Murder in Merino (23 page)

“But Don Wooten hadn’t lost his partner. And he wanted to.” Nell spoke the words quietly, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear.

But of course they did hear her.

Don and Rachel were their friends.

Good people with good, sound values.

It sobered the conversation, stilled them, while Birdie got up and refilled everyone’s glass. She sat down again and took out her section of the anniversary afghan, her needles magically knitting a row of lacy hearts. “Taking the personal out of this,” she said matter-of-factly, “Don had motive and opportunity. He knew where Jeffrey was going and he would have known when.”

“As did the others who worked there. They may have known Don would hire them back—as he, in fact, did—if Jeffrey wasn’t around.”

And Jules. Opportunity, but what earthly reason would she have had to murder a man she barely knew . . . ?

“And Garrett,” Birdie said. “I think our feelings for him have softened. But he may have known the property better than anyone.”

“According to Grace Danvers, Jeffrey gave him grungy jobs to do at the Edge. But she said Garrett didn’t seem to mind,” Nell said. “And there’s the spying, if that’s what it was—”

Birdie leaned down and dug around in her purse. She pulled out a brochure. “Ella gave me this.” She flapped it in the air. “It’s the Feathered Friends brochure. Garrett Barros was a bona fide member, and an avid one at that. He especially enjoys their night watches.” She looked over the top of her glasses. “Yes, for anyone who doubted it, one can go bird-watching at night.” Then she read from the brochure. “‘It’s the best time to hear a black rail, least bittern, or barred owl.’”

Nell nodded, somehow relieved. The answer would come in the details, and eliminating those small items that pointed to one person or another was a helpful thing.

Izzy leaned forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees. “One of my law professors always warned us against committing what Sherlock Holmes said was a capital offense—theorizing who did it, and then twisting the facts to support it. I think that’s what is happening with Jules. People want it to be her because they don’t know her. She doesn’t live here. Or Garrett, because he’s a little off the grid. So we try to twist the facts to seal the deal.”

“I agree,” Nell said. “We need to find out all the facts first, line them up.” She looked down at the beautiful pieces of the afghan in front of them, the gentle zigzag of the cables winding through the design. They were zigzagging, too, this way, then that. But without the beauty of the whole, their zigzags were getting lost.

“I agree with Birdie that the person with the answers is Jeffrey. If we could walk in his shoes that week, figure out what was going on in his head and his life, maybe we could solve this,” Izzy said.

They all thought back over the week and tried to pull up the things they’d seen or knew to be true. The steps Jeffrey Meara had taken the last week of his life.

“He had a terrible argument with Don Wooten on Sunday,” Nell said. “Don came an inch away from threatening him. And within days of the funeral, Don was reversing plenty of decisions Jeffrey had made, hiring back people and vendors.” It didn’t at all convince her that Don had done it and she didn’t like talking about it. But those were clearly facts.

“We know Don called him at home, the day before he died, trying to buy him out,” Birdie added.

“There was something else about that Sunday night that was odd,” Izzy said. She looked at Nell. “Remember? Jules came in, and we talked for a few minutes at the bar.”

Nell’s brows lifted. “Of course. I had forgotten that. Jeffrey acted strangely.”

“As if he knew Jules.”

“How could he?” Birdie asked.

“Exactly. He couldn’t. But he kept asking her questions about why she was there, staring at her the whole time, as if memorizing her face.”

“It was uncomfortable,” Nell remembered. “And Jules said he did the same thing another time, when she was at the Edge trying to get some information on the house she’d seen.”

“Maybe he finally remembered why he thought he knew her, and he was going over that day to explain it. Apologize for making her uncomfortable by staring at her that way,” Izzy said.

It was a logical explanation, but one that didn’t explain why he ended up dead.

Nell thought back through that week, still trying to follow Jeffrey through it. They knew from Maeve that he had been troubled about something that week. He’d left work a couple of times, missed several meetings, someone had told them. Nell had seen Jeffrey again that week but couldn’t remember where. It wasn’t where she would expect to see him. Somewhere else, but where? And there was something else, too. Another loose strand they hadn’t explored. “Jules mentioned that Jeffrey wasn’t the first person who thought she looked familiar. There was someone else.”

“Did she say who?”

She hadn’t. But intuition told Nell they should find out.

Garrett. Don. Julia Ainsley, someone they had never heard of just a few weeks before, who now had a front-and-center role in their lives.

Harbor Road was quiet when they finally cleaned up the last of the dishes and packed up their knitting, calling it a night.

The room seemed crowded, somehow, with bits and pieces of their conversation strewn everywhere, vying with scissors, needles, and balls of yarn for space. In spite of the food and luscious yarn around them, the air was heavy and they all felt a need to walk outside and breathe in the chilly night air.

“Sometimes things make more sense in the light of morning,” Nell said.

“I think it will come together. We have the right ingredients. Now we need to figure out the pattern.”

They waved good-bye to Izzy and walked toward Cass’s truck.

“You’re quiet tonight, Cass,” Nell said.

Cass shrugged. “Tired, maybe.”

“A long week?”

Cass looked over at a single stream of light on the side of Archie’s bookstore. It cast a narrow shadow onto the alley. It was coming from an upstairs window. She looked back at Nell and Birdie.

“It’s hard,” she said.

Birdie nodded. “Yes. You still love him, don’t you?”

Cass didn’t have to answer. It was in her eyes, her face, and the sadness that drew her eyes back to the window in the cramped apartment where Danny probably sat, a laptop in front of him, a single bed up against the wall.

“Love isn’t always the answer,” Cass said.

“The answer to what?” Nell asked gently. The three women stood together, speaking into the space created by the circle of their bodies. Their voices were low and intimate.

“To relationships. Ours hadn’t been tested much, but it was this time.”

“Danny was true to you.”

She nodded. “He was, and I love him even more for that. But what I didn’t like was me.”

Birdie and Nell were quiet, not wanting to impose on Cass’s thoughts. Giving them time to breathe.

She went on, sorting through her words and feelings until she thought she had them right. “Danny’s a great guy—and yes, he explained to us why he was with Jules. Even though he didn’t owe us an explanation, not really.”

“No, dear, he did,” Birdie said, looking into the sadness filling Cass’s face. “Sometimes one needs to explain things that are out of the ordinary to people they care about. We’re human. And Jules aligning herself with Danny the way she did deserved an explanation.”

Cass conceded. “But either way, the experience brought out some things in me that I didn’t much like. I felt so vulnerable that I wanted to curl up in a ball. I hated that. The whole thing made me feel weak. I hated that, too. And sure, for a while I even felt some jealousy. And that’s abominable to me. I didn’t like me. I didn’t like what loving Danny was doing to me.”

“You should look in a mirror more often, Cass. Maybe you would see the many marvelous things loving Danny—and having Danny love you—has done for you,” Nell said. “Those of us who love you see them.”

“You sound like your niece, Nell. Izzy says the same thing. But she doesn’t have to live with me. I do.”

She turned toward the truck, then stopped and turned back. “I remember watching my ma after my dad died. I was just a little kid, but my ma seemed to shrink. She was so vulnerable—because she had loved him so much and then he died. And I wondered if it had all been worth it.”

“Her love for your dad?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Have you looked at your mother lately? She’s one of the strongest women I know. Being vulnerable didn’t destroy her. And the strength she developed? I suspect life with your dad had put that in some kind of reserve, should she ever need it.”

Cass was quiet. She looked at her two friends. “Maybe I’m missing the gene.”

“Which gene is that?” Birdie asked.

“The one that makes loving someone a healthy thing. And doesn’t turn one of the parties involved into a screwup.” She looked at both of them and tried to smile as she began walking around the front of her truck. “In case you were wondering, that would be me—the screwup—not Danny.”

In the next minute the truck roared to life and Birdie and Nell stood quietly, watching the taillights disappear down Harbor Road.

N
ell fidgeted around the kitchen the next morning, unable to settle in on her day. Images of people she knew—and liked—traveled across her consciousness, back and forth. They were missing something in their conjecturing, overlooking something right before their eyes. And somehow Nell couldn’t erase the thought that it had to do with the little house on Ridge Road. It was bursting with secrets, if only they could clear their vision and see them.

When Izzy called to say she had packed up some duplicate wedding gifts that had been sitting in boxes for two years and was going to give them to Jules, Nell welcomed the chance to ride along. Ben suggested they add that small unused television set sitting in the garage.

“Maybe it will help take her mind off things while she’s marooned here in Sea Harbor,” he said.

A phone call confirmed that Jules would be home—she’d already gotten her morning run in—and she’d love company. She would be home all day, waiting for several repairmen to come by.

An hour later, Izzy and Nell turned onto Ridge Road, a route that was fast becoming almost as familiar as it had been when Izzy lived in the house.

“It looks like we’re not her only company,” Nell said, pulling up in front of the house.

Mary Pisano waved as she emerged from Karen Hanson’s silver Audi.

“We all had the same idea,” Karen said, closing the car door and calling back to Nell and Izzy. She took a package out of the backseat. “I am curious to see what she’s done with the house.”

Mary held up another box. “Bathroom soaps and accessories.”

“The best kind of happening. A housewarming party with no planning,” Izzy said.

“I have the coffee and donuts,” Jules called from the doorway.

Nell was surprised—but pleased—to see Karen Hanson. She had unconsciously pegged her as one who was suspicious of Jules Ainsley, not at all sure of her innocence. She had read her wrong.

“Karen,” she said, stopping her at the steps as the others went on in. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something for days but keep forgetting.”

“You’re worried about the party. Mary is under control as best I can tell.”

“That’s good, thank you. But it’s not that. It’s about something you said to Jeffrey. Or maybe you said it to us and he was just there. It was at the Ocean’s Edge.”

Karen looked confused. “Was it about one of those new drinks he was concocting? I didn’t know Jeffrey all that well.”

“No, it was about Jeffrey and your husband.”

“Jeffrey and Stan? Oh, I don’t think so . . .” She began to walk up the steps.

“It was about their friendship.”

Karen stopped and turned back to Nell. “They knew each other a long time ago. Another life.”

“You mentioned there were three friends—the Three Musketeers, I think you said. Who was the third?”

Karen’s brows drew together, her voice tight. “Yes, there were three of them who hung around together back when they were teenagers—childhood friends.” She paused, digging back in her memory. “Stan, Jeffrey, and . . .” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. It escapes me right now. It was such a long time ago.”

“That’s all right. My memory is like a sieve sometimes. It always surprises me what stays in it and what falls through the holes.”

“Are you two coming?” Izzy called from the door.

Nell nodded and dropped the conversation, hurrying up the steps and into the living room. Jules motioned them back to the kitchen, where a pot of coffee waited.

Nell mentioned the television still in the car. “Don’t let me forget it when we leave.”

Jules gave her a hug. “You’re wonderful. All of you. What thoughtful gifts.”

“You’ve done nice things to this place,” Karen said. She looked around the kitchen and out the windows to the backyard. “You have an eye for color, Jules.”

Izzy agreed. “It changes by the minute. I love it.”

“It occupies my time, and that’s good,” Jules said.

“What are the police saying?” Karen asked.

“Not much. Except they’re closer, but that’s hearsay, and I don’t know if it means they are closer to me or closer to the person who really killed Jeffrey.” She stood at the sink, fiddling with the chain around her neck. Nell noticed the gesture seemed to happen when she needed extra support—or when she was uncomfortable with the conversation.

Talk of the murder sobered the group and they all uttered meaningless but reassuring comments. Ben had told Nell that morning that Jerry Thompson said the police were looking into the last few days of Jeffrey’s life carefully—meetings he’d missed, arguments at work—not unlike what the knitting group had done the night before.

Nell was relieved. She knew Birdie was right. Follow Jeffrey. He will tell us who did this. And why.

“Karen, how are things on the campaign trail?” Nell asked, attempting to change the conversation.

But the question caused Karen’s face to tighten. She took the mug of coffee that Jules handed her. “Stan has canceled a few engagements—and that’s not a wise thing to do when you’re campaigning. The president of the Rotary Club called Beatrice Scaglia to fill in when Stan canceled.” She sat still on the kitchen chair, composed, but clearly upset at Stan’s uncharacteristic actions.

“And of course she went?” Izzy said.

Karen nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, the debate is coming up,” Mary said. “Stan will shine.”

“Beatrice scheduled that without asking either of us. She checked with Stan’s secretary to be sure he’d be free but never asked him.”

“He’ll do a great job. Stan is impressive,” Nell said.

“Yes, he is. Stan could have been governor if he had put his mind to it. As for the debate, I told him he has to do it. He thought holding a public forum right now wasn’t the right thing to do because of Jeffrey Meara’s death. But the election is still going to be held, and Sea Harbor still needs a mayor. And Stan is the only person for the job. Sometimes things happen in life that we can’t control. We must go on.”

Karen stood and forced a smile to her face, then excused herself to use the restroom.

Jules started to get up to show her the way, but Karen was already gone.

“Stan is stressed,” Mary said when Karen was out of earshot. “This is such a hard time for him, trying to calm people down, keep his town safe.”

Perhaps it was the image of Stan Hanson carrying the weight of Sea Harbor on his shoulders that cleared Nell’s memory, but in that moment she remembered the unlikely spot where she had seen Jeffrey Meara shortly before he died.

She and baby Abby.

He was sitting under the shadow of the harbor bridge in an intense conversation with his high school friend Stan Hanson.