A Finely Knit Murder Read online

  “That old boathouse is such a cool place,” Gabby went on, pointing to the photo. “Daisy and I wrote a proposal that it be an art place and we gave it to Dr. Hartley.”

  “Art place?” Cass asked.

  “Yeah, like a studio, sort of. Mr. Babson took us down there sometimes to paint. It was very cool. He kept some easels there for us and sometimes we’d climb on the rocks to paint the ocean. Daisy liked to paint the boathouse and he told her maybe it would become a famous Sea Harbor motif, like that red shack—the Motif #1 over in Rockport. He told Daisy maybe she’d be famous for starting the trend.”

  Ben laughed. “Maybe so. You’re talking about the art teacher, right?”

  “Uh-huh. He used to be, anyway. He was way cool. Did you know he was at the party Friday? Daisy and I walked down to the boathouse with him that night and talked about how great it would be to fix it up. He still thinks it’s a good idea even though I guess he doesn’t have much say about it now. Unless . . . unless maybe they’ll hire him back.”

  “Did he say that he might get hired back?” Birdie asked.

  “Not exactly. But sort of. Like maybe Dr. Hartley would reconsider. But anyway, we gave our idea to Teresa to give to Dr. Hartley.”

  “Dr. Hartley pays attention to her students’ ideas,” Nell said. “She mentioned some of them at a board meeting.” She managed a smile, keeping to herself her surprise at Josh Babson’s thinking he’d be rehired now.

  “You’re right, Aunt Nell. She’s nice. She listens to us. To everyone. Usually.”

  “Usually?” Cass asked.

  “Well, yeah. Daisy and I talk to her a lot. She likes us. But some other people, not so much.”

  A waitress appeared with the Sunday special: roasted fall vegetables picked from Annabelle’s garden—spinach and tiny peppers, thin slices of radishes, and late-blooming heirloom tomatoes—blended with cream, basil, eggs, and Gruyère cheese.

  Ben beamed at his Sunday indulgence, one Nell allowed him but only with the firm warning that he’d be eating grilled fish and roasted vegetables for the rest of the week. She was not about to contribute to another heart attack, like the one years before that had convinced them to move to Sea Harbor and slow down their lives.

  “Harry, you’re quiet,” Nell said. She picked up her fork and looked over at him.

  Cass answered for him. “Harry’s contractor on the old house says it needs some structural repairs or it’ll fall off the cliff. He’s bummed. One more thing to be fixed before he can sell it.”

  “Sell it?” Birdie asked.

  “Yeah. Seems silly to keep paying taxes on it,” Harry said, looking up from his omelet.

  “Oh.”

  The fact that anyone would forsake a cottage in Sea Harbor with such an amazing view of the water was unfathomable to every person sitting at the table.

  Harry seemed not to notice.

  “Are you staying there?”

  He nodded. “In a bedroom filled with paint and plaster buckets. But it’s okay. It works.”

  Nell looked at Cass to read her expression, but it was neutral. She had brought Harry to the party—and today to breakfast—but for the life of her she could not read Cass’s feelings about the man. Perhaps Ben would have some insight later. He was a good mind reader on occasion.

  They all concentrated on the perfectly cooked omelet, enhanced by a gentle curve of melon slices and blueberries. Ben engaged Harry in stories about his and Sam’s sailing adventures, once he discovered something he had in common with the younger man. Cass went back to the newspaper, and Gabby and Birdie gabbed back and forth about Gabby’s weekend at the Danverses’, Gabby happily enthusing about Daisy’s sisters, her built-in bunk beds, and Mr. Danvers’s yacht.

  And Nell listened.

  In between, Gabby would answer Birdie’s well-placed questions meant to tease out feelings about the Friday night murder. Laura and Elliott had talked to the girls after the headmistress’s e-mail arrived. Whatever they’d said had satisfied the girls, although the thought of someone dying on “their” rocks was still an issue. Daisy had checked the statistics, and most people killed on rocks fell off them or onto them. Murder wasn’t as common, especially using one of the boulders as the murder weapon.

  “We were right there, Nonna. Can you believe it?” Gabby said, her expression a mixture of awe, excitement, and utter horror. “What if we’d handed the murderer a program, what if we were so close to him we could touch him? What if we’d been down there, putting out the hurricane lamps, when . . . when he did it?”

  Nell looked closely to see if there was another emotion on Gabby’s face, one that might mitigate somewhat the concern she saw growing on Birdie’s face. Fear. Fear could be a deterrent in seeking adventure. In exploring places that might not be safe.

  The excitement and awe and even horror were there, dwindling only when Birdie insisted on asking Gabby what she would like for dinner.

  Fear never entered the picture.

  And that worried Birdie and Nell in equal measure.

  * * *

  Cass and Harry left the restaurant soon after, but not before Ben promised Harry a turn at the controls of his and Sam’s forty-two-foot Hinckley. They set a time and it seemed to bring some life to Harry—at least the man was speaking now and then. Nell tried to analyze his mood in her mind, but finally gave up, realizing that she would have to know him better to determine if he was sad, depressed over his cottage, or simply someone who didn’t talk a lot. The strong and silent type.

  Birdie and Gabby left next. Harold texted them from the restaurant’s parking lot. He was sitting in Birdie’s Lincoln and wouldn’t be the slightest bit disappointed if they were to bring him and Ella a sack of Annabelle’s fried apple biscuits and a jug of apple butter.

  Warm, if possible.

  Nell and Ben sat alone for a while after everyone else left, enjoying the breeze, the Sunday Times, and being alone with each other. It hadn’t happened often in recent days.

  Nell’s eyes and soul were filling up with the picture-perfect scene in the distance—the sky and sea nearly seamless and a fleet of Sunday sailors heading out to open sea. The whale watching boats had already left the harbor, while small fishing vessels still tugged their way out around the shinier, fancier, bigger boats.

  Ben finally put down the opinion page of the paper and looked over at her. “It’s just beginning,” he said.

  A quiet voice at his elbow confirmed that to be true.

  They both looked up into Jerry Thompson’s concerned face. He stood alone, dressed uncharacteristically in jeans and a knit shirt, his thick hair brushed back with streaks of silver serving as attractive highlights. The Silver Fox, some of the girls at the station called him, Esther Gibson had told Nell, but he didn’t have quite enough gray for that yet.

  “It’s going to be a mess,” Jerry said, and sat in the chair Ben pulled out.

  Ben poured coffee. “Food?”

  Jerry shook his head. “I’m here for breakfast takeout. I thought I’d take something over to Elizabeth Hartley’s—a peaceful meal away from crowds.” He glanced out toward the parking lot. “I didn’t intend to come farther than the kitchen door, but I spotted your car in the lot and Annabelle let me sneak out here through the kitchen.”

  “It’s a rough time,” Ben said. “Everyone wants answers.”

  “Yep. And when I can’t give any, folks make them up. Or put things together that really don’t fit.”

  There wasn’t much to say. Jerry was right. Nell felt a slight twinge of guilt that they had done the same thing. In less than two days the facts and nonfacts of Blythe Westerland’s murder had been stacked up and scattered about haphazardly. Attempts to sort it out before there was enough there to create a pile.

  “I understand it,” Jerry said. “Everyone wants the town to go back to the way it was a week ago, to make
this thing go away. The problem is you have to be so careful. We can’t destroy more lives because we’re desperate for a semblance of peace.”

  The words seem to make his wide shoulders sag, his eyes lose their clarity as he focused on his strong, blunt fingers on the tabletop. The chief of the Sea Harbor police looked more haggard than Ben and Nell had seen him look in a long time—and maybe ever.

  Finally he looked up. There was genuine sadness in his eyes. “We don’t want the wrong person to be hurt in all this,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  Ben and Nell walked with Jerry out to the parking lot, exiting the restaurant the way Jerry had come in—through the fragrant aroma of Annabelle’s kitchen.

  Annabelle handed Jerry a white bag filled with fried biscuits along with his order. “Elizabeth likes these,” she said. She gave him a quick hug, then attempted to lighten the mood. “And who knows, Chief, it might make you sweeter.”

  Jerry hugged her back, a quick display of uncharacteristic affection. They walked over to his pickup truck, parked in the shade of a maple tree near the Endicotts’ CRV.

  “Traveling incognito, I see,” Ben said.

  He shrugged. “I’m not on duty. It makes it a little easier not to be spotted. It’s a helluva situation we have on our hands.” He pulled out his keys. “I didn’t know Blythe Westerland very well. For a while she seemed to be in and out of town a lot—sitting on some boards here but had a life in Boston, too. But her life seemed pretty ordinary, as far as I know. Not the kind that would breed enemies. She was always friendly. Sometimes overly so, I guess you’d say.”

  “That happens to handsome eligible bachelors, Jerry,” Nell said.

  But Jerry knew that. In the fifteen years since his wife, Fran, had died, he had been on many single women’s radar. The number-one choice to fix up with a friend for a dinner party. He dated some of the women he was matched with. But it had never felt right. His Frances was still too much a presence to allow another woman in.

  Jerry seemed to give Nell’s words undue thought. “Yeah, okay, there was that,” he said, dismissing it. “Who knows, I’m so rusty—she was probably just friendly or wanted me to fix a parking ticket for her. Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was an odd one, Blythe Westerland was.” He looked off, as if remembering things that were not entirely pleasant and that he shouldn’t have expressed in the first place. He gave a shake of his head and had started to climb inside the cab of his truck when fingers grasped his arm tightly.

  Ben and Nell looked over, startled.

  Teresa Pisano had come out of nowhere, climbing off a bike and letting it fall to the ground.

  “Arrest Dr. Hartley, Chief. Right now before she hurts someone else. She only wants the money. That’s all. We can’t let her get away with this.”

  The pain on Jerry’s face was palpable. But his voice was calm, controlled, professional. “Teresa, I told you yesterday when you came into the station that we are talking to everyone. We will do everything in our power to find the person who killed Blythe.”

  Teresa Pisano began to cry, large tears running down her long, homely face. Nell went over and touched her arm. “Teresa, would you like a ride home?”

  Nell saw Jerry’s look of thanks as he climbed into the cab of his truck and immediately brought the engine to life, then slowly backed up and made his way out of the parking lot.

  “I was out riding,” Teresa said, glancing over at her bike. “And I saw the chief head up here. I just wanted to talk to him, to make him understand.”

  “Jerry is a good police chief, Teresa,” Ben said.

  “He’s a good man, I know that.”

  “You look tired,” Nell said.

  She nodded. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  Ben picked the bike up and hooked it to the rack at the back of his CRV. “Nell and I can give you a lift home.”

  Teresa climbed into the back of the car without protest. “To Ravenswood,” she said. Then added with a feeble attempt at a smile, “Please.”

  Nell looked over the seat. “To your cousin’s bed-and-breakfast?”

  She nodded. “I moved over there to help Mary out. I’m staying in the suite that used to be Grandpa Enzo’s. I do night desk sometimes and help out on weekends.”

  Mary Pisano was a good woman, Nell thought. Her cousin Teresa wasn’t like the rest of the Pisanos—friendly and motivated and assured of their place in the world because of the newspaper empire their grandfather had built. Teresa was a loner, moved slower than the others. Nell knew from board discussions that Teresa’s secretarial job at the school had been “encouraged” by an uncle’s contributions to the school.

  And now she was living in the lovely expansive bed-and-breakfast that her cousin Mary had inherited from old Grandpa Enzo.

  And she was probably a help to Mary, since Mary stayed at the home she shared with her husband when he wasn’t out at sea. “What a wonderful place to live,” Nell said.

  Teresa didn’t answer and when Nell looked back, her eyes were closed, her head back against the seat.

  That was a good thing. Nell didn’t want to hear a word about Elizabeth Hartley.

  They drove the rest of the way through town in silence—along Harbor Road and up to the historic Ravenswood neighborhood, once home to shipping magnates, wealthy quarry owners, captains of the sea—and Enzo Pisano, owner of a dozen newspapers.

  Ben slowed and drove up the wide drive, past the neat white and gold sign that read RAVENSWOOD-BY-THE-SEA. And below it, WELCOME.

  Teresa seemed to have recovered somewhat and looked less disheveled than when she had nearly attacked the police chief.

  She helped Ben take her bike off the car rack and thanked them for their help. “I’m sorry for acting the way I did. I just don’t think the police are looking in the right places. They make mistakes sometimes. I wanted to help, that’s all.”

  “Of course,” Nell said.

  She thanked them for the ride and walked around to the back of the inn.

  “Let’s see if Mary is here,” Ben said. “A chance to say hello.”

  But his message was clear. Let’s make sure Teresa is all right. And maybe Mary could fill them in on Teresa’s vendetta against Elizabeth Hartley.

  Mary ushered them into the large kitchen of the B and B, where there was always coffee brewing and usually a basket of scones on the large center island.

  Ben filled her in on the encounter at Annabelle’s restaurant.

  Mary grimaced. “She’s come a little unhinged over all this,” she said.

  “How long has she been living here?” Nell asked.

  “It’s been a while. I just don’t talk about it, because the other cousins think I’m a little daft for doing it. Teresa is simply not a family favorite. She isn’t savvy and successful and filled with self-importance.” Mary laughed. “But she helps me out in exchange for the room. It works.”

  “Do you know why she has this thing against Elizabeth?” Ben asked. “It’s almost an obsession.”

  “I’m just beginning to hear about it,” Mary said. “Maybe I didn’t pay attention before. I’d noticed that Teresa was trying to change her looks, bleached her hair, lost some weight—way too much weight, in my opinion.”

  “But why?” Nell asked.

  “It took me a while to figure it out because frankly, I don’t see Teresa much. She takes the desk when I’m not here, and since I don’t live here, our paths usually cross over business things. But I realized recently that she was talking more and more about Blythe Westerland and then it dawned on me that she was trying to look like her. She wanted to be pretty.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She’s the baby of the clan. Thirty-eight, I think—and never been kissed.”

  “So—” Ben wrinkled his forehead. “So this thing Teresa had with Blythe might have been l
ike a schoolgirl crush on a teacher?”

  “I think so. Something like that,” Mary said. She looked down at the stainless steel surface of the island and drew a lazy line with her finger. “But honestly, Ben, I don’t know what to think about her animosity toward Elizabeth. She said Elizabeth was terrible at her job—an opinion I’m sure she got from Blythe, so who knows how legit it is? I suspect not much at all. She said Blythe was going to save the school by getting Elizabeth fired—and she was helping her.”

  “Helping her?”

  “I’m not sure, but I suspect that Teresa relayed things to Blythe that were going on in the administrative offices. Making herself into a little mole. She practically said as much one night, telling me how she had changed a board meeting time so Elizabeth would be late for the meeting. She seemed inordinately proud of being complicit in Blythe’s little plan, as if she were collecting Brownie points or something. And then she showed me some cheap necklace Blythe had given her. I said she was going to get herself fired, but she just laughed. It seemed she’d do anything for Blythe.”

  That explained the last board meeting. It was Teresa’s doing. And now Teresa was without her anchor, adrift in the head office. And furious about it. That explained a lot of things.

  “Teresa thought she was protected against any and all evils because Blythe was her friend. And Blythe’s goal was to get rid of Elizabeth. So that was Teresa’s, too.”

  Elizabeth knew about Blythe’s goal, of course. The whole board did. Elizabeth loved her job passionately. Which in Nell’s mind was why she was such an excellent administrator. But if she thought she was going to lose that job . . .

  No. She refused to go there.

  But the police would.

  They wouldn’t have any choice.

  Chapter 16

  T he beginning of the week didn’t bring an arrest in the Blythe Westerland case, but it did bring some normality back to Sea Harbor.

  “School is in session today. Elizabeth is trying to keep everything as normal as usual,” Birdie reported. “I stopped in to see her when we dropped Gabby off, just to be sure she was all right and to see if there was anything we could do. She was busy, as you’d expect, not only with the normal run of things, but fending off a pesky reporter.”