Patterns in the Sand (15 page)

 

 

“Now, ladies, for more pleasant concerns, what are you two wanting this fine Friday morning?”

 

 

“I’m waiting on a sack of sourdough rolls for dinner tonight. Margaret is getting them for me—they weren’t quite ready when I came in.

 

 

“And don’t worry your head, Harry,” Birdie added. “We’ll not hang on to a valuable table once your lunch crowd starts coming in. Nell and I are not for loafing today—we’re squeezing in a brisk walk.”

 

 

A brisk walk and time to collect their thoughts, but Nell wasn’t about to share that with Harry. Things weren’t moving fast enough to clear Willow’s name, and if the police weren’t going to do it, then Cass, Birdie, Izzy, and Nell were not above snooping around themselves.

 

 

Harry laughed and wiped his palms on the smudged white apron that covered his ample girth. “Well, you two girls be about your business then and have a nice day. Looks to me like the lunch crowd is early and Margaret will have my hide if anyone has to wait longer than a heartbeat.” Harry turned and walked over to greet a crowd of tourists, who were eyeing the meats and cheeses behind the glass of the deli case.

 

 

“Jane Brewster?” Birdie whispered when he was out of earshot. “Jane and Aidan were good friends. What do you suppose Harry was talking about?”

 

 

“There’s one sure way to find out,” Nell said. “Seems like Canary Cove might be a good destination for us. Who knows what rumors are starting—and once things percolate too long, they become truth in some people’s minds. We can’t let that happen to Willow.”

 

 

 

 

 

The narrow road that ran through the center of Canary Cove was alive with people moving in and out of the small galleries and boutiques. The first building along the stretch was a small cottage that housed the artists’ association office and two small, one-room galleries. The association was manned mostly by volunteers, who handed out brochures, planned special art events, and gave the council a place to meet. Nell waved to Mary Pisano, who was walking inside to put in her volunteer hours.

 

 

Nell and Birdie walked briskly toward the heart of Canary Cove, down past the tea shop and a small pottery shop, heading toward the Brewsters’ gallery.

 

 

Ellen Marks and Billy stood together in front of the Sobel Gallery, and Nell waved across the street. The two were so deep in conversation that the wave went unnoticed. Billy’s brows were drawn together, his head lowered, and his hands on his hips. In front of him, Ellen spoke earnestly, her long hands gesturing as she talked. Finally Billy spread his hands wide, his palms up, and shrugged. He touched Ellen lightly on the shoulder, a gentle gesture that seemed to indicate regret, then turned and walked back inside his gallery.

 

 

Ellen looked after him, then turned and walked slowly back to the Lampworks Gallery.

 

 

“An odd couple,” Birdie murmured beside Nell.

 

 

“They’re longtime friends, I think. Ellen says Billy has a huge heart.”

 

 

“The big heart seems to be delivering unwanted news to Ellen. She looks disappointed.”

 

 

Ellen was walking slowly back to the Lampworks Gallery. Her head was lowered but her body language indicated Birdie might be right.

 

 

“And if Billy was so bighearted, what was the beef he had with Aidan? Bighearted fellows shouldn’t have beefs.”

 

 

“Good point.” But Nell supposed the disagreement between the two men was something they would have worked out, just as Aidan had indicated at dinner. It seemed more of a disagreement about how to exhibit Billy’s paintings—nothing too serious, Nell supposed.

 

 

They crossed over to Jane and Ham’s gallery—right in the center of the row of artists’ shops. The location was second only to Aidan Peabody’s prime acreage. Behind the gallery, Jane and Ham had turned a cozy cabin into a clean white space, a lovely home, filled with paintings and prints collected from fellow artists. It hosted many dinner parties and late-night discussions.

 

 

The door to the shop was open today and several children played on the wooden bench in front. Nell tousled the hair of a redheaded boy and peered into the cool interior.

 

 

Ham stood in front of a display of Jane’s large pots, talking to a customer and absently fingering his bushy beard. Brendan was helping out and stood on the other side of the room, talking to another group of visitors and drawing their attention to a large watercolor painting of Ham’s that Nell knew would grace their own home if they had a wall big enough to hold it. It was a beach area north of town, craggy and dramatic, with enormous granite boulders reaching directly out to the sea. Ham had captured light on water and granite with an agility that reminded Nell of some of Fritz Lane’s paintings.

 

 

Ham looked up and spotted Nell. “Looking for Janie, Nell? She had some association business but will be back shortly.”

 

 

“We’ll circle around and be back,” Nell called and stepped back onto the road. Birdie stood straight, shielding her eyes against the glare of the noontime sun, and peering down the street.

 

 

“Looks like there’s activity at the Fishtail Gallery.”

 

 

Nell followed the point of Birdie’s finger and spotted the Delaney Construction truck sticking out of the small alley beside Aidan Peabody’s closed-up gallery. She fell in step as Birdie headed down the street.

 

 

“It makes my stomach lurch to see police tape circling Aidan’s lovely shop this way,” Birdie said.

 

 

“Ben said the police are about finished and will take the tape down today. They’ve scoured the place looking for clues but haven’t had much luck. With the number of people in and out of Aidan’s gallery—and his sculptures begging to be touched the way they do—I’d guess nearly half of Cape Ann has left fingerprints in that place.”

 

 

“So no fingerprints. What are they thinking?” Birdie paused, then said, “Don’t answer that. I know what they are thinking. For a minute I was able to forget.”

 

 

“Ben said they had hoped to find some note, someone who had heard something, seen something, that would put Willow in the right place at the right time.”

 

 

“Or wrong is more like it.”

 

 

Nell nodded. “She needs us. Right now we’re the only ones convinced she’s innocent. We need to prove our case.”

 

 

As they neared the Fishtail’s front door, Nell heard voices coming from the small dirt alley next to the studio. The alley was more of a driveway that dead-ended beside Aidan’s lovely shade garden and the hilly, wooded land beyond.

 

 

“D.J., what’s going on?” Nell asked. She pushed her sunglasses up into her salt-and-pepper hair.

 

 

D. J. Delaney stood in front of his truck, dark sunglasses shielding his eyes and a yellow pad in his hands. Two men in muscle shirts and deep tans stood on opposite sides of the drive, extending a tape measure between them.

 

 

“Hey, Nell, how ya doing?” D.J. said. Building condos and renovating Sea Harbor property had turned D.J.’s body into a solid mass of muscle. Today a knit shirt covered his chest and his thinning hair was hidden beneath a baseball cap. “We’re getting some stats on this place. I’m thinking the whole damn thing should maybe be torn down.”

 

 

Nell’s hands knotted into balls and pressed into her hips. “And why are you thinking that, D.J.?”

 

 

“See those woods, Nell? It’d be a perfect outdoor area for guests of the inn. Scoop out a clearing and lay flagstone, maybe a little pond. Make it completely private. Beautiful plantings, a place to have morning coffee or lunch. Art lovers from Boston would pay big bucks to have that kind of pampering in the fine little inn.”

 

 

“Inn?” Birdie said. Her eyebrows lifted with her voice.

 

 

“It’s just what Canary Cove needs, Miss Birdie. A sweet elegant inn, right smack in the middle of the artists’ colony. It will help everyone—the artists, the town—”

 

 

“Not to mention your pocketbook.” Birdie frowned at him.

 

 

D.J.’s laugh was deep and gravelly. “Have ta feed the wife and get the kids through college.”

 

 

“How do you propose to get your hands on this property?” Nell asked. “It’s not yours.”

 

 

“Not yet,” D.J. answered with a wry smile. “You wait and see. The girl is guilty as sin. She won’t be needing this land where she’s going, but she’ll sure need the money for lawyers. Now excuse me, ladies. I’ve some numbers to write down.” He tipped his head, dismissing Nell and Birdie, and strode up the alley to his crew, listening and jotting down figures on the yellow pad.

 

 

“Well, I’ll be,” Birdie said. “Okay, let’s get out our own yellow pad. And if we want suspects to deflect attention from Willow, D. J. Delaney is now at the top of my list.”

 

 

Jane had just returned when Nell and Birdie walked back in the front door of the Brewster Gallery.

 

 

“Ham said you stopped by,” Jane said, smiling a welcome. “I was over at the Association office.”

 

 

“We walked right by there but didn’t spot you. Is everything okay? You look worried.”

 

 

Jane waved off Nell’s remark. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ve been trying to stay on top of things that Aidan used to take care of for the art association, and am having a hard time. Just little things, a couple of overdue bills . . . and some numbers that don’t match up. I should probably mind my own business. The reports aren’t due for another month, but I want to be sure the summer arts program is okay and all the bills get paid on time.”

 

 

“You mentioned the other day that the funds were low. Maybe we need another benefit.”

 

 

“Maybe.” Jane leaned back against the glass counter. “Now what brings you two over here on a Friday? You look like you have more on your mind than strolling in and out of galleries.”

 

 

“It’s about Willow,” Nell began.

 

 

Jane’s smile disappeared. She nodded, pushing a lock of slightly graying hair back behind one ear.

 

 

Jane looked the quintessential artist today, Nell thought, dressed in jeans and a colorful Art at Night T-shirt. Her voice, too, was flowing and clear, matching the lines of the smooth, unique pots she displayed in her gallery. She was aging with elegance.

 

 

“That poor young woman. What a tragedy,” Jane said. “As close as I was to Aidan, I never imagined that he had a daughter. There was one night—he’d had a little too much to drink, and we were sitting out on the dock underneath that old roof. We were talking about the insane things Ham and I did when we were at Berkeley, and Aidan matched them with his antics at Wisconsin. He started talking about this thing that had happened to him there—that last semester of school when things get crazy, things happen.”

 

 

“Like what?”

 

 

“Some young gal came on to him, he said. She was everywhere he was, following him around campus, making him dinner, showing up at his house. She was very pretty, he said. Flirty. She told him she was a coed at Wisconsin. Then the night before he was to leave town—he was skipping the graduation ceremony because he couldn’t wait to get back to the coast—she showed up at his apartment. They’d not seen each other for a while because he thought there was something dishonest about her, something not quite right. And he suspected from the way she talked that she might be lying about her age and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

 

 

“So that last night she showed up at his apartment and told him she was pregnant, that she was sixteen and had run away from home. But she loved him, she said, and she wanted to run away with him.”

 

 

Two sides to every story
, Nell thought, thinking of Willow’s grandmother, determined to save her daughter’s image.

 

 

“Good grief,” Birdie said.

 

 

“Aidan was flabbergasted, as you can imagine. They’d been together once, maybe twice. He didn’t say much that night because he was so stunned, just that he needed a few hours and a little space to collect his thoughts. He’d talk to her the next day.”

 

 

“He must have been scared silly he’d be accused of rape.”

 

 

Jane nodded. “There was that, yes. But you know Aidan. He’d do the right thing, whatever that was. So he spent the whole night thinking about it. And the next day he went to the place where she worked, but they said she’d left suddenly. He went to her apartment, but she was gone—lock, stock, and barrel. She disappeared off the face of the earth.

 

 

“Aidan said he’s thought about her over the years, tried to find her. Wondered what happened . . . if there really was a baby. And that was the last time he talked about it to us. He never mentioned it again after that night. Sometimes Ham and I wondered if we’d really heard the story right or if we’d imagined it. But that night, at least, Aidan had been haunted by the thought that he might have a child out there, someone he never had a chance to know or to hold or to love.”

 

 

“Aidan rarely talked about himself.”

 

 

“No, hardly ever. It was a rare night. Mostly, Aidan was all about his art. Even the women in his life never seemed to dominate his attention—they were more like peripheral distractions. At first Rebecca made an impression, I think. But that’s because everything Rebecca does makes an impression.”

 

 

“Apparently Willow didn’t think she made an impression, either,” Nell said. “She never knew who her father was until recently. It must have been difficult, growing up like that.”

 

 

“And living with a mother and relatives who colored her version of the kind of man he was,” Birdie added.