A Finely Knit Murder (23 page)

B
en was working on understanding, but he didn’t see the significance in what Nell had seen in Harry Winthrop’s eyes. He pulled on a shirt and jeans and gave his hair a quick brush.

“I’m not sure, either,” Nell admitted, watching him from their bed. Ben had his mind on other things, she knew. A will with one of its benefactors missing, a friend who happened to be the police chief who was under great stress to find a murderer. And she knew he harbored hidden concern about her, hoping she’d stay safe. Everyone was on edge.

She thought back to the night, to the week, all the way back to a party at a lovely school—a party that had ended in murder.

Dots. All sorts of them. Enough to fill a canvas. With a myriad of lines connecting them.

“I’m worried about Bob,” Ben called from the bathroom, where he stood at the mirror, a razor in one hand and his chin white and frothy. “Danny is, too. He texted that he’d tried to reach him all night, even drove around a little, checking a couple restaurants and bars.” He was trying to convince himself that their worry was foolish. They really didn’t know the guy that well. “Maybe the whole mess got to him and he went drinking.”

But neither of them believed that to be the case.

By the time Nell took a quick shower, dressed, and walked into the kitchen, Ben had the coffee on and was rechecking his messages.

“Anything?” Nell asked.

He shook his head. “I need to go over to the club.” He checked his watch. “Liz thinks someone’s been messing with the keys and they want people to check their boats. I’m picking Sam up on the way.”

“She mentioned that to us.” Nell repeated what she knew and that Liz pretended she wasn’t concerned, but she was. The club was small, the members friendly—something she and Ben had always appreciated. People treated each other—and each other’s property—with respect.

“Liz seems to think there might be a need to initiate some security, new protocols. Members won’t be happy about it. They like the trust factor.”

Ben grabbed his keys and kissed her on the cheek. He waved a hand toward the papers. “What’s all that?”

Nell explained.

“Good, glad he remembered. I asked him to bring bills and financial papers so I can figure the will out. Danny and I also thought, who knows, there might be something there that will give us a better look at who Blythe was when she wasn’t arguing at a school board meeting or dictating relationships. If you get a chance, maybe you can sort through them and pull out what I might need.”

Ben left, then stuck his head back into the kitchen. “Almost forgot. Birdie’s on her way over. She was skipping Annabelle’s today and bringing coffee cakes and knitting.”

Nell frowned. She knew Birdie. Sudden changes to rituals meant more than buttery coffee cake. Which was why she wasn’t at all surprised when Izzy, Abby, and Birdie showed up at the same time.

Abby had been up for hours already, Izzy said, and she settled her down upstairs for a morning nap.

“Is Cass coming?”

“Yes,” Cass called from the front hall, and walked in with a bag of apples. She wore jeans and an old paint-spattered sweatshirt.

“Apple picking?”

“Yesterday. It helps me think.”

“About?” Nell brought mugs and a coffeepot to the table in front of the fireplace.

Cass followed her but didn’t answer. Her expression said whatever it was was still being processed.

It was about Harry Winthrop, Nell suspected. But it might have little to do with her affection for him. Cass was perceptive, and Nell wondered exactly what it was she had perceived.

Cass dropped a set of keys on the table. “My car wouldn’t start. Harry loaned me his BMW.”

“Nice of him,” Nell said.

“No, not really. He owed me. I plastered a hallway full of cracks. It’s payback, I suppose.”

“You don’t look like you’re enjoying it,” Nell said. The
it
was undefined and Cass’s face showed that she knew Nell was throwing her a wide-open question.

She looked at the car keys, then back to Nell. And then she changed the subject. “Did you see Josh Babson at the Gull last night?” She scratched at a spot on her jeans, flaking off plaster residue.

Nell and Birdie hadn’t seen him, but Izzy had, and she had talked with him.

“We talked about his painting that the Mansfields bought. Although he had painted the same spot where Blythe was murdered, it was painted before that. But I wondered about the Mansfields buying it, because they didn’t know that. Josh was convinced they bought it because they liked it and they loved the school. Barrett told him the last thing he saw in the painting was murder—which was exactly what I thought.”

“Hmm. Well, I guess that’s one person’s perspective,” Cass said.

“I think it means they didn’t see a murder there. If either of the Mansfields had been involved in Blythe’s murder, I don’t think they’d have bought a painting to remind them of it.”

It was only an opinion, but it made sense to all of them.

Birdie spoke up. “I think another thing Barrett Mansfield is saying is that the sooner we stop seeing murder on that beautiful campus, the better.”

Nell looked at her. Something was clearly on Birdie’s mind. It resonated in the tone of her voice.

“There are too many casualties of this unsolved murder,” she continued.

Izzy and Cass turned toward Birdie. Her voice was stern now, advocating a serious cause.

Birdie looked around at each of them. “It has to stop. For the sake of the town. For the sake of our friends whose lives have been turned on their heads. And especially . . .” Birdie’s breathing became audible and her face grew so severe that Nell hurried to her side with a glass of water.

“Birdie, take a deep breath.”

“Especially?” Izzy sat on Nell’s slipcovered couch, pulling her legs up beneath her.

“Especially for the sake of the children.” Once the words were out, Birdie’s face relaxed. She took a drink of water and sat down next to Izzy. “Gabby and Daisy found the rest of Elizabeth’s scarf yesterday.”

Izzy’s eyes widened. Nell put down her coffee mug.

Cass forked her fingers through her hair. “Where?” she finally asked.

“At the school. They were rehearsing for the fall festival and when their part was over, they wandered down to the boathouse, doing exploring or some such thing. The kids all play on those rocks.”

Birdie reached into her knitting basket and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside was an exquisite, bright turquoise scarf. “I’m dropping it at the police station on my way home.”

Birdie wanted them to see it first, something Ben would have raised the roof over. Nell held back an opinion. At least Birdie wasn’t letting them touch it.

“Two things,” Birdie said. Her voice was matter-of-fact but heavy with authority, as if she were chairman of the board, making a decision for all. “First, having children—
children
—exposed to this murder in any way is awful. We need it solved and all traces of it gone from our lives.
Now
. And I think we can. I think we have so many things rattling around in our heads that we’re not seeing the forest for the trees. It’s all here. Right in front of us.”

Nell walked over to the kitchen island, listening, and came back with napkins and coffee cake, sliced in thin pie-shaped pieces—one thing in her life, at least, that was neat and easily managed.

“That’s the first thing. Here’s the second—” Birdie’s voice mellowed slightly. “I know it isn’t quite kosher to run off with something that might factor into a police investigation. I’ll get it to them. But in truth, this scarf proves something. It was the actions of some frightened individual determined to put the blame for a murder on someone else. He’s trying to speed up the investigation, too. But in the wrong direction.”

They all looked at the scarf, partially smeared with mud, one edge frayed and torn.

“It’s a foolish attempt. Clearly we’re not working with a hardened criminal here. It’s amateurish.”

“It may be amateurish, but he or she
did
kill someone,” Izzy reminded her.

“Yes, of course.” Birdie’s white cap of hair moved slightly. “And being an amateur doesn’t mean this person isn’t dangerous. My point is if the person is this sloppy, there’s no reason he can’t be found. Immediately.”

She paused for effect, and then continued. “The scarf was probably tossed into the ocean with hopes that the tide would miraculously land it near the scene. And somehow it did that. But the scarf is in decent condition. Muddy, but not something that’s been out there in choppy salt water for a week. And it has no further tears or rips. It’s dirty. And it’s soiled, but probably not from the ocean.” She
smoothed out the large plastic bag on the coffee table, the scarf becoming visible through it. “See that?”

They all leaned closer, looking at Elizabeth’s beautiful knit scarf and remembering the way it had transformed her from a schoolmarm to an elegant sensual woman.

“What are we looking at?” Cass said. “I see mud.”

“Look closer. Right there—” Birdie pointed with the tip of her finger to a spot near one corner. “I think sugar or baking soda or paint—something from sitting in a house or car, not floating in the ocean. Elizabeth wouldn’t have worn it with a stain that night—so it has happened since Blythe died.”

They squinted at the scarf until they were all seeing an off-white smudge, garish against the silky turquoise yarn.

“A workman at the school?” Izzy whispered. “Surely not Angelo.”

Nell’s thoughts turned immediately to an artist with messy, paint-stained jeans.

But the thought didn’t settle comfortably this time. Josh Babson was slowly but effectively becoming more to her than a brooding artist. She was beginning to like him.

Birdie removed the plastic bag from the table and slid it into her purse, her face registering resolve. But more concerning to her friends were the deep worry lines that filled her face.

Nell moved over to the couch. Birdie’s emotions were intensified because of Gabby, of course. The worry, the urgency. The thought that a murderer walked so close to where the girls played and painted and laughed. The worry wasn’t healthy. And it wouldn’t go away, not until they made it.

They took out their knitting—a small Abby-sized sweater in a finely knit wool, long winter socks, and the poncho Gabby was making in class that required a little frogging and fixing. The sound of the needles, the rhythm of the stitches, knitting and purling and yarn overs helped them think.

Angelo’s words returned again, as they had so many times. A
hurt so great that someone would kill to dull the pain—or punish the person who inflicted it. Or struck out in anguish and took a life.

The mental list of people was becoming ragged and worn, so often had they returned to it. They all had motive. They all had opportunity. But none of them seemed likely suspects any longer, no matter how they fared on paper.

Nell, Izzy, Birdie, and Cass were all unconvinced, and without a connection that knit Blythe with one of the people on the list so tightly that the stitches would refuse to come loose, the four women forced themselves to think outside the box, to make themselves invisible, like ghosts, tracing Blythe’s footsteps through her days and nights, listening to what she said, to whom she spoke.

“We’re missing something,” Cass said. “We’ve boxed ourselves in and can’t see beyond it.”

They all agreed. They needed to step back and look beyond the narrow prism they were looking through. They needed to dig into the shadows where they’d tucked aside things they’d seen, facts they’d recorded. Suspicions that caused them sadness.

Nell moved back to the kitchen counter and put on another pot of coffee. She rinsed off a bunch of grapes and put them in a basket. And all the while she listened to the conversation humming in the distance.

Then in her head she heard Chelsey Mansfield threatening Blythe.

Elizabeth Hartley shouting at her in the middle of Harbor Road.

And dear Angelo, his face beet red, his anger and dislike almost palpable.

But it was the party itself, the night Blythe was killed, that came back with the most clarity. Nell followed Blythe as closely as a shadow. Every step she took that Nell could remember. Every word she said.

The thought brought a quick, uncomfortable thump in her chest. The critical moment had been there all along, but
inconsequential, hidden in the banter and warm lights of the evening. Hidden among good friends and food and music.

She repeated each word in her head, then turned her memory to the look on Blythe’s face as she had said them. Nell looked over at Izzy and Birdie, talking in hushed tones, as they picked their way, inch by inch, to a murderer. Did Izzy hear Blythe that night?

Surely Cass did. And ignored it, thinking Blythe was talking to her.

But she wasn’t.

They needed more. An expression, a look, wasn’t enough. It needed a paved road in front of it so it wouldn’t slide off the cliff.

Nell carried Bob’s brown envelope back with the grapes and set both on the table.

Birdie took the envelope and emptied it as Nell explained where it came from.

“There may be nothing of use here,” she said. “But Ben asked me to sort through the contents. Maybe seeing this side of Blythe’s life will help us look at her from a different angle, one that will help us figure out what she
did
. Mary Pisano said Bob used that word. And it meant more than casting a boyfriend aside.”

“Something she did . . . ,” Izzy repeated, giving it a larger space in their thoughts.

“Something she did that brought about her death.”

“And when Bob comes back, he can answer any questions we have,” Birdie said.

The phone rang—Nell’s landline—and they all looked up, somehow thinking Birdie’s words had reached Bob himself.

And he was calling to say he’d be over in a few minutes to help them finish up the puzzle. They were that close.

But it was Ben. He was calling from the hospital.

T
hey had found Bob Chadwick early that morning. The coast guard was doing a routine patrol out near Sunrise Island. Bob was washed up on the shore, still breathing, but unconscious. He’d been beached there for a while—it could have been a day or so—with a severe blow to his head. He must have fallen off a boat. It was a miracle he hadn’t drowned.

“We’re going to stick around here for a while,” Ben said. “Danny and Sam are with me, and Father Northcutt is on his way to see if he can help. But there’s not much anyone can do. He’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Danny?” Nell asked. Ben had been at the meeting with Sam.

“The coast guard called Danny because he was the one who had reported Bob missing,” Ben said. “He came to the yacht club and got Sam and me.”

Ben paused. Then said, “It’s odd. Bob had fallen off a boat—it’s the only way he could have ended up on the island. It probably happened Friday night, because that’s when he went missing. That was the same night the keys were messed up at the yacht club and one of the boats went out without being signed out.”

“I thought they got the keys straightened out.”

“They did. The missing set belonged to an owner who has been out of town for a few weeks. The police are checking, but they think that was the boat that was taken out Friday night. They’ll know for
sure once they examine it, since it hadn’t been used for a few weeks. The security guard keeps track as best he can, though owners can come and go as they please—but they always do a morning check. And all slips were filled Saturday morning.”

Ben talked for a few more minutes, then promised to call back soon and hung up.

They sat in silence, absorbing the news and trying to make sense of it.

“It wasn’t an accident, Ben said. Someone wanted Bob Chadwick dead.”

The word
why
screamed unsaid in the room. And an avalanche of loose pieces of yarn seemed to float around as if to strangle it.

“Why was he on a boat?” Cass said.

“He likes to sail,”
Ben had said the other day. But it certainly didn’t fit his schedule for Friday. At least as far as they knew.

“Mary Pisano said Bob was disturbed about something, someone. Danny sensed that, too. He thought Bob was onto something regarding Blythe’s death,” Birdie said.

“He was meeting someone,” Nell said. She knew they were close. The pieces were scattered, but there. Had Bob Chadwick followed the same trail? A person hurt so badly by something his cousin did that he killed her?

In a short few days, Bob had met nearly all their friends. Casual hellos. He’d gone out with Pete and the others. The person he went to meet Friday night was not a new friend who wanted to have a friendly beer. They were sure of that.

Their thoughts pulled painfully together. They were filled with people and conversations and facts and dates, and narrow lines moving from one to the other, examining the connection. Throwing it aside. Hanging on to it.

Nell stared at the pile of papers. They needed to do something, to keep their minds working, to keep connecting the dots until the picture emerged clear and flawless.

“Let’s see what these tell us,” she said.

They took turns laying the bills and papers out in neat rows. Many were financial statements, mortgage reports, renovation bills for the condo in Sea Harbor. It looked as though Blythe was using her Boston townhome more as an office for the last few months.

More interesting to the women were the receipts and checks and credit card statements—a day-to-day record of where Blythe bought groceries and took her dry cleaning and shopped for clothes. In addition, there was a spiral-bound desktop calendar that surprised them. Nell picked up the calendar and leafed through it.

Izzy looked over. “I’m surprised Blythe wasn’t more high tech. I haven’t used one of those for years.”

The cardboard cover of the calendar was decorated with flowers and birds.

“Who knows?” Nell said. “She was one of the only people on the board whose phone didn’t ring during meetings.” She glanced back at the large wall calendar she and Ben both scribbled things on. “There’s a certain security in paper.”

Izzy laughed. “You’d be lost without that calendar, Aunt Nell.”

“Let’s hope Blythe felt the same way,” she said, slipping on her glasses, her eyes smiling over the top of them. She went back to reading.

“There’s not much here for the last month. Board meetings. Those are in big letters and that’s fitting. She took them very seriously.”

Nell turned back to the summer months. There were plenty of Sea Harbor events. Yacht club parties, meetings with architects, dinners. Tennis lessons both in Boston and Sea Harbor. And scribbled here and there were dates with names of recognizable men.

“They were ever-changing,” Nell said. “She certainly had an array of men at her beck and call.”

“They were probably using Blythe as much as she was using them,” Birdie said. “I don’t think most of them are probably important to us.”

Birdie continued flipping through a stack of bills, some paid,
some still needing to be paid. She stopped at one, frowned, then checked several others. She looked at the calendar. “Nell, check the calendar for August.”

Nell went forward a couple of pages. In one week there were several tennis matches, but they were all crossed out. There was also a line through a dinner event. A charity event at the Boston Mandarin Oriental Hotel was canceled.

Nell looked up. “She seemed to have put her socializing on hold for a week or so in August.”

“Maybe she was sick?” Cass said.

“Maybe.” Nell looked at the beginning of the crossed-off week. There was an appointment at a clinic. This one was not crossed off. And another a week later.

Nell read out loud: “Massachusetts Women’s Health Clinic. Arrange with Bob.” Each item had a phone number, one presumably for the clinic and another for her cousin’s cell phone.

Birdie pulled out several checks and set them aside. “These are made out to the same clinic.” She frowned. “That’s odd,” she said.

“What?”

“These checks are for more than a throat culture or cold. Wouldn’t you think Blythe would have insurance to cover medical expenses? It looks like none was applied.”

Nell shuffled through until she found the receipt. It looked as though Blythe had paid the clinic the day she went in. Nell lined up all the papers next to one another and looked carefully at the dates of the checks, the dates of the appointments. And a computerized receipt that indicated treatment. And a checkup a week later.

They all realized it at the same time, surprise showing on each face. Of course. It made sense now.

Nell looked up. “Her insurance probably wouldn’t have covered the procedure,” she said slowly, pointing to the medical abbreviation on the receipt.

Izzy nodded. “Blythe was pregnant.”

They all knew how Blythe felt about having children. She would
never have them, nor husbands. Never, she’d said many times. Another scar afflicted on her by the Westerland men.

Nell looked over at the bills again, then the calendar. The brief hiatus that her social life took.

August.

Liz’s conversation about Blythe and the guest cottages came back to her in a rush. A dam burst as the dates lined up.

Nell repeated the conversation they’d had with Liz the day before.

“So Liz said she’d been there a couple times with this guy?” Izzy said.

“Yes. The timing would fit. That was probably when she got pregnant.”

“And Bob took her to the clinic in August. Not unusual, since they depended on each other for that sort of thing. But it was Bob, not someone else, who took her, and perhaps that is significant. He clearly wasn’t the man who got her pregnant,” Birdie said.

“I wonder who else besides Bob knew about the pregnancy,” Izzy said.

“Or cared.”

“Or maybe cared a lot?” Nell’s comment brought an eerie, uncomfortable quiet. She looked around the table, and then her gaze came back and settled on Cass. She sat in one of the large slipcovered chairs, scratching absently at the stiff spot on her jeans. Then she stared more closely at it. She looked up and saw Nell watching her. “Plaster,” she said. “Just like on the scarf.”

Cass turned her attention back to the bills and the calendar and checks, into Blythe Westerland’s personal life, now laid out on the Endicotts’ coffee table for all to see. It seemed a violation of sorts.

Nell watched her as she scanned the checks that had been set aside, the calendar, then picked up the clinic report and read it again. Then put it down and looked off into space.

In that moment Nell knew she wasn’t the only one who had heard the story that had haunted her for the last couple of days.

Cass had heard it, too.

Sweet sounds came through the baby intercom announcing that Abby was awake, a welcome break to the ponderous silence in the room. Izzy hurried up the stairs while Nell stacked the coffee cake plates and carried them into the kitchen.

Cass followed her. She stood at the kitchen window, staring out into the gray day.

“Are you all right, Cass?” Nell asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“None of us are.”

“Do you remember Blythe coming over to our table at the party?”

Nell’s memory was crystal clear.

Cass’s was, too.

Izzy and Abby appeared, and attention turned immediately toward a baby who woke up from her naps smiling, nearly every time. Her blond curls were slightly matted, pressed against her head, her cheeks rosy. Nell kissed her on the cheek, but Cass got the first hug. “Godmother prerogative,” she said to Nell, scooping the cheerful baby into her arms.

Nell watched the power of a child. In an instant, terrible thoughts could be pushed aside by a toddler’s joy.

She watched them for a minute, seeing Cass’s lovely face transformed for the moment.

“Take care of her, Abby,” she said to the baby. She turned to Izzy and Birdie. “I’m going to check back with Ben and see if there’s a change in Bob’s condition.”

Izzy and Birdie looked at her, Izzy’s clear lawyerly look in place. They both knew she wasn’t calling Ben. Izzy and Birdie knew exactly what information Nell would be trying to attain. Almost all the stitches were cast on.

Nell stepped into the den and quickly looked up a number in her contact list.

She punched in the numbers, hoping Liz Santos wouldn’t mind being disturbed on a Sunday.

Of course the yacht club manager didn’t mind. Her memory hadn’t served her well, but she had checked the guest cottage log. She was going to call Nell later that day. There were several reservations for the same couple. Or for the gentleman, at least. It was one of those lifetime memberships that the club didn’t do anymore. In the case of this family, there was only one family member left.

Nell scribbled down the name of the family, then stood silently in the den, the dots connecting so loudly it was deafening.

She walked into the kitchen and looked around. “Where’s Cass?” she asked.

Birdie was jiggling the baby on her knee, singing an old nursery rhyme.

Izzy was rinsing the dishes. “Her ma texted her,” she said.

“Mary Halloran texts?” Birdie asked.

“Incessantly,” Izzy said.

“Did she need Cass?” Nell asked.

“She wanted to be sure Cass had her prescription card. She needs to pick up some medicine for Mary later today.”

“So she went home?”

“No. She couldn’t find the card in her purse and thought maybe she’d stuck it somewhere in the car. She’s looking for it.”

Nell walked to the front door and looked out. She saw the backside of Cass in the open driver’s door, digging around.

She walked back into the family room. “Izzy . . . ,” she began.

Izzy nodded before Nell had a chance to say anything. “It fits, Aunt Nell. It’s awful, but it fits.”

Birdie looked over the baby’s head. Her face said that everything they needed sat on the coffee table or in things they’d observed in just one short week—a week that seemed like a lifetime. Maybe they didn’t have proof, but in their minds they had certainty. And the scarf that Daisy and Gabby had found might well provide whatever else the police would want.

Nell walked back to the front door. The car door was still open,
but Cass was standing beside it now, staring at something in her hand.

Nell pushed open the screen door. “Cass,” she called out.

Cass looked up. Her face was filled with anger. She held up what she had found. It wasn’t Mary Halloran’s prescription drug card.

It was a large gold ring holding a Ravenswood B&B key—with Bob Chadwick’s room number on it.