A Finely Knit Murder Page 2

  Gabby loved Angelo’s accent, the absence of r’s. Sometimes she tried to think of questions for Angelo that would require only r word answers. “I went to a Sox game with Sam and Ben last weekend,” she said, walking into the small room. A slice of sunshine fell from the high casement windows onto her blue-black hair. “So that counts for something, right?”

  She brushed a layer of dust from a folding chair and sat down. The small room was crowded with manuals and tools, shoved onto shelves that lined one wall. A single filing cabinet stood beside Angelo’s metal desk, a small table holding a coffeepot and lunch box against another wall. The only other furniture were Angelo’s high-backed office chair, a heavy table with a printer on it, and a few folding chairs.

  But the bright posters lining one gray wall made the office wonderful in Gabby’s mind. Broadway shows performed at the local high school, Sea Harbor Community Day School productions, shows performed in a small theater over in Gloucester. Angelo himself had sung a tune or two in his day, he confessed to Gabby one time.

  But no matter, he loved them all, and donated generously to keep their doors open.

  And Gabby loved that he loved them.

  “Whattaya doin’ down here, anyway?” Angelo growled. “Shouldn’t you be in class somewhere, learning how to behave like a lady?” He waved one fist in the air as he talked, his bushy eyebrows tugging together until they almost touched—a white caterpillar shadowing piercing eyes.

  Gabby grinned and flapped a folder in the air. “I’m Miss Patterson’s errand girl. I was about to fall asleep in her history class and she took pity on me.”

  Angelo tsked and shook his head. “You watchit, Marietti. Your nonna holds me responsible for you, God knows why. You get yourself booted out of here and it’s all on poor Angelo.”

  His words were soft, his gruff expression fading into a lopsided smile. He picked up an envelope from the corner of his desk, half rose, and shoved it toward her. ”Might as well give you an excuse for coming down here. This gets put directly into Dr. Hartley’s hands. And don’t lose it, you hear me talkin’ to you?”

  Gabrielle shoved it under her arm. “Do you doubt me for a second? Of course I’ll do your bidding, fair Angelo. Your wish is my command.” She stood and bowed elaborately, her arms stretching out and knocking a stack of papers off his desk.

  “Outta here, pest.” Angelo shooed her off with a wave of his hand.

  Truth be told, he loved Gabby Marietti’s detours to his office. He loved her sass and her smile. She’d come late to Sea Harbor Community Day School, missing the first few weeks of the quarter after moving up from New York. But no one would have known she was a newbie. In the brief time she’d been there, Gabby had made a place for herself, brought sunshine into the cavernous mansion that housed the old school. Or at least into the office of the chief maintenance engineer, as the black-and-white sign on his door so presumptuously declared. Sunshine was good.

  Gabby scooped up the papers and set them back on his desk. She wrinkled her nose at him, the freckles dancing on her fine-boned face. And then as quickly as she’d come, she spun around, arms and legs flying, and disappeared from Angelo’s view as she raced down the hall toward the staircase.

  The urgent sound of boots on the hardwood stopped Gabby in her tracks just before she reached the bottom step.

  “No running in the halls,” she imagined the person saying to her. “Decorum, my dear.”

  But the sound on the steps was loud in the quiet hall, ominous, certainly not an administrator checking lockers or taking someone on a tour—and Gabby instinctively stepped back into the shadow near a utility closet.

  The familiar figure that came barreling down the steps was mumbling fiercely, the sound pushing Gabby deeper into the shadows. She wanted to be invisible.

  Mostly she didn’t want to embarrass Mr. Babson, the slender teacher who was teaching her to paint en plein air and never once considered her ramshackle watercolor of the old boathouse something that belonged in MOBA. Surely it would embarrass him to know a student was privy to the string of obscenities that filled the dusty basement air. Some of the words were ones Gabby had never heard before, even when she hung out at the fishermen’s dock, helping Cass and Pete Halloran repair lobster traps. These were unfamiliar, and seemed out of place coming from the mouth of the teacher.

  Gabby backed up until she could feel the ridge of the firebox between her shoulder blades, dust motes filling the air in front of her. A sneeze was threatening to break her silence. She pressed one hand over her mouth, the other clutching the papers she was supposed to be delivering. One second before the tickle became utterly painful, Mr. Babson disappeared into the downstairs teachers’ lounge, his strangely animated voice trailing after him. Words like hussy and revenge were mixed in with the curses, until the door finally banged shut behind him, filling the hall with silence.

  Gabby released a sigh of relief, pitying the final hour’s art class, who would have to face the angry teacher. It wouldn’t be pretty.

  With a sudden desire to return as quickly as possible to the safety of her class and the trials of colonization, she raced up the steps to drop off the envelopes, pausing more briefly than she usually did in the lobby.

  She always skidded to a stop here—even if she only had a minute—planting her feet on the striped hardwood surface and tilting her head back. The portrait demanded it. There was something about the austere expression on the man’s face that froze Gabby in her tracks. He’d had something like nine sons, her nonna had said. And they all lived in this house. She gave him her brightest smile. She’d crack that facade. Someday he’d smile back, she told herself.

  Sure he would.

  And then she rushed into the office suite, startling the secretary to attention.

  “Gabrielle, where is the fire?” Teresa leaned over the tall counter and peered at the student, her long face somber.

  “Delivering papers to Dr. Hartley.”

  “I’ll take them,” Teresa said, reaching out her hand.

  Gabby stared at her arm. It was thin, with knobs at her wrist. The kids talked about the secretary sometimes, but Gabby worried about her. She was so skinny, and had recently done something terrible to her light brown hair. It was a dull blond color and seemed to move in odd directions. Maybe it was just a wig, Gabby thought, somehow relieved at the idea.

  “It’s okay, I told Angelo I’d deliver them—”

  “And so you have. To me. You’re two seconds too late to see Dr. Hartley. An important board member beat you to it.” Teresa reached across the counter and took the papers from Gabby’s hand. “Now, off with you, back to class, missy,” she said, and motioned toward the door.

  Gabby turned back just once. Just long enough to see the back of a woman with platinum hair, standing perfectly still on the other side of the headmistress’s glass door.

  Teresa had turned and was looking at her, too, in an admiring way as if she wished her bleached blond hair didn’t frizzle around her face, but floated back smooth and perfect, every hair in place.

  For a second Gabby thought the woman beyond the door was a mannequin, but just then Teresa Pisano turned back in her direction, and her glare prevented Gabby from finding out. She hurried down the hallway to learn more about the founding fathers.

  * * *

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  The voice came from behind her, scattering Elizabeth Hartley’s thoughts. She hadn’t heard the door open. For a brief moment her heart skipped a beat.

  How long had she been standing there, watching her from the back, reading her thoughts?

  Blythe Westerland never made a sound when she entered a room—and she rarely knocked. “It’s a finishing school walk,” Birdie Favazza said after a recent board meeting. “One can imagine her with a book on her head, gliding effortlessly and silently on those long, well-exercised legs.”
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  Elizabeth turned toward the familiar voice. It matched Blythe’s hair and body perfectly—liquid and smooth. The board member was beautiful in that perfect way magazines managed to accomplish with Photoshop techniques, but in her case, it was real, at least mostly. A few years older than Elizabeth, Blythe always managed to dredge up the same insecurities she had spent her teenage years running from—those years when she watched from the sidelines as others were caught up in social whirlwinds and laughter and fun. The years when she was praised by her teachers for being bright and articulate, when she’d won one academic award after another—but spent most weekends alone in her room with her books and her dog.

  But it was different now, she reminded herself. She’d accomplished much since those painful teenage years; even allowing the memory back embarrassed her. It had no place in this office.

  She took a deep breath and met Blythe’s eyes. “Have I forgotten a meeting with you?”

  Beneath the open windows a riding mower started up, pushing the sounds of the sea into the background.

  Blythe didn’t answer. Instead she walked over and stood next to Elizabeth, resting her long fingers on the sill. Her chest rose as she breathed in the air. “It’s truly an incredible view. I never tire of it.”

  Elizabeth nodded, waiting.

  “We used to have our May Day dance right over there, in the middle of that lawn,” Blythe said.

  Elizabeth watched the memories play across Blythe’s face as she looked through the window. The board member was being transported back to a sunny day when the Sea Harbor school was truly a country day school, catering to old New England families. Days when the school’s greenhouse was a stable with horses bridled and ready, when limousines climbed the long, hilly drive at the end of a school day to pick up their charges.

  May Day. Elizabeth had seen the photographs, some of them framed in the library and in the glass cases outside the auditorium. The Maypole strung with colorful silken ribbons, the girls in white dresses, each one clutching the end of a streamer as she whirled and twirled around on the pole. The beautiful young women surrounding the queen. And surely Blythe would have been one of those queens.

  Over the years the May Day practice had become frayed around the edges, just like the school. Other private New England schools had eclipsed Sea Harbor in desirability for the wealthy, and May Day seemed to have diminished in stature, too. It seemed less appropriate, less an event, until Elizabeth had stopped it completely her first year as headmistress. The move didn’t settle easily with some of the parents and board members. But in light of declining enrollment and the expense of the ritual, it seemed out of place, elitist, even in its pared-down state. Elizabeth knew the money would be better spent on scholarships and to repair the roof and choir risers. It no longer fit into her vision of Sea Harbor Community Day School.

  Today, along with the nation’s flag, colorful flaps of sailcloth hung from the top of the metal pole—one a school banner that an art student had designed; another, a Boston Strong flag the students themselves had made in memory of that April marathon day they would never forget.

  “Who is that?” Blythe said, pointing to a figure moving across the bucolic scene.

  Elizabeth looked down at the flagstone path. It circled the mansion and then serpentined down the lawn toward the flagpole.

  The question was rhetorical. Blythe was aware of who it was—and why the man was moving resolutely across the grass, his head held high, tousled hair flying every which way and a lumpy backpack strapped between his shoulders. And she probably knew how angry he was, too. Her voice had been the strongest in determining the teacher’s fate. Her determination to have him fired was unusually intense.

  Elizabeth watched him casually at first, wondering if someone was taking over his class. Then she looked more closely. Something wasn’t normal about the way he was walking. She pressed her palms down on the window frame and leaned forward, shading her eyes. The man’s left arm was picking up speed, moving wildly, rotating like a Gloucester wind turbine. At first Elizabeth thought he was waving to someone she couldn’t see, perhaps the old man on the lawn mower.

  And then the surface of the lawn around him began to change, like a black-and-white film gradually taking on a wash of bright color.

  Slowly, deliberately, the well-tended grass became a painting in progress as angry swaths of reckless, canary yellow circles appeared across the grass.

  The color of crime scene tape—ugly and intrusive and announcing something evil.

  Elizabeth’s breath balled up in her chest as she watched the drama unfolding on the lawn. It wasn’t so terrible, what he was doing. He was angry, that was all.

  What was terrible was having Blythe Westerland standing next to her, watching it.

  Then suddenly, as if the music had stopped, the man turned slowly and looked up at the two women, as if he knew they were standing at the windows watching him.

  Elizabeth watched carefully, feeling no anger or fear; all she felt was sadness at disrupting a life. She forced a neutral look to her face and started to raise her hand. To do what? To wave at him? To invite him back?

  The tall man continued to look, to stare at them, his body perfectly still. She moved slightly, the shadow of the blinds partially blocking her. She watched him with a strange sense of unrest, as if she were listening in on a private conversation. She looked away, concentrating on a spray of paint soaking into the grass.

  And then she stared at it again, the random wash of color suddenly transforming into something else. There, in the middle of one of the fuzzy yellow circles, was a stick drawing of a woman, a triangle skirt giving nod to her sex. Slashing through the figure was a straight line—a street sign: NO LEFT TURN. NO TRUCKS ALLOWED. No women . . . No woman . . .

  Elizabeth looked at Blythe. Her profile was calm, and little emotion marred her perfect skin. The same half smile, lips just slightly parted, was set in place.

  Finally the artist waved, as if happily leaving a festive event. In the next minute he turned and walked resolutely across the lawn toward the old boathouse.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Blythe said quietly.

  Elizabeth turned away and walked back to her desk. “Dismissing staff is always unfortunate.”

  “The dismissal was necessary. I meant his reaction to it.”

  Elizabeth knew what she meant. She meant the dismissal must have been handled poorly to generate such a reaction. It meant Elizabeth had failed.

  “It’s unfortunate he was hired in the first place, Elizabeth.”

  That was the rationale Blythe had brought to the board. He was clearly unsuitable. One had to be careful when hiring artists.

  And having a beer down by the dock while he helped Ira Staab paint the school’s old boathouse didn’t help his case. It didn’t matter that it was after the students had gone home. He was on the payroll, Blythe said.

  He’d left work early several times, she’d noted. And had spent way too much time at the Artist’s Palate Bar over near Canary Cove, no matter that it was on his own time, his own dollar.

  Elizabeth knew those things. She had talked with the teacher about mannerisms, school rules, the importance of schedules. She’d been making progress, she thought.

  Until she wasn’t, because the board had decided differently.

  “And also unfortunate that the way he was fired somehow stripped him of his dignity. That’s a shame.”

  Elizabeth chose not to answer. Instead she glanced at the grandfather clock and sat down behind her desk. “I don’t mean to rush you, Blythe, but I have an appointment shortly. Is there something you wanted?”

  “You’re meeting with Chelsey Mansfield.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Elizabeth frowned, wondering when her calendar had become public knowledge. She glanced through the door at Teresa Pisano. Recently the school secretary
had become friendly with Blythe Westerland. It was an odd kind of friendship, more an admiration on Teresa’s part. Someone had brought it to Elizabeth’s attention that Teresa had recently bleached her brown hair and begun straightening it into what vaguely resembled Blythe’s perfect bob.

  Blythe seemed to like the admiration, even bringing the secretary flowers one day.

  Elizabeth pushed away the thoughts that began to crowd her judgment. She put her glasses back on and picked up the Mansfield file. It was a simple progress report on the student, Anna Mansfield, a ten-year-old whom Elizabeth had known for a long time. It was a good report. Diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, Anna was sometimes challenged by school and the social world that came with it. But Elizabeth knew that in the right environment and with teachers to help, the student would thrive. And that’s exactly what was happening, as slowly but surely Anna was meeting all the goals her teachers had set for her. She was also proving what Elizabeth suspected to be true, that Anna was probably more intellectually gifted than many of her peers. She just needed a little extra help sorting through the stimuli that made up life. And the other students in the school would only benefit from learning that they weren’t all cut from the same mold.

  That was exactly the kind of environment Elizabeth Hartley was creating. And meeting with the child’s mother was the kind of meeting she’d like to have every day—a good student report handed over to a very interested, loving parent.

  But of what interest was the meeting to Blythe?

  Before she could ask, Blythe stood and brushed an imaginary fleck of dust from her white skirt.

  “Actually I came in today to give you support when you met with Josh Babson. To make sure the firing went smoothly.”

  Elizabeth frowned. If she hadn’t changed the time of the appointment at the last minute, moving it up an hour, Blythe would have arrived at her door at the same moment Josh did.

  “It seems I was too late,” Blythe continued. She offered a sad smile and added, “That’s a shame, but what’s done is done.”

  Elizabeth looked down at her desk, collecting herself and holding back words that she knew she would regret if they escaped. She would be gracious. Blythe was a board member, a school benefactor—and related to the man who had donated the building and grounds. Finally Elizabeth looked up. “While I appreciate your offer to help, the board hired me to run this school. It’s what I am trained to do. And for better or worse, I cherish this job, all of it, even the difficult parts. You and the other board members are wonderfully supportive. But I know you can appreciate that some of the responsibilities are ones I need to handle alone. Especially ones like this. My faculty deserves that kind of respect and privacy.”