Trimmed With Murder (20 page)

T
hursday was cold with a blustery wind, and Birdie offered to have Harold drop off some extra logs at the yarn shop so they could build a lovely fire that night. He'd been chopping firewood for weeks, she said.

It just might turn out to be a long knitting night, was Birdie's thought. One in need of warmth and yarn, of dear friends—and maybe even an extra bottle of pinot gris.

•   •   •

A large figure, slightly slumped, was walking out of Archie's bookstore as Nell got out of her car and opened the trunk. For a moment, in the shadows of the alley, she didn't recognize him.

He carried a bulky book bag under one arm. A puffy black jacket flapped open over his wide girth, and high-waisted slacks were shoved into large furry boots.

The figure was now unmistakable. “You'll catch your death of cold out here, Father,” she scolded, abandoning the bags of food in her trunk and walking over to him. She smiled into his eyes, rheumy from the blast of cold air. “Button up.”

She fastened several snaps on his jacket, then reached up and pulled his black furry hat down around his ears.

“You're like Mary Halloran,” he said, chuckling lightly. “Mothering me to my grave.”

“Now, who said anything about a grave? But you are looking tired.”

The priest nodded. “Being my age does that to one.”

That was true, but there was something else in his weathered face tonight. These past few days had aged the kindly priest. Nell looked into his face, trying to read something there. Secrets could do that to a person, their weight often more ponderous than life's ordinary tasks.

“Will there be a service for Amber?” she asked.

“Barbara and Stuart didn't want one. But I do. I'm going to ask Charlie and Esther to help. Ben said he thought Charlie would like that.” His white eyebrows lifted in a question mark, seeking an opinion.

She nodded. “Yes, I think he would like that. And those of us whose lives Amber touched will want to be there.”

“I didn't know the lass well, but she was a part of my days in that strange way life works sometimes. Her mother was a special person.”

“You knew Amber's mother?”

“That I did. Ellie came to church regularly. She was a sweet young woman. Happy. Smart. Pretty. And so in love with Patrick Cummings. I'd see it on her face, and she'd share it with me in private—Stu knew, but otherwise they kept their little romance quiet, under the Cummingses' radar, if you know what I mean. Some girls would have flaunted it—Patrick was a catch—but Ellie didn't like attention in that gossipy kind of way. The pregnancy was a surprise to her, unplanned. She worried about it, and hid it well. But when she finally told Patrick, he was thrilled. They were two good solid young people, full of hope and life. Finding each other was a miracle, Ellie always said. She was so good for him, even got him coming to church now and then; she grounded him in a way that being Lydia's pride and joy didn't. When they told me about the baby and their marriage plans, I encouraged them to go to Lydia right away, to tell her. I knew Lydia would like Ellie. You couldn't help it. And imagine, Lydia's havin' herself a grandbaby. What great joy.”

Nell imagined the rest of the story that was playing out on his face. His lips pulled tight, his shoulders rising and falling beneath the heavy jacket. She imagined what it must have been like to hear the news of the accident, the sound of all those dreams dying in a fiery crash.

The priest looked at her with a sad smile. “I was wrong,” he said.

“But you may have saved one life—Lydia's. I know you helped her through those terrible days. And maybe Amber's, too. Where would she have ended up if Lydia hadn't respected your advice? Your wisdom?”

“Amber Harper.” He said her name slowly, uttered like a prayer. The kind that required a refrain. A “pray for us” said in unison from a choir.

He pulled himself back together and went on as if the digression in the conversation had never happened. “After Amber's memorial, we'll bury her in a plot reserved for her next to her mother. Lydia thought of everything.”

The thought was chilling. That somehow Lydia had the foresight to arrange a burial plot for Amber.

“Taking care of all those mundane things—things that required money but nothing more—was the best that Lydia could do. So that's what she did, knowing her limitations, and it eased her ethical struggle, her guilt. At least I prayed it did.”

“Did her feelings change at all when she got sick?”

Father Northcutt considered her question. “In some ways. When she was dying, she began to think through her long life, something I suppose most of us would do if given the time. She'd done some good things, some not so good. She talked about Amber some, and she obsessed about Ellie, worried about her dying—”

“Ellie?” Nell asked. “She had died two or three years before that, hadn't she?”

The priest nodded. “Yes.” He looked over Nell's head, as if Lydia were standing behind her, listening, watching the priest. He looked back at Nell. “Lydia knew she could bring Amber back to Sea Harbor by putting her in the will. I think it brought her a peculiar kind of satisfaction.”

“So she did it to make up for things?”

The furrows in his brow deepened. And then he said, “Maybe a little of that, although she had made peace with her God about how she'd raised—or not raised—the girl. Those last days Lydia was very weak, and not always making complete sense. In her mind, Amber became two different people. She was ‘that girl'—the person she had never really allowed into her life, the daughter of the woman who had killed her son. And at other times she became ‘Patrick's daughter. So like her father. So smart.' Two Ambers. Lydia's tone of voice changed completely when she talked about one versus the other. I think in her peculiar way, she loved Patrick's daughter. And who knows, if love can be in one's subconscious, maybe she'd felt that way all along—her latest will, after all, was made some time before her illness confined her.” He stopped talking, thinking back, as if to straighten out his thoughts for himself. Then he sighed, and murmured, “Of course,” words that slipped out unbidden. “I remember now. Her will was made shortly after Ellie died.”

Nell listened, the significance lost to her. Then she asked, “Do you think Ellie's death made her feel guilty about Amber?”

“No, like I said, she'd come to grips with all of that. Spiritually, at least. But those last days she did seem consumed about things. About Ellie dying. About her grown children, about the company—and somehow maybe she suspected if given the chance, Patrick's daughter might fix things. At the least, it would even things up.”

“Fix things?”

He didn't answer. Instead he pivoted on his large black snow boots, looking around at the lampposts strung with Christmas lights, at the cars moving slowly along Harbor Road, a lone group of carolers walking past McClucken's hardware store, their young voices joined in “Silent Night.”

He breathed deeply, taking it all in, then focused back on the woman standing in front of him, his eyes locking in to hers. “Lydia and I felt differently on some subjects. But here's the thing, dear Nell, we can't always control the world, now, can we? And we can't always absolve the sins of those we love.”

He held her eyes for a moment longer, then smiled sadly and lumbered off to his small practical car, leaving her standing there, mulling over his words.

N
ell was the last one down the back steps, and Cass breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “I couldn't imagine you not showing, but when I walked in here and all I could smell was Izzy's awful coffee, I nearly had a heart attack.” She walked over and relieved Nell of a heavy cardboard box. “I'm better now.”

Izzy looked up from the fireplace. “Jeez, what a relief.” She ignored Cass's irreverent retort and turned back, continuing to pile logs and kindling onto the grate. Harold had been true to his word and filled her iron firewood holder to the brim. She lit the bottom layer of kindling and sat back on her heels, waiting for the flames to curl up around the logs, licking them, coaxing them to pop.

Marvin Gaye was already humming through the speakers—“Ain't no mountain high enough.” Izzy unfolded herself from the hearth and walked over to the long pine table, her shoulders moving to the beat. Anticipating the discussion ahead, she hoped Marvin was right.

Birdie read her look. “Mr. Gaye knows whereof one speaks.” She lifted the heavy lid off Nell's slow cooker and leaned into the aromas.

The Endicott staples—garlic and wine, fresh cream and parsley—wafted into the room.

Birdie closed her eyes and breathed in the mingled odors. “Absolutely perfect for this chilly night.” She took a spoon and stirred the chunks of tender beef. Rounds of carrots and onions and slivers of spinach, cilantro, and parsley floated in the thick caramel-colored sea.

“It's creative-thinking food,” Nell said. “My version of it, anyway. Lots of wine and secret spices.”

Izzy took a stack of heavy bowls from the cupboard and set them beside the napkins, butter, and basket of warm rolls. She began singing along with the CD as the singer moved on to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

Nell watched her niece, sensing the worry that lay just beneath the surface of the lyrics coming from her mouth. Although she and Charlie still had bridges to cross, he had worked his way, inch by inch, back into his older sister's life. His problems were now hers to solve, his worries hers to share. Charlie was fortunate. He had an amazing warrior on his side.

Cass filled her bowl and tossed a handful of croutons on the top, urging the others to follow. “Perfect choice of music, Iz. Pete tells me the harbor's grapevine is so heavy it's about to topple over.”

“That's what happens when people are desperate for resolution,” Birdie said. She carried her soup over to the fireplace and settled in with Purl curled up next to her. She turned to watch the glowing embers, dancing like fireflies around the logs. “There are more loose ends in this case than the first sweater I knit. And everyone, including the police, is tripping over them. I'd take the record mountains of snow we got last winter to the awful cloud that's hovering over us. Mae told me when I came in tonight that even her nieces—and they belong to the generation that knows they'll live forever—are hesitant to go out at night. They're trying to talk their parents into a trip to somewhere warm, and not because of the weather.”

“Could the difficulty in finding the murderer be because no one is really invested in the woman who was killed?” Cass asked. “I don't mean to be crass, but the Cummings family probably doesn't care who did it. Relative or not, she wasn't important to people in this town.”

“She was important to Charlie,” Izzy said softly.

“That's true,” Cass said. “And look where that's getting him. The police are watching him like a hawk.”

Izzy caught her breath, the intake of air audible.

Nell looked over at Cass. She knew Cass's practical approach was an attempt to blur the awful image of seeing Amber's body. But her harsh words carried truth. It was Charlie's decision to pick up a hitchhiker on a blustery Massachusetts night—and then to let himself care about her. That was what got him in this trouble—the good things he had done. It wasn't the least bit fair, but somehow letting his kindness—and then his heart—get involved had stacked things up against him.

The police knew Amber had argued with Charlie that night. He hadn't tried to hide it—Nell hoped that counted for something. But his anger—the kind she remembered from his youth—had been forceful enough to nearly break his hand. And even Jake Risso had admitted that on Amber and Charlie's frequent late-night visits to the Gull, Amber had been tough on Charlie, especially after she'd had a few beers, sometimes teasing him harshly no matter who was around. It was her way, Jake had said. Kind of like a grade school kid teasing the guy she liked best. But it was embarrassing to Charlie. Guys don't like that. And Charlie was definitely a guy.

“I'm sorry for being blunt, Iz,” Cass said. “I like Charlie. If I didn't have Danny following me around and if Charlie were a couple years older, I might go for him. He's a very cool guy and he sure as heck didn't kill Amber. I'd bet my lobster fleet on that. I'm just trying to put things out there so we can force ourselves to think the way the police are thinking. And then figure out what really happened.”

“It seems obvious to me that the most likely people who might have wanted Amber dead were the Cummingses,” Birdie said. “And I don't say that lightly. I like Stu and Barbara. But Amber was about to insert herself in their lives in an unpredictable way—something they didn't want.”

“True. But killing her wouldn't have solved their problems if she'd had a will, and they didn't know if she did or didn't,” Izzy said. She set a basket of rolls on the coffee table and sat down across from Birdie. “They lucked out, I guess, in a morbid way, finding out she didn't have a will.”

Nell agreed, but that niggling feeling came back that she was missing something. “The chief told Ben that was a big point—the fact that they didn't know what would happen to Amber's share of the company if she died. It blurred motives a bit.”

Birdie took a few sips of her soup, then set the bowl down. She lifted her wineglass, thinking about motives and wills—and playing devil's advocate. “If you think practically about the situation, most people Amber's age don't have a will. The Cummingses could realistically have assumed that Amber didn't have one.”

Izzy jumped in, her lawyer voice intact. “But assumptions don't hold much weight when you're making important decisions. Stu and Barbara Cummings are very smart people and they couldn't just assume she wouldn't have a will. What if she did? What would that have done to their company?”

Nell smiled. She was echoing Ben. So alike, those two.

Birdie nodded, satisfied. Then she replayed Helen Cummings's happy state when she got the news that Amber had died intestate. “It was news they'd been eager to hear. At least Helen was. Indicating that they weren't sure when she died if she had one or not.”

Nell's eyes widened, a sudden realization springing up out of her memory. “Wait,” she said suddenly.

All eyes turned toward her.

“Maybe they
did
know Amber didn't have a will. At least one of them, anyway. Stu made a veiled reference at the club one night, shortly after Lydia's will was read. He said ‘his sources' told him where Amber worked, that she was a waitress in Florida. I'm sure I heard him say that. It certainly sounds like he was looking into her past. Maybe he knew more than that?”

“And if his sources had discovered she didn't have a will before she died, the motive is back. Bingo.” Cass scooped up the last remnants of soup.

Birdie raised one finger in the air as if to slow them down. “It might give us a motive. A beginning.
If
, in fact, it's true that Stu knew Amber didn't have a will. And if he knew, Barbara did, too. Although Helen was often in the dark about business affairs, Barbara told me she and Stu met nearly every day. They shared everything.” She shivered at the thought of a person she had known for dozens of years being a murderer. “But motive doesn't equate to guilt.”

“Rachel Wooten found out the name of Amber's lawyer friend in Florida,” Nell said. “I could find out if anyone else had contacted him. At least it would be a start.”

“All right, then,” Birdie said, moving the conversation along. “When I think about Amber's short time here in Sea Harbor, it occurs to me how narrow this search is. It's concentrated on a will, a company. On one short week in Amber's life. But she had a lifelong connection to Sea Harbor, whether she currently lived here or not.”

“True,” Nell said. She set her soup bowl down. “I don't want to add confusion to our discussion—it's confusing enough—but I met Father Larry as I was coming in tonight, and he said some things we should think about. He knows all the players better than maybe anyone.”

And confusing or not, the more facts—or memories—that they could pull apart, knit back together, make sense of, the better off everyone would be. Perhaps the entire town. But in the whole mix, what mattered most to Nell was helping her nephew Charlie escape the cloud that was shadowing his life. Charlie had been out of their lives for too long. He had been living in shadows. And if there was anything she wanted right now, it was to pull him out of that darkness completely and allow him to live his life.

She repeated the conversation while the others fell quiet, draining the bowls of Nell's creamy stew. Parts of the story they had heard before, but Father Larry's description added poignancy to Ellie and Patrick's romance. And parts of it were new—and perplexing.

“So he thinks Lydia thought Amber could help the company?” Birdie spoke the words slowly, trying to make sense of them. “It seems unlikely Lydia thought Stu and Barbara were incapable. They'd been helping her run the company for years.”

“Perhaps that was the thing—she wasn't going to be around to help them,” Izzy said.

“Father Larry wasn't guessing. What he said came from conversations he'd had with Lydia,” Nell said. “Esther said something similar—that Amber was as smart as her father. Brilliant with numbers. So in a way, she'd be adding to the company what Lydia herself had provided. Lydia wasn't questioning her children's abilities, just imagining the company without her own abilities. And maybe, who knows, maybe it was even more than that. Father Larry said Lydia used the word
fix
, making things right—and it didn't make me think of bad management, but more about them as people. And perhaps Amber, too.”

Nell began eating again, thinking about what she had just said. Even to her, her words were confusing.

“Perhaps she was forcing Stu and Barbara to do what she couldn't do—bring Amber into the family,” Birdie said. “Making sure the sins of the father—or the mother in this case—would finally be righted.”

“Maybe,” Nell said. The explanation was admirable. But somehow it didn't quite fit.

“My ma thinks Father Larry carries around the sins of the world. I told her I thought that was sort of his job. But she said it seems especially heavy-duty right now.”

“Heavy sins?” Izzy wondered rhetorically.

“It can't be easy,” Nell said, thinking back to the worry she'd seen in the priest's face. She had always wondered about the burden priests must carry from hearing confessions. But it seemed to bring solace and relief to people as they passed off their burdens to the listening ears of the priest.
Good for the soul,
as the saying goes.
Forgiveness
. Was Lydia somehow wanting forgiveness?

“So Lydia willed Amber not just a piece of the company, but a piece of her family, in a way—” Birdie said.

“That was presumptuous,” Izzy said. “She barely knew Amber.”

“But Amber seemed to accept it,” Birdie said. “She spent time looking into the business, from what Charlie says.”

“Amber did exactly what I'd do if I inherited a business,” Cass said. “She went to the office, looked through the records, and gathered up whatever information she could about the company. That makes sense to me. It's the only way she could make an informed decision on what to do about it. If I died and left my part of the Halloran Lobster Company to Pete—who has never in his life looked at a ledger—that's exactly what he'd have to do.” The thought made her wince. “I'm sure Amber was much better at it.”

“So maybe that's what she was doing,” Birdie said. “But we're no closer to the murderer. Could she have found something odd, something about the company that they wouldn't want her to know? Or maybe being in the office, talking to people who worked there, she heard something?”

“I don't think Father Larry's message had much to do with the actual inheritance, although I can't be sure. But remember, he was Lydia's confessor. He was working very hard to say only what he thought he could. I think that's why it doesn't completely make sense to us,” Nell said. “We need to fill in some blanks.”

“One scenario,” Cass said, leaning forward and using her finger to draw an imaginary picture on the low table. “Lydia knew Amber would get into the business end of things. She knew how smart she was. Maybe the business was screwed up. Maybe Garrett isn't as smart as everyone thinks he is. Or Stu or Barbara, for that matter.”

“But Ben says the company is doing well,” Nell said. “We're kind of going in circles. What would need to be fixed?”

“Companies can appear healthy to outsiders, even when there might be something going on inside,” Cass said. “There're all sorts of things that can be done to make you look good. Creative accounting, among other things.”

The thought sobered them, and they set it out there. An internal indiscretion? Something Amber spotted?

“If the company was having problems, having Amber inherit part of it was probably the last thing Barbara or Stu wanted—no matter what their mother thought,” Cass said.

“Zack Levin—Janie's brother—is an intern over there. He said Amber was going through lots of things, comparing reports, tax forms, checking ledgers, payrolls,” Nell said. “It made sense, since she was a part owner.”