Trimmed With Murder (17 page)

I
zzy ran out at the first honk, and they drove down Harbor Road to the Ocean's Edge restaurant—just a long enough drive for Izzy to chide Charlie about the smelly coffee cups and paper trash littering the backseat. She stacked the papers up neatly, shoved them into a portfolio, and set them on the floor.

“Sisters,” Charlie whispered to Nell. The message that he liked having one was clear.

As he pulled into a parking space, Nell suggested she'd like a chance to look at the portfolio, grease and all. Charlie agreed and she reached behind the driver's seat, collecting the package and setting it on the floor next to her bag where she wouldn't forget it. Then she remembered the books, and said she'd be happy to take those off his hands, too.

She'd be happy to replace them with sandbags.

•   •   •

The Ocean's Edge was humming, the sounds of silver and dishes and glasses competing with the happy chatter of diners being well fed. Izzy, Nell, and Charlie walked in, shutting out the cold and welcoming the warmth from the large stone fireplace.

“It looks full,” Izzy said, peering into the crowded dining room. The restaurant was a Sea Harbor landmark on prized real estate, the view over the ocean and harbor pier extraordinary, but it was the amazing chefs that brought people all over the north shore to the seafood restaurant.

Charlie read the blackboard sign in the foyer highlighting the luncheon specials, his stomach growling along with the words. “I don't even know what some of these words mean.” He leaned closer and read out loud:
“Lobster-roe noodles, bucatini truffle crusted tuna?
”

Nell laughed. It was true the menu had become slightly more exotic since Don Wooten became the sole owner. But it had old favorites, too—lobster rolls, chowders, oysters on the half shell—even a steak sandwich. “You'll love everything. Great chowders and bisques, sandwiches. The fried oyster sliders are out of this world.”

“That's if we can get a table,” Izzy said, her eyes canvassing the crowded room. She was already feeling pangs of hunger that would settle for nothing less than the Ocean's Edge.

“For you? No question about it, Izzy,” said a familiar voice behind them.

Izzy spun around with a start and grinned into the face of the restaurant owner.

Nell smiled. “Don, you never fail us, do you?”

“I save my favorite table for favorite guests,” he said. He welcomed Charlie with a handshake and gave Izzy and Nell hugs, then motioned for them to follow him as he wove his way through the tables, leaning to the left and right to greet friends and neighbors and first-time diners, smiling and never losing his stride. He motioned to a tall, willowy waitress. “Arlene, you take good care of these special folks,” he said.

The table was perfect, as promised, right next to the bank of windows and doors that would be open in the summer to the restaurant's wide porch. Today they offered an endless view of the water, as if the ocean were theirs alone. Nell never tired of it.

A basket of fried Ipswich clams arrived unbidden and Nell tried to find Don's eye to thank him. The restaurant owner was intuitive. As the city attorney's husband, he was keenly aware of everything going on behind the scenes this week, but he wisely concentrated on food today, not murder.

And she could see the relief on her nephew's face.

Izzy ordered her usual, the lobster salad, and Nell decided on the same. But they regretted it slightly when a long plate of fried-oyster sliders smeared with chili-lime aioli and topped with pickled onion and sprigs of arugula was set down in front of Charlie.

Charlie swooned.

Izzy looked into her brother's face. For a moment she said nothing, just enjoying the pleasure she saw there. And then she said softly, “See what you've been missing?”

The words were a surprise, even to Izzy herself. The emotion they carried was still thick and poignant. And it had little to do with food.

Charlie sat still, staring at the oysters, as if somehow they'd find a voice to help him out.

“Izzy,” he finally said, finding her eyes. “Izzy, I know I missed a lot. But I couldn't come here, or to Kansas. Anywhere. I was a poor excuse for being anything, especially a brother or son. I didn't have much control over me, is how I saw it. And when that has an impact on other people's lives . . . well, then the best thing might be to bow out for a while.” He stopped, fiddled with a fork, moved the tines along the tablecloth. “I needed to find the
me
that used to be, the one who teased you and pulled your hair and used my whole allowance to buy you the best Hello Kitty birthday present I could find. And then—then I need a reentry plan,” he said finally.

The waitress named Arlene was back and the moment faded, then passed. “Okay, here's what I have,” Arlene said. She put four tall elegant beer glasses on the table, one in front of each of them, then picked up a pitcher of beer from the tray. “This beer is from that nice man in the corner. It's a
gueuze
,” she added, clearly proud of her pronunciation. She explained while she filled the three glasses. “The man insisted they'd be perfect with seafood, but especially with the oysters, and he definitely knows his beer, I can vouch for that—he drinks a lot of it.” She grinned and walked away.

Nell looked over to the corner and into the wide beefy wave of Stu Cummings. She nodded, lifted her glass in the air, and smiled back.

He wasn't alone. His wife, Helen, was there, and also Barbara and Garrett. A family gathering.

Charlie glanced over, too. He looked hard at the group. Nell couldn't read his expression, his face partially hidden behind his beer glass. But his eyes spoke volumes. Charlie Chambers clearly didn't like their beer benefactor—or anyone sitting with him.

•   •   •

Later, after finally pushing away plates that once held slices of airy lemon meringue pie and collecting the credit card receipt, Nell excused herself. She'd meet them at the front of the restaurant, she said.

She hadn't seen Stu since Amber's death, although Ben mentioned seeing him at the courthouse as he dropped some papers at Rachel Wooten's office the day before. Stu had been headed in to the attorney's suite and had seemed rushed, so the conversation consisted of polite expressions of sadness. It was her turn.

Nell headed over to the table where the Cummingses had been sitting. Stu and Helen were still there, Stu wearing an unusually sober expression. Helen, too, sat still and quiet beside him, nursing a martini, a worried look on her face. Garrett and Barbara were gone, their places cleared.

Of course they looked sad, Nell thought. It was a death in their family, a horrible tragic death. Amber was their niece, in spite of the way they might have addressed her in recent days. She had been quick to go to visit Esther, but the Cummingses had been affected, too, and that fact had nearly escaped her.

Helen spotted Nell first. She half rose, a smile fastened to her long, lean face.

“I don't mean to interrupt,” Nell said. “Please, Helen, sit down.”

Stu turned his head around to greet her, his hand outstretched. “Dear, Nell, you sit, too. Good of you to come over.” He grabbed the back of an empty chair and started to pull it out.

Nell shook her head. “I just wanted to thank you for the beer, but mostly to tell you how very sorry I am—all of us are—about your niece.”

For a minute Stu looked confused, as if not sure to whom Nell was referring, and then he quickly recovered. He nodded vigorously, a slight flush of embarrassment crawling up his neck. He ran a finger along the inside of his starched shirt, pulling it away from his neck. “Yes. It's a tough week. Awful. Terrible time. Horrible for that girl. We didn't know her that well, but she sure didn't deserve to die like she did.”

“No, she didn't. She clearly had a difficult life—as did her mother.”

Nell waited a minute to see if there was any acknowledgment of Amber's mother. A simple nod that yes, a beautiful young woman had had a tragic life.

Stu picked up his napkin and set it down again.

Helen drank the last of her martini and looked at her husband's discomfort. “Yes,” she said politely, her face suggesting nothing more needed to be said. She fingered a broach on her lapel nervously.

“Please let us know if there's anything Ben and I can do—” Nell said.

Stu wiped his forehead with the napkin and forced a smile in place. “Thanks. Father Northcutt asked about a memorial service down the road, but we're not sure that's for the best. It might simply be prolonging a sad time. The family has already felt closure, I think.”

“I don't know if any of us will feel closure until the person who did this is caught,” Nell said. “It's tragic for a life to end that way, and awful for the whole town—the fear, the rumors, the way people look at each other. Chief Thompson is working day and night, but until he finds who killed Amber, we will all be in a kind of limbo.”

Later, Nell wasn't sure what part of what she said had upset the usually genial Stu, but as she talked, his eyes narrowed and his voice rose a decibel louder than comfortable in the tasteful restaurant. “It better be soon, Nell,” he said. “I hope the police know what they're doing. I have a business to run and they're everywhere, upsetting my staff, crawling all over the nurseries, as if the girl ever even set foot in them. It's upsetting. And makes no good sense. My unflappable sister, Barbara, is about ready to explode. She can barely get her work done, and says the files are a mess now. Garrett O'Neal is working fourteen-hour days getting things back in order.”

Helen sat quietly beside him, a worried look on her face, but Nell noticed one strong hand reach out and rest on her husband's arm, as if calming him, protecting him from being too excited, wanting the conversation to end. Her grip was firm, and Stu finally sat back in the chair and took a drink from the water glass Helen pressed into his hand.

Nell was relieved when he stopped talking, aware that others sitting nearby could hear him.

But Stu wasn't finished. “You have to understand the upset this has caused to everyone in our family, Nell. We're wondering why they aren't out looking at Amber Harper's associates or friends. Who knows what kind of ruffians she knew? What kind of trouble she might have gotten herself into? That's where the focus should be, not at upstanding members of the community. I'll tell you this much: if they don't start looking, I will.”

“Stu,” Helen said, “your heart.”

Nell lowered her voice, hoping Stu's blood pressure would lower along with it. She spoke calmly. “Of, course, Stu. Investigations are hard on everyone. And Jerry doesn't leave stones unturned. You know that. It's not just your employees. He's talked to all of us.”

Stu took another deep breath and shook his head. “Sure, you're right, Nell. I know it's hard on you, everyone else. I know your nephew was her friend and they're probably checking him out good and hard. But sure, the police chief is a good man, like you said. All I'm saying is it's wicked hard on the staff, the landscapers, that's all. I just thank the good Lord my mother wasn't here to see the way the Cummings name is being bandied about, connected to a murder like this. She'd be mortified. Humiliated.”

Helen looked up at Nell, a slight rebuke in her tone at upsetting Stu. “It's taking a toll on us. Tempers are short.”

“Of course,” Nell said. “And it's especially difficult for those who knew Amber.” The conversation was uncomfortable, the focus not what Nell had expected it to be. She hastily repeated her offer to help—although it seemed a meaningless gesture now—then excused herself and walked away.

But the conversation stayed with her as she walked out to claim her coat—and it would linger into the day. Amber was Stu and Barbara's niece.
Flesh and blood
. A fact that seemed to somehow be missing in their distress over the tragic events. She thought of Izzy, Charlie, and their older brother, Jack. How intimate her tie was to each of them and would always be, no matter what they did or where they were. It didn't matter. They were family.

Charlie and Izzy were waiting at the front door, bundled up and ready to go.

The parking lot was busy, and they walked their way around the moving and parked vehicles slowly.

“Hey, there's my twin,” Charlie said as they neared a crowded row of cars. He pointed to a shiny silver BMW, then admitted, “Well, not exactly a twin. Mine's used, rebuilt, a few years older. But hey, they say Bimmers are like fine wine—they get better with age.”

It wasn't until they stopped to admire the shiny new version of Charlie's car that they noticed Garrett O'Neal and Barbara Cummings standing next to it, talking.

The two figures were shadowed by a Range Rover, their figures almost invisible in its height. The conversation looked serious, their faces close together. Barbara seemed to be controlling the conversation at first, her face unreadable, her demeanor controlled as always, but her body language registered displeasure. She had lifted her arm, a finger moving slowly in the air, a teacher getting a point across.

Garrett stood still, listening, nodding. Finally he wound his fingers around her wrist, gently pulling down her arm. He took her gloved hand in both of his, holding it still.

Barbara looked surprised at first. Then slowly took her hand back.

Garrett's voice was measured, his words slow and carried by a wind that whipped up off the water, carrying them the short distance to where Nell, Izzy, and Charlie lingered.

“I've promised you everything would be all right,” he said. “It's under control, just as it always is. I know numbers backwards and forwards. Nothing gets by me. Nothing. You need to trust me more, have more faith in me.”

“Faith in you?” Barbara's expression was curious now, as if she wasn't sure who this man was who was speaking to her.