Death by Cashmere (21 page)

"Pete said she was like that. Upbeat and fun-loving one minute, then sad the next. But Angie would never tell him what was making her sad." Cass smoothed out two rows of knitting and looked at the beginnings of her shawl.

Birdie nodded. "You're doing fine, dear. Now make sure you don't tense up toward the end of your rows."

"I think that's what we need to find out," Nell said. "What was making Angie sad--or mad. And why she was leaving Sea Harbor soon. The police look for things like blood and evidence. But I think if we look into Angie's heart, we'll be closer to finding the truth."

A slight tapping on the back door brought Nell's words to a halt. Izzy stood and walked over just as it opened a crack, then wider, and Sam Perry stepped inside, his tall figure filling the door-frame and his camera bag swinging from a strap around his neck.

"Hi, ladies. Hope I'm not interrupting."

"What do you think, Sam?" Izzy asked.

"It's perfect, Izzy. What a great place. I sure appreciate your doing this for me."

"My friends here would tell you that it's for all of
us,
Sam," Izzy said.

"And that would be the truth," Birdie said. "It will be nice to have someone other than George Gideon keeping an eye on our knitting studio."

Sam dropped the keys on the table. "I've met him once or twice and understand what you're saying, Birdie. I took my students up to North Beach today to take some shots and we ran into him. He seemed to be moving from beach towel to beach towel, grazing the ladies, so to speak."

"Ugh," Izzy said, wrinkling up her face. She glanced at the window, then looked at the clock on the wall. "He should be coming on duty soon. But enough about Gideon. When do you want to move in?"

"Now," Sam said. He smiled. "But I guess the weekend will suffice. How about I come over tomorrow after class and I'll help take the boxes of Angie's things over to her mother's? Then Saturday I can bring my meager belongings over. I don't have much."

"Sam, it's good of you to do this," Nell said.

"Well, the least I can do is help clean up my new home. And I told Izzy I'd look into having the locks changed." He looked over at Izzy. "So it's a date?"

Izzy frowned for a moment, the words sounding unfamiliar. She cleared her throat. "How about an appointment?" she said finally.

Izzy could control her voice and mannerisms, Nell thought, like any good ex-lawyer. But she had absolutely no control over the slight blush that spread down her neck. Perhaps summer was coming to Sea Harbor after all. Or at least it was just around the corner.

Ben arrived home on Friday afternoon. To Nell, it seemed he had been gone a month.

"I should go away more often," Ben joked. He walked out onto the deck where Nell had placed a platter of cheese and crackers and a carafe of sun-brewed mint tea. Nell's hand rested on the small of his back, and her body leaned nicely into his side as they stepped into the late-day sunlight.

"It's been a long week," Nell said. "I'm glad you're back, Ben."

"So fill me in," he said, drawing her down beside him on the swing. "We've a little time before Ben's Colorado fish fry." He leaned forward and poured them each a glass of tea.

Nell sipped the tea, looking over the tops of the trees toward the ocean. "I don't have much to tell that I haven't told you over the phone, Ben. It's more a collection of emotions. Uncomfortable ones. Do you remember the summer that we went out to the ranch for the Fourth of July?"

Ben nodded. "The summer of the tornado."

Nell nodded against his shoulder. "Yes, that one. Remember how we stood outside that day and looked up at the sky while the warning sirens went off in the distance? How the air got heavy and still, and the birds went crazy, chattering and flying in circles."

"I do remember. It was my one and only Kansas tornado. That early part was fascinating and foreboding."

"It was almost like a spell, holding us in suspension. That's what it's been like here, Ben. That eerie calm that you can feel deep down inside. But you know it's not right, and you know it's not going to last. It's going to explode in an enormous black flurry and rip things apart."

Ben touched her hair. "Far as I know, there are no tornadoes scheduled for Sea Harbor, Nellie."

Nell nodded, her head rubbing against his shoulder. Not one tracked by Doppler radar, maybe. Not that kind.

When the phone rang, they both looked toward the house, thinking for a minute they'd not answer it, savor this time alone. But when Ben got up and walked into the kitchen to answer, Nell knew before he called her in that it was a call they needed to get.

"That was Izzy," he said, grabbing the keys to his SUV from the counter. "She needs us."

Nell had been right. A tornado had struck Sea Harbor. Or at least one small part of it.

"What a mess," Ben said, looking around the small apartment that was once Angie's apartment.

Sam and Izzy stood in the center of the living room, surrounded by debris. The books that Izzy had piled on the shelves to warm the apartment were scattered across the floor, some open with their pages bent where they hit the floor. A desk drawer hung awkwardly at the end of its groove, ready to fall. Two small area rugs were rumpled, kicked aside, and cushions from the corduroy sofa had been pulled up at odd angles and left that way, leaning against the back or sides.

Nell picked her way across the room to Izzy's side. She looked at Sam. "You found it like this?"

"We came up to check the door for new locks," Sam said. "And take the boxes of Angie's things over to her mother. This is what we found."

Izzy and Nell walked back into the bedroom area where they had stored the boxes of Angie's things, and Sam and Ben followed.

It mirrored the living room, drawers emptied, bedclothes pulled back, and the mattress was pulled partway off the bed. Izzy walked over to the open closet door where they had stored the boxes of Angie's things. The boxes were ripped apart, clothes and shoes and cosmetics thrown all over the closet floor and trailing out into the bedroom.

Nell's heart sank.

"I should have taken Angie's things to Josie right away," Izzy said, her eyes brimming with tears.

Nell wrapped her arms around Izzy's shoulders. "We'll pack them again, Izzy. It will be fine."

"I wonder if they found what they were looking for," Izzy said, her voice soft. She bent down and picked up a jean jacket that had been Angie's, held it for a moment, then folded it carefully and set it on the bed. She picked up a small cardboard box in which she'd carefully packed a few of Angie's personal things-- some photos, CDs, a few pairs of earrings. She frowned, then fingered through the messy contents.

"What's wrong, Izzy?" Nell asked.

"I packed Angie's iPod in here. It's gone."

"You're sure, honey?"

Izzy nodded. "Positive. And those orange earphones are gone, too."

"Someone did all this for an iPod and earphones?" Ben said. "Doesn't make sense."

"Maybe the intruder didn't find what he was looking for," Nell said, "and he took the iPod for a consolation prize. So silly. So unfortunate."

Nell glanced into the kitchen area and noticed that even the refrigerator had been searched and the freezer door left open. A small pool of water had collected on the floor. Several of Izzy's plates had fallen from the cupboard and lay cracked on the counter.

Izzy's eyes were huge, taking in the chaos that had been a clean, tidy apartment the day before.

"Have you called the police?" Ben asked.

Sam nodded. "There's a bad accident out at the rotary that they're taking care of first. And because no one was living here, it's not a priority, I'm afraid."

"The police probably can't do much," Ben said. He looked over at Izzy. "There's not much damage, Iz. Mostly just a mess." Ben rubbed his hand along the wall. "My excellent paint job is still intact."

Izzy offered a small smile.

"We can clean this place up in no time," Sam added, sounding more enthusiastic than any of them felt. "It already looks better than a lot of places I've lived."

The concern on Izzy's face was obvious. Nell hugged her. "It's okay, sweetie," she whispered. But it wasn't okay--and all four of them were well aware of that. The earlier intruder had done nothing, just let in a sweet little kitten. It had bothered Nell, but there hadn't been much upset and no aftermath that they knew of. But this destruction and disregard was truly frightening. Nell walked across the room and absently picked up some magazines from the floor, her thoughts disjointed and moving in several directions at once. She hoped Izzy couldn't feel her fear.

What if Izzy had been in here? If someone had been here, she wondered, would they have been as carelessly thrown aside as the books and dishes and bedclothes?

"Someone was looking for something," Sam said. "Something that could have fit in a drawer or beneath a mattress or behind a row of books, from the looks of the mess."

"Or in a freezer," Nell said.

"Which narrows it down to a million things," Izzy said.

Sam picked up a plastic garbage sack and walked into the kitchen area. "Well, I'm claiming this room," he said over his shoulder. "The rest of you are on your own."

Nell watched him begin to sweep up the broken pieces of pottery and dump them into the garbage bag, then look around under the sink for other cleaning supplies. She didn't know much about Sam's family, but someone had definitely done a fine job of raising him. And for right now, in this place and time, she was awfully glad he was here.

The trout didn't reach the hot coals of Ben's grill until much later that night. But by the time Nell, Izzy, and Sam walked out of the Seaside Knitting Studio apartment a couple hours later, the rooms smelled of soap and lemon oil, the bed was stripped and the refrigerator emptied out. Once Eddy McClucken from the hardware store had finished putting in the new lock and after they'd stashed seven boxes of clothes, books, and personal items in the back of Ben's SUV, the tired crew called it a day.

"I think showers can wait," Nell announced, not leaving room for arguments. "It's time to go home and feast on Colorado trout. I called Birdie to say we'd be late, but we'd be there. She's in charge."

As sometimes happened at the Endicott home, friends arrived before those who lived there, making themselves at home, and when the bedraggled foursome arrived, Ham had cleaned the fish, Birdie had lined up the martini mixings, and Cass had swept the deck clean of pine needles, lit the gas lanterns along the railing, and put a Norah Jones CD in the player. Archie and Harriet Brandley showed up with a loaf of sourdough bread and an enormous bowl of Harriet's spinach pasta, and Jane had mixed together her special mayonnaise herb sauce for the fish. And Rachel and Don Wooten had come, too, reminded recently that Friday nights at the Endicotts were a fine ending to a long week.

Nell sank into a chair and gratefully accepted the glass of water Birdie offered her, along with the promise that once Ben got mixing, she'd have something better.

"What could Angie possibly have had that someone wanted so badly?" Jane asked after the story had been told and retold. "It doesn't make sense to me. Could she have been in some trouble? Drugs?"

"Angie was honest, almost to a fault," Ben said. He stood at the grill, an old checkered apron covering his shirt and shorts and a basting brush in one hand. The trout sizzled as he basted it with dill butter. "And she was plenty tough on anyone who wasn't."

"That's the truth. I remember when Ted Archer lost his manager's job at the Framingham plant," Birdie said. "It was one of those layoffs to save money, so Tony's grandfather took the higher-paid men and pulled their jobs right out from under them. No warning. It was right before Christmas, I remember. Angie was just a child--twelve or so--but Josie thought she was going to personally take out the old man's eyes. She hated him."

Archie nodded, remembering the story and the people affected by the layoff. "I think Angie held Tony Framingham personally responsible for his grandfather's sins. She didn't have much use for him, that's for sure. And if Angie didn't like you, you darn well knew it."

"Tony?" Jane said, surprised. "He was a cocky teen, but I thought he'd grown up all right."

"Unless you crossed him," Archie said.

"And Angie crossed him?" Ben said.

"She did something he didn't like. I don't know what, exactly, but Tony told her she'd be sorry she ever came back to Sea Harbor."

"But why, exactly?" Izzy asked.

"Well, now that's the question of the hour, isn't it? Tony never finished his threat because yours truly showed up to escort him out of my bookstore, as you yourself personally witnessed, Izzy."

Nell listened to the chatter, but none of the scenarios played out. Not tales of Angie's childhood, her emotional response to injustices, unrequited lovers. None rested comfortably in her mind, nor held a motive for murder. Not even Tony's threat. Although that was something she wished she knew more about.

Gideon, though, frightened her. Everything about him seemed darker since Angie's death, and there didn't seem to be any reprieve. Had he been that dark and sinister before, and they just hadn't noticed? Or was Angie's death creating a cloud over everyone, deserving or not?

By the time the trout was passed from grill to plates and the crispy bread and salad passed around, the only thing in the whole day that made much sense to Nell was the cool breeze, the deck full of lovely friends, and the thought that tomorrow was another day. She felt fairly certain that Tony wasn't the kind of person who could ever hurt anyone, but then, she realized with some surprise, there wasn't anyone in her town she thought capable of killing Angie Archer. But someone most definitely had.