Trimmed With Murder (23 page)

“He could have forgotten about the shift. He's had a lot on his mind these days,” Sam said. “We all forget things.”

Nell half listened to the excuses. She began taking out the rolls, whisking together a citrusy orange sauce for the meat while Jane helped, slicing the tenderloin into juicy slices.

Charlie was fine.

When Ben came over to her side, he reinforced her thoughts. “Don't worry, Nellie. Everything is being blown out of proportion these days.” He put one arm around her shoulders. “We see evil and suspicious faces all over the place. We wouldn't be thinking twice about Charlie taking some time for himself under ordinary circumstances.”

Nell leaned slightly into his side and said, “Dinner's ready. Uncork the wine and call the troops.”

Ben was right, she thought. None of this would be a concern, not if less than two short weeks ago Amber Harper hadn't walked into their lives. And then—been murdered.

But she had.

And sometimes worry was real.

C
harlie didn't call, but he finally answered Izzy's text.

It was after Cass and Danny had taken Birdie home—the weariness of the week weighing on all of them. The Brewsters had called it an early night, too.

Finally it was just the sound of the humming dishwasher. Sam and Ben were drinking a scotch in the den and Izzy was trying to decide whether to leave Abby at her aunt and uncle's for the night or to wake her and take her out in the cold.

But mostly she and Nell were stalling, hoping to hear a car drive into the driveway.

Finally the text came
. I'll be there soon
, it read.

In less than ten minutes, they heard the car drive up and a door slam.

Charlie walked in, kicking off his boots at the door. He greeted them as he walked across the family room, shrugging off his jacket, his attempt to appear normal in place. But he didn't look normal.

He looked like the lone survivor of a grueling boot camp, his hair matted down when he pulled off his hat, his cheeks raw from the cold. He was disheveled, weary, and looking as if he'd lost his best friend.

“Where've you been?” Izzy said, her eyebrows pulled together in a harsh scowl, her worry hidden beneath the scolding.

Ben and Sam had come out of the den at the sound of the door. Ben poured his nephew an inch or two of scotch and put it in his icy hand. “You look like you need this. It'll warm you,” he said.

Nell walked to the microwave to heat up a plate of leftovers. Izzy stood near the island, her arms wrapped around herself as if Charlie had brought a blast of cold into the kitchen—one unrelated to the weather outside.

Charlie straddled a stool and rested his arms on the island, leaning forward, but his eyes were on his sister and when he spoke, it was to her.

“I didn't mean to worry you.”

“Well, you did.” Izzy held his look. She repeated her question.

“I've been a couple of places. The last one being a walk around the shoreline for as far as I could go. Around boulders, up that hill on the point, along the sand. The back shore.”

“In this cold?” Nell asked. “At night?” The shore was long and winding, rugged in places, and not a place for an evening stroll in December.

“No wonder your cheeks look like they're going to fall off,” Izzy said. “And before your ridiculous ocean hike? Where were you then?”

“The police station,” he said. He took a breath. “Tommy Porter called me and asked if I'd stop by the station today on my way to work. I suppose ‘asked' is not entirely appropriate, but he's a nice guy. He asked.”

“More questions?” Ben asked.

Charlie nodded. “They had come across a text message on Amber's phone that somehow had been misplaced. Actually she had deleted it—that's why they hadn't seen it earlier. But when they received the records from the phone company, they found it. It was a message from me.”

“And?” Izzy picked up her coffee mug, cradling it in hands that had suddenly grown cold.

“It read ‘I killed a man.'”

The silence in the room was deafening. Finally Sam spoke, stepping in as if he were Charlie's older protector.
Don't touch him,
his body language said.

“Morgan College,” Sam said.

Charlie nodded.

Sam clenched his jaw and shook his head. “You didn't kill anyone, Charlie.” He looked at Izzy, then back to Charlie.

Charlie took a long swig of scotch, his eyes narrowing as it went down, stinging his throat.

“I finally get it,” Sam said, his voice sad. “It's why you left. Dropped out of college. Dropped out of our lives. It was that damn football game.”

It had happened at the end of his last summer before his senior year, at the small Colorado school where Charlie had gone to play football, not entirely to his mother or father's liking. But he was getting a free ride. And then there was the promise of skiing from November to April—Charlie was in heaven.

And he loved playing football; he was good at it. Even pickup games during late summer when they'd be getting ready for the fall, playing whenever they had the chance, everyone wanting to be first string when the real play began. Sometimes frat guys filled in to make the extra team. It usually worked well. There were always assistant coaches around—school rule—to keep the games instructive and safe.

Charlie looked over at Sam. “You were there that weekend, Sam. Remember how hot it was? But a little heat doesn't stop football players—not tough guys like us—and I was ‘the man,' the one who took the ball carrier down, the one who saved games.” He said the words facetiously, his dislike for “the man” clear. He looked around at the others. “Sam had stopped in at Morgan, just to check in on me and to say hi. He was doing a photo shoot in Aspen, but stayed around for some of the game.”

“You're into detail, aren't you?” Sam said quietly, his memory of the day hazy and not completely in sync with Charlie's, but clear enough to know where Charlie was headed. “It wasn't your fault.”

Charlie looked around as if anxious to get it over with, to explain his life away in two minutes. To lay it out on Nell's island, for better or worse, something he should have done years ago.

“We were crushing the other team that day—mostly frat guys—when one of them started calling our quarterback names, you can imagine the kind, maligning this really great guy simply because he marched to a different drummer than the frat guy did. He wouldn't stop. On and on, goading our guy, sexual slurs. I could feel my blood rising, my face getting hot, that awful boiling feeling I used to get when my temper was winning out over my mind. I knew the frat guy would be receiving the next pass, and I was ready for it. The ball went up, his arms went up to catch it, and I barreled into him with all I had, pummeled him to the ground. My teammates were ecstatic.”

Nell looked at Sam. He hadn't taken his eyes off Charlie, as if his look might help him through it.

“Then everyone got quiet. I couldn't figure it out for a minute, then looked down. The guy didn't get up. He stayed right there on the ground, convulsing, his body flopping uncontrollably.”

Nell stopped herself from going over to him. It wouldn't help him finish.

“An ambulance took him to the hospital. It wasn't until later that the coaches got the results. A separated vertebrae, they told us in the locker room. He was paralyzed.

“But after a few days, no one talked about it anymore. Not the coaches, not my teammates, not other students. It was like it never happened. I was supposed to forget about it. The season started, life went on. It was no one's fault, they said, a football injury. It's too bad, but it happens.”

“They were right, Charlie. It was no one's fault,” Sam said.

“You knew about this?” Izzy said, looking at her husband.

Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Charlie. “Did Mom and Dad know?”

“No. And don't give Sam that evil eye. He was headed to Aspen that day and had to leave before the game was over. Lots of times guys don't get up right away. Drama on the field. Sam went off to Aspen after the guy was taken off to the hospital, and the game actually went on. It wasn't until later that we knew the extent of it. And like I said, even the guy's family didn't blame anyone. No one.” He swirled the amber liquid in his small glass until it became a small whirlpool. His voice dropped. “They left all the blaming to me.”

Nell thought back to any hazy memories she might have of that time, of Charlie's time in Colorado. Her sister, Caroline, had called, upset when Charlie had dropped out of school without a word to anyone. He spent the rest of the year as a ski bum. Caroline and Craig thought he was just getting something out of his system. But then, it seemed, he dropped out of life. Moving around. Odd jobs here and there. Sending cards occasionally, e-mails. But missing family holidays, celebrations, Izzy and Sam's wedding. “We could have helped,” Nell said softly, but Charlie chose not to hear.

“I got into some strong stuff, my own cure to forget it all. I was pretty useless for a while. Woke up every night sore and achy, like I had just played a football game. I'd stumble around, then fall back into bed, not feeling anything. Going home to Kansas City or seeing you, Iz—or Jack and you, Sam—it was beyond what I could do. I simply couldn't hack it. I had flunked out of the family, is how it felt. The youngest. The mess-up. I'd e-mail Mom that I was okay. Just out exploring the world. I even got a job on a freighter, made some good money, and bought myself the used BMW as if it would prove I was worth something.” He laughed at his own foolishness. “But jobs never lasted long because I'd fall back into darkness and have to claw my way out, messing up along the way.

“It was a girl in Idaho, of all places, who finally forced me to do something. She worked in rehab at a small hospital and we hung out with some of the same people. One night she told me what I already knew—that I was a disgusting human being and of no use to the world. I should either kill myself or shape up, she said. Just like that. We were friends—and for some reason I actually thought about what she said. For a week or so. Frankly one of her choices was way more appealing than the other. I don't know for sure why I didn't go that route. But I didn't. I decided to pull myself together. Rehab, anger management. The whole shebang.

“Angel—that was my friend's name, if you can believe it—managed to get a good deal on the treatment. I had some money, that inheritance we got from Dad's aunt, Iz. And maybe Angel told them I was a charity case, who knows?”

Charlie's story had flooded the room, filling every corner and crevice, and while Nell heated Charlie's now-cold food, they played with their drinks and tried to arrange his story in their minds, following the journey that had taken him from them. And wishing at every turn he had turned to his family for help.

Nell set his plate back in front of him and he managed a bite before Izzy asked something they were all wondering.

“Nursing school,” she said, the need to fill in the gaps overriding the emotion they were all feeling. “How did you end up there? Dad had you signed up for Harvard law when you were in preschool.”

“Yeah, go figure,” Charlie said.

Nell handed him a glass of water and he drank it gratefully. Then looked at his sister and finished his story.

“At the end of rehab the director plugged each of us into a supervised volunteer program. Mine was working on a playground—kind of like a counselor—with some tough young kids. They spent most of the time shooting baskets, playing hard and banging up knees, heads, bloodying noses, even a sprained ankle or two. I surprised myself by liking it as much as I did. It guess it doesn't take a shrink to figure it out—all that shame for the tackle, all the guilt. It made me feel, I don't know—useful, maybe? I liked fixing the kids up, tending to their cuts and sprains, keeping them calm, and making them laugh. While I was there, the supervisor told me about a nursing program in that godforsaken town. She said they actually needed students to keep their grant money, and she thought I'd be good at it.” He stared down at his hands for a minute, then looked at Izzy. “And you know what, Iz? I was. I am.”

Nell's emotions were bottled up so tightly in her chest that she found it difficult to breathe. As Charlie's journey unfolded in her kitchen, her sister's youngest child appeared in her memory—the playful one, charming teachers, carefree. His grades never as good as his older brother's and sister's because he didn't study much, but no one cared, because he was Charlie.

Izzy climbed onto the stool next to her brother. “But you didn't let us know, when we could have helped, or even when things were getting better. Why, Charlie? I want to shake you. Beat you up.”
Hold you close
. Her eyes were damp.

He picked up his fork but held it still beside the plate, looking into Izzy's eyes. He swallowed hard, as if there were something stuck in his throat. A lump as big as his fist. “Because I wasn't sure I'd make it. I didn't know if I'd fall back into hell. I didn't want to take anyone with me—and I didn't want those who loved me and whom I loved to have to watch.” He was holding himself together as best he could. But beneath the surface was a battered young man, ready to cave in upon himself.

His eyes begged his sister to understand.

Izzy looked at her younger brother, certainly no longer a baby brother. And she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight.

C
harlie was spent, his shoulders slumped, his body as weary as if he'd just run a marathon. But there was a lightness to him that Nell had not seen in the weeks he'd been living in her backyard.

“What did you tell the police?” Izzy asked. It was her lawyer's voice, crowding out the emotion.

“Not the whole made-for-TV movie I just told all of you. Amber had texted me really late one night right before she died. She was filled with thoughts of her mother, obsessed with the fact that she was alone in that bed at Ocean View. She was blaming herself, regretting she hadn't stayed here for her. She kept saying she could have protected her. She was tossing all sorts of crap on herself, and telling me I wouldn't understand, not with the charmed life I had.”

“So you jarred her out of it by dropping a bomb.” Ben said.

He nodded. “But it was real, too. For a long time I felt like I
had
killed him. I stole some years from him, for sure. His parents would never let me see him, so I didn't know until an old coach tracked me down for some silly reunion—it was just a year or two ago—and incidentally told me the guy went through a lot, but a couple dozen surgeries got him back on his feet. He was married with a couple kids.”

“You explained this to Tommy Porter?”

“And Chief Thompson. But I could see through their eyes what a prosecutor would see.”

An angry kid who grew up to be an angry man.

•   •   •

It was a perfect Saturday morning outing.

Ben and Sam, with Abby bundled up in a carrier on his back, were taking Charlie to the yacht club to introduce him to the
Dreamweaver
, their prized sailboat.

Nell could have questioned their good sense, since the sailboat was in storage, the sails were removed, and the warehouse the club provided was cold and drafty. But she knew exactly what these men in her life were doing—distracting Charlie from the ponderous weight he was carrying around. Weekends were long, and for Charlie, Saturdays would be especially painful for a long time.

She waited ten minutes after they left—just in case Ben forgot his phone or came back looking for a pair of gloves—before gathering up the papers and books in his den and heading out the door.

Izzy was in the drive, and together they headed over to Birdie's. Cass would meet them there.

•   •   •

Birdie had lit a fire in the fireplace and cleaned off the round oak table in Sonny's den. They settled around it, gratefully accepting hot glasses of tea from Ella.

“The Cummings business office, the cemetery, and the nursing home. The Gibsons' house, Charlie's car, and the Gull. Unless we've missed out on chunks of Amber's time, these are the places she went in her short week in Sea Harbor.”

Birdie had pulled scraps of purple yarn from her tapestry bag and placed them like snakes in the center of the table. Colorful stitch markers defined the Gull, the rectory where the will was read, Ocean View, Harbor Park, and Cummings Northshore Nursery. Amber's journey.

“Amber found something or did something or saw something she shouldn't have along this purple route that made someone want to kill her.”

“All we have to do is find it,” Izzy said. “A breeze.” She pulled back a thick hank of hair and fastened it with a band. “I'm ready.”

Birdie and Cass had been filled in on Charlie's journey, at least the parts that mattered in a police investigation. Bits and pieces would be shared later, in the way close friends did.

“They have nothing concrete on Charlie,” Cass said. “Phone calls and e-mails will verify his explanation. But no matter, Charlie needs to be off their radar completely.”

“And someone needs to be taken off our streets and out of our lives,” Izzy said, the emotion in her voice showing how personal the quest had become.

Beyond the mullioned windows of the den, the sky was a bright wash of color, as if a child had taken wide sweeps of watercolor to it. Waves of powdery purple and pink were vivid against the blue Saturday sky. “The yarn color of Amber's path matches the sky,” Nell observed. “I think that's an omen, Birdie. A good one.”

She reached down and picked up the portfolio containing the papers from Charlie's backseat. “May the good-omen fairy guide our way.”

But could a collection of ketchup-smeared printouts lead them to a murderer? Perhaps not. Yet they were of interest to Amber—and that made them eminently interesting to them. And hopefully significant.

Nell pulled the printouts out of the folio and passed them around. Food and coffee stains blurred some words, some numbers, but not enough to make the sheets useless.

They smoothed them out on the table.

“Phew,” Cass said. “These smell like greasy french fries.”

“Charlie's car became Amber's office and their diner.”

“This shows me more than anything that Charlie was falling in love with Amber Harper,” Izzy said.

“That he let her mess up his car?”

“Yes. He was always fastidious about cars. And I know he loves that BMW. When he was sixteen my dad got him a new Subaru. Only Charlie, by the way. Jack and I shared a used
gold
Chevy Blazer. Charlie was so protective of his car that he never took the plastic coverings off the backseat.”

Cass laughed. “You Kansans. Pete and I shared a clunky beat-up truck my dad hauled lobster traps in. And I mean we
shared
it—with a crew of fishermen.”

Izzy smiled and turned back to the array of printouts in front of her. “Somehow I feel like Amber herself is asking us to straighten this mess out. She started it for us, but somebody has to finish it.”

Nell's thoughts exactly. She put on her glasses and picked up a dog-eared sheet, then several others with the same head. They were year-end summaries. Amber had used a highlighter and Nell's eyes went to a bright yellow streak through a headline:
SALARIES
.

Charlie mentioned that Amber looked at payroll. Something she was going to address, was his surmise. Low-wage issues, maybe. But as Nell scanned the sheets she saw that the nursery staff—gardeners and landscapers—made very fair salaries, and the cashiers, too, all above minimum wage, all nicely compensated. One star for Barbara and Stu Cummings.

She ran her finger over the rows. Then spotted the Magic Marker at play again. This time highlighting the word
Bonuses
.

Again the managers of the various stores fared well, the owners, too. And then she stopped, surprised at a hefty bonus listed after a name close to the end of the list.

She leafed back to salaries and double-checked. No wonder Amber was concerned. As an owner, she might not have approved. But Barbara and Stu apparently had.

Nell pulled the sheet aside and passed it around the table. “Amber singled this out. I see why, except that bonuses are up to the company leadership, right?”

Birdie read it, and nodded with interest. “It's high. Nice for the person getting it. But maybe something Amber didn't like or think equitable.”

Cass and Izzy looked at it, too, frowned, then placed it in their “pay attention to later” pile.

Minutes later Birdie assembled her handful of printouts and sat back in her chair, sipping her tea. “I wish my Sonny were here. He loved numbers. But the fact is, I don't. If there are hidden liabilities and incorrect asset valuations and all those other things Sonny used to talk about, I will never find them. I don't even know what they mean. I've always agreed with you, Nell—you and Fran Lebowitz. There is no algebra in real life.”

Nell chuckled, happy that Birdie had brought it up. There were certainly more useful things she and Birdie could do. She looked over at Cass and Izzy, barely able to pull their eyes away from their numbers. “I'm sorry, you two; Birdie's right. You both run businesses. You need to be the ones to go through these. You even seem to be enjoying it, which is beyond my comprehension—but I admire it, I do.”

Cass laughed. “You're mathophobes, both of you. Give me those.” She grabbed their sheets and went back to the ones in front of her. “This is interesting. Cummings Nurseries are doing well. Amber should have been pleased about that. It makes me wonder what she was looking for. I do see some oddities in the accounting. Strange accounts that Amber highlighted. Things that maybe got her attention and she needed to check through more carefully. She had pulled old financial reports, too, not just the most recent ones.”

“Any red flags?”

“Not sure.” Cass looked at the scattering of papers. “But we still have a lot to go through. It's fun—a little like reading someone's diary.”

“Each to his own,” Birdie said primly.

“But, Birdie, before you fink out on us completely, I think you and I should go over some of these payments. You'd know the names of the companies even better than I do. Look for anything that seems out of line. Companies that wouldn't be offering services to a place that sold trees and plants, that sort of thing. Or maybe ones you've never heard of.”

Nell looked at her and frowned. “Cass, what are you looking for here? We're following Amber, remember.”

“True. But who knows what she found that she might not have been looking for? Things that made her think people were doing things they shouldn't be doing. Isn't that what she said? Bad things.”

Birdie shoved her chair closer to Cass's and began looking down the line, making notations, at times her silvery eyebrows lifting in surprise.

While Birdie conscientiously worked through the printout, Izzy ran her finger down a row of numbers, her eyes moving from one column to another and back again. “There's always a chance for simple errors in these things,” she said to anyone who might be listening. “But even though bonuses are always up to a company, big discrepancies get your attention. Like at those big Wall Street companies. I can see why Amber was intrigued with these.”

Ella walked into the den carrying a tray, her interruption and the coffee, fruit, and warm cinnamon muffins a welcome break. They happily shoved back chairs and set papers aside. Ella poured coffee, warning them not to spill it on the rug, and retreated as quickly as she'd come.

Izzy picked up a muffin and nibbled on its edges, resisting eating the sugary top first. She glanced again at the top sheet on her pile and tapped it with one finger, leaving another grease spot. “There's an expense on this ledger that stunned me. It's not a red flag, but definitely startling.” She lifted the paper up. “It's a year-end summary of expenses from a few years back. Amber highlighted a line on it.” She passed it to Cass, then watched while her friend's eyes widened in surprise.

Nell took it from Cass, held it out for Birdie to see, and together they scanned the page. “Oh, my,” Nell said, her tone matching Birdie's wide eyes.

“A year's ‘residency' at Ocean View,” Nell said, “is that what they call it—residency?” She looked at Birdie.

“Yes, it sounds better than ‘nursing care.' I knew it was expensive to live in Ocean View's homes, but I had never seen the figure for long-term nursing home patients. This is quite amazing.” Birdie held the paper up close and read the fine print. “Ellie had a suite—a very nice one apparently.”

Cass was awed. “It better have been. You could buy a house with a full-time nurse for less than that. I can't get my arms around this kind of expense. Who can pay for things like this?”

“It seems Cummings Northshore Nurseries could. And did. For almost thirty years,” Birdie said.

They were silent as they all did the math in their heads. No one was able to utter the final figure out loud. It was more than most of them would make in a lifetime, Cass whispered.

Most of Sea Harbor, Izzy said.

Nell looked at the sheet again and shook her head. “It's literally a fortune. The exorbitant price of guilt, in my mind, although Father Larry doesn't see it that way. He said Lydia was at peace with everything she'd done. She wanted nothing to do with Ellie—so she didn't visit. Not once, all those years. But she spent a fortune on her care. That made it all right, at least in her mind.”

“Tit for tat,” Cass said. “It's certainly a different way of looking at what people need. I suppose Barbara and Stu supported it. It relieved them of any responsibility for Ellie. Or did they visit her? Maybe they did, just to see where those large chunks of cash were going.”

Nell looked at the summary sheet again. “The family business apparently could shoulder that expense, but imagine less able people?”

“Which is most of the world,” Cass said. “It's bigger than most mortgages, for sure.”

“I remember the relief when Ben and I paid off the mortgage on our Beacon Hill brownstone,” Nell said. “We were young, and not having to pay that amount every month was huge for us. Ben broke out the champagne.”

Izzy laughed. “Sam doesn't know it yet, but he's taking Abby and me to Spain the year we pay our mortgage off,” she said. “For a month.”

Cass looked up. “Think about it. Suddenly, the day Ellie Harper died, Cummings Northshore was no longer paying this enormous amount of money. It was enough to make a significant difference to the company's bottom line. I can't imagine they mourned Ellie's death any more than they did her daughter's.”

They were silent, processing the somber, sad thought.

“I wonder if Amber had that same thought,” Birdie said quietly.

“She had the same information we have,” Cass said. “With one difference.”

“Yes, an important one. She loved the woman whose death freed up that money,” Nell said. She got up and carried the tray back to Ella's kitchen, her thoughts filled with the Cummingses' generous care of Ellie Harper—and all of its ramifications.

Cass looked up when she returned. “If we're walking in Amber's shoes, we need to think her thoughts—or what she might have been thinking. And I think this is an important one, at least to consider.”