A Finely Knit Murder (11 page)

Nell turned away, slightly discomforted by his stare. She turned her attention with some relief to Mary Pisano, who was walking out the Tea Shoppe door.

Mary greeted them all warmly and began a prolonged commentary on the amazing soup she had just eaten—even though her silly cousin had barely touched hers.

A minute later, Teresa Pisano came out. At first she didn’t notice the others standing with Mary. With one hand, she was rummaging in an overstuffed shoulder bag. The other hand gripped a white take-out container of uneaten soup.

Teresa was thin to the point of being worrisome. Mary had commented recently that her cousin naively thought it made her
look beautiful and had been intentionally shedding pounds. Instead she looked gaunt, and her nose seemed a little too big for her face, her shoulders too narrow, and her skinny jeans slightly loose.

Mary frowned at her cousin, nudging her to say hello. “It’s your boss, Teresa.”

Teresa looked up with a start. Her eyes flitted from Nell to Birdie, then zeroed in sharply on Elizabeth Hartley.

“Hello, Teresa,” Elizabeth said gently.

But social pleasantries seemed to be the furthest thing from Teresa Pisano’s mind. Her dark eyes lit up with sudden, unexpected anger.

For a minute they thought the younger woman was going to attack Elizabeth, but in the next second she took a step back and began to yell—her voice so shrill and harsh that Polly appeared in the doorway and a car slowed down as it passed.

Her words came out in a torrent of rage. “This is your fault, Elizabeth Hartley. You hated her—I know you did. Everyone knew it. You killed my Blythe!”

And then, before anyone could stop her, she hurled the small container of cucumber soup at Elizabeth Hartley, spun around, and ran down the street as if she were going to be the next one to meet an untimely demise.

F
or a moment, no one moved. The shock of Teresa’s words trailed behind her like bad fumes.

In the next instant, there was a flurry of action.

Mary, her face red with shame, uttered an apology and set out after her cousin.

Polly grabbed a towel from her apron band, tsking at the waste of her delicious soup, but happy none of it had landed on Elizabeth.

Birdie handed a glass of water to a shaken Elizabeth.

Nell wiped the table clean, and Polly disappeared inside with the rags and tray of dishes.

In all, the fuss lasted less than a few minutes.

The look on Elizabeth’s face, however, told them the aftermath of Teresa Pisano’s words would last much longer.

Nell picked her bag up from the chair and handed it to her.

She looked around to be sure they hadn’t forgotten anything, and then, almost as an afterthought, she glanced across the street.

She had nearly forgotten about him, but he was still there, standing as still as the wooden statue that guarded the gallery next door.

Josh Babson hadn’t moved, his eyes fixed on the scene playing out in front of Polly Farrell’s Tea Shoppe.

Nell narrowed her eyes, straining to bring his face into focus, looking for acknowledgment of what he had seen. Their eyes met—
and a careless smile seemed to curl his lip just seconds before he leaned forward, letting his cigarette drop to the sidewalk where he snubbed it out with the toe of his shoe.

He looked over once more, a brief glance, then turned and pushed open the door to the Brewster Gallery.

And then he disappeared from sight.

*   *   *

Birdie and Nell walked on either side of a quiet, shaken Elizabeth. They headed away from the art colony and onto a quiet street that wound its way back to Sandswept Lane and to home.

For several blocks, they walked in silence, each wrapped up in her own thoughts and emotion.

The pain in Elizabeth’s face was raw.

Finally, as they neared Elizabeth’s house, Birdie said, “People express their sadness in different ways. I suppose that is what Teresa was doing. Was she close to Blythe?”

“Close?” Elizabeth repeated the word as if examining it carefully. “Teresa knew Blythe because she came into the office often. Teresa didn’t seem to have many friends among the staff, though I couldn’t be sure of that, but Blythe was nice to her. She brought her small gifts sometimes. I suppose you could say they were friends. They spoke often.”

“That surprises me,” Nell said. “Though I have no reason to think they shouldn’t be. Except . . .”

“I know. Except they were so unlike each other. I thought that, too. I don’t know. I wondered about it. Maybe it was just . . .” Elizabeth’s words trailed off, as if there was more there, but she wasn’t sure how to address it—or if she should.

They had reached Elizabeth’s house and stopped near the front door. “Thank you for giving me part of your day,” she began. She took a step toward the door and dug her keys out of her purse.

But when she went to use it, the door opened on its own.

Nell and Birdie stared.

Elizabeth looked down at her keys as if they had failed her, then managed a short laugh. “I must have forgotten to lock it. Sometimes I do that. It upset Jerry when he noticed it one day. I wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving my place in Boston unlocked, but somehow Sea Harbor seems to be the kind of place where it would be okay.” She stopped, listening to her own words and thinking about them.

Sea Harbor was a place where you didn’t have to lock your doors . . . but where a woman could be killed with a rock during a festive school event.

“Let’s just be sure . . . ,” Nell said, and moved past Elizabeth and into the small entryway before she could object. She wasn’t sure what they were being sure of, but today wasn’t the same as yesterday or the day before. Today—and maybe all the tomorrows for a while—were days for locking doors, and for checking to see what was behind ones that weren’t.

Elizabeth tried to object, but it was too late—Nell was already inside with Birdie close behind her. Reluctantly she followed them through the door.

The bungalow was small and neat and light, with magazines stacked on the coffee table, books lined up on polished shelves, and a beautiful knit afghan in every color of the sea draped over the couch. Framed paintings of seascapes created bright spots of color against the white walls.

Elizabeth went in and checked her bedroom. She came back, announcing that it was fine. “There’s no little bear sleeping in my bed,” she said, attempting to lighten the mood, but Nell and Birdie didn’t smile. “I’ve no jewels to steal.”

“Caution isn’t a bad thing, Elizabeth,” Birdie said. “Not when someone has been murdered.”

“Of course not. I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. Honestly I’ve left the door unlocked before, many times. But I won’t anymore. I won’t be foolish about this.”

“You’re anything but foolish,” Birdie said. “But these are unusual times.”

“I understand. And please know that I appreciate what you’ve done for me today—the soup and walk were truly the therapy I needed. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Maybe you can get some rest now. You can’t have had more than a couple hours’ sleep last night—”

She nodded, weariness returning to her face, as if she’d somehow been given permission to let it seep in. “There will be a lot of questions. Jerry warned me of that. I know I will need a clear head. Last night is all a blur right now.”

“There’ll be questions for all of us, no doubt.”

The questions would go on and on. The hope was that there would be answers.

Nell and Birdie headed for the door.

There would be endless questions for all of them—friends and neighbors, staff and teachers and board members.

Board members.
The thought hit Nell with some force
.
How would the board members’ interviews play out to the Sea Harbor police? A board fraught with dissension. And much of it centering on—and created by—Blythe Westerland. If they wanted to look for people with motive and opportunity, questioning the Sea Harbor Community Day School board might be hitting the mother lode.

S
aturday night dinner began as a somber hodgepodge.

A hodgepodge of people and a hodgepodge of food. A hodgepodge of emotion.

A gathering of people who simply wanted the warmth of food and Ben’s martinis. And the comfort of old friends.

The night was cool—sweater weather, a knitter’s dream—and the warmth from Ben’s grill and the stone fire pit that he and Sam had built was welcome.

Cass and Birdie were the first to arrive, bringing Ella’s apple crisp and fresh loaves of bread. Sam had picked up ribs that Ben would warm on the grill. The Brewsters showed up, too—with daisies from Jane’s garden and her famous peanut slaw. Probably more food than any of them could eat. But that would be all right, too.

“Is Harry coming?” Izzy asked Cass.

“Nope.” She rummaged around in the small deck refrigerator for a beer. “I thought about inviting him. I needed to be with all of you tonight, and I thought maybe he would need company, too, you know? But he doesn’t know us all that well, and so, I don’t know, I opted to come alone. He was okay with it. He totally got it. He said he was going to work on the house a little, figure out exactly what needs to be done. Originally he thought he’d stick around and supervise, but now he thinks maybe he’ll just hire the right guys and head back to Boston.”

“I suppose a lot of people who don’t live here might feel that way. The town’s charm loses its luster in the face of a murder,” Birdie said.

“But you do know he’d be welcome here, Cass,” Ben said, poking the coals.

“Sure, I know. Thanks. You guys would welcome a circus clown if I picked one up along the way.”

“No, no, no circus clowns,” Izzy said. “They scare Abby.” She looked over at the sleeping blond baby, curled up next to Sam on the chaise and oblivious of everything around her but the safe warmth of her daddy.

Cass laughed. “Okay. For Abby I’ll take clowns off the pickup list. Anyway, it was a selfish decision but hey, I’m selfish.”

Birdie set a plate of crackers and cheese on the low deck table. “We didn’t talk long, but he seems like an interesting man.”

Cass didn’t reply. Instead she smeared a cracker with Brie and popped it into her mouth.

A familiar voice rumbled up the back deck steps. “Hey, guys. Anyone home?” Danny Brandley appeared, coming from around the side of the house and taking the deck steps two at a time. “I figured I’d find at least two friends here. I got a bunch. Must be friend karma.”

“You’re back.” Nell walked over and hugged him. “I’m glad. And I’m glad you found us.”

He greeted everyone on the deck with his signature slow smile, his glasses reflecting the dozens of candles Nell had lit around the deck. When he got to Cass, his look lingered and his eyebrows lifted, as if he was checking to be sure she was okay. Cass met his look and allowed a smile.
I’m fine,
it said. And his nod told her that was good.

Danny walked around the group and sat down next to Nell. “Not good news to come home to. Especially for all of you who were there at the party—” There was a bit of apology in his tone, as if he somehow should have been there, too.

“It’s pretty awful for everyone. But especially Elizabeth Hartley,” Nell said.

She had only repeated the awful incident at the Tea Shoppe to Ben—but the memory of Teresa’s harsh accusations was still raw in her head. Elizabeth had been visibly shaken, then very quiet on the walk home. She had tried to get Elizabeth to come for dinner, but she had graciously declined.

Nell suspected—or hoped—that Jerry would get over to see her.

“I can’t quite get my arms around this whole thing,” Danny said. “Maybe because I wasn’t there like you were, but it’s also because some people seem invincible. Blythe was one of them.”

“There’s that,” Jane said. “But didn’t Orwell address invincibility? Something about the person who’s winning at a particular moment always seems invincible. Maybe in some other part of her life, she wasn’t winning . . .”

Jane’s words settled around them as they sipped Ben’s martinis and thought about Blythe Westerland. She was on top of the world. In charge. At least that was what they’d thought. But maybe she wasn’t?

“My mom and dad were really disturbed about the whole thing,” Danny said. “Mom said they had walked down to the shore at the party. It was romantic, she said. A perfect evening. And then they heard the news this afternoon, what little there was of it. And it all fell apart. Memories of the party would no longer hold anything romantic. The perfect party wasn’t perfect anymore.”

“None of us has a clear idea of what happened,” Birdie said, “other than that Blythe died from a blow to the head. But what time, exactly? And wouldn’t someone have heard a tussle? Lots of people were going back and forth to the shore that night.”

Ben nodded. “
That
night. It seems like we’ve been living with it for a while, that it has had time to fester and ferment—but it hasn’t even been a full day.”

“Most of what I found on the Internet focused on Blythe’s life,” Birdie said. “Her civic involvement, her townhome in Boston, and here, her beauty.”

There had been no marriages, no children, and the friends quoted in the reports seemed somehow remote, Nell added.

Ben mixed a new shaker of martinis and strained the cocktail into glasses. “Jerry is a good chief. Smart and careful. He keeps things close to his chest until he’s sure what’s going on. And it’ll take a couple days just to sort out what really happened. Even finding the murder weapon will be a challenge. There are hundreds of rocks around those boulders near the boathouse. Ones that could be picked up and held in a hand—or two hands. And if the rock that had been used by the killer was then tossed or rolled down into the water on its own, the tide could have taken it to God knows where by now.”

“So they may never find it,” Nell said.

“Probably not.”

“So, then, where does one even begin?” Jane asked.

“With Blythe,” Izzy said. “That’s where you start. She’s the only one who knows what happened. Her life needs to be picked apart, piece by piece.”

Danny was listening carefully to Izzy. He leaned toward her, his elbows resting on his knees, nodding in agreement. The former lawyer and the mystery writer—their brains traveling along the same road. “That might take some work,” he said. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Even though she’s been spending most of her time here for the last couple of years, I’m not sure any of us knew her very well.”

“Well, someone did. Someone knew her well enough to want her dead,” Izzy said.

The thought sobered them into silence, and for a few minutes the only sounds were the wind whistling through the giant elms and the pounding of the surf against the shore. Gulls, foraging above the water, squawked as they dove for their dinner.

Birdie shivered and pulled her sweater tightly around her. “There’s such cruelty in all this.
Hatred
. How can it become so severe that it propels one to kill?”

Nell sat quietly in the chaise, her head back and her eyes nearly closed, thinking about Birdie’s idle comment. How did hate evolve into the need to kill? Did it develop slowly—a slow-growing cancer that eventually reached an unbearable level, propelling action? She supposed there was that kind . . . but she couldn’t for the life of her come up with an example. Or the opposite, a hatred that springs forth suddenly, maybe out of love, even—or fear. Or maybe it wasn’t hatred at all that killed Blythe Westerland.

“Danny has a point. I see Blythe often, but I couldn’t name one friend of hers,” Izzy was saying. “She was usually alone—”

“I disagree, Iz. More often than not she had a man on her arm,” Cass said.

Cass was trying with difficulty not to look at Danny. Nell could feel it, and Danny could, too. She could feel his body tense beside her. Danny
could
have known Blythe better, but he had resisted her blatant attention—and everyone knew it. At the time, Cass had, at first, been worried, and then relieved, her interest in Danny just begining to blossom. Nell wondered how she felt about that now.

Nell got up and began bringing out the salads and breads, filling the long outdoor table with their dinner and keeping one ear on the conversation moving at odd angles around the circle of friends. Then she refreshed the cheese platter and settled back next to Danny. Ben followed suit and took the ribs off the grill, piling them on a platter and adding them to the mix. Sam took over at the bar and refreshed drinks.

Izzy was exploring Cass’s comment. “Okay. Sure—she seemed to attract men. But were those men her
friends
? Sometimes I got the feeling they were
blings
—accoutrements, you know what I mean? I was thinking of ‘friends’ in the way you and I are friends. Blythe was almost always alone when she came into the yarn shop, even when she stayed for a while in the back room. I have to say, though, that she was always pleasant—knitting seemed to bring out the best in her.”

“As it does with many of us,” Birdie said sweetly. She reached
into her bag and pulled out a partially finished hat of soft merino wool—a sample for next week’s class at the school. She stroked the yarn as if it were Purl the calico cat, and then began rhythmically knitting the vibrant colors into a round. It was difficult to think about hatred with yarn in your lap and your blood pressure being lowered with each stitch. The process stoked her memory and she looked up. “I do know of one friend she had.”

Nell turned from the table.
Of course.
How had they forgotten the recent encounter at the Tea Shoppe?
And it wasn’t a handsome man once seen on Blythe’s arm, but a nondescript woman who had raged in pain, flinging out hurtful accusations.

Attention turned to Birdie. “Teresa Pisano,” she said. “You all know her, Mary’s cousin. She’s been secretary in the administrative office at the school for several years. That’s probably where she and Blythe met.”

Cass scoffed and dismissed it. “Teresa? No. I went to school with her. Blythe wouldn’t have been her friend.” What she didn’t say spoke louder than her words. Mousy, sad Teresa Pisano was the most unlikely choice of friend imaginable for the glamorous Blythe.

“We don’t know how long they had been friends or if it was even a friendship, but Teresa is clearly devastated by Blythe’s death. Mary was trying to console her today in Polly’s Tea Shoppe,” Nell said.

Nell and Birdie both sat quietly, hesitant, wondering if repeating the episode that had happened outside the Tea Shoppe would be gossip or helpful. Nell looked at Jane Brewster. She looked as though she was wondering the same thing.

“Were you at your gallery this morning?” Nell asked her.

Jane nodded. “The door was open. And what I didn’t hear, Josh Babson repeated for me.”

“Oh, yes, Josh,” Nell said. Josh had bothered her inordinately by his stance, his presence, and what she still imagined was a slight grin before he disappeared back into the gallery.

Birdie went on to relate the brief but awkward encounter
between Elizabeth and Teresa. “Elizabeth was shaken but composed, as is her way,” Birdie said.

“And Mary was chagrined by her cousin’s actions. I imagine Teresa got an earful, grieving or not.”

“That’s the kind of incident that’ll find its way back to the police,” Danny said.

“No. It was said out of grief,” Nell said, but her words came back to her, sounding hollow—just as she knew they did to everyone on the deck. Danny was right. The police would need to hear about the accusation, as outlandish as it was.

She met Birdie’s look. The two of them, more than the others gathered on the deck, would know where Teresa’s outburst would lead.

The accusation would lead to other things, to more questions—and eventually would wind its way to a recent board meeting.

The board meeting in which Blythe Westerland had tried to get Elizabeth Hartley fired from the job she dearly loved.