A Finely Knit Murder (13 page)

The words seem to make his wide shoulders sag, his eyes lose their clarity as he focused on his strong, blunt fingers on the tabletop. The chief of the Sea Harbor police looked more haggard than Ben and Nell had seen him look in a long time—and maybe ever.

Finally he looked up. There was genuine sadness in his eyes. “We don’t want the wrong person to be hurt in all this,” he said.

B
en and Nell walked with Jerry out to the parking lot, exiting the restaurant the way Jerry had come in—through the fragrant aroma of Annabelle’s kitchen.

Annabelle handed Jerry a white bag filled with fried biscuits along with his order. “Elizabeth likes these,” she said. She gave him a quick hug, then attempted to lighten the mood. “And who knows, Chief, it might make you sweeter.”

Jerry hugged her back, a quick display of uncharacteristic affection. They walked over to his pickup truck, parked in the shade of a maple tree near the Endicotts’ CRV.

“Traveling incognito, I see,” Ben said.

He shrugged. “I’m not on duty. It makes it a little easier not to be spotted. It’s a helluva situation we have on our hands.” He pulled out his keys. “I didn’t know Blythe Westerland very well. For a while she seemed to be in and out of town a lot—sitting on some boards here but had a life in Boston, too. But her life seemed pretty ordinary, as far as I know. Not the kind that would breed enemies. She was always friendly. Sometimes overly so, I guess you’d say.”

“That happens to handsome eligible bachelors, Jerry,” Nell said.

But Jerry knew that. In the fifteen years since his wife, Fran, had died, he had been on many single women’s radar. The number-one choice to fix up with a friend for a dinner party. He dated some of the women he was matched with. But it had never felt right. His Frances was still too much a presence to allow another woman in.

Jerry seemed to give Nell’s words undue thought. “Yeah, okay, there was that,” he said, dismissing it. “Who knows, I’m so rusty—she was probably just friendly or wanted me to fix a parking ticket for her. Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was an odd one, Blythe Westerland was.” He looked off, as if remembering things that were not entirely pleasant and that he shouldn’t have expressed in the first place. He gave a shake of his head and had started to climb inside the cab of his truck when fingers grasped his arm tightly.

Ben and Nell looked over, startled.

Teresa Pisano had come out of nowhere, climbing off a bike and letting it fall to the ground.

“Arrest Dr. Hartley, Chief. Right now before she hurts someone else. She only wants the money. That’s all. We can’t let her get away with this.”

The pain on Jerry’s face was palpable. But his voice was calm, controlled, professional. “Teresa, I told you yesterday when you came into the station that we are talking to everyone. We will do everything in our power to find the person who killed Blythe.”

Teresa Pisano began to cry, large tears running down her long, homely face. Nell went over and touched her arm. “Teresa, would you like a ride home?”

Nell saw Jerry’s look of thanks as he climbed into the cab of his truck and immediately brought the engine to life, then slowly backed up and made his way out of the parking lot.

“I was out riding,” Teresa said, glancing over at her bike. “And I saw the chief head up here. I just wanted to talk to him, to make him understand.”

“Jerry is a good police chief, Teresa,” Ben said.

“He’s a good man, I know that.”

“You look tired,” Nell said.

She nodded. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Ben picked the bike up and hooked it to the rack at the back of his CRV. “Nell and I can give you a lift home.”

Teresa climbed into the back of the car without protest. “To
Ravenswood,” she said. Then added with a feeble attempt at a smile, “Please.”

Nell looked over the seat. “To your cousin’s bed-and-breakfast?”

She nodded. “I moved over there to help Mary out. I’m staying in the suite that used to be Grandpa Enzo’s. I do night desk sometimes and help out on weekends.”

Mary Pisano was a good woman, Nell thought. Her cousin Teresa wasn’t like the rest of the Pisanos—friendly and motivated and assured of their place in the world because of the newspaper empire their grandfather had built. Teresa was a loner, moved slower than the others. Nell knew from board discussions that Teresa’s secretarial job at the school had been “encouraged” by an uncle’s contributions to the school.

And now she was living in the lovely expansive bed-and-breakfast that her cousin Mary had inherited from old Grandpa Enzo.

And she was probably a help to Mary, since Mary stayed at the home she shared with her husband when he wasn’t out at sea. “What a wonderful place to live,” Nell said.

Teresa didn’t answer and when Nell looked back, her eyes were closed, her head back against the seat.

That was a good thing. Nell didn’t want to hear a word about Elizabeth Hartley.

They drove the rest of the way through town in silence—along Harbor Road and up to the historic Ravenswood neighborhood, once home to shipping magnates, wealthy quarry owners, captains of the sea—and Enzo Pisano, owner of a dozen newspapers.

Ben slowed and drove up the wide drive, past the neat white and gold sign that read
RAVENSWOOD-BY-THE-SEA
. And below it,
WELCOME
.

Teresa seemed to have recovered somewhat and looked less disheveled than when she had nearly attacked the police chief.

She helped Ben take her bike off the car rack and thanked them for their help. “I’m sorry for acting the way I did. I just don’t think the police are looking in the right places. They make mistakes sometimes. I wanted to help, that’s all.”

“Of course,” Nell said.

She thanked them for the ride and walked around to the back of the inn.

“Let’s see if Mary is here,” Ben said. “A chance to say hello.”

But his message was clear.
Let’s make sure Teresa is all right
. And maybe Mary could fill them in on Teresa’s vendetta against Elizabeth Hartley.

Mary ushered them into the large kitchen of the B and B, where there was always coffee brewing and usually a basket of scones on the large center island.

Ben filled her in on the encounter at Annabelle’s restaurant.

Mary grimaced. “She’s come a little unhinged over all this,” she said.

“How long has she been living here?” Nell asked.

“It’s been a while. I just don’t talk about it, because the other cousins think I’m a little daft for doing it. Teresa is simply not a family favorite. She isn’t savvy and successful and filled with self-importance.” Mary laughed. “But she helps me out in exchange for the room. It works.”

“Do you know why she has this thing against Elizabeth?” Ben asked. “It’s almost an obsession.”

“I’m just beginning to hear about it,” Mary said. “Maybe I didn’t pay attention before. I’d noticed that Teresa was trying to change her looks, bleached her hair, lost some weight—way too much weight, in my opinion.”

“But why?” Nell asked.

“It took me a while to figure it out because frankly, I don’t see Teresa much. She takes the desk when I’m not here, and since I don’t live here, our paths usually cross over business things. But I realized recently that she was talking more and more about Blythe Westerland and then it dawned on me that she was trying to look like her. She wanted to be pretty.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s the baby of the clan. Thirty-eight, I think—and never been kissed.”

“So—” Ben wrinkled his forehead. “So this thing Teresa had with Blythe might have been like a schoolgirl crush on a teacher?”

“I think so. Something like that,” Mary said. She looked down at the stainless steel surface of the island and drew a lazy line with her finger. “But honestly, Ben, I don’t know what to think about her animosity toward Elizabeth. She said Elizabeth was terrible at her job—an opinion I’m sure she got from Blythe, so who knows how legit it is? I suspect not much at all. She said Blythe was going to save the school by getting Elizabeth fired—and she was helping her.”

“Helping her?”

“I’m not sure, but I suspect that Teresa relayed things to Blythe that were going on in the administrative offices. Making herself into a little mole. She practically said as much one night, telling me how she had changed a board meeting time so Elizabeth would be late for the meeting. She seemed inordinately proud of being complicit in Blythe’s little plan, as if she were collecting Brownie points or something. And then she showed me some cheap necklace Blythe had given her. I said she was going to get herself fired, but she just laughed. It seemed she’d do anything for Blythe.”

That explained the last board meeting. It was Teresa’s doing. And now Teresa was without her anchor, adrift in the head office. And furious about it. That explained a lot of things.

“Teresa thought she was protected against any and all evils because Blythe was her friend. And Blythe’s goal was to get rid of Elizabeth. So that was Teresa’s, too.”

Elizabeth knew about Blythe’s goal, of course. The whole board did. Elizabeth loved her job passionately. Which in Nell’s mind was why she was such an excellent administrator. But if she thought she was going to lose that job . . .

No
. She refused to go there.

But the police would.

They wouldn’t have any choice.

T
he beginning of the week didn’t bring an arrest in the Blythe Westerland case, but it did bring some normality back to Sea Harbor.

“School is in session today. Elizabeth is trying to keep everything as normal as usual,” Birdie reported. “I stopped in to see her when we dropped Gabby off, just to be sure she was all right and to see if there was anything we could do. She was busy, as you’d expect, not only with the normal run of things, but fending off a pesky reporter.”

“It’s too bad she has to deal with things like that,” Izzy said. “Geesh, what a mess.”

They were walking along the beach—Izzy, Birdie, and Nell taking turns pushing Abigail’s thick-wheeled stroller and taking advantage of Izzy’s day off. She had refused to take time off for years, but finally caved in when Mae Anderson, the store manager, threatened to quit if Izzy didn’t spend more time with Abigail. Putting it like that was genius—and of course Izzy started taking a day off now and then. This Monday seemed like a good day.

“Angelo was practicing his bouncer skills and did a nice job of removing the man from the premises. But there was a line of parents outside the office door, all jittery, with fear in their eyes. The police have talked to a lot of them, especially those who stayed late at the party. And that only makes it worse because everyone
imagines they might have been standing next to a murderer, or talking with one, or might have seen something. And that only adds to the fear, of course.”

“I can imagine,” Nell said. “Everyone is nervous—but it must be worse for parents whose children are there at the school, so close to the crime scene. It isn’t logical but it’s certainly emotional.” She looked at Birdie.

“Of course,” Birdie said, feeling Nell’s question. “I worry, too. But I know that the school is probably the safest place in town.”

“Was Teresa Pisano in the office?” Nell asked.

“No. And that was making things more difficult for Elizabeth. Dear Mandy White was trying to juggle Teresa’s job and her own assistant headmistress responsibilities all at the same time.”

“And doing a better job than Teresa would have done, at least today,” Nell said. She filled them in on Sunday’s incident in the parking lot. “She seems convinced Elizabeth had something to do with Blythe’s death.”

“How awful for Elizabeth,” Birdie said.

Nell agreed. It
was
awful for Elizabeth. They all liked her—and suspected things were going to get more difficult for the headmistress before they hopefully got better.

Birdie and Izzy were quiet, too—processing the thought and the accusations.

Izzy bent over and tucked a blanket around Abigail. The breeze was chilly enough for thick sweaters today but too early for hats, although she’d put one on Abby anyway—a floppy green hat with a huge crocheted flower on the side. It was exactly like one Gabby wore—her signature hat, she called it—and she had knit it up for Abby in three different sizes so she’d never be without.

As they started up toward the road, they spotted an easel set up near a pile of boulders at the end of the beach. In front of it stood a tall man swinging a brush across the canvas, his mouth moving along with his strokes.

He spotted the women walking along the beach and nodded in
their direction, then waved his brush briefly in the air. It wasn’t clear if it was a wave to them or the air or to a gull hovering overhead.

“Josh Babson,” Nell murmured. They waved back, but rather than disturb an artist at work, they continued toward the road that led back to Nell’s.

“You don’t like him, do you, Aunt Nell?” Izzy said softly.

Nell frowned. The comment made her uncomfortable. “I don’t know him well enough to not like him.”

“But I can tell from your voice that he isn’t someone you’d want to invite to Friday night dinner,” Izzy said. “I don’t know the man from Adam, but Gabby likes him. She told me he was a good art teacher and she was sad he got fired.”

Nell knew that—and Gabby had proven herself to be a good judge of character. So what was it about the man that bothered her?

“He acted odd at the party,” Birdie said. “There was an unpleasantness about him. He was clearly looking for someone—and he didn’t look happy about it.”

“So, do you think he was looking for Blythe?” Izzy asked. “Why?”

Nell looked at Birdie, who shrugged. “I don’t know. But he was attending a party at the school that had just fired him. Blythe was a part of all that.”

“But he should have been looking for Elizabeth,” Izzy said, bringing logic to the guesswork. “She was the one who fired him. He probably was furious, especially if he was as good a teacher as Gabby thinks he is. Maybe he wanted to confront her, embarrass her in front of everyone. Just like he did with the yellow paint.”

Nell’s frown deepened. She looked at Birdie, then back to Izzy. “Actually it wasn’t Elizabeth who wanted him fired,” she said. “It was Blythe Westerland. She wanted him gone because he didn’t conform to what she thought the school’s teachers should look like, or act like.”

Izzy was surprised. “Blythe? I saw her with Josh one night at
the Gull. I think they had come in together and they didn’t look like enemies.”

“That’s a surprise.”

“Well, it was months ago. Or weeks, maybe. Not recently.”

“Well, no matter. The point is,” Birdie said, “Josh wouldn’t have known who was behind his firing. Elizabeth Hartley is the consummate professional. She would have assumed the responsibility for it. I don’t think she would even have hinted that Blythe pushed for it.”

They all thought about that as they walked up the winding street, listening to Abby’s delightful new sounds.

Elizabeth was the headmistress. She was the one who had fired him. That was a fact.

She was the one Josh Babson would hold responsible. “That’s an assumption, though,” Izzy said. “We don’t know that.”

But what they did know was another fact: although Elizabeth fired him, it was Blythe Westerland who had forced her hand.

*   *   *

“Maybe I’ve been wrong about Josh Babson,” Nell said to Ben that evening. “Elizabeth fired him. She would be his target if he was seeking revenge. I go back and forth. My logical, rational mind tells me I’m misjudging him. Yet I can’t shake this feeling I have about him. It refuses to let go of me.”

They were driving over to the yacht club. Ben had to pick up some things he had left on the boat, and the club was having a seafood special that Ben found difficult to miss. But mostly they both craved quiet time together to try to make sense of the turbulence in their town.

“I don’t think I’ve spoken two words to Josh Babson. Ham seems to think he’s an okay guy. He wouldn’t have hired him if he didn’t.”

Nell had had the same thought. But it didn’t seem as simple when mixed with other thoughts. “Jane thinks you’ll like his paintings. She said he paints beautiful seascapes.”

She told Ben about seeing him that morning at the beach, working on one.

“Maybe I’ll stop by the Brewster Gallery one of these days. Meet the guy.”

“But not to buy any paintings, Ben. We don’t have any walls left.”

“Where there’s a beautiful painting, there’s always a wall, Nellie, dear.”

The yacht club parking lot was nearly full, a tribute to the chef who had recently moved over from the Ocean’s Edge and was now giving the Edge some healthy competition.

Ben parked beneath a lamplight and they walked through the early-evening light to the clubhouse.

Liz Palazola Santos, the club manager, met them just inside the dining room door.

She hugged Ben and Nell. Annabelle Palazola’s oldest daughter was as competent and gracious as she was beautiful—and everyone connected with the Sea Harbor Yacht Club was grateful that her marriage to wealthy contractor Alphonso Santos hadn’t taken her away from them.

“What a sad week,” she said. “I can’t quite get my arms around it all. It’s so awful. Blythe had just been in here that very day. She’s been a regular for the past few months. There were certain nights we could set the clock by her. But before that, too, when she was in town. Actually even before I was manager—back in my hostess days. I can’t believe anyone would want to kill her.”

“Were you two friends?” Nell asked.

Liz considered the question, then answered carefully, “No. I certainly make an effort to be friendly to everyone who comes here. I try to learn people’s names, a little bit about their families. But Blythe was very self-contained. It was almost as if she didn’t need friends. From what I know of the family—the Westerland men—they were that way, too. Strong, powerful men who had a habit of getting their way.”

“Except Blythe was a woman. But the other description seems appropriate,” Nell said.

“Yes,” Liz said. “But she played with power quite adeptly herself.” The manager started to say more, then held back. “Never speak ill of the dead, my mother always said.” She turned to Ben. “Anyway, I noticed you got out on the water today. A good sail?”

“Short but good.”

“Saw Sam. But who was the other man? He looked vaguely familiar and I’m trying to get better at keeping everyone straight around here. It makes my job a lot easier.”

“He was a friend of Cass. His family used to vacation up here, but that was before your time.”

“Good.” She laughed. “One less face to remember.”

“Is there a lot of talk around here?” Nell asked. “Of Blythe, I mean.”

“What you’d expect, I guess. I talked to the staff this morning, encouraging everyone to keep things as normal as possible. And to avoid discussions about it.”

“The best remedy—the only one—is to find out who did this. It’s the only thing that will get the town back to normal,” Ben said. “The only thing.”

“But in the meantime there’s this awful tension. I feel it everywhere, no matter what I tell the staff to do or not do.”

Ben looked over to the bar and the small patio that opened off it. “Liz, I don’t have my glasses on. Is that Chief Thompson on the patio?”

Liz nodded. “He was waiting for someone. Dr. Hartley, I suspect. He had a dinner reservation for two, but he told me a few minutes ago to cancel it. He decided to have a fish sandwich in the bar and then get back to work. The poor guy—he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

“The weight of Sea Harbor, for sure,” Ben said.

They thanked Liz and walked through the bar and out the open sliding doors. Jerry was sitting alone at a high-top table on the small
bar patio, his back to the bar and any customers who might be inclined to join him.

“Jerry,” Ben said, coming up behind him.

Jerry turned around and looked at them, then smiled a greeting.

Nell gave him an unaccustomed hug. “You look like you need that,” she whispered in his ear.

Jerry managed a small smile. A half-eaten sandwich sat on the plate in front of him, a half-drunk bottle of beer beside it. “You’re both a welcome sight. I was going to give you a call. Can you sit for a minute?”

“Sure,” Ben said, and ordered two glasses of wine from the waitress.

Jerry was quiet for a moment, his eyes intent on his blunt fingers tapping the table. Finally he looked up. “I have a favor to ask. Both of you, really.”

“Sure. Anything.”

“It’s about Elizabeth,” he said.

Nell felt a small stab of worry. The look on Jerry’s face was haggard and sad.

She and Ben waited while Jerry seemed to play with a jumble of words in his head, searching for those that would make the most sense.

“This was a difficult day for her. No, worse than that. It was hellish. For me, too . . . and I need, hell, I don’t know what I need. I’ve never been faced with this before.”

The conversation lapsed while the waitress set the wineglasses on the table and brought a fresh beer out for Jerry.

He continued. “You were there yesterday when Teresa Pisano had her outburst in the parking lot—so you know that she’s causing some trouble. She’s in the station every day. She’s a little goofy, she overreacts, says things that don’t make sense, then refuses to explain them. She’s sure Elizabeth is in it for the ‘money,’ whatever that means.

“But it’s more than Teresa, really. It’s the whole investigation.
It’s what happened that night and why. The whole thing is thorny and touching people we know.” He coughed slightly, a gesture to clear the sadness in his voice.

“It’s . . . it’s hovering over Elizabeth. Blythe very much wanted her out of that job. People have come in, told us Blythe was talking to people, waging her own private campaign to get rid of Elizabeth. It was a power thing, I think. But I don’t know why. Not yet, anyway. You’re on the board, Nell. You know some of this.”

Nell nodded. “But Elizabeth has far more supporters on that board than detractors.”

“Sure she does. She’s a good woman. A wonderful woman. But she has landed smack dab in the middle of this. She . . .”

“She can’t be a suspect,” Nell said, but her words fell off as she realized that of course Elizabeth was a suspect. Not the only suspect, but one that the police would have to pay attention to. Not to be arrested now, but certainly to be questioned. And maybe questioned again and again. And she was Chief Jerry Thompson’s close friend—his “lady” friend, as Esther Gibson would gently put it in the days to come. Gabby and Daisy’s April-December romance couple.

The chief continued. “I’ve put Tommy Porter in charge of large chunks of the investigation. I need to step back a little. I know how people talk, how they think. Even good people, and I can’t let the force suffer because of what people might see as signs of impropriety—though I’d quit my job in a New York minute to be able to stand by her side. But it’s Elizabeth who’s taking the lead on this.”

He leaned back and swilled down half a bottle of beer. Ben and Nell sipped their wine, the table weighted down with thought.

Jerry’s smile was sad. “She doesn’t think we ought to see each other for a while until this thing evens out a little. Tommy had to go to her house and talk to her,
question
her. And he’s probably going to have to bring her in to the station. It’s awful for her. I tried to tell her we would be discreet, but she is convinced we can’t be seen together, and she’s adamant. A stubborn woman. She needs me right now—and I can’t help.”