Seaside Knitters 01 - Death By Cashmere Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Nell’s Sea-Silk Scarf

  Obsidian

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  First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, August 2008

  Copyright © Sally Goldenbaum, 2008

  All rights reserved

  OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Goldenbaum, Sally.

  Death by cashmere: a seaside knitters mystery / Sally Goldenbaum.

  p. cm. — (An Obsidian mystery)

  eISBN : 978-1-436-23532-7

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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  Acknowledgments

  The seaside knitters (and the author) would like to acknowledge those who have helped bring the knitters’ story to life. My sincere thanks to:

  Cindy and the entire staff of The Studio Knitting & Needlepoint in Kansas City, and especially Sarah Kraly, who showed me what life in a knitting shop is all about—lovely yarns, generous help, friendship and laughter, and a cozy place to be on a cold winter day.

  Kristen Weber, for gracious, smart, and generous editing; Andrea Cirillo (for years of encouragement); and Kelly Harms (whose passion for knitting and life fueled the Sea Harbor women every step of the way).

  My dear porch-writing friend Nancy Pickard, who understands it all.

  And to my amazing family, the Cape Ann McElhennys: Aria, John, and Luke, who sent books on lobstering and quarry history, walked with me on breakwaters, through museums and seaside towns, and who shared with me their love of the sea. And the KC Goldenbaums: Todd, Danny, and Claudia, who are ever-present, fixing broken computers, building Web sites, and salving the spirit. And a special thanks to Don, for thirty-eight years of reasons.Web site address: www.sallygoldenbaum.com

  Prologue

  Late Thursday night, Sea Harbor, Massachusetts

  North of the Harbor Road shops, a mile or two up the coast—past the Canary Cove artist colony and the ocean-view vacation homes, some of which had been turned into enviable residences with wide seashell drives and two-story carriage houses—the land curved sharply like a sea serpent’s tail.

  When the moon was full, the sky a whitewash of stars, and the breeze a warm embrace, the beach on the tail and the stalwart breakwater were perfect places to walk on a summer’s night. But tonight the weatherman had predicted rain, and the winds were gusty, discouraging evening strolls and lovers’ trysts.

  At the far end of the tail, beyond the yacht club and private homes, the wide stone breakwater jutted out into the ocean, protecting the waters from the ocean’s vagaries. Not many people would be out on the breakwater tonight, or on the public beach just north of it, no one with good sense at least. Not fishermen or lovers or teenagers with six-packs stuffed in their backpacks. It would be the perfect place to have a drink, a talk, or whatever the encounter required.

  On one side of the breakwater, the waves pounded hard against the structure. Foam, like beer from a tap, danced high against the black night. The breakwater—fifteen feet high or more, depending on the tide—was built of wide granite blocks, one on top of another, and it ensured calm waters for anchoring sailboats, small fishing vessels, and the smooth beach where young children built sandcastles on the tended shore.

  Tonight no one sat on the beach. The expanse of windows in the clubhouse revealed warm flickering lights, visible from the height of the breakwater. Most of the families were gone at this late hour, but some couples remained, sitting at white-clothed tables and feasting on chunks of fresh lobster baked in crisp, buttery pastry and drinking the club’s fruity cocktails. In the lounge, a few couples danced to a local band. Outside, the wind whistled through the needles of the pine trees.

  A small sitting area on the edge of the property, across a stretch of beach from the breakwater, held two stone benches and a table—a perfect place for drinks at sunset on a pleasant evening. Or a place to sit in private tonight, with only the low lights of the dock illuminating the lone figure’s deliberate stance. Calling her was risky, but it couldn’t go on any longer. It had to end. And this would be a smart meeting place to iron out problems, to settle demands in whatever way was necessary.

  Two figures sharing a drink, even walking out on the high breakwater, should it come to that, would appear as shadows against the sky to anyone who stepped
out on the clubhouse’s veranda for a smoke or a breath of air—nondescript, vague, undefined shadows. And the couple’s voices would be carried away on the wind.

  It didn’t have to be like this, of course. Life was about compromises. Negotiations. Forgiveness. Not betrayal and disloyalty and idiocy.

  Peering into the blackness but seeing nothing—no one—the lone figure felt a sudden slice of fear, almost painful in its intensity. It began deep in the pit of the stomach and churned painfully up until it was overpowering, an ugly acid taste.

  No! A sharp command calmed the body and the mind. It wasn’t the time to be afraid, not a time for cowards. Steady, deep breaths, an inner voice dictated. A long drink from the silver glass did its magic. And as always, the fear slowly resided.

  And then the sound of footsteps on the rocky shore, just barely heard above the rising, crashing waves, caused a strange relief. A figure walked slowly and purposefully toward the stone table. Tall and unafraid and brash.

  It was almost as if two friends were meeting for a private talk or a business deal, a drink shared—except for the fierce anger that charged the air, calmed only by a slow, deliberate breath, and a long swallow of scotch.

  It was time. Two glasses. A flask. A walk along the breakwater. To talk and reason. Or not.

  Chapter 1

  Early Thursday evening

  Izzy Chambers stood with her hands on her hips, staring hard at the ceiling. Crashing thumps from the floor above sent tiny flecks of paint floating to the floor. The music was loud, too— screeching, unrecognizable words and a freight train-loud bass that Izzy could feel in the pit of her stomach.

  Behind her, Nell Endicott, thirty years Izzy’s senior, felt the same vibrations, but perhaps with more weight. Had she been back in Kansas, there’d be no doubt in Nell’s mind that a tornado was pummeling down to crush her niece Izzy’s small knitting shop.

  But neither she nor Izzy was in Kansas. They were in Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, and tornadoes were rarely spotted in the sleepy oceanside town.

  “Maybe she’s Rollerblading,” Izzy said. She grimaced at the continuing noise.

  “Rollerblading is a lot better than some of the thoughts that passed through my head.”

  “Oh, phooey. Let’s not worry about it,” Izzy said, spinning around on her newly knitted socks and facing her aunt. “Angie’s rambunctious, that’s all. She’s usually not so noisy.”

  A new sound—a series of heavy clunks—caused the track lighting to quiver and brought Mae Anderson rushing in from the front of the knitting store.

  Izzy held up her hands to shush her sales manager before she could say anything. “Mae, it’s just a little music.”

  “The little music, Izzy, made Laura Danver’s baby cry—that’s how loud it is up at the cash register. And Laura left without buying the yarn she’d been waiting weeks for.”

  Izzy sighed. “I’ll drop Laura’s yarn by her house later, Mae.”

  Nell could feel Izzy’s frustration—the young mom wasn’t Izzy’s most patient customer, but she was certainly one of Izzy’s best, and Izzy couldn’t afford to offend her.

  The bell above the front door jingled, and Mae hurried off to help a new customer, but her eyes told Izzy that she needed to do something—and soon. Priding herself on her senior status, Mae didn’t hesitate to tell her young boss how things should be done.

  Nell looked up at the ceiling again. The music was softer now, but heavy shoes—boots, maybe—clunked back and forth across the floor above.

  “Thicker carpet,” Izzy said, half to herself.

  “No, sweetie,” a lilting voice from the doorway chimed. “Thicker skin. That’s what you need. Angie Archer needs to move on.”

  Birdie Favazza, the oldest member of the Thursday-night knitting group, stood in the doorway. A diminutive woman of nearly eighty, Birdie stood straight, her chin lifted and her eyes bright. A short cap of silver hair outlined her small, fine-boned face. “Landlords need to be tough, darlin’,” she said, and walked on into the room.

  “She’s a good tenant, Birdie. She’s probably just had a rough day at work.” Izzy scooped up stray pins and measuring tapes and tossed them into a wicker basket on the table.

  Birdie shook her head in clear disagreement and walked briskly across the room to a worn leather couch. Her bulky backpack landed on the floor. A bottle of wine protruded from the top of the pack and Birdie pulled it out, putting it on the coffee table in front of her. “I’m here to knit and snack and share a glass of this very fine Muscadet, Izzy. Not to judge you, dear. But—”

  ”—you told me not to rent the apartment to Angie.”

  “And you’re not quite ready to admit I’m right,” Birdie said in a distinct accent that blended fine breeding with a salty touch inherited from a sea captain grandfather. She tugged her bright yellow cable-knit sweater closer around her diminutive frame and tenderly pulled a ball of qiviut yarn from her bag. She fingered its softness with still-nimble fingers and pondered aloud whether to make a shawl or a scarf out of the luxurious wild-berry yarn.

  “A shawl,” Nell suggested. She looked around the studio. Nell knew exactly why Izzy liked having Angie living above the knitting shop. When they had turned the broken-down bait shop into the Seaside Knitting Studio the winter before, Izzy had decided to move into a cozy New England cottage a short bike ride away, leaving the apartment space above her shop empty.

  “This shop could easily become my whole life,” she had told Nell. “I need to build in distance.” But she liked having someone live above the shop. And when Angie moved back to town and was looking for a place, it seemed a fine match.

  Nell had agreed. Birdie was wrong this time. Sometimes she clung to old memories a tad too fiercely, Nell thought. She was remembering a young, wild Angie. But college and graduate school had intervened, Angie had mellowed, and in Nell’s opinion, she was a fine tenant.

  “Angie loves living here,” Izzy said, rummaging around in a side drawer for a pair of scissors and some extra needles.

  “And how could she not, sweetie?” Birdie said. “Your apartment is a bit of heaven.”

  Nell looked out the east windows, the same view Angie could see from the apartment above. A rectangle of mullioned windows framed the harbor and an expanse of endless ocean beyond—wild and churning one day, and a smooth silken blanket the next.

  Nell thought the building was worth most anything for the view alone. She remembered standing in that same room the year before, Izzy at her side. The Realtor, brushing dust off her taupe suit, had stepped over broken boxes and bottles and motioned Izzy and Nell over to that same window, smudged and filthy, with a broken pane at the bottom and glass scattered on the floor.

  Izzy had recently abandoned a boyfriend and a lucrative law career and was looking for the perfect place in which to sink her savings and begin a new life.

  And to this day, Nell swore it was looking out that mullioned window that did it.

  The Realtor had tugged and pushed at the latch until the windows opened wide, framing the sea and dozens of small boats moored in the Seaside harbor. She slipped into the background then, in that way that Realtors did, leaving Nell and Izzy standing side by side, seeing new beginnings carried in on the waves.

  “See,” the Realtor said with practiced excitement. “You can jump directly into the ocean from these windows.”

  Izzy and Nell had smiled. Neither had been inclined to take the plunge, but they were both lured by the sound of the waves against the stone wall below and the breeze that carried new dreams directly into the knitting room.

  Not long after that day, Ben Endicott built a window seat directly below the windows, and Nell cushioned it with a thick blue tufted pad. It was a favorite spot for Izzy’s customers and friends.

  The back room, as it came to be called, was filled with personal things of Izzy’s—Uncle Ben’s old leather chair, a table that Nell had found at an estate sale over in Rockport, paintings Izzy had bought from local arti
sts on Canary Cove or Rocky Neck in Gloucester. A bank of bookshelves held knitting books, some dogeared and smudged with coffee.

  With Nell and Ben’s help, the space had been transformed into a cozy, inviting knitting shop, stocked from floor to ceiling with fine hand-dyed yarns and skeins of bright cotton and wool. It drew in townsfolk and summer people alike—a place for friends and strangers to sit and talk and share their knitting passion.

  The small rooms grew out of one another like the arms of an octopus. One was filled with patterns and soft old chairs to settle into while picking out the perfect hat or sweater. Another held small cubicles filled with baby-fine cottons and cashmere, and dozens of tiny knitted sweaters and pants to lure even the weekend knitter into a project. A side room—Izzy called it the magic room—housed tiny chairs, a soft rug, and baskets of Izzy’s own childhood toys and books, a place for children to play while their moms got help finishing a sweater, picking up stitches, or figuring out the intricacies of knitting a Möbius cowl.

  And everywhere, on walls and tables, there were wooden cubicles or large wicker baskets holding every imaginable kind of yarn—alpaca and cashmeres, wool and cotton, linen and silk and mohair.

  The first time Nell had walked through Izzy’s shop, once the paint had dried and cubes and shelves and baskets were filled with soft plush yarns, she had called it a “sensory overload.”

  Izzy loved the description. A rich, lovely, sensuous experience. That’s what knitting was all about.

  Birdie looked up from her yarn. “Having someone here is comforting, Izzy—and I know for sure it helps your aunt Nell sleep at night.” She lifted her silvery brows and looked over the top of her glasses at Nell.

  Nell knew there was an unspoken “but” at the end of Birdie’s statement, but at least she understood the feelings that gave birth to the Seaside Knitting Studio—and her own feelings, too. Izzy was like a daughter to her. And though Nell didn’t expect anyone to break into the shop—Sea Harbor wasn’t a high-crime sort of town—it made her feel better knowing there was someone living there. And it did help Nell sleep better. Birdie was dead-on right about that.