Death by Cashmere (12 page)

Birdie loved her Town Car. It had belonged to Victor Morino, her second husband, and the fragrant, woody aroma of his pipe tobacco still lingered in the leather seat. "Oh, my, if this car could talk, I would be in trouble," she had teased the knitters one Thursday night, her eyes twinkling with mischievous secrets. So Birdie continued to drive all eighteen-plus feet of the long elegant car around the hilly environs of Sea Harbor, and Nell recited a daily prayer that they wouldn't someday regret not taking charge of the situation more forcefully.

Birdie set the water glass down and eyed Nell's eggs. "Annabelle is trying something new, I see."

"It's good, Birdie. Want a taste?"

Birdie wrinkled her nose. "I don't need new and different. In fact, what I want is the old and familiar. And that means a peaceful Sea Harbor summer. Angelina's murder is changing the texture of the town. It creeps into everything, making people look at one another suspiciously. I know you thought there was something fishy from the beginning, Nell, but I don't like this kind of awfulness in our town."

"None of us do, Birdie," Ben said. "But it will go away. People will move on."

Birdie's smile had disappeared and she waved one pointed finger at Ben, then Nell. "I know one thing for sure. People in Sea Harbor are good people. Angie should never have come here; that's as clear as the nose on your face. She needed a bigger world than this."

"Birdie, how can you say that? This was Angie's town, too. And Josie loved having her daughter back, that much I know for sure."

"You're right, I guess. I just want so badly for it all to go away. And no matter what you say about Angie enjoying her job and liking it here--she never seemed settled to me. Look at her apartment. Was that settled? It looked like she was ready to flee in the middle of the night--just as I predicted. And now this. None of it makes any sense, not the official patched-together scene of what happened that night or anything else."

Nell was silent.

"Well," Birdie said brightly, forking her fingers through her hair, "I think we need to get a little more organized, Nell."

Ben looked up from his paper and frowned. "You're going to let the police do their job, Birdie. This is murder we're talking about, not poachers or lost pets."

"Ben Endicott," Birdie said, her hands flying in the air and her face breaking out in delight. "Are you suddenly becoming a fuddy-duddy? Since when do you have to protect us?"

Stella brought a platter of eggs--over easy--and set it down in front of Birdie, then scurried off.

"Now, if this isn't telepathic service, I don't know what is," Birdie said, smothering her English muffin with butter and strawberry jam. "What if I ever decided to order something different?"

"Annabelle would know," Nell said. "I think she knows all things."

"And that one probably does, too, the way she listens to each table." She nodded toward Stella, who was now filling Tony Framingham's coffee cup, her head leaning just close enough to hear the flow of conversation.

"I guess it's natural to be curious," Nell said.

"It's more than that," Birdie said. "Look at her sweet face. Love-struck. She thinks Tony Framingham hung the moon."

Nell looked over and saw that Birdie was absolutely right. Stella's smile wasn't about her mother's amazing spinach frittatas or the table conversation. It was all about Tony.

And Tony was oblivious. His head was turned toward the water, and he seemed to be looking beyond the white sails and the sleek double-deck whale-watching boats headed out to the open sea. He was oblivious to his mother's conversation with Father Northcutt, and for certain he was unaware that Stella hovered longingly at his elbow.

Nell wondered again what was going through Tony's head. From what Archie Brandley said that night, Tony had been harsh with Angie. And where had he taken off to in that big orange car of his?

"I wonder what the good father is talking so animatedly about," Birdie said, swallowing a forkful of eggs.

"Maybe they're discussing some kind of memorial fund for Angie," Nell said. "That might help ease Josie's grief."

"And make Father Northcutt feel better, too."

"You should talk, Birdie Favazza," Nell said. "You've paid for more pews in that church than you'd have time to occupy in two lifetimes."

"Time or whatever," Birdie said. "We all get spiritual in our own way, that's what I say. But he who asks shall receive. And the padre does a nice job of asking."

"And receiving," Ben said. "But he's a good man. It's part of his job."

"That's right, Ben," Birdie agreed. "And I see it as a part of my job, too, to fill the coffers."

"You're a good person, Birdie--in spite of yourself." Ben said.

"Sometimes," Birdie said, a twinkle in her eye. "Sometimes not."

When they got up to leave a short while later, Father Northcutt was still engaged in conversation with Margarethe. Tony had quit pretending he was a part of the conversation and stood alone at the railing a short distance away, his attention elsewhere.

A short distance from Tony's elbow, Sal and Beatrice Scaglia sat with the Brandleys, platters of frittata and cups of steaming coffee in front of them. Beatrice's small hands played with her pearls as her voice rose and fell in animated cadence.
She's probably telling them how she single-handedly cleaned out Angie's apartment for Josie,
Nell thought. She looked over at Sal--dressed today in a khaki suit and pink-striped tie. Beatrice picked out his clothes, Nell suspected. Somehow Sal didn't seem to be the pink-striped type. He was good-looking in an ordinary sort of way and probably interesting, too. But as usual, he sat quietly next to his wife, allowing her the full stage. He looked sad today, she thought. Sad and a little anxious.

Their eyes met as Nell walked by, and she smiled at him.

But instead of returning her smile, Sal Scaglia put his napkin down, pushed his chair back, and followed Nell to the restaurant deck door.

"Angie Archer's murder . . ." he whispered into Nell's back. She stopped and turned around.

"Yes, Sal?" she said, waiting for the familiar expression of dismay at a beautiful young woman's tragic and cruel death.

But instead of words, Sal Scaglia's long, quiet face was filled with a terrible kind of angst Nell wouldn't have thought him capable of. He opened his mouth to speak.

At that precise moment, Stella Palazola, carrying a glass of juice in one hand and a platter of eggs in the other, hurried through the screen door. The heel of her clunky sandal caught slightly against the doorsill, and before Nell or Sal could move aside, the tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice tipped from the tray and poured like spring rain down Sal Scaglia's pink-striped tie.

Chapter 13

Nell slipped out of her skirt and pulled on a pair of cotton capris and a sleeveless blouse. Her friends joked that surely she'd done something to remove that flap of extra skin that seemed to appear by magic on upper arms when one turned sixty. Nell had her mother to thank, she supposed, for her tight bone structure, prominent cheekbones, and firm upper arms. But she suspected she'd wear what she wanted to, no matter how many flaps of skin waved when she walked. Comfort was usually the determining factor in Nell's wardrobe.

Downstairs in the airy kitchen, all was quiet save for the bugling of the herring gulls on the beach across the back road. Nell straightened up the family room, folding the scattered pages of newspaper and piling them on the coffee table. Ben was a news junky, and the
Sea Harbor Gazette
wasn't nearly enough to satisfy his lust--the
Globe
and
New York Times
cluttered their drive with such regularity that Nell knew Johnny the paper boy's birthday and favorite CDs. She collected her knitting from the couch and slipped it into a large roomy bag.

After the bountiful breakfast at Annabelle's and peculiar encounter with Sal Scaglia, Ben and Nell had left the restaurant, insisting they give Birdie and her bike a ride home. The three spent the ten-minute drive exploring the possibilities of what Sal had meant to say--but the quiet man's motivation escaped them.

"Did he know Angie?" Birdie had asked. Practically everyone in Sea Harbor knew everyone else, but that didn't mean they had spoken or been friends. And Nell could think of nothing that would have put Sal and Angie in the same room at the same time.

"I think Sal is a sensitive man," Nell said. "Maybe he was just expressing the helplessness and dismay so many of us feel. And Beatrice would certainly have been dissecting the crime over breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

The explanation didn't sit well with any of them, but it was enough to allow them to move on with their day.

Ben had plans to help Ham and Jane work on an old Hinckley sailboat that they had invested in. And maybe they'd get in a quick sail. "I need to work off that sour cream Annabelle piles on top of her eggs," he said.

Nell agreed. She watched Ben's diet carefully, but Sundays were not about cholesterol, and Nell turned the other way. Encouraging Ben to exercise made her feel better about it. Sailing was therapy for him--the ocean expanse, the breezes and salt air calmed Ben in remarkable ways when worry or concerns began to crowd his chest and mind. "It puts the world right," he told Nell. "At least for a while." Angie's murder didn't escape Ben's thoughts easily, and a sailing trip with dear friends would be a welcome reprieve for a few hours.

"And I'm sailing off to the Studio to get Izzy's help on this scarf she started me on," Nell told Ben.

Nell considered herself a good knitter. Her stitches were steady and even, and her seams not too bulky. And she was fast, sometimes finishing a strawberry hat for a baby during the course of a single board meeting. But she still needed Izzy's help sometimes. When it came to knitting, Izzy had that intuitive something, like a photographer who captures magic in a cloud shot, or who knows instinctively when the light is just right over the water. Izzy could look at a sweater or sock or hat, and in seconds, zero in on the problem--and fix it.

And Nell needed Izzy's help today or she'd never finish this scarf in time for the Framinghams' benefit next week.

But Nell had another reason for walking down to the village shops, one best kept from Ben. There were too many loose ends in this murder scenario to be comfortable.

Just before he left, Ben had talked to the police chief again, and he told Ben they'd found nothing around the harbor except the sighting of two guys who'd been hanging around the yacht club. Some cars had been broken into, and several women had complained of being bothered on the beach. They'd given descriptions of the men and the reports had indicated they'd moved on to Rockport, Newburyport, up into New Hampshire. They were probably up in the wild woods of Maine by now, Jerry had told Ben. But they'd keep looking.

Nell listened to Ben in silence. Angie's murderer was not in Maine. He was probably right here in Sea Harbor. And the sooner they figured out who stole the key to the apartment--and the other inconsistencies of the last few days of Angie's life--the better.

Nell hoped Cass might be at the shop, too. She often spent Sundays around Harbor Road, drinking mochas at Coffee's or sitting on the pier with a book. It was the one day she relaxed, and she certainly needed some of that. Between the lobster thefts and Angie's death, Cass had not had a stellar week. Her talk of spending the night on the beach, trying to catch the poachers--with a murderer walking around--was disturbing to Nell. She hoped to talk to her about it.

The sea yarn was still on display in Izzy's window, and as Nell approached, she saw people lingering in front of it, lured like kids to cotton candy.

Nell passed them by and went in the knitting shop door, held open today to catch the breeze.

Although the Seaside Knitting Studio was open on Sundays during the summer season, Izzy never worked the floor herself. Instead, she left the front counter in the hands of Mae's twin sixteen-year-old nieces, Rose and Jillian, whose giggles spilled over the skeins of yarn and who delighted customers with their teen talk and enthusiasm. Mae had taught them how to knit as soon as they were old enough to hold needles without poking out their eyes, and they were now a surprising resource for the summer people when they needed a project for their television-less cottages or long afternoons at the beach. And, Mae told Nell, it added some needed structure to their summer. She'd heard enough of Izzy's wild stories of summer fun beyond her aunt and uncle's watchful eyes to not be wary.

Nell walked through the front door and smiled at Jillian, whose ears were plugged with tiny white circles connected to her iPod. She was bouncing behind the counter to sounds only she could hear, but managed a quick wave as her head moved back and forth to the music. Nell could see Rose in the baby room, helping a customer pick out pale pink fingering yarn for a newborn-size sweater. Skeins of cashmere in pink and lime green and buttery soft yellow were piled on the table like a rich ice cream sundae, and Nell resisted the urge to wander in and scoop them up.

Izzy was in the back room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, poring over photographs spread out in front of her. The windows were wide open, and a breeze rustled the newspapers spread out on the couch. In the background, soft strains of an old Beatles CD played. And, to Nell's delight, Cass was hunched down beside Izzy, her dark hair falling down over her face as she looked at the photographs.

Izzy had on her dark-rimmed glasses, a sign that whatever she was looking at deserved her full attention. She nibbled on her bottom lip, her face pulled into a frown and her eyes following Cass's pointing finger.

"What're you two up to?" Nell asked. She set her knitting bag on the floor beside the table and walked over to Purl. The kitten, now a comfortable and prized resident of the Seaside Knitting Studio, was curled up on the seat beneath the open window, her fur slightly ruffled by the breeze. "Hello there, sweet Purl," she said, scratching the kitty behind its ears. "This is pretty close to heaven for you, isn't it?" Balls of waste yarn in all colors of the rainbow dotted the cushion and floor.