Murder in Merino Page 17

  “Danny, what do you think?” Nell asked.

  He looked up. “I think Jules will find some answers, maybe not all. She knows which summer it was. Her age plus nine months. That’s a starting point. But right now what I think is that it’s a good thing that all of you are hearing Jules’s story.” He looked over at her. “If you could pick any support team on the Eastern Seaboard, you couldn’t do better than the four women sitting at this table.” He took a drink of coffee, then met Jules’s eyes again. “And Rebecca Early is a pretty good friend to have as well.”

  Nell poured some cream in her coffee and stirred it around with a spoon. “Have you told the police about this?”

  Jules looked surprised and slightly agitated. “The police? Why would I do that?”

  Why indeed? A random idea had scuttled across Nell’s mind that there might be a connection between Jules’s father and Jeffrey Meara’s murder. But when she let her mind touch on the possibility, it instantly fell apart, into loose, frayed pieces of yarn. She looked over at Danny and saw that he was considering it, too—and getting nowhere.

  Jeffrey Meara would have had no way of knowing why Jules was in Sea Harbor. Danny had been her only confidant. But yet . . . he had insisted on talking to her. And it was important to him.

  Important enough to get him killed?

  Danny left the table soon after, back to his corner table to rework a stubborn character, he said, and figure out a tricky motive.

  Nell watched him walk across the deck. Would that it were so easy in real life. Now there were two mysteries, not one. A murder, and uncovering a past. One was drowning a town in fear, the other filling a woman with hope.

  As the deck began filling up with the early lunch crowd, they realized the morning was rushing by. Coffee cups were drained, bills pulled out, and tips slipped under the creamer as they waved a good-bye to Merry.

  Birdie told Jules they would talk soon. She was an old-timer, and though she sometimes had trouble remembering what she had for dinner the day before, remembering what happened thirty or forty years earlier would be a breeze. She would certainly give it some thought.

  Jules was grateful to Birdie, to all of them, she said. She had no doubt Danny Brandley was right: they were formidable allies. Just as he was. She looked across the deck at the writer. “You know better than I do what a good and decent man he is,” she said. Her words were spoken to all of them, but her eyes were on Cass.

  As soon as Jules had left, Nell took out her phone and sent a quick text to Ben to check on Jules’s car. Surely the police were finished with it by now. Jules was headed back to her house—she would need a car. Maybe Ben could speed it up. As she punched the Send command, she looked over the deck railing and noticed that Jules had stopped in front of Lampworks Gallery, looking in the window at the colorful handcrafted beads.

  Izzy stood and followed her look. “I like Danny and I like Rebecca,” she said. “But Rebecca is much better for Jules right now than Danny Brandley.”

  Nell laughed. “That’s only because you have other plans for Danny.”

  At the table, Cass gathered up her bag and ignored her friends. She wasn’t laughing.

  Chapter 23

  Birdie and Nell left the Artist’s Palate together, stopping briefly at Birdie’s home in the Ravenswood neighborhood to pick up a chicken salad Ella had prepared that morning. “Enough for three,” Birdie had requested.

  They drove north along Ravenswood Road, past the bed-and-breakfast and the elegant homes hidden on wooded acres. A mile later, they turned west onto a side road that wound around to the smaller, more modest neighborhood where Jeffrey and Maeve Meara had settled.

  Birdie had suggested to Maeve that she and Nell stop by. She wanted Maeve to try her housekeeper Ella’s incredible chicken salad.

  But mostly they both wanted to check on Maeve, to see for themselves how she was doing and to make sure she wasn’t spending too much time alone. And as Birdie said, one learns a lot from sitting in another’s home. Things you never noticed before sometimes became significant, the minutiae of living a life. When she and Harold had taken Maeve home the night of the funeral, all they saw was the results of someone’s invasion of a grieving widow’s privacy. Perhaps a friendly visit would give them a much better picture of what might have been going on in Jeffrey Meara’s life in the days before he died.

  They pulled up in front of the neat, two-story frame house. The grass was trimmed, and Mexican urns filled with orange and crimson chrysanthemums sat on either side of the front steps—as welcoming as Maeve herself was when she appeared in the doorway and ushered Birdie and Nell inside.

  It took them less time than it did to settle around the pine dining table to see that Maeve was going to be fine. Although her eyes were lined with grief, there was something else in this small woman who had just buried the love of her life: Maeve Meara held an extraordinary ability to understand life—and death—and whatever lay beyond.

  The table was bright, cheery, with a vase of gerber daisies in the center and three of Jane Brewster’s signature pottery plates on bright green place mats.

  Maeve immediately scooped up a forkful of Ella’s chicken salad. “This is quite amazing,” she said. “Now tell me what these little buds are?” She pointed to one of them with a tine of her fork.

  “Capers,” Birdie said. “As my granddaughter says, ‘Capers and olives and avocados in a chicken salad. How cool is that?’”

  “It’s very cool,” Maeve said, going for another forkful.

  The dining area was an extension of the living room, the short end of the L. Above the credenza on the wall facing Nell was a wall filled with framed photographs. Her eyes moved to a wedding photograph of Jeffrey and Maeve. The age difference was evident but not pronounced, and the look of happiness on Jeffrey’s face lit up the photo.

  “I remember that day,” Birdie said, following Nell’s look. “I was older and wiser, of course, and from my vantage point it was a marriage made in heaven.”

  Maeve laughed. She welcomed the chance to bring Jeffrey Meara back into the room with them. “In those years before we married—when I was off at college and then experimenting with living in a big city—Jeffrey was kind of a lost soul. He had put off college for a year to care for his father, who was dying of cancer. But then, after his father died—I don’t know. My family and friends said that something happened to him, changed him, and he seemed to lose his way. Jeffrey was very smart—Yale was holding a scholarship for him, but he didn’t honor it.”

  “Did you ever ask him why he didn’t go?”

  She sighed, as if she’d like to go back right then and talk to him about many things. “Sometimes we would touch upon our pasts, but not too often—and that particular time seemed to be a touchy subject. Jeffrey would clam up when I asked too many questions and I would back off. I didn’t want him to think I was disappointed that he didn’t have a college degree.”

  “But he planned on going to college?”

  “Yes. He kept in touch with several good friends, and they all went off to college. I’m sure they encouraged him that way. But then—well, somewhere along the way he changed his mind. Something happened—something traumatic—and his life turned around and followed a different path. But the good thing is that it was a path that crossed over mine.

  “I knew Jeffrey because our families had lived here forever, but when I came back to Sea Harbor, I wasn’t looking for a man. Then one day I walked into the Ocean’s Edge with some friends and there he was—the man I wasn’t looking for. This short little man with a bow tie who was already going bald, even way back then.

  “Jeffrey used to say that I gave him a second life, and that it began the day we were married.” Maeve turned and looked up at the wedding photo. “He was a romantic, my Jeffrey. My Renaissance man, I called him.”

  Her gaze lingered on the photo. The couple stood
side by side, dressed in simple clothes, a short white dress for Maeve, a dark suit for Jeffrey. They were nearly the same height. They weren’t touching, except for a brush of their hands, but the look on their faces told a deep and intimate story.

  Maeve turned back to the table. “Memories,” she said softly, then picked up her fork and scooped up the remaining traces of Ella’s chicken salad, smiling with pleasure.

  “Do you suppose his father’s death changed him?” Birdie asked. “Perhaps that’s why he didn’t continue his schooling.”

  Maeve thought about the question, but rejected it. “No, I don’t think so. His father died that next winter after Jeffrey got out of high school. My sister worked with him at a resort near Long Beach and she said Jeffrey contacted the school after his father’s funeral and told them he’d be coming the next fall and they should activate his acceptance papers. He was going to sell this house—who needed four bedrooms? But then at the end of that next summer, when he should have done all those things, he didn’t. He didn’t sell the house, and he didn’t go to Yale.” Maeve thought about the question some more, as if in the retelling it made even less sense to her.

  “Jeffrey told me he wasn’t close to his father. He cared for him when he was ill, but I suspect it was out of duty, not affection. Jeffrey was the kind of man who would do that. He was as loyal as the day is long. And his father appreciated it. He thanked him by leaving him this house.” She looked around the room. “This is where he was living when I moved back to town.”

  They looked around at the cozy and well-kept home. Nell’s guess was that Maeve had lovingly torn the entire place apart and transformed it into the cheerful and inviting home that they now sat in.

  “It was a bit of a wreck,” Maeve mused, as if reading their thoughts. “Too many bachelor parties, I suspect. The only decent room was the garage.”

  Nell laughed. “Now that’s a switch. Our garage is a mess.”

  “Ours was—is—spotless,” Maeve said. “Jeffrey kept a car out there, a Sprite—one of those tiny British cars that looks like it’s smiling. And he kept it in perfect condition—always.”

  “Jeffrey had a Sprite?” Birdie’s silver brows lifted in surprise. “My Sonny had a Sprite and he loved it dearly. The two of us would drive up the coast—all the way to Maine and back—my hair flying in the wind, young and carefree and alive.” Her voice grew soft with memory. “May I see it, just for a moment?”

  “Of course.” Maeve got up immediately and led the way through the kitchen to a back door that opened onto the driveway. She pressed a button just inside the door and they heard the garage door lift.

  “I can understand Jeffrey’s pride,” Birdie said, walking down two steps to the gravel drive. “Sonny’s Sprite was his true joy—well, after me, of course.”

  They stood on the driveway looking into the immaculate garage.

  Looking back at them were the bright bug eyes of a pristine British racing green Sprite. The small open-topped car, facing out, commanded center stage in the spotless garage. With the headlights staring straight ahead and the wide oval grille below, it did look like it was smiling at them.

  The three women smiled back.

  “What a gorgeous car,” Nell said.

  “It’s beautiful,” Birdie said. “A beautiful beast. But I never once saw Jeffrey drive it. I could barely pry Sonny out of his. There was only one way”—she lifted her eyebrows—“and this isn’t the time or place to talk about it.”

  Maeve laughed. “Jeffrey never did drive it. Never once that I know of, though he certainly might have before I came into the picture.”

  Birdie was in disbelief. “This amazing car sat here alone?”

  “Oh, no. Not alone. Jeffrey spent a lot of time with it, just not behind the wheel. He got the car from a great friend, someone he was tight with when he was young. He had promised his friend he’d take good care of it. Jeffrey was a man of his word—take care of it, he definitely did. He polished it every single week.” Maeve spoke in the indulgent tone reserved for talking about husbands who did irrational things.

  They started to walk back inside, when Maeve stopped and turned back to the car as if remembering something.

  “One curious thing. Jeffrey spent more time out here than usual the last week before he died. I remember because it wasn’t the usual time to polish it, but he gave it a complete once-over. I heard him rummaging around with some things he kept out here one day. After a couple of hours I came out to check on him, and there he sat, relaxing on the black leather seats, his head back and his eyes closed. He must have been revisiting old times. He had a box on his lap and he was smiling. A kind of sad smile, I remember. I snuck back inside, not wanting to disturb his reverie.” She smiled at the memory, then shook it off and motioned Birdie and Nell back inside.

  “Well, your whole house—not just the garage—is lovely,” Nell said as they walked back inside.

  Maeve glanced back one more time, then shut the door behind her. “It’s interesting how memories come to me now, some from long ago, some from last week. In no order. No reason, except maybe triggered by a comment made here or there. And the need to keep Jeffrey close.”

  “Are you remembering something about the car?”

  She nodded. “Something he said in passing recently, something that was a surprise. He said he had found someone to give the car to. And that thought seemed to make him inordinately happy. It surprised me.”

  “Who?” Nell asked.

  “He didn’t say—and I didn’t ask. I assumed it was one of the collectors who occasionally called about the car. Someone who would want an old Sprite in pristine condition. It was just the day before . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, but the drop in her voice made it clear. It was the day before he died. The day before he was murdered.

  “We had recently talked about moving, maybe finding a smaller, one-story place. And it might have been related to that. Perhaps the person he talked to will call about it.”

  She walked into the dining room and began carrying the empty dishes from the table back into the kitchen. She called over her shoulder, “You tell Ella for me that your granddaughter is absolutely right. This salad was amazing. Cool, indeed.”

  Jeffrey’s British racing green Sprite had slipped back into her memory, tucked carefully away with decades of others.

  Nell walked through the living room to a back window that looked out over Maeve’s garden. A vine of small pumpkins wound around the spinach and kale and the border of bright dahlias and nasturtiums. She could imagine it all summer long, carefully tended, bearing tomatoes and zucchini and peppers.

  Maeve came out of the kitchen and pointed to glass-paned doors that opened into the den. “That’s the room where someone thought Jeffrey had hidden money or gold or something worth dumping out drawers for. Birdie knows—”

  Birdie looked through the doors, a slight shiver bringing back the image of the chaos they’d found there just a few days before. “I’m sure the police have been over all this with you again, but do you have any idea what the person was after?”

  “I try not to dwell on it,” Maeve said. “But of course I’ve thought about it. I’ve gone through the room myself and there’s not much there anyone other than I would want. I know every inch of what’s on the bookshelves. Nothing was missing. I think it was a random happening.”

  A random happening that had nothing to do with her husband’s murder. That, of course, was the hope. It was simply a curious person who knew Maeve wouldn’t be home that day and that she rarely locked her doors—and took advantage of it. It was a scenario that was far easier to deal with than the thought of a murderer’s presence in this lovely home, and Nell wondered whether she might have felt the same way had it happened to her. Imagining a murderer in your personal space was a nightmarish, nearly unbearable thought.

  Maeve walked into the den and Bir
die and Nell followed. It was neat and clean now, the pine floor polished and small rugs vacuumed. A vase of colorful dahlias sat on a small table near a leather love seat. “Jeffrey loved this room—it’s where he worked on his restaurant business but also where he spent hours and hours reading. Originally, it was his mother’s sewing room, but together we turned it into a den for him. He called it his haven.”

  One wall was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Nell read the titles and held back her surprise at the collection: a shelf of Proust; Aristotle and Plato, Sartre and Heidegger sharing space with postmodern philosophers; French poetry and British mysteries. The classics and volumes of history books. Jeffrey Meara may not have made it to Yale, but he was well educated. Maeve was right. He was a Renaissance man.

  Maeve followed her look. “He read them all, Nell. Sometimes he’d read poetry to me. He loved every inch of those books, from his bartending volumes to literature to philosophy. That was my Jeffrey.”

  Interspersed with the books were mementos, photos, and framed certificates. “I found boxes in the rafters of the garage with all this old stuff of his. I pulled out some of it and surprised him with it. He protested at first—he said he stashed all those old things so no one would find them. But then he looked at it all carefully, walking around the room, and it must have brought back some good memories because he got a bit teary—and he let it all be, exactly as I arranged it. I think it taught him that the past wasn’t always a bad place to go. Recently I found him rummaging around out there in the garage, looking at some other things he’d stashed. Memories.”

  There were plenty of framed photos of Jeffrey holding giant fish down on the pier, of his bartender licenses right alongside an old National Honor Society membership certificate, and a photo of him on his first day on the job at the Ocean’s Edge. Maeve had even put his high school graduation diploma in the mix. It was on a top shelf so he couldn’t get it down easily and pitch it, she explained smugly.