Murder in Merino Page 12

  Beside her, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, was Jules Ainsley.

  Chapter 16

  Her smile was more subdued today, but she was just as striking, even in jeans and a faded T-shirt. She stood still, watching them walk toward her, her brown eyes large and expectant and welcoming.

  Almost as if welcoming them into her own house.

  Nell returned her smile.

  “Jules has been waiting patiently to see the inside of the house and this seemed as good a time as any, since Sam and I were coming over,” Stella said. “I hope you don’t mind, Sam.” She looked at Nell and Ben and her smile grew, relieved to have the extra support.

  “Of course not.” He looked at Jules. “I guess that means the week hasn’t changed your mind about things.”

  “No,” she said.

  “If the week’s events haven’t, the house may,” he said, then suggested to Stella that they all go inside.

  The house had a stale smell, the smell of perspiring police officers tromping through it looking for whatever they thought might lead to a murderer. Mud covered the hardwood floors and a small accent rug was rolled up, as if someone thought there might be a valuable clue beneath it, perhaps a trapdoor in the floor.

  “Chief Thompson called and apologized for the mess,” Sam said, looking down at the muddy boot prints. “It was raining that night. It couldn’t be helped.”

  Jules stood in the center of the small living room. Izzy had left behind some furniture for renters—a couch and chairs, a kitchen table, beds. The furniture made it easier to imagine the house as it might have been.

  But Jules wasn’t interested in the furniture. She was looking through to the back of the house and the yard beyond.

  “It’s a great view, once that weedy mess on the hill is cleaned up,” Stella said, then sent a silent apology to Sam, her brown brows lifting up into her bangs.

  They all walked through a dining alcove to the kitchen, where large windows framed the backyard, the porch, and a wooden swing that Nell knew well. It had been the main selling point for Izzy when she had purchased the house. The swing was old—even back then—with rusty chains and squeaky brackets, but Izzy had fallen in love with it. And she’d spent more money than she probably should have restoring it, replacing parts, repairing the wood, and refinishing it to what it must have looked like years and years before. Today it was as polished and smooth as Sam and Ben’s sailboat.

  Jules stood still, taking in the swing, the yard. When she spoke, her voice was tight and filled with emotion. “It’s . . . it’s perfect.”

  Sam stared at her, at the yard, at the muddy footprints on the hardwood floors. And most of all, at the potting shed at the edge of the yard, where a man had recently been killed. Murdered. It was as far from perfect as could be imagined.

  Nell looked at the emotions flitting across Sam’s face, then pushed the images of the past week out of her mind and walked over to the windows. She looked out, lost in her own emotions, seeing the same beauty Jules Ainsley somehow was seeing. “Izzy and I spent many nights on that porch, dreaming of her future here in Sea Harbor,” she murmured.

  “Was I in those dreams?” Sam asked softly, standing close behind her.

  “Someone exactly like you, Sam Perry,” Nell said. “I think we dreamed you into being.”

  Sam chuckled. “I didn’t have a chance, huh?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Sam, why don’t we sit over here and go over things,” Stella called to them, motioning to the dining table, where she had laid out papers. Ben was already seated and had taken out his reading glasses.

  “Nell,” Stella asked, “would you mind showing Jules through the rest of the house?”

  “Stella is being all business,” Sam whispered to Nell. “We best comply.”

  Nell chuckled and motioned to Jules. “It’s not really big enough to get lost in—except for what we used to call the hidden bathroom—but follow me. The bedrooms are back this way.” She headed through the living area to the small bedroom hallway. She reached the first bedroom before she realized Jules wasn’t with her. “Jules?” She retraced her steps and found Jules still standing in the kitchen, looking outside. “Jules?”

  She spun around. “Oh. Sorry, Nell. I’m coming.” She hurried after her, taking in everything Nell pointed out: two small bedrooms, a walk-through closet, with the single bathroom on the other side.

  “We used to tease Izzy about this bathroom. Her closet always had to be neat and tidy so guests could walk through it on their way to the restroom. One of the house’s idiosyncrasies.”

  “It’s charming,” she said. “The whole house is.”

  “It needs some sprucing up. Years of renters can take a toll on a house, but when Izzy lived here it was a lovely, cozy cottage.”

  Jules didn’t answer. When Nell looked over at her face, all she saw was happiness.

  They stayed another hour, waiting until just before leaving to venture out into the backyard. But it was out there, with the wind blowing up from the ocean and the tangle of weeds waving wildly, that Jules seemed to be most at peace. She sat on the swing, her flip-flops falling to the floor, and swung slowly back and forth, as if she were alone in her own private universe.

  Sam and Ben walked back to the potting shed. It was a small structure, with a semicircle of flat granite stones outside the door. The stones had been scrubbed clean. They pushed open the door to the shed and walked into a small space with gardening implements, potting equipment, and lawn tools scattered about. The potting workbench was littered with trowels, gloves, and miscellaneous items.

  “Jerry thinks Jeffrey and his killer moved in here to talk privately, out of view of neighbors,” Ben said. “It must have been someone Jeffrey knew, because there were no signs of a fight. The serrated knife that killed Jerry came from that bench. From the bloodstains, they know he was stabbed, then staggered outside and collapsed on the stone path outside the shed.”

  “Izzy’s last renter loved gardening,” Sam said. “She left this stuff behind when she skipped out on two months’ rent and disappeared. The tools must have been hers.”

  Ben nodded. “The police took the knife, of course.”

  “Which sounds like whoever did this didn’t plan ahead?” It was Nell, standing in the doorway, grimacing at an image of the grisly scene that had played itself out where she was now standing.

  “It sounds like that, doesn’t it?” Ben said.

  Somehow it lessened the horror of it a small bit, the idea that no one had plotted out the murder. Yet someone did kill Jeffrey Meara. Why?

  She looked out the door at Jules Ainsley sitting on the swing, her mind a million miles away. Was she seeing it all over, finding the bartender in a pool of blood? If she bought this house, would she wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, replaying it?

  Somehow Nell didn’t think so. Jules looked more peaceful at this moment than she had when Nell first met her—or on any of the intervening days. Even her necklace was at rest, the charm hanging quietly from her neck, not from a chain twisted around nervous fingers.

  Sam checked his watch. It was getting late. “Stella, let’s go over Jules’s offer again and get out of here before it gets dark.”

  They headed inside, Ben leading the way.

  Sam held Stella back and apologized to her. “I know this isn’t the way you’ve been taught to sell houses and negotiate contracts, Stella. It’s . . . well, not the norm, I guess.”

  “Sam, do you have any idea how relieved I am that this whole thing is happening with you and Iz and the Endicotts? A few days ago I was ready to burn my license, but Uncle Mario talked me out of it. He told me to calm down, that the nicest people in Sea Harbor had my back on this whole awful thing. That would be you guys. And he’s right.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes filling. She
took off her glasses and blinked away the tears. “The miracle of it all is that it looks like I’m actually going to sell this house.”

  “We’re an inch away,” Sam said.

  “And that’s because of all of you. I love you guys.”

  Sam gave her a hug, then led her through the door and to the table, where the others were already seated.

  Sam sat and looked at the official offer one more time, then the bank statement, the earnest money already deposited. The inspection report was better than he’d anticipated, with no major repairs needed. “Your offer is more than fair,” he said, looking up at Jules.

  “It’s all relative. It’s fair to me.” Jules sat beside Stella, her face still.

  “We’ll cover your closing costs—it’ll make Izzy feel better. And we will have the whole place cleaned. I had Stella write that in.” He glanced down at the papers again.

  Stella laughed. “How am I ever going to handle another sale, one where sellers actually try to get buyers to fork out more money and buyers try to whittle down the price? You guys are ruining me.”

  They laughed and Sam pushed out his chair. “I think we’ve removed everything from the house that needs to go—mostly junk left by old tenants. The furniture is yours to use or give away. Izzy had it cleaned, but who knows what’s happened to it this week.”

  They looked around the table.

  “That’s it?” Jules asked.

  “Almost,” Stella said, trying with great difficulty to hold back her excitement and present a professional face. “I need to run this by Uncle Mario. If you could come by the office tomorrow, we’ll seal the deal and give you the keys.”

  And in the next breath she let out a squeal that everyone present was sure was heard in Rockport, Gloucester, and perhaps the northern edge of Boston.

  “Sorry we don’t have champagne,” Sam said, laughing. “Maybe at a later date.”

  “Later is fine,” Jules said. Her smile was wide, filling her whole face. She looked at Stella. “You’re great, Stella. I will be sending everyone I know to you.”

  “But . . . but you’re on vacation, right? This will be your vacation house? I guess in all the commotion I never asked.”

  Jules smiled again, a smile none of them could begin to read. And Stella’s question lay unanswered on the kitchen table.

  They walked out into the fading light of day. Nell felt a weariness clear through to her bones, deep and suddenly overwhelming.

  They all paused at the end of the walkway and, as if by plan, turned and looked back at the small house that had been Izzy’s first home in Sea Harbor. Cass Halloran had lived there for a while after Izzy had moved to the home she and Sam shared, and after that a succession of not always ideal renters moved in and out.

  And now the torch was passing to Jules Ainsley. A stranger in their lives who had somehow become—in a very short time—a very intimate stranger.

  It was then, when they turned back to the house, that they saw him.

  He was standing near his parents’ rosebushes, still dressed in the suit he’d worn to Jeffrey Meara’s funeral. In one hand was a pair of binoculars attached to a black cord around his neck. On his face was a crooked smile.

  Garrett Barros released his grip on the binoculars, letting them fall to his well-muscled chest, and waved.

  Chapter 17

  It wasn’t the kind of news anyone wanted to wake up to, especially after the emotions of the day before.

  It came in a phone call just as Nell was making her way down the back stairs to the kitchen, barefoot, with her hair still damp from a quick shower.

  Ben picked it up. When he hung up a few minutes later, he hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words.

  “That was Birdie. Someone broke into Maeve’s house during the funeral yesterday.”

  “No. Oh, Ben, that’s terrible. Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. There’s something hauntingly serene about Maeve Meara. And Birdie’s fine, too—she and Harold were with her when she went into the house. She noticed right away something wasn’t right. Her mail had fallen to the floor from a small table in the front hallway, and Maeve is fastidious about things like that.”

  Nell poured herself a cup of coffee. “Birdie said Maeve resisted having anyone stay in the house during the funeral. She said she didn’t have anything worth stealing.”

  “Apparently the thieves thought so, too, because, as Maeve told the police, nothing was missing, at least as far as she could tell—Jeffrey was a bit of a pack rat. They made a mess, that was all, she said.”

  “Not even a television or computer? Jeffrey had plenty of electronics.”

  “He did. And that’s why the police don’t think it was an ordinary thief. Tommy Porter was on duty last night, and he sat and talked with Maeve for a while, walking her through things.”

  “Are there any hypotheses?”

  “Probably the one running through your head right now. That somehow . . . somehow this is connected to Jeffrey’s murder.”

  Nell shuddered. “Where was the mess?”

  “In Jeffrey’s den. Drawers pulled out, that sort of thing. Birdie said it was ‘interesting’ and that she’d fill you in on everything tonight.”

  “That sounds cryptic.”

  “It’s probably because Birdie, wise as she is, knows that the details you might want to hear would be of less interest to me.”

  Nell nodded, her mind’s eye still seeing a fragile widow walking into a ransacked house. It was unnerving and unpleasant.

  But the most unnerving thing of all was that, had the timing been different, Maeve Meara and Nell’s cherished friend Birdie might have come face-to-face with a murderer.

  • • •

  Thursday dinner for the knitters would be simple, and Nell knew no one would mind. She was watching Abby for the afternoon—Red had come along, too—but she also needed some time to clear her head, to try to deal with the fact that a murderer was inching his way into their lives in a most frightening way. She needed time to calm the fear that closed her throat and tightened her chest when Ben told her about the danger that Birdie had narrowly escaped.

  Ben had tried a distraction before leaving the house earlier. He brought up their wedding anniversary, something they hadn’t talked about in days. “Nell, let’s just pack a bag and escape to Costa Rica for a couple weeks. Forget about everything else. Just you and me and the deep blue sea.”

  He lifted one brow in what he hoped was a sexy way.

  Beneath it, his eyes were tired, too.

  In one movement, Nell was close enough to feel his breath on her cheek. She wrapped her arms around him tightly. Costa Rica. Beaches, rain forests. Alone with Ben for days and days.

  She sighed, her head rubbing against his chest. “If only . . .”

  “If only,” he whispered into her hair. “But this, too, shall pass, Nellie. Soon.”

  • • •

  They finished the Israeli couscous salad in record time, down to the last piece of feta cheese and lone chickpea on the bottom of the bowl. Soft, flaky rolls were washed down with Birdie’s pinot gris, and the meal was applauded.

  “It looked way too healthy to be good, but that salad was great,” Cass said. She slathered the last roll with butter and began to collect empty plates.

  “You outdid yourself, Aunt Nell. When did you have time to make it? My daughter isn’t usually so unselfish with people’s time,” Izzy said. “She definitely doesn’t like people cooking when she’s there to be cuddled.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t what?” Izzy’s eyes grew large. Never—not once in all their Thursday nights in the back room—did Nell not cook.

  “I didn’t make the salad. Abby, Red, and I went over to Gloucester and bought it at that sweet little tea shop on Pleasant Street. We sat there for a while, just
the two of us, with Abby captivating everyone who came in. It simply wasn’t a day for cooking. It was a day for playing with Abby, for marveling at the magnificent schooners in the Gloucester harbor, for feeling the breeze in our hair as I pushed her stroller, and visiting that little park near the water where Abby shrieked with delight when I bundled her into a baby swing and pushed her back and forth. It was a day for clearing my head and being thankful for all sorts of wonderful things. That’s what today was for. Not for cooking.”

  For a few minutes the room was quiet. Then Birdie reached over and touched Nell’s hand. She said softly, “Yes, Nell. It was a day for all of those things. A small babe puts everything in its place.”

  Nell hadn’t realized the enormity of the emotion that had been trapped inside her until Birdie’s gentle touch released it. She cleared her throat and brushed the moisture in her eyes away. “It’s been a long week, hasn’t it?” She managed a smile.

  “Long weeks need chocolate,” Cass said, moving quickly to the side table. She picked up a box of Masala chocolates and passed the pear-shaped candies around.

  Nell nodded a silent thanks to Cass. She could always be counted on to lighten an awkward moment. She had almost forgotten Cass’s own emotional baggage—it had all been lost in the shuffle of the past week. She looked at her face, trying to read there how she and Danny were getting along. And how they were both greeting the news that the house on Ridge Road was being passed along to Julia Ainsley, a Sea Harbor visitor who seemed to be overstaying her welcome.

  Izzy plopped down on the chair next to her aunt’s. She nibbled on a chocolate and took a sip of wine. “Okay, first, let’s get the elephant out of the room.” She looked at Birdie.

  “You want to talk about Maeve’s house, about the break-in,” Birdie said. “Tommy Porter called it a ‘minor’ break-in, and maybe you can’t even call it a break-in because Maeve never locks her doors.”