Trimmed With Murder (21 page)

Cass got up to refill her bowl. “Maybe she discovered the staff wasn't being paid enough. And Amber might have wanted to change that—somehow that seems like something she might want to do. But it would affect the company's bottom line.”

“That does sound like something she might do,” Nell agreed.

“Dessert,” Izzy said, stopping the flow briefly. She had baked chocolate chip cookies that day, huge and chunky, a skill she was diligently perfecting now that she had a sweet toddler to impress. She cleared away the soup bowls and set a plate of the cookies on the coffee table, and without a word, knitting baskets and bags were magically unearthed. In minutes half-finished yarn ornaments—snowmen, lobsters, sailboats, and fish—were lined up on the table alongside skeins of soft merino wool in all the joyful colors of the season.

“Have the police talked to Andy Risso?” Birdie asked. She was attaching a yarn hook on her completed whale, smiling at her handiwork before adding it to the basket of finished ornaments.

Cass nodded. “According to Pete, the police talked to all of them—him, Merry, Andy. Amber had hung around the gazebo that night, listening to the Fractured Fish play. She'd been nice, Pete said, though not very talkative. They told the police that she was alone at the time and seemed to be worried or sad or something. But she had liked the music. Andy said she helped him carry some equipment to the dolly.”

“So, that was it?” Izzy asked.

“They saw Andy hug her. But he hugs everyone, Pete said. Not a big deal.”

That was true, Nell thought. Andy was a hugger; there was nothing unusual in that. But the embrace Nell had witnessed when he and Amber stood near the drum cases seemed more familiar than Andy's usual greeting. Certainly more emotional.

Nell pushed aside the image and concentrated on casting off the last row on her boat's sails. The tight stockinette stitches were perfect, and the sailboat would be stiff enough when she was finished to hang proudly from the tree.

“Charlie said he didn't see Amber again that night, not after he stormed off, grabbed some beers from a stranger's cooler, and almost ruined his hand.” Izzy's tone held a rebuke and sympathy at the same time—a sisterly response.

“She seemed to have been swallowed up in the crowd,” Birdie said. “When we left, it was bigger than when we came. That tent was bursting, people warming themselves beneath the heat lamps and spilling out onto the paths through the trees.”

“Were the Cummingses still there?” Izzy asked.

“I'm sure they were,” Nell said. “Since this was their idea, Stu and Alphonso felt a responsibility to hang around.”

“Amber told me she had to talk to someone that night,” Birdie said. “She was looking at her watch when she said it, as if it had been planned.” She replayed the event in her head. “She was upset. She talked about bad things happening. She seemed pressed to do something about it and thought that talking it over with someone might help. I suppose what she said would fit with what we've talked about tonight—with messy books and a company that might have problems—but somehow . . .” She shook her head, trying to feel the emotion she'd felt that night. The distress on Amber's face. “Somehow I don't think it was about her inheritance.”

“Then what?” Izzy pulled a skein of pure red wool yarn from her bag. A perfect hat for her snowman. With barely a glance down she began looping the yarn onto her needles, pulling it in place. And then the next and the next.

Nell watched her. Loop after loop. That was what they were doing. Were the loops too loose? Maybe all of them, including the police, were walking down the wrong road. She tuned back in to the conversation and wasn't at all surprised when Birdie answered Izzy's question by mirroring her own thoughts.

“If not the inheritance, then what? I'm not sure, but somehow I don't think Amber was anguished about the nurseries that night. Intuition, maybe, but we were going to meet the next day—and I certainly know nothing about Cummings Nurseries.”

“Birdie is doing exactly what we need to do,” Izzy said, picking up on the thread. “We're not thinking outside the box—it's all been about her inheritance, who it affected, and why. That's logical, sure, and a place to start. But maybe we're not seeing things right in front of us. What else did Amber do that week?”

“She went to the cemetery to see her mother's grave. But what else? Where was she when she wasn't at the office?” Cass asked.

“She could have gone back to the grave site,” Birdie said slowly, her mind replaying the conversation she'd had with Amber the night she died. “She talked about her mother. Ellie was on her mind, and in a ponderous way, I thought. A troublesome way.”

“Maybe she was coming to grips with her mother's dying and not being able to be here before she died. Maybe she was putting together the pieces of her mom's life, the things she had missed out on—the things her mother had missed out on—and wanted the picture complete before she left.”

But the truth was, none of them had any idea what it was like to be Amber, a grown daughter of a mother she had never known in an ordinary sense. The woman who had given her life but, except for a few early weeks, had never been able to hold her, to take her to a park or bandage scraped knees. To express her love.

But maybe, when they had followed her footsteps to find her murderer, they would discover some pieces of that life as well.

“C
ass said she could get away from the office for a couple hours and she insisted on going along with us,” Birdie said. She stepped out of her furry boots and followed Nell into the kitchen. “I told her we'd pick her up at her office.”

Nell handed Birdie a mug of coffee. “Cass acts tough, but she can't erase what she and Danny saw that morning. I'm glad she's coming with us.”

Birdie looked at an arrangement of holiday greens on the island. “That's a lovely display, Nell.”

“A sweet girl at Cummings Nursery put it together for me. It'll be fine outdoors, she said. The place looked festive and humming with business when I picked it up. I think Stu's complaints over the police questioning his employees were a bit overblown.”

“The master doth protest too much?”

“Maybe. Although I don't know how his pestering the police would help anything.” Nell poured a generous stream of half-and-half into her coffee. “Do you?”

“No. But it could be that Stu is like any business owner and truly wants people out of his hair—what little he has left—so he can get on with growing his empire.”

Birdie sipped her coffee and looked out the window. It was another cold December day, but sunny, without a cloud in sight. The early snow had all but disappeared, and from the warmth of Nell's kitchen, one could almost imagine it was a spring day instead of a few weeks before Christmas.

“What's wrong, Birdie?”

“I sat in Sonny's den for a longtime last night, wrapped in a blanket, cozy and warm and looking at the moon—and thinking about the whole Cummings clan, including Amber, Lydia, Ellie. It's like a Shakespearean play. So many relationships to sort out. Even Garrett O'Neal—an outside who's an insider.”

And Charlie, Nell thought. An outsider, too. But certainly a part of the drama. An outsider who was an insider.

“I went over everything we had bandied about in the yarn shop—imagining each piece of the puzzle as pieces of yarn. Trying to figure out how one works with the other, and how they make a whole.”

“And?”

“And I got a giant headache, drank a glass of warm milk, and went to bed. But before I did, I felt confident that we have almost everything we need. Almost. There is something that Amber said to me the night she died that is trying to make itself heard, but when I focus on it, it slides away, just beyond my reach. But we'll reach what we need eventually. And then we'll untangle the mess.”

“Are you saying that you think the murderer is in that pile of yarn, in that web of relationships?”

“Or on the periphery where we might not see him yet. But connected. Yes.”

•   •   •

They put the arrangement of greens in the trunk and picked up Cass at her office near Canary Cove. Halloran Lobster Company was housed in a low modern building right on the harbor waters. Cass had built it on land she'd inherited from an old fisherman.

Driving into the parking lot, Nell reflected on the irony of it. Cass and Amber had both come into inheritances. Cass had used hers to expand her company, to build a much-needed office, and had given some of the land to the town to build a children's park and memorial garden. Nell wondered what Amber would have done with hers. Sold it and used the money to benefit herself and others? Gone to school? Or stayed in Sea Harbor and become a part of the Cummings empire? Nell tossed out the last possibility almost before it entered her mind.

Cass came out and climbed into the backseat, chewing on a bagel. “We're starting to walk the road. That's what Danny calls it in his mysteries. Following Amber.”

Birdie nodded. “She's the one with the answers, Catherine.”

Nell drove to the edge of town and up the winding road she had traveled just a few days before, the road Amber had traveled. The road to Ocean View. The familiar trademarks were there, the trees lining the road and a couple of miles later, the tall iron fence and the carved
OCEAN VIEW
sign that indicated they were close. She drove past the guardhouse and along the tall security fence surrounding the campus to the cemetery at the top of the hill. The wooded area was crisscrossed with winding pathways, memorial benches, and narrow road signs that allowed visitors to find the memorials, to be alone in secluded spots.

Birdie spotted the hawthorn tree and Nell pulled over to the side of the narrow road, turning off the engine. In the distance they spotted several joggers, a bicyclist here and there, and heard the sound of a motorcycle.

They sat in quiet for a few minutes, looking out at the evergreens, the tended pathways. The carefully manicured hedges with their tops trimmed off even as winter was making itself known.

Nell looked over at Birdie. She had shifted in the car seat and was looking back the way they came, toward the Ocean View campus, just visible through the trees. “What do you see?” she asked.

“Something Amber and I had talked about that night at the harbor party. I'd almost forgotten about it—it hadn't been important at the time—but seeing Ocean View today brought it back.”

Cass leaned forward with her elbows on the back of the seat so she could hear.

“Amber asked me about a plaque in the main lobby of the nursing home. She wondered about the inclusion of the Favazza family name on it. I explained the family connection, then congratulated her on her excellent memory. What child remembers names on a plaque she saw years ago?”

“I suppose it's unusual but not impossible,” Nell said. “Amber left Sea Harbor when she was, what? Sixteen or seventeen?”

“Yes. She was just a teenager.”

Nell and Cass listened.

“I suppose an observant visitor to the lobby might remember the frame or plaque itself, probably not the names on it unless it was your own family or friend. But here is where it falls apart. The plaque Amber described—the ornate, showy piece—was put up at the sixtieth-anniversary celebration of Ocean View, the year they remodeled the lobby. I was there. I remember. And that was seven years ago.”

There was quiet in the car.

“There was an old framed list years ago,” Birdie went on, “but it was stuck in a hallway somewhere where no one would notice it. Amber described the glitzy, gold-edged one that hangs in the lobby now.”

“So Amber was there. Priscilla Stangel wasn't seeing a ghost,” Nell said softly.

Birdie nodded. Then she turned and explained to Cass what Esther had told them. “We all thought Priscilla was mistaken. She's older than sin and can't see well.”

Cass glanced back to the edge of the Ocean View property. “But how could Amber have gotten in? That fence would be almost impossible to scale.”

“And why would she want to go inside?” Nell added. But she'd no sooner asked the question than she thought she knew the answer. “Maybe visiting the place where her mother died would bring some comfort to her, since she wasn't here when Ellie died.”

“Yes, I guess that makes sense. Except Priscilla left a later message saying something about Amber bothering the staff, asking questions, and keeping them from their work. She suggested Esther keep her from returning,” Birdie said. “But she somehow managed to get in—and I'm not sure how that happened—I can't imagine people there not being courteous to her. The Cummingses spent a fortune on her mother's care—and it's really a lovely place, if a little extravagant for my taste.”

“If she went back a couple times, maybe she was wearing out a welcome,” Cass said. “But we still don't know how she got in.”

They mulled that over, the questions of “why” and “how” hanging heavy over any reasonable answer.

“If she had mentioned to Esther that she wanted to visit Ocean View, she probably could have arranged it,” Nell said. “I wonder why she didn't.”

Their breath was slowly fogging up the windows of the car, reminding them of why they were there, and Cass suggested they continue the discussion later. She hopped out of the car and took Nell's evergreen arrangement from the trunk, and they made their way over to the small monument.

Esther's stone planter was there, but the squirrels had done serious damage to the arrangement she had planted some weeks before. Nell pulled a plastic bag out of her purse and they gathered up the remains. Cass lifted up the holiday arrangement from the Cummings Nursery and set it inside the vase, tucking some chunks of nearly frozen soil around the sides.

They were so intent on their job, the roar of the motorcycle coming around the path from the other side of the cemetery was a dull sound in the background, blending in with the squeal of gulls and winter wind whistling through the pines.

It was the voice that startled them to attention: “Who would ever have imagined that you three wonderful ladies liked to play in dirt?” he asked.

Cass spun around, dropping several of the silver bells she was attaching to the evergreens. “Jeez, Andy,” she said. “What the h—”

“Andy, what a nice surprise,” Nell said.

“Well, my goodness. What are you doing here, Andy Risso?” Birdie asked. “And why in heaven's name are you carrying a helmet?”

Andy looked down at it, then feigned a stern reply. “It's the law, Ms. Favazza. Don't you get any ideas of riding your bike without one.”

Birdie laughed and looked behind him to a Harley parked near the side of the road, just behind Nell's CRV. “I'd forgotten you ride one of those. I asked Sonny to buy me one, once. It was the only request he ever denied me.”

Andy loved it. “Come next spring I'm taking you out on it. Be ready.”

“Do you ride up here often?” Nell asked.

“Oh, sure. My mother's buried right over there—” He pointed through the trees. “I like coming over and visiting her. Sometimes it's just me and her here. It's nice. We talk—”

Nell felt a startling wave of déjà vu as Andy grabbed a handful of blond hair and snapped a rubber band around it.

She looked toward Ocean View, then back to him. And then she felt several missing pieces land together with a heavy
ka-chunk
.

“You volunteer at Ocean View,” she said, more to herself than to those standing around looking at her. Jake was so proud of his son, she'd heard it in his voice when he told her about it.

Andy picked up her words and looked at Nell, surprised. “Yeah. Long time now. They have a hospice floor and they were good to my mom when she was a patient. Pop and I spent a lot of time there back then. I saw how it mattered to patients when they had visitors. I even thought it mattered if they didn't know I was there.” He looked over at the monument with Ellie Harper's name on it. “Like Ellie. The nurses would kid me about it, but sometimes I thought she knew I was there.”

“You visited Ellie,” Birdie said.

“Sure. Pop came with me sometimes. Sometimes I'd go in on my break when I was volunteering. Ellie was like a member of our family. She worked at the Gull. Then after the accident, Pop kind of adopted Amber. Lots of the shopkeepers knew her. She was a floater, sort of roamed the town more freely than most kids her age. And she'd end up in our place a lot. Sneaking in. She was kind of like a little sis.”

They
took her out in their boat, Esther had said.
They
. She meant Andy and his dad. Of course. She should have put those pieces together right away. Andy was like a big brother. Someone Amber knew and trusted and would hug tightly if she was worried or upset about something—exactly what she was doing the night she died.

Andy was still looking at the monument, and then his gaze shifted to the empty space next to it.

The three women had been so intent on sprucing up Ellie's grave that they hadn't noticed it before, but the area next to Ellie's had been marked off with chalk, outlining the dimensions of a casket. The hole that Amber's body would be lowered into.

Nell rubbed her arms. Beneath her down coat she felt a sudden chill that rivaled the cold around them. It traveled in all directions, circling around her.

Cass walked up and tucked an arm around her waist.

Andy glanced at them, then looked back at the monument at the top of Ellie's grave. “I'm glad Ellie didn't have to know the gruesome way her daughter died.”

His jaw was set, his usually gentle eyes lit with anger. “It's an awful thing.” He shook his head as if denying it would negate the horror of it.

“Amber visited her mother's grave last week,” Nell said, watching his face. “We picked her up, gave her a ride home.”

“I know. I saw you guys leave.”

It was the answer Nell expected. And the explanation for how Amber was able to bypass Ocean View security. “I'm guessing you managed to get her inside Ocean View without a pass.”

Andy stared down at his boots, a lopsided smile on his face. Then he said, “Sure I did. She had the right to come in and revisit this place. It was her mother's home all those years. All the life she had with Ellie—at least what she could remember—was at Ocean View. So I got her a pass the first time. I just explained to the director that she needed some closure. He's kind of a hard-ass, but he said okay.”

“The first time?”

Andy nodded. “It was soon after she arrived, a Sunday, I think. She had come into the bar the night before, that night she arrived in Sea Harbor. Nasty night. I came in late after our gig at the community center to help Pop close up, and there she was, as if she never left. Cold and wet and skinny. She told Pop and me what brought her back, how ambivalent she was about the whole Cummings will. What she really wanted, she said, was a look at the place where her mother died. She wasn't even sure why, but could I call someone over there and get her in? She knew going over there might be upsetting, but she thought she should do it, that it'd be a good thing in the end. I agreed with her. I was going to be out there the next day anyway, so I called and arranged it.”