Murder in Merino (19 page)

A
hush fell over the room. And then curiosity took over and the questions began.

“Your mother painted this?”

“How do you know?”

“Where did you find it?”

Their voices collided in the small den, their eyes still glued to the painting.

Jules stood close to the painting now, one knee on the couch, and pointed to the initials painted into the corner—scrolled initials worked right into the shadows of one of the pillars as if part of the painting.
PTJ.
“Penelope Theresa Johnson. I found the paintings in a trunk after she died. I brought them with me—I’m not even sure why. Except it was easy to do—they were small—and somehow I knew they were from a time in her life that I wanted to discover. A time when she was happy. And I didn’t want to leave them in a storage unit.

“Then one day I was running along the beach. I stopped to catch my breath, lifted my head back, and there it was—or a glimpse of it at least. My mother’s painting, come to life.” She turned and looked at them. “I think I saw some of you walking with Abby that day. Remember?”

They nodded. The memory of a mesmerized Jules staring up at nothing was fresh and vivid. They had thought that day that there was something wrong, that she had been running too hard or too long. That she was seeing something that wasn’t there. A mirage.

The smell of the lasagna heating in the oven was the only thing that lured them away from the painting, but a string of questions remained. They went back into the kitchen and filled their plates with Harry’s cheesy dish, then filed out onto the porch. Birdie brought the cabernet and Izzy passed around rolls for everyone. And although they were starving, the questions lined up like a thick barricade, preventing the food from going down comfortably without at least a few more answers.

Jules confessed that she had come back that day, the day she’d discovered the house, after they were gone. She had worked her way up through the tangle of bushes and scrub trees until she found herself on the edge of the backyard. From there she could see it all, every detail. The swing, the tapered pillars, the slight overhang of the roof. It was just as her mother had seen it. She snapped a string of pictures, then slowly made her way back down the rise, trying not to be caught trespassing.

“I got the painting out of my car and compared it to the photos I had just taken. There was no mistaking that it was the same house—the house my mother had painted forty years before. I knew it was a sign, somehow. A sign that I was on the right path, that this house was important in my search.

“I went to City Hall to learn more about the house, but I was too excited, too caught up in the experience, and I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking for.” She looked out toward the water, slowly sipping her wine, tracing back over her footsteps that day. “I ended up at the Ocean’s Edge. It seemed an easy place to go and think—and I’m hooked on their calamari. I sat at the outdoor bar and asked a few people who were milling around about the house, trying to describe where it was. It was mostly staff because it was still early for dinner. A waitress told me her friend was a new Realtor and was listing a house in that neighborhood. Then she pulled over another waiter whom she thought lived near Ridge Road. Maybe he’d know more, she said. It turned out to be the guy who lives next door.”

“Garrett Barros,” Birdie said. She looked at Nell, but Jules went on.

Jules nodded. “I know people think he’s odd, but he’s harmless, I think. It’s probably a result of very cranky parents. He told me the house was empty. Haunted, probably. But here’s the really odd thing. It’s ironic, thinking back over it now, although I never gave it a thought at the time.

“As Garrett and I were talking, Jeffrey Meara walked around the bar, checking on the waiters and bartenders, making sure things were ready for the dinner crowd. He saw Garrett and pulled him away, chewing him out for bothering a customer. I spoke up and said that wasn’t the case, that I had been asking him a question and he wasn’t bothering me—he was just answering it.

“Then Garrett spoke up, too. He tends to talk more than he has to, but I think he wanted to make sure Jeffrey wouldn’t fire him. So he told him I was asking about an empty house that was right next door to his parents’ on Ridge Road, so I had picked a good person to ask and he was just trying to be helpful.”

She paused, remembering the conversation more vividly as she revisited it now. She took another drink of wine and frowned. “Maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t there these days—especially in retrospect—but it seemed to me that Jeffrey Meara’s face froze when Garrett mentioned the house on Ridge Road. And then he stared at me, a stare that even that day seemed a little odd and out of place.”

“Did Jeffrey say anything more to you?”

“No, but he kept staring at me, just like he had done a few days before when someone introduced us. It was uncomfortable, and then some emergency in the kitchen called him away, and he left, motioning to Garrett Barros to get busy and clean up a wait station. But I didn’t have any more questions for Garrett anyway; I was ready to go. The waitress had given me an address and a name: Stella Palazola at Palazola Real Estate on Harbor Road. They’d know more about the house, she said.”

Nell remembered what happened next. She had watched Jules talking to Gus McClucken in front of his store, looking up at the window of the real estate firm, closed for the day. She had thought Jules needed a dentist. Now the thought made her smile. How very far off she was.

Izzy put her empty plate on the table and picked up Abby, waking now from a nap. “You decided right then that you wanted to buy the house?” A question they’d all been wondering. “Because of a painting?”

Jules half smiled. “It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I came here thinking I’d spend two weeks tracking down my past, the things my mother refused to talk to me about. I would file the information away, and get on with my life back in Chicago. Before my mother got sick, I was managing a catering company. I liked it—I met great people—and they wanted me back. I had good friends there. And look at me now—I own a house halfway across the country in a place I’ve never been before.”

“It is a bit crazy,” Birdie agreed. “What are your plans? Will you stay on here in Sea Harbor?”

There was an awkward silence as they all realized that Jules’s decisions right now were limited.

“Even if I wanted to leave, the truth is, I can’t. Not until the police are convinced I didn’t kill Jeffrey Meara.” She twisted her necklace, the small charm glinting in the porch light.

Although she spoke in a matter-of-fact way, her words held an emotion that Nell suspected Jules Ainsley didn’t often reveal: fear. A certain amount of trust had come into the small house on Ridge Road, circling around them and emboldening the conversation. It was a shift in relationships, an opening to let out—and in.

“But once I get my life back, I don’t know what I’ll do. There are still many things I don’t know about my mother’s life forty years ago. And about the man she was with here in Sea Harbor. Finding this house, though, and looking at the painting again, is telling me one thing, something I’m sure about now, no matter what my mother led me—or herself—to believe.”

Nell had pulled out the small sweater she was knitting for Abby. She put it in her lap and looked over at Jules. “What is that, Jules?”

“I know that my mother was happy here, at least when she painted this house. That painting is a happy painting.”

It was definitely that, they all agreed.
Happy
. Nell thought back to the summer Izzy lived in the house, the same summer Sam showed up in Sea Harbor to teach a photography class. The summer they fell in love. That summer, the house looked exactly like the painting in Jules Ainsley’s den. Filled with love. A happy house.

Jules got up and went inside. Soon strains of “Waiting on the World to Change” drifted over a small speaker. She returned with a plate of chocolate chip cookies that a neighbor across the street had brought over that morning. “It was a welcome to Ridge Road,” she said, passing them around.

They savored the cookies in silence, content to let John Mayer’s soulful voice fill the porch and roll softly down the hill.

Cass took another cookie from the plate and sat back, looking over the trees at the sky, dark now with a sprinkling of stars. “You mentioned that you brought
paintings
with you,” she said. “Do you have more than one?”

Jules nodded. “She did three paintings of the house. Growing up, I never saw them. They were in an old trunk in the corner of her bedroom. The other two paintings were slightly damaged and I haven’t had time to get them repaired yet. But I will. They will go right next to the first one, along that wall.”

“What else did your mother paint? Did she have a gallery?” Nell asked. “She’s very good. I love the light and shadow she’s created in the painting of the house. I’d love to see more of her work.”

“She didn’t ever show in a gallery, although my grandmother told me once that my mother would have been a fine artist, a well-known artist. If only . . .”

The sky was dark now, and somewhere in the safety of the evening shadows Jules spoke more frankly. “‘If only,’ my grandmother would sometimes say, ‘she hadn’t gone to the ocean that summer and let her life be ruined by an evil man.’”

The word “evil” was punched out, as they imagined Jules’s grandmother might have said it.

“My mother got her rigid code of ethics in the womb, I think. My grandmother didn’t allow much give when judging people and actions.”

“Your grandmother knew who your father was?”

“I think so. But she took the information to her grave. My mother’s parents took her away from Sea Harbor, away from Bryn Mawr, away from the life she had found in the East. They sent her to a home run by the nuns until I was born. And then they hired a nanny for me in their own home and enrolled my mother in Northwestern University. Soon after, they encouraged her relationship with a law professor at the school, a nice, quiet, respectable man who was fifteen years older than my mother. He adopted me and gave me his name.”

She looked out into the vastness of the sea, her voice barely audible.

“And my mother never painted again.”

N
ell hurried toward Archie Brandley’s bookstore, checking her watch as she pushed open the door.

Ten minutes to spare before meeting Mary Pisano at the Ocean’s Edge. A drink, a simple plan for the anniversary celebration, that would be it, Mary promised. Ben couldn’t join them, but Cass and Birdie said they might stop by to provide moral support and keep Mary’s plans under control. Nell wanted to tell Cass that she shouldn’t come. Any extra time she had in her busy life should be directed toward Danny Brandley.

But she’d never say that, of course. Cass hugged her personal life close to her chest, sometimes even shielding it from the people who were closest to her. Sometimes Nell thought that was to ward off unwanted advice; other times she thought Cass did it to protect those she loved. They were all invested in one another’s lives—they celebrated joys and suffered one another’s sadness. But they did both gladly, something that maybe Cass hadn’t grasped yet.

She walked in to the wonderful dusty smell of books and over to the counter, shielded behind the new-books display.

“Danny,” she said, surprised.

Danny Brandley looked up from the computer. “Hey, Nell. Good to see you. I bet you’re here for Ben’s weekly stash. When are you going to open your own bookstore with the books he finishes?”

Nell laughed. “I recycle a lot of them right back to your father. Or the community center. What puts you behind the checkout desk?”

“Dad took Mom into Boston for a doctor’s appointment and the guy who usually helps them out on Tuesday afternoons is sick. That leaves me.”

He straightened his glasses and pushed a shock of hair off his forehead. “I’m cheap,” he said. “It works well. Free digs, free labor.”

Nell’s eyes rotated up to the ceiling as if she could see the small apartment off the back of Archie’s store. “You’re still staying here?”

“Yep. It’s not a bad place, though my feet hang over the end of the bed and the hot plate doesn’t work. I’m thinking Tommy Porter will soon get up enough courage to propose to Janie Levin and she’ll move out of Izzy’s apartment above the yarn shop. And then I’ll pounce on it, promise to love Purl the cat forever, and I’ll once again be able to walk into the bathroom without cracking my head on the slanted ceiling.”

“That sounds like long-term planning.”

Danny thought about Nell’s pointed words, then crouched down and pulled a stack of books from beneath the counter. He set them on the counter and pulled out a bag. “Long term? Who knows?” The look he leveled at Nell was thoughtful and steady—and noncommittal.

And, Nell thought, sad.

Danny slid the books into a bag and handed it to Nell. “Cass needs time. She doesn’t want to simply pick up where we were, and I need to respect that. This whole thing shook her in a way I wouldn’t have expected, and I’m not sure I can do anything about it. She needs to figure it out.”

“What thing?”

“Oh, the Jules situation. Being upset that we were spending time together, imagining false scenarios. It was like a bad movie.”

“But she understands now what that was about.”

“Yes. But she didn’t for a while—she was angry and upset. And she didn’t believe me, not completely. Those are big things.”

“So this is simply a cooling-off time?” Nell pushed away the sinking feeling inside her.

“I don’t know exactly what it is. I’m forty, Nell. For a while I was okay with being a bachelor—I liked it. I was happy doing my thing, being completely independent. But coming back here to Sea Harbor gave me a different perspective on things, changed me, I guess. That and getting older, maybe. I want to have a family, kids. I look at you and Ben, my parents, Sam and Izzy, and I think, Yeah, that’s what it’s about. That’s why we work hard, why we try to be good people. It’d be for all that. For having an Abby, a lifelong partner, a family. A life.”

“For a Cass?”

Danny didn’t hesitate. “I love Cass, there’s no question about that—crazy and ornery as she sometimes is. But whether that’s enough right now, I don’t know.”

The ringing of the bell above the door sliced through the conversation, severing it as Stan Hanson walked over to the counter to ask about a book.

“Hi, Stan,” Nell managed to say around the catch in her throat. “It’s nice to see you out in the middle of the day. Giving a talk to some civic group, I’d imagine.”

Stan smiled, but it wasn’t the usual polished meet-and-greet smile Nell was accustomed to seeing from the mayor. Stan Hanson looked diminished somehow.

“No. I’ve put the kibosh on some of that for a while. I have plenty of things on my desk needing my attention—wind turbines, trying to help the fishermen, things I’ve started and need to finish.”

Nell smiled as if she understood. But her mind was back behind the counter, where Danny Brandley busied himself and hid his feelings behind the computer, looking up the book Stan had asked about.

Nell took the bag from the counter, nodded her good-bye, and walked out into a brisk September day, the breeze a welcome salve for the feelings collecting inside her.

•   •   •

Birdie and Cass were walking up the steps to the Ocean’s Edge as Nell approached from the other side.

Nell forced a smile to her face and tried to push aside her conversation with Danny. As Ben reminded her with some regularity, there were some things that weren’t within her control.

“Is Mary here yet?” she asked. She glanced automatically over to the bar. It was dotted with customers, some stopping for a drink on their way home, others finishing up a meeting in the comfortable lounge. Tyler Gibson was behind the bar mixing a drink. He looked over and waved.

Tyler was one person to be crossed off the list of those having had a problem with Jeffrey. They liked each other, even if they had a few differences, which Esther Gibson wasn’t shy talking about. She said Jeffrey was good for her grandson, a good role model.

Ryan Arcado was there, too, near the bar, dark hair flopping across his forehead. Several customers at round bar tables vied for his attention, but Ryan had his back turned, a grin on his face as he scrolled through texts, neglecting his waiter duties. Nell looked around, half expecting to see Jeffrey coming around the corner to scold the young man. But no one came, and Ryan continued to text.

I coulda killed the guy.
The words echoed in Nell’s head. It’s what Ryan had said right after the funeral when talking about Jeffrey tossing his cell phone in the Dumpster. And Zack Levin hadn’t praised Jeffrey, either.

“It’s not the same, is it?” Nell looked over at Cass and Birdie.

They looked at the bar and nodded. It wasn’t. It wouldn’t be. Jeffrey’s familiar figure, his warm hugs, would not be back.

But hopefully justice would be, and soon.

“Mary Pisano is waiting for you in the outdoor lounge,” a hostess told them, walking across the entry with menus in her hands. “It’s chilly today, but we turned on the heaters and lit a fire. It smells like fall.” She smiled and led them through the nearly empty restaurant to the deck.

Mary sat at a tall round table, her feet barely touching the rungs of the stool. Beside her sat Karen Hanson, her fingers tapping on a yellow pad.

“I’ve ordered something for us to taste called a cucumber fizz,” Mary said, bypassing hellos. “It might be nice to have a refreshing drink at the party.”

Karen looked indulgently at her. They were an odd couple, the mayor’s wife and Mary. Both had husbands with demanding jobs that often kept them away from home—one a fisherman and the other a city official. Perhaps that’s what made their relationship work.

Nell sat on one of the stools and looked over at Karen. “I just ran into Stan.”

“Stan?” Karen looked surprised. “Where? He was speaking at the hospital guild volunteer event today. Were you there?”

“No. He was in the bookstore, on his way to the office, when I saw him. He didn’t mention giving a talk.” But he mentioned
not
giving talks. Nell wondered whether he had forgotten it, something that never sat well with voters. From the look on Karen’s face, she was thinking the same thing.

“Sometimes Stan gets his priorities mixed up. I lined this talk up weeks ago,” Karen said. She checked her phone, as if expecting an explanation—an apology?—on the small screen. Then she slipped it into her purse and concentrated on the waitress passing around five tall cucumber fizzes. “Enjoy,” she said, then disappeared back inside.

Nell watched Garrett Barros walk out, his shirt straining slightly over his wide chest. Their eyes met briefly and he offered a tentative smile, then followed it with a nod. It was meant to be friendly, she thought, but there was something that added an edge to it, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to be smiling at her.

“Nell, does three weeks from now sound good to you? It will be the actual week of your anniversary, and the back of the inn will be beautiful then, the leaves just starting to turn. The swamp maples will be brilliant—the beeches and oaks, also. And we’ll keep it simple; I promise,” Mary began.

Nell pushed her doubts away and simply smiled. Ben had told her that business at the bed-and-breakfast was a little slow, and having a party there would remind all their friends that Ravenswood by the Sea was the perfect place to put up visitors and hold events. It was the least they could do for Mary.

Karen slipped Nell a sheet of paper with a menu written in her neat printing style—a distinctive combination of block and script that was utterly legible. Nell found reading Karen’s thank-you notes pure pleasure, simply because of the handwriting. She read through the list with Cass and Birdie peering at it from either side of her.

It was all the things Nell and Ben loved—Gracie’s lobster rolls, Harry’s pasta salads with fresh grilled vegetables. Lots of finger food—calamari and sea salt shrimp and tiny crab sandwiches with sprinkles of the Cheese Closet’s feta on top. It read like a menu Nell would plan herself, a gift to her friends.

A river of relief passed through her, followed almost immediately by gratitude and a twinge of guilt at her reticence in letting Mary take over the celebration. Her friend was saving her from details that wouldn’t fit easily into her life right now. Not until Jules Ainsley was released from the cloud of suspicion smothering her—and until a murderer was safely behind bars.

She looked at Mary again, this small dynamo of a woman sitting quietly with a smug smile on her face. “Didn’t I tell you I’d treat you and Ben right? Especially Ben. I plan on marrying him after you and my Eddie are gone.”

They laughed at the image of the not-quite-five-foot Mary Pisano alongside Ben Endicott, his six-four frame belying the fact that the only basketball he ever played was Sunday pickup games at the Y.

“I asked Karen to contact the purveyors of this fine menu, and in her persuasive way she has brought everyone on board.”

“But Mary has everything else organized, which is how it needs to be. I have a full plate right now, helping Stan with his campaign. He needs me by his side.”

Nell looked up. The words were said with a tone that Karen didn’t often use. She thought of the expression on Stan’s face in the bookstore. In hindsight, it wasn’t a tired look at all. Instead, it was the look of someone distracted, someone grappling with a difficult decision that had no good answer.

“Of course Stan needs you,” Birdie was saying. “I told Mary a million times, I’m just across the street and I will be on call for anything you need.”

“That’s nice, Birdie,” Mary said, “but you have a few other things on your mind.”

“I suppose we all do,” Birdie said. “It’s difficult when friends are in pain.”

Nell caught the word “friends,” and realized that included Jules as well as Don Wooten, Maeve, the chief, and others so affected by Jeffrey’s death. Perhaps that’s what she had seen on the mayor’s face. Grief for an old friend. Worry about a murderer walking freely somewhere. A shared anguish that they needed to bring to an end—soon.

Mary motioned to the waitress for the bill. “How do you think Jules is doing? She stopped by today and mentioned the support you’ve given her. Thank you for that. I feel a little bit like I took her in when things were happy, then abandoned her.”

“Of course you didn’t. And she knows that. This house was important to her. It’s a good place for her to be right now,” Nell said.

“She told me about the painting,” Mary said.

“Painting?” Karen looked up.

They had all decided the night before that it had taken great courage for Jules to share her life with them. It wasn’t intended for the rumor mill. Nell wondered now how much she had told Mary about her life. As much as they all loved her, holding confidences wasn’t Mary’s long suit.

Mary went on, explaining to Karen, “She came across a painting that resembled the house on Ridge Road. She loved the painting, and when she saw the house, it seemed like kind of an omen to her. A vacation place here would be a nice investment, I told her, and fixing up that place might help her get through all this mess.”

So Jules had been cautious in talking to Mary. They would be cautious, too. “That’s a good thought,” Nell said. “She certainly has a lot on her mind. But she’s a strong woman, and she will somehow survive all this.”

Karen leaned in, her voice lowered. “How is she really doing? She used to run through town daily, but not lately. The article in the paper yesterday shocked all of us. It’s started a barrage of rumors all over town. People are talking about the garden glove as if it has put the nail in the coffin for her. People can be cruel. I can’t believe that what they’re saying is true.”

“It’s
not
true,” Mary said. Her words were definitive. “And someone will find something that proves it.” She stared at Nell, Birdie, and Cass as if to ask them what they were waiting for.

“Frankly,” she went on, “it was a coward who leaked that information to the newspaper. I mean, think about it. It would have had to be someone who actually saw her put the glove in her car, because—according to Esther Gibson—the information didn’t come from the police. And if someone had seen Jules put it there, don’t you think they’d have run to the police with the information to speed up the investigation? Good grief. We need this solved so everyone can stop looking over shoulders and around corners and double locking their doors at night.”