Death by Cashmere (31 page)

"They're keeping him sedated," Birdie reported. "But he's getting stronger. Detecting the poison as early as they did will probably save his life." And that was just damn luck, Birdie had gone on to say, her voice with an angry edge to it that Nell rarely heard her use. Someone had meant to kill Angus, and they would have done exactly that, if the doctor hadn't remembered seeing a healthy, robust man in his office just days before.

Good news was a rare commodity these days--and Nell silentlyrejoiced in the report. She hadn't thought about the man's aloneness before--no family or even remote relatives as far as anyone knew. He had been a loner as long as Nell had known him, the old man of the sea. But he did have a family, in a sense. He had Sea Harbor. The town cared about Angus--and people like Birdie would be there to be sure he was warm and fed. Family had many different meanings, she thought, and she punched a button on her phone to check the remaining messages.

There was only one message that had come while she was in the meeting. Father Northcutt had called, saying he'd been up to see Angus, too. And things looked better by the hour.

Nice of him to call, Nell thought. He certainly kept his finger on the pulse of the town.

The message went on to report that George Gideon's funeral was over. A brief service with himself, Esther Gideon, and an uncle from Boston, followed by a quick, no-frills burial. It was what Esther wanted. She had then made a sizable donation in Gideon's memory to Our Lady of the Seas. Money, Esther had confessed to Father Northcutt, that she had found in Gideon's rented room, stuffed beneath his mattress like a daft old lady would do, and she wanted none of it.

"Give me a call," the priest had said at the end of the message.

Nell punched the return call button, and Father Northcutt answered on the second ring.

"How much money, Father?" Nell asked.

"A lot, Nell. Nearly fifty thousand dollars," he answered. "In cash." He explained that Esther wanted it used for parish upkeep, a new roof or statue, and for the daycare center they'd set up for children whose parents couldn't afford to pay. "We can certainly use it," Father said. "Sometimes the Lord works in strange ways."

"Esther Gideon is generous."

"She thinks that using the money for good somehow sanitizes it. She doesn't think it came to Gideon in honest ways, but there's no proof of that, so the police aren't confiscating it."

"Esther doesn't have any idea where it came from?"

"No. But she knows he didn't have it a month earlier when he had to ask her for rent money. She also dropped off a couple boxes of his possessions that your husband kindly picked up for me. He said he'd sort through them and give anything worthwhile to the shelter. That's what Esther wanted. But it's the money that has me stymied. That's a lot of money for someone who couldn't pay his rent the month before."

"Someone was paying Gideon for something, Father."

"Yes, Nell. It appears that way."

"And now he is silenced for good."

"It seems that way, dear, and I believe caution and prudence are called for in these situations," Father Northcutt said, winding up the conversation. And then, in his inimitable way, he added, "And just maybe, Nell, I'll see you next Sunday at the ten o'clock?"

The money was a shock to Nell. Nearly fifty thousand dollars. But it explained so many things. The money was Gideon's ship. It had finally come in. So he had been down at the breakwater that night, and he saw who murdered Angie. It was a quick ticket to wealth for the security guard. Why work when you had blackmail at your fingertips?

Maybe he was asking for more. And the answer to that came on a lonely road by a speeding truck.

Nell reached in her pocket for some change. Her fingers touched paper and she pulled out the envelope Mae had given her hours before.

Mae was right; it looked like a bill, very official, a tax receipt or property tax notice. But on closer look, Angie's name was above the Seaside Knitting Studio words, not Izzy's or Mae's. And when Nell looked at the folded paper inside, she realized it was as far removed from a bill as it could be.

Nell thought about calling Ben, but dismissed the idea quickly. She knew he had meetings and a golf game. Besides, what could be dangerous in a crowded office building in the middle of the afternoon? Nothing.

Nell approached the frosted door slowly, organizing her thoughts, then knocked once and walked on inside.

Sal was standing over at the windows, staring down into the parking lot. "I saw you get out of your car," he said without turning around.

Nell waited quietly until he turned and faced her.

"I knew you'd come back," he said sadly. "I didn't mean to scare her, you know."

"You petrified her, Sal. You harassed Angie with your phone calls and protestations." She held up the envelope.

Sal stared at it. "I shouldn't have sent that. It was like the e-mails. I knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't help myself. I loved her, Nell." Sal walked over and slumped down in the chair. "So I wrote her the letter, begged her to run away with me. I'd have given her the world, you know."

"It might not have been yours to give, Sal. Did Beatrice know? Was Angie going to tell her?"

Sal rested his elbows on his knees and held his head in his hands. He nodded into his palms. "Angie didn't tell her. She said she would if I didn't stop the e-mails. But Beatrice . . . Beatrice didn't need other people to tell her anything. She checked my e-mail, found out about it all on her own."

Nell heard the hardness in Sal's voice when he talked about Beatrice. And then it grew soft and sad.

"But I didn't kill her, Nell. I'd never have killed her. Why would I kill such a beautiful light? Beatrice said you'd all think I did unless . . ."

"Unless what, Sal?"

"Beatrice said if I didn't get Angie's computer before the police did, they'd read all the e-mails I sent--and they'd think I killed her. She said her reputation would be ruined. How could she run for mayor if her husband was in prison?"

Nell shuddered. Sal's last words were utterly sad and desperate. "So Beatrice got the apartment key from Izzy's shop?"

He nodded again. "She'd been hanging around there, trying to figure out where a key might be. Beatrice can find anything, solve anything. That's what she does."

"And then she had you go into the apartment in the middle of the night to take the computer?"

Sal nodded again. "I had dropped one of my pens in the apartment." He looked down at the pocket of his shirt, filled with a neat row of pens. "They all say Registrar of Deeds on them."

"That explains why Beatrice wanted to help us clean Angie's apartment." Nell thought of Beatrice insisting Sal bring them drinks that day. She was probably inflicting some kind of sad punishment on him. He had hurt her, and she was finding ways to hurt him back.

"I loved her, Nell. That's all. She came to see me a lot. I was able to help her with the work she was doing at the museum, help her find the deeds she needed, the photos and all for the exhibit. I didn't want to hurt her."

"You need help, Sal. That's not love, not when you frighten someone. And not when they tell you to leave them alone, and you keep coming back."

Nell looked down at the letter she held in her hand--a frantic desperate outpouring of love. She folded it and put it on Sal's desk.

He looked up, surprised.

"I don't want this. I don't want to hurt you, Sal. But I want you to promise me that you'll see someone--get some help."

Tears streamed down his cheeks and Nell had to look away. She walked toward the door, then stopped, suddenly realizing what she'd forgotten.

"Sal, where's Angie's computer?"

"Beatrice threw it over the railing of our sailboat. It's at the bottom of the ocean."

It was nearly six when Izzy finally returned Nell's call. "How's Angus?" she asked, and Nell breathed a silent thank-you for the sound of her niece's voice. She gave Izzy the updated report. Relieved at the news, Izzy suggested she and Sam come for dinner.

"We've had an interesting day," Izzy said. "Sam took some great photos of the place. And we'll bring dessert."

Sam and Izzy arrived around seven with six different flavors of Scooper's homemade ice cream. "In my next life, I'm going to be a photographer," Izzy declared. "It was such fun, and you see things so differently looking through a lens."

They were sitting in the family room with the doors open to catch the breeze. Ben stood at the kitchen island chopping onions and tomatoes for fish tacos.

Nell filled them in on the letter and her time at the county offices and they were all suitably surprised.

"So it was Sal calling Angie at Harry's," Izzy said. "The phone call he overheard when Angie threatened to tell his wife."

"But Beatrice already knew."

"There goes the motive for murder," Sam said.

"Sal didn't kill Angie. He's a lonely, sad man," Nell said.

"What about his wife?" Sam asked.

They were all silent for a minute.

"It doesn't seem likely," Nell said finally. "I don't think Angie would have gone to meet Beatrice that night. Though Sal scared her, Angie would know there were easier ways to make him stop."

"Maybe, Nell," Ben said. "But I don't think she can be completely overlooked."

"The whole thing with Angie and Sal is so sad," Izzy said. "Angie talked to him because she was friendly, and she needed his expertise. Probably no one had ever relied on him like that before."

"And he mistook it for affection and fell in love with her kindness, " Nell said.

"I guess we'll never know what else was on Angie's computer, " Ben said.

"Maybe that's all right. Maybe there was nothing on it," Nell said. "The e-mails were definitely there, and definitely a threat to Sal and Beatrice. But other than research notes, Nancy didn't think there would be much on the computer. She said Angie left it out in the open, loaned it to coworkers. And she'd have been more careful if there was something on it she didn't want anyone to see. She was doing a lot of photocopying, Nancy said, that sort of thing, for her job. I think it was the fact that it was missing that made it seem important. And now we know where it went."

"On a brighter note," Izzy said, "Sam and I had a great time out at the quarries. With a bizarre sort of encounter at the end."

"That's a great place," Sam said. "The light was perfect. No wonder there are so many artists up here--you never run out of inspiration. Izzy turned out to have a flare for it."

Nell sipped a glass of white wine that Sam had brought and wondered if she should mention her conversation with Margarethe about the quarries. She certainly wouldn't mention her own irrational fears, but they needed to understand Margarethe's feelings if they had any intention of going back for more photos.

"And then an odd thing happened on the way back," Izzy said, as if she had tapped directly into Nell's thought. "We had just gotten to the end of the trailhead where we'd parked when Tony's orange chariot came barreling down the road toward us."

"Well, not exactly," Sam said. "Though when we saw Tony's expression, barreling seemed apt. He wasn't happy and seemed to be taking it out on the poor car."

"Margarethe was beside him, and if looks could have killed Tony right then, he'd be out flat on the quarry trail."

"So they stopped?"

Izzy nodded. "Briefly. Margarethe was gracious, but it was clear she was furious at Tony for 'sending us into danger,' as she put it. It almost seemed as if she thought Tony had meant to harm us. She seemed genuinely worried, and was clearly relieved when she saw us."

"What did Tony say?" Ben asked from across the room.

"Basically nothing," Sam said. "He barely looked at us. I think Margarethe had made the drive rather unpleasant for him."

"Rather unpleasant," Izzy repeated. She looked over at Sam. "You are a master of the understatement."

"Did you tell Tony or Margarethe about the photographs you took?" Nell asked. "She might want to see them--maybe it'd ease her anger at Tony for letting you go in."

"We didn't mention taking any pictures," Sam said. "But that's a great idea. I know from talking to her that she loves that land. She's an interesting woman--and so proud of her Framingham name and what it stands for. Tony seems an okay sort, too, though a little distant. His mother seems to worry about him a lot. A little odd, at his age."

"That's what mothers--and aunts--do. Age doesn't matter much," Nell said.

"And you do it so well, Aunt Nell." Izzy tapped her hand. "Tony must have done something awful to make Margarethe so upset."

Or done something awful that would ruin the Framingham name--like pushing a young woman to her death? Nell hated to give any credence to such a thought, but there was something about Tony, about his temper, that Nell thought needed consideration.

They gathered around the kitchen table and ate Ben's tacos, smothered in his special pineapple and garlic sauce. The big, old kitchen table, set against a bank of windows overlooking the deck, was Nell's favorite place to sit. It was gauged and pocked from years of use, and had been in the Endicott family since they bought the land a hundred years before. The hardy piece of furniture had been the gathering place for meals, games, paperwork, and family talks for as long as Nell could remember--and years before that, she suspected. Nell rebuffed Ben's periodic suggestion to refinish it. Each of those marks is a memory, she told him. You don't sand away memories.

"It's amazing you two aren't huge, the way you both cook." Sam wiped the sauce from the corners of his mouth. "Great tacos. "

Behind them, the summer light faded into night and the deck lights blinked on.

"It's mostly healthy food, though I sneak in my pat of butter or two when Nell isn't looking," Ben said. "And speaking of health, I stopped by the station today on some business and heard some talk about Angus's situation. The police were quick to check out the kitchen over at Ocean's Edge, trying to figure out what happened. But they didn't find anything. And no one else had gotten sick, though plenty of people had the same meal. Since Angus went directly to Sam's after eating, whatever happened to him either happened at the restaurant or the few short blocks in between."