A Holiday Yarn (8 page)

Chapter 11

T
he Monday cookie exchange, scheduled to start as the work-day wound down, had already begun when Nell walked into Izzy's yarn shop. Voices, music, and laughter floated up the steps from the back room.

Mae Anderson's niece, Jillian, covered her ears.

"Can you believe, like, how noisy they are, Miz Endicott? And they say teens squeal. Hah!"

Nell laughed. "But they're good sounds, right, Jill?"

"I guess. Though if I hear 'Winter Wonderland' one more time, I will, like, scream." The young salesclerk slipped a skein of yarn and receipt into a store bag and handed it to a customer. Then she leaned across the checkout counter, her long brown hair falling across her face as it came up close to Nell's.

"It's awful, isn't it? Like, I love Kevin Sullivan. He's the coolest guy in the whole world. He coached our swim team last summer. No way he could have killed that lady. You don't think he did it, do you?"

Nell stepped back, startled. It was a scant thirty-six hours since the police report was released. And just a day after Kevin had been questioned--not even officially--just the normal rundown with people who might have seen something. What kind of texting or tweeting passed rumors around that quickly?

"No, Jillian, I don't think Kevin Sullivan had anything to do with it. Where did you hear such silly talk?"

"My friend Ace is working over at the B and B, helping get it ready. He shovels snow and stuff. He's kinda lazy, but Miz Pisano hired him anyway. I think she felt sorry for him because he needs the money. Anyway, he says the police were questioning Kevin. He saw them through the window. Kevin looked worried, Ace said. And he saw Kevin yelling at the lady one day. But, hey, I yell at my sister all the time, but I wouldn't, like, kill her."

Nell shook her head. Well, it was a relief that the suspicion was so superficial. That kind of ungrounded gossip would hopefully turn into discarded rumor by tomorrow.

But when she headed back to the rear of the shop, an undefined weight pressed down on Nell's shoulders. The heaviness of concern for friends and neighbors, for good people whose lives could get caught up in circumstances and tossed around like a ship in a winter storm. She brushed away the feelings as best she could and smiled into the room filled with yarn and food and friendship and the delicious smells of snickerdoodles and gingerbread cookies.

"Look at this, Aunt Nell," Izzy called out. "One hundred and fifty squares ready to go to Soweto." She waved a fist in the air. "Woo-hoo, knitters!"

Cheers rippled through the crowd. Nell wove her way to the wooden table in the middle of the room. Piled high were stacks of colorful eight-inch squares, one more beautiful than the next. Izzy's devoted clientele took to the knit-a-square project for the group called KasCare with the same zeal and dedication they used to knit up cashmere sweaters and lacy silk shawls. Some of the squares had intricate cables going up the center; others boasted soft primary colors, knit in solids or fanciful designs. Nell imagined the beautiful children in Africa--their huge eyes and round, dark faces--cuddling beneath the blankets knit from the patches, warm and wrapped in the love that went along with every piece.

"Terrific, right?" Izzy said. "I can't believe that people have taken the time to do this in the middle of the holiday rush."

"It's the perfect time to think of someone else." Nell fingered a square bordered with jungle animals knit in primary colors.

Across the room, Beatrice Scaglia waved to Izzy that she needed help. Nell watched the councilwoman demand Izzy's full attention, her fingers flapping a square in the air.

Beatrice was complicated, but over the years, Nell had decided that her heart--if not her actions--was nearly always in the right place. Taking in her unemployed relative for one thing. After her chance encounter with him the day before, Nell wasn't sure she'd be so generous. There was something about Troy DeLuca that put her on edge. Perhaps his cocky air, though Nell admitted to Birdie later that the cockiness might have been colored by her own embarrassment at being caught staring at him.

"I've gained ten pounds just by walking into this room," Cass whispered beside her. "Check it out, Nell. Ben will be in hog heaven when you go home tonight. Danny wanted to come to knit, but I wouldn't let him. He'd eat too much."

A floor-to-ceiling bookcase ran along one wall in the back room of Izzy's shop. Normally it was littered with skeins of yarn and knitting gadgets, patterns, framed photographs, and CDs, but today the counter that separated the bookshelves from the cabinets below was filled from end to end with platters of homemade holiday cookies--from decorated Santas and buttery spritz blossoms, to chocolate peanut butter drops and cinnamon-sugar sticks. A linen-lined basket at the end was brimming with chocolate coin cookies for Hanukkah, each one wrapped in gold foil. Izzy had taken a few cookies from each plate and placed them on a tray for nibbling while knitting. Before leaving, they'd all walk the cookie-lined path and fill their take-home baskets with the rest.

"I'm always amazed and inspired at the creative things busy people come up with," Nell said, squeezing her own platter in between a plate of macaroons and frosted reindeer, complete with cherry noses.

"And even some not-so-creative people--but certainly enterprising--like me." Cass pointed to a plate of red lobster-shaped Christmas cookies. "Harry Garozzo made them for me," she whispered, then slipped away to help Izzy pass out scrap yarn for new squares.

Nell laughed and looked back at the array of sweets. How interesting, the abundant comfort that homemade cookies could bring to a room. Eggs, butter, flour--medicine of the gods. She looked around the room, at heads bowed sharing family news, fingers reverently touching soft yarn, smiles flittering across lined faces.

In the midst of it, Izzy moved from group to group, her long, lean body bending to offer praise for a newly finished square. Her fingers pointing out a fresh design. A pat on the shoulder. She offered warm cider or soft drinks, a glass of wine or cup of coffee. The perfect hostess. But it wasn't a role she played. It was simply Izzy.

"Our Izzy looks tired," Birdie said, coming up to Nell and motioning her over to the window seat where Purl was saving their places, the long tabby body stretching from one pillow onto the next.

Nell nodded. "Tired. Or concerned."

"Or both."

Birdie handed Nell a glass of hot cider, and the two settled down on plush pillows, their backs to the window framing the winter sea, with Purl now curled into a ball between them.

Birdie pulled her thick red sweater around her. "What's going on with Isabel?"

"It involves Sam, but I haven't been able to make sense of it. Three weeks ago Sam and Izzy both had that magical look of expectation, of wonder, or so it seemed to me. And I don't think it was from holiday decorations or the mayor lighting the Christmas tree, or the music. It was more than that, an intimate something that was hard to define. I truly half expected an announcement."

"And now?"

"I don't know. They seem to have issues."

"Of the heart." Birdie's small white head moved with her words, and her eyes sought out Izzy. "It's difficult when our emotions are being tugged in such disparate directions. Love. Murder. They simply don't fit well in the same house."

Birdie had intended to speak the words softly, but the hardness of "murder" carried the word far enough to pull Rebecca Early's attention away from her knit square.

The jewelry artist leaned over the arm of a leather chair, bringing her head close to Nell and Birdie. "I saw her the day she was killed. She was as close to me as the two of you."

Rebecca's silky blond hair fell over her shoulder, and her brows pulled together. "It's awful. No one deserves an end like that; I don't care who they are or what they've done."

"You saw Pamela that morning?"

"Yes, not too long after I spotted you, Nell, heading to Polly's for one of her amazing scones, I supposed. A short while after that Pamela stopped in the gallery."

Nell remembered Pamela changing directions, heading down the sidewalk. She assumed Pamela had seen someone she wanted to talk to. "Did she seem okay?"

There it was again. That irrational desire to pull out a reason, an emotion, something that would make sense of a woman being happy and ordinary and alive. And hours later, murdered.

"I've gone over the conversation often--believe me. She seemed happy, in that overconfident way of hers. Pamela comes to my studio whenever she's in town--she loves jewelry, and I always hoped she'd find something to feature in
Fashion Monthly
. I'm not much of a self-promoter, but I jumped in this time and asked her if she would consider using some of my jewelry in an issue. She was interested. She tried a few things on. A necklace and some of those long drop earrings that I've made for you, Nell."

"Did she buy them?" Birdie asked.

Rebecca nodded. "She bought several things. I would have given them to her if it meant they'd show up in her magazine."

"Maybe they'll show up anyway. Her cousin Agnes seems to be filling in at the helm, from what we can gather."

"Agnes Pisano? Oh, my, that's a surprise. I don't exactly see Agnes as being very fashion conscious."

"Maybe it's just an interim thing. So what did she pick out?"

"Well, not as much as she might have if we hadn't been interrupted."

"More customers?"

"No, that blond guy who's been staying with the Scaglias followed her in. They had been talking on the sidewalk earlier. He was upset; I could tell. A vein in his overly tan forehead was throbbing, but he was smiling, trying to be nice."

"He was upset with Pamela?"

"Well, I'm not sure. Their conversation didn't make a lot of sense to me, probably because part of it had occurred on the sidewalk. He was almost ingratiating himself to Pamela, I thought. He kept saying he'd be perfect, and he'd do anything she wanted." Rebecca chuckled. "And this was all with me standing there behind a felt pad filled with necklaces.

"Pamela kind of ignored him at first. She picked up more earrings, a couple of necklaces, and put them in her 'to purchase' pile. But he kept after her, nudging her, flirting one minute, coaxing the next. All the while, the vein was throbbing. At first she was more patient than I'd have been. But then she finally told him to stop. She turned and looked him right in the eye, her hands out in front of her as if she were warding him off. He had
other talents
, she said--in a suggestive way, I thought. Then kind of laughed, you know, in a teasing way. And then she told him he needed to face the hard truth. He was too old--over the hill, was how she put it--to be in any reputable fashion magazine. It was time to put him out to pasture, she said. And that was that."

"Over the hill? Out to pasture? Ouch. That must have hurt."

"His face was as red as Birdie's sweater, but he tried to hold it in. He swallowed hard and began flirting again, touching her, brushing up against her. He's a real lothario, that one. He came on to me the other day; can you believe that?"

Of course they could believe it. Rebecca was one of the most beautiful women in Sea Harbor. A willowy blond artist with skin like an angel's. But her relationship with Melanie Foster, a new fiber artist in town, seemed to be going well. Troy DeLuca wouldn't have stood a chance for all sorts of reasons.

"He's younger than Pamela, though I don't suppose that matters. But Pamela is so classy and sophisticated. This guy--for all his good looks--is definitely not that. There's something a bit . . . sleazy."

Nell didn't know Troy DeLuca at all, but Rebecca's feelings mirrored her own.

"I got the feeling Pamela was playing with the guy. Flirting with him, but making fun of him at the same time, assuming, maybe, that he was too dumb to realize it."

"How unpleasant," Birdie said. She picked up her knit square.

"Maybe he thought he could still convince her, using a different approach. They left together, even after she'd insulted him right to his face."

In front of the room, Izzy was holding up more squares. Rebecca turned back to listen and watch.

"Pamela probably met Troy at Ravenswood-by-the-Sea," Birdie said. "The crew has been there every day."

"I wonder how well she knew him."

The words hung heavy in the air.

"You're talking about Troy."

Nell looked up.

Beatrice Scaglia was standing near a coat tree, her knitting bag hanging from her shoulder. She was pulling on a pair of leather gloves. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I heard 'blond ponytail,' and since one is living in my house, I picked up on it." Beatrice managed a smile. "What's he done?"

"Nothing, Beatrice, nothing," Nell said. She hadn't the faintest idea what Troy had done or not done, but Beatrice seemed to need an answer. "It seems your houseguest is sociable; that's all. For being a newcomer, he's meeting people just fine."

"Sociable? He's that, yes." Beatrice slipped her purse over her shoulder. "He's the youngest in his family. Spoiled rotten, if you ask me. He's gotten by so far on his looks--lots of modeling jobs when he was younger. But at thirty-five, he's getting rejected for jobs. And his temper doesn't help him through such things easily. He's a hothead. He told off a Boston agency and smashed a camera to emphasize his point. Sal and I are suggesting to him that there might be other ways to get through life, rather than relying on one's body tone and looks. Something more lasting, perhaps?"

Birdie chuckled. "That sounds like good advice. It's nice of you and Sal to help him out."

"It looks like he's lined up some jobs," Nell said. "I saw him at the old Pisano place a couple times."

Beatrice sighed. "Mary was nice to hire him. I think Sal and I are beginning to impose too heavily on our friends and neighbors--they're starting to walk the other way when they see us coming. But Mary says he's a decent painter, so I guess that's working out. But who knows what will happen now?"