someone else to look at.” Her voice was loud and urgent, and they all heard the message, standing feet away.

Nell drove, and they reached the arts office just as the heavens broke loose. Jane had left the door unlocked, and they rushed in, stomping water from their shoes on the rubber mat.

“In here,” Jane called from the boardroom in the back. All along the walls were paintings of different sizes, some still wrapped in brown paper, others leaning against the wall, their landscapes or waterscapes or abstract art muted today in the low light.

“This is the artwork donated to the public auction that the community center is holding later this summer. We’ve been stacking them in here, but Willow, Ham, and I finally got around to organizing them last night. I had almost forgotten that Beverly had donated a painting. She left it here shortly before she died, and in the confusion, we forgot about it. I unwrapped it this morning.”

She pointed toward a painting directly behind Izzy. It was a large oil filled with brilliant colors. Greens and blues and a bright white-yellow that looked like light pouring through the canvas from behind. It was a joyful painting, without some of the heaviness they’d seen in Beverly’s earlier works.

And then they saw what Jane had seen. There it was, tucked away in the blues and greens and golden sunlight. They saw what Beverly Warden had painted, and what everyone would see when the paintings were displayed, what Beverly wanted everyone to see.

Jane wrapped the painting up in heavy plastic and taped it back together, then helped them put it in the back of Nell’s car. Nell called Ben and told him what was happening.

The trip back to Harbor Road was anxious, but beneath the anxiety was hope. Hope that soon, very soon, the nightmare would be over.

“Ben will meet us at the police station,” Nell said.

They drove into the visitors’ parking lot between the police station and city offices just as Janie Levin pulled in beside them. She jumped out of the car, her yellow umbrella springing into action.

“Are you coming to visit me again?” she yelled through Birdie’s window. “I hope so. That’s the loneliest office known to man.”

Birdie rolled down the window. “You’re working for Sal today?”

Janie looked around to see if anyone was close by, then stuck her head through the window and whispered, “It’s a huge secret. I’m not supposed to tell.”

But Janie told.

They were out of the parking lot and headed toward the yacht club before Birdie got the window back up. She wiped the rain from her face and dialed the necessary numbers.
Hurry
was the message she left.

Nell pulled up in the yacht club parking lot and they piled out into the rain, pulling their slickers tight and rushing down to the dock. She pointed to a red Saab. “Beatrice,” she shouted over the rain.

With Nell in the lead, they rushed to the dock, pointing to where she remembered the boat being moored. Peering through the sheets of rain, they finally saw and heard it: lights and the purr of an engine, idling in preparation. Standing on the dock, dressed in soaking-wet exercise gear, was Beatrice Scaglia.

Screaming.

Sal stood on the boat, tugging at the stern lines. Trying to ignore the pounding of the waves and the screaming of the woman he knew he couldn’t live without. “Come with me, Bea,” he pleaded.

Birdie and Cass reached Beatrice and held her tight.

“He’s crazy. He’ll kill himself,” she said. She broke free and ran to the end of the dock with Nell close behind. She reached over and grabbed the edge of the boat railing, holding tight. “I can’t swim, Sal. I hate water. If you try to move this boat, I will fall in the water and drown. I swear I will. Is that what you want? Now get off this damn boat.”

In the distance, heavy footsteps made their way to the dock.

Sal looked startled at the lights shining from flashlights, the heavy footsteps.

And in the time it took for Nell and Cass to pull Beatrice back on dry land, Tommy Porter had jumped on the boat and read Sal Scaglia his rights.

For killing his mistress, Beverly Walden.

And Francis Finnegan.

“Beatrice’s sister is with her,” Nell said. “And Father Northcutt. She’s a strong lady. She’ll be fine. It’s Sal who won’t be. I don’t know if he can exist without her, a fact that Beverly Walden never understood.”

It was early evening and the rain had left the town soaked in the wonderful freshness of summer. The doors to the deck were open, bringing in the smell of roses and evergreens, of new grass and ocean breezes. The coffee was on; martinis were mixed.

“It’s intoxicating,” Nick Marietti said, looking out over the yard. “It’s like the color has come back.”

Beside him, Birdie nodded.

The weight of sadness that settled on the town was lightened by the knowledge that it was over. At last.

The siege on their summer was no more.

Jane Brewster looked over at the painting, still leaning against the wall. “The painting was like Beverly’s coming-out announcement. Her way of telling the world that she and Sal loved each other.”

“An announcement Sal could never have let her make,” Nell said.

They turned toward the bright, happy painting of the sea. And riding the waves like a chariot was a magnificent yacht, sharply angled with strong, broad strokes, but as recognizable as the photos they’d seen the night before. A brilliant boat with a deep metallic blue sheen, and painted on the side was its new name:
BEVERLY
.

“Do you think Sal loved her?” Nell wondered out loud. She’d been grappling with it for hours. Such complicated relationships. Beatrice was Sal’s anchor. He would never have left the one stronghold in his life that kept him safe.

“I think Beverly loved him desperately, and needed him in a way Beatrice didn’t,” Birdie said. “Her love was total and adoring, and it made him feel vigorous and important and manly. So, in a way, I think he did. Certainly he loved being needed. He never had
that role before. It’s not uncommon. But he’d never have left Beatrice. He couldn’t. He was too dependent on her.”

“And he truly loved her, I think,” Nell said. “Maybe not in the normal husband-and-wife way. But he did love her.”

“I feel sorry for Beverly,” Cass said. “I didn’t think I’d ever say that, but the woman had rotten breaks.”

“She also had a temper,” Ben said. “Kind of a Jekyll and Hyde. And my guess is that after she lost the inheritance, she was desperate. She knew Sal and Beatrice were wealthy, and thought that having her own would equal the playing field. But once that was gone, she was frantic. All she had left were threats to tell Beatrice. Sal couldn’t stand for that, and it pushed him right over the edge. Just like Finnegan pushed him when he said he was going to tell Beatrice about the affair. For Finn, Sal’s infidelity was the worst sin of all.”

“Davey Delaney had me fooled,” Ham said. “That guy is scary sometimes. I thought he did it.”

Izzy nodded. “Scary, but I’m beginning to think he’s a teddy bear underneath.”

“We’ve Gabby to thank for steering us away from Davey. It was the broken lens she found with her sea glass,” Nell said. “Her throwaway piece.”

“Sal’s broken glasses,” Birdie said. “He told us he’d lost them, but he didn’t say it was on the island where he and Beverly would meet each night.”

“Do you think Beatrice knew . . . maybe suspected?” Izzy asked.

Birdie sipped the martini Ben handed her. “I don’t think she’ll ever tell us—and I don’t think we need to know.”

But Nell remembered the scrap of paper, something Beatrice probably found in Sal’s pocket early on. She was no one’s fool. Maybe she knew and the affair was all right with her. As long as it was quiet and discreet. Maybe she’d torn the sheets out of the sign-in book—or insisted Sal did it.

“And Sam is a hero, too,” Izzy said proudly. “No wonder that Sal turned white when he saw your great photographs.”

“I didn’t think anything of that big, white sisal hat, except that it
made an interesting object in the photo,” Sam said. “Just like the two wineglasses. It was the four of you who put it all together.”

“Beatrice never set foot on the boat, so the hat couldn’t have been hers,” Birdie said.

“Beverly wore it several times in Canary Cove. She must have forgotten it on the boat the morning that we ran into Sal at the club.”

“And the rigging knives—Beverly and Beatrice both probably bought them as gifts for Sal—never dreaming one would be used to kill Finnegan,” Nell said.

“We’ve answered lots of questions,” Jane said. “But not all . . .”

“Right. The big one.” Ben’s eyes were laughing.

They all looked at Cass.

Cass looked like a new person. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. The weeks had taken a toll on her. But tonight, in the midst of all the sadness that the murders had wrought, there was new life in her eyes.

“Me?” she said innocently. “What’s the question?” And then she laughed. “Ah, the land—Finnegan’s wonderful land . . .” She looked over at Danny, whose eyes hadn’t left her face. “Danny is helping me sort through it all. Sort of my sounding board.”

“Meaning Cass talks and I listen,” Danny said, his eyes still locked on hers, a look of pure pleasure on his face.

“But it takes a lot of trust to bare your soul to a writer,” Cass said. “A lot. Trust, Brandley.”