Murder in Merino (12 page)

I
t wasn’t the kind of news anyone wanted to wake up to, especially after the emotions of the day before.

It came in a phone call just as Nell was making her way down the back stairs to the kitchen, barefoot, with her hair still damp from a quick shower.

Ben picked it up. When he hung up a few minutes later, he hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words.

“That was Birdie. Someone broke into Maeve’s house during the funeral yesterday.”

“No. Oh, Ben, that’s terrible. Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. There’s something hauntingly serene about Maeve Meara. And Birdie’s fine, too—she and Harold were with her when she went into the house. She noticed right away something wasn’t right. Her mail had fallen to the floor from a small table in the front hallway, and Maeve is fastidious about things like that.”

Nell poured herself a cup of coffee. “Birdie said Maeve resisted having anyone stay in the house during the funeral. She said she didn’t have anything worth stealing.”

“Apparently the thieves thought so, too, because, as Maeve told the police, nothing was missing, at least as far as she could tell—Jeffrey was a bit of a pack rat. They made a mess, that was all, she said.”

“Not even a television or computer? Jeffrey had plenty of electronics.”

“He did. And that’s why the police don’t think it was an ordinary thief. Tommy Porter was on duty last night, and he sat and talked with Maeve for a while, walking her through things.”

“Are there any hypotheses?”

“Probably the one running through your head right now. That somehow . . . somehow this is connected to Jeffrey’s murder.”

Nell shuddered. “Where was the mess?”

“In Jeffrey’s den. Drawers pulled out, that sort of thing. Birdie said it was ‘interesting’ and that she’d fill you in on everything tonight.”

“That sounds cryptic.”

“It’s probably because Birdie, wise as she is, knows that the details you might want to hear would be of less interest to me.”

Nell nodded, her mind’s eye still seeing a fragile widow walking into a ransacked house. It was unnerving and unpleasant.

But the most unnerving thing of all was that, had the timing been different, Maeve Meara and Nell’s cherished friend Birdie might have come face-to-face with a murderer.

•   •   •

Thursday dinner for the knitters would be simple, and Nell knew no one would mind. She was watching Abby for the afternoon—Red had come along, too—but she also needed some time to clear her head, to try to deal with the fact that a murderer was inching his way into their lives in a most frightening way. She needed time to calm the fear that closed her throat and tightened her chest when Ben told her about the danger that Birdie had narrowly escaped.

Ben had tried a distraction before leaving the house earlier. He brought up their wedding anniversary, something they hadn’t talked about in days. “Nell, let’s just pack a bag and escape to Costa Rica for a couple weeks. Forget about everything else. Just you and me and the deep blue sea.”

He lifted one brow in what he hoped was a sexy way.

Beneath it, his eyes were tired, too.

In one movement, Nell was close enough to feel his breath on her cheek. She wrapped her arms around him tightly.
Costa Rica. Beaches, rain forests. Alone with Ben for days and days.

She sighed, her head rubbing against his chest. “If only . . .”

“If only,” he whispered into her hair. “But this, too, shall pass, Nellie. Soon.”

•   •   •

They finished the Israeli couscous salad in record time, down to the last piece of feta cheese and lone chickpea on the bottom of the bowl. Soft, flaky rolls were washed down with Birdie’s pinot gris, and the meal was applauded.

“It looked way too healthy to be good, but that salad was great,” Cass said. She slathered the last roll with butter and began to collect empty plates.

“You outdid yourself, Aunt Nell. When did you have time to make it? My daughter isn’t usually so unselfish with people’s time,” Izzy said. “She definitely doesn’t like people cooking when she’s there to be cuddled.”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t what?” Izzy’s eyes grew large. Never—not once in all their Thursday nights in the back room—did Nell not cook.

“I didn’t make the salad. Abby, Red, and I went over to Gloucester and bought it at that sweet little tea shop on Pleasant Street. We sat there for a while, just the two of us, with Abby captivating everyone who came in. It simply wasn’t a day for cooking. It was a day for playing with Abby, for marveling at the magnificent schooners in the Gloucester harbor, for feeling the breeze in our hair as I pushed her stroller, and visiting that little park near the water where Abby shrieked with delight when I bundled her into a baby swing and pushed her back and forth. It was a day for clearing my head and being thankful for all sorts of wonderful things. That’s what today was for. Not for cooking.”

For a few minutes the room was quiet. Then Birdie reached over and touched Nell’s hand. She said softly, “Yes, Nell. It was a day for all of those things. A small babe puts everything in its place.”

Nell hadn’t realized the enormity of the emotion that had been trapped inside her until Birdie’s gentle touch released it. She cleared her throat and brushed the moisture in her eyes away. “It’s been a long week, hasn’t it?” She managed a smile.

“Long weeks need chocolate,” Cass said, moving quickly to the side table. She picked up a box of Masala chocolates and passed the pear-shaped candies around.

Nell nodded a silent thanks to Cass. She could always be counted on to lighten an awkward moment. She had almost forgotten Cass’s own emotional baggage—it had all been lost in the shuffle of the past week. She looked at her face, trying to read there how she and Danny were getting along. And how they were both greeting the news that the house on Ridge Road was being passed along to Julia Ainsley, a Sea Harbor visitor who seemed to be overstaying her welcome.

Izzy plopped down on the chair next to her aunt’s. She nibbled on a chocolate and took a sip of wine. “Okay, first, let’s get the elephant out of the room.” She looked at Birdie.

“You want to talk about Maeve’s house, about the break-in,” Birdie said. “Tommy Porter called it a ‘minor’ break-in, and maybe you can’t even call it a break-in because Maeve never locks her doors.”

“
Sergeant
Tommy Porter,” Cass said. “He just got promoted. And it sounds like Sergeant Tommy Porter handled things well,” Cass said. “We actually heard the whole story from the horse’s mouth. Tommy came by here last night.”

Izzy picked it up. “Cass and I were here late, just sort of, well, solving life’s personal problems without men around. Tommy was picking Janie up and saw our light on the way up to the apartment. He probably also spotted the beer and pizza on the table. He and Janie came in for a while.”

“It was a careless break-in,” Birdie said. “That’s what Tommy said, done by someone who probably didn’t even know what they were looking for. Amateurish.”

“Did he have any ideas?” Nell asked.

“First he did a masterful job of calming Maeve,” Birdie said. “That young man is number one in my book. He will go far.”

“But who does he think did it? And what were they after?” Nell asked.

Izzy pulled out the section of the anniversary afghan she had almost completed. The soft red yarn coated her finger. “He wouldn’t commit to anything. He wouldn’t even say it was connected to the murder. But it must have been.”

“Except,” Birdie said, “Maeve never locks her door. It could have been someone walking by, looking for cash. For food.”

“In the den?” Nell said. Birdie was trying to calm everyone’s fears, and especially Nell’s worry over Birdie and Maeve’s close call. But the very thought of it caused the fear to worm its way back inside her. “Birdie, it could have been awful—you and Maeve, you could have—”

Izzy spoke up. “Aunt Nell—you can’t live your life on what could have been. How many times have you said that to me? Birdie is fine. Maeve is fine.”

“But there’s some creep out there who isn’t fine,” Cass said. “That’s what we need to be thinking about. And we still have some dribbles of pinot gris left to help us think it through.”

She walked around and refilled glasses. Cass couldn’t sit still for long. Perhaps hours spent on lobster boats did that to her. But tonight she seemed especially on edge.

Nell watched her circle the room, her Irish features—“black Irish” features, according to Mary Halloran—stunning. High cheekbones and a defined chin were the only traits that linked her to her mother, but those who had known Patrick Halloran said she was the image of her father in looks and temperament—thick dark hair, dark eyes, pale olive skin, and a stubbornness mixed with good humor that served her well as co-owner of the lobster business her grandfather and father had built all those years before.

Nell took a drink of wine and pulled out a sweater she was knitting to add to Abby’s growing collection. Navy blue was difficult to knit on, but it would look wonderful with the baby’s blond curls and would be perfect in the coming months—a warm, cozy cardigan for stroller rides down to Paley’s Cove when the winds blew in from the northeast.

“Tommy said they’ve run into a brick wall with their investigation,” Izzy said. She pulled out a loose stitch and redid it, smoothing it in place with a finger until the tension was perfect. “Actually, it was Janie who said it—Tommy tries to be mum about police business—but it wasn’t exactly news. I think everyone in town knows that there are no good leads.”

“The police have talked to Don Wooten,” Nell said. “He and Jeffrey were having some difficulties with their partnership.” She told them about the night she’d been caught in the middle of one.

“Don got angry? Geesh,” Izzy said. “I don’t ever want to go into business with a friend if that’s what it does.”

“Pete and I argue all the time. It’s part of the game. But I’d never murder him so I could make all the decisions.” Cass paused, then joked, “Well, at least I’d give him a chance to behave first. Seriously, though, I can’t imagine Don doing that. He’s been such a success in the businesses he’s run, and you don’t get to be on top by being a temperamental schmuck. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Of course, that’s how all of us see it,” Birdie said. “Don is our friend—we like him and we’re crazy about his wife, Rachel—so it’s easy to decide that he couldn’t have done it. But what if you didn’t know him? What if all you knew about him was that he was Jeffrey’s partner and he didn’t like the way Jeffrey ran the restaurant—and he threatened him to back down or else. That’s what the police will look at. The facts.”

“Another thing that’s not in Don’s favor—he wasted no time at all in negating many of Jeffrey’s decisions, hiring back people Jeffrey had fired just days before he died. And he did it all before the body was even cold.”

“What did he do?” Cass pulled her hair back from her face and fastened it with a rubber band. Dark strands escaped and curled around her flushed cheeks.

Nell told them in detail about the conversation she and Ben had had the day before with some of the Ocean’s Edge staff.

“Wow. That’s pretty sudden, don’t you think?” Cass asked. “I wonder if he’s making other changes that quickly, before Jeffrey is in the ground. It almost sounds like he’d thought them through and as soon as he had a chance, he went into action.”

None of it sat well, of course—none of them truly believed Don Wooten could be on the wrong side of such a tragic situation. Yet Nell had been wondering the same thing as Cass, and so had Ben. Usually those kinds of business decisions took time and thought, both examined from an HR standpoint and looking at the legal ramifications. Don was a businessman. He would know this. Had he known for a while what he was going to do?

Ben had been especially interested in the vendor accounts the two men had argued about that night. Vendor accounts in a restaurant business were very important, relationships to be nurtured and fostered. What happened there? Nell wondered. She made a mental note to check whether Ben had gotten more information. She knew Ben thought she should talk to Jerry Thompson about the conversation she had overheard. Yet it made her feel like a traitor, and she cringed at the thought of providing any information to the police or anyone else that would draw more suspicion to Don Wooten.

“Who else are the police talking to? And who would have known that Jeffrey was going to be at the house that day?” Birdie asked.

“Jules, of course,” Izzy said. “And maybe Don or others working at the Edge that day. He would have taken time from work.”

“The police have probably covered that,” Birdie said. “But it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have lunch over there tomorrow.” She looked up, her eyes bright at the prospect of clam chowder, but brighter still at the thought that sometimes, as she often said, the devil was in the details. And often those details escaped the notice of professionals who weren’t encouraged to bend the rules.

Nell held up the back of the soft sweater as she watched Birdie’s mind work. All the pieces of her sweater for Abby could be knit perfectly, but the trick was in piecing them together smoothly. And that’s what Birdie was thinking. The pieces of a murder. Gathering them, laying them out, and removing fear and danger from the town they loved.

“If the person who killed Jeffrey ransacked his house, he was looking for something. Something that was worth killing for,” Izzy said. Her logical, orderly thinking had served her well as a lawyer in Boston—and in other ways, too.

“So it was someone who skipped the funeral when he knew the house would be empty?” Nell thought of the waitstaff. They’d all been at the church, or so it seemed.

“Not necessarily,” Birdie said. “Maeve stayed until the last person had left the church hall, as everyone knew she would. It was dark by the time Harold and I took her home.”

“Then pair up the two things. It had to be someone who knew Maeve was at the church—someone who wasn’t at the funeral, or maybe left early—and someone who knew Jeffrey was going to Izzy’s old house that day, who knew where it was, who knew about the back way up the hill.” Cass listed the items, her knitting needles tapping out each one. She stopped and looked around.