The Wedding Shawl Read online

  Nell passed around plates and napkins to catch the dripping cheese from the grilled sandwiches.

  Cass licked her fingers. “Can’t believe I like these as much as I do. A sandwich without a hint of cow or pig—and it’s good.” She peeled back the top crust and eyed the mushrooms, tomatoes, and thin slices of grilled red onion and zucchini. Harry had added sprigs of basil and oregano, slivers of pepperoncini, and a creamy sauce, the contents of which he refused to reveal, all topped with fresh melted mozzarella cheese.

  Izzy put her half-finished sandwich down and pulled the first box over to the group. She tore off the tape and lifted the cardboard flaps. “Clothes?”

  “She kept a bit of her life in that office. More than at Mrs. Bridge’s boardinghouse, we think,” Birdie said.

  Izzy pulled out jackets and checked the pockets. “You never know,” she said, looking up, but they were empty except for some loose change and a pair of sunglasses. She folded them neatly and took out a pair of nylon running shorts and several shirts. The rest of the box had more of the same—several underwear items, a baseball hat.

  Nell took out a Magic Marker while Izzy refilled the box. Father Northcutt, she wrote across the side.

  Cass opened another box and lifted the battered backpack out, setting it aside.

  “The rest are all books,” Cass said. She opened each one, then flipped the pages upside down to release any notes or receipts, or stray bits of paper. Anything that might add details to Tiffany Ciccolo’s life. She checked the titles, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, and she packed them all up again.

  Birdie leaned over and pulled the backpack to her lap. She unzipped the main compartment and looked inside. “This is interesting.” She pulled a cotton nightshirt from the bag. Next was a red lightweight hoodie. Birdie held it up. SEA HARBOR RED HOTS was written across the back.

  “That’s the name of a community-center basketball team. I think I played on it one year. I was awful,” Cass said.

  “Tiffany played basketball,” Nell said. “She must have saved it. Claire said she was a good player.”

  Birdie held the shirt up by the shoulders and scrutinized it more carefully. “It must have shrunk over the years if it was Tiffany’s. It’s not very big.”

  The nightshirt and shorts were small, too. She pulled out a hairbrush and small bag holding creams and elastic bands. Deodorant and a toothbrush. A clean T-shirt and pair of jeans were folded together, along with underwear. Birdie set them aside and unzipped a side pocket. She found a pair of earrings and a black velvet pouch. Inside was a thin gold chain.

  “What’s that?” Izzy said.

  Birdie dangled it in the air. A rectangular charm hung from it. It had a raised design on the gold-plated surface. “An amulet. It looks like an Egyptian cartouche.”

  Izzy took it and turned it over. She rubbed a finger over the design. “It’s pretty.” She squinted and looked at it more closely. “It’s an odd design, two or three horizontal lines. The letters are rubbed down, hard to see, but there’s something about the design that looks familiar.”

  Nell took it from her and looked at it. “Maybe we should show this to Sheila. It’s jewelry, maybe something from their family?”

  They all agreed, and Nell set it aside.

  “This box is all picture frames, some with the original store picture still in them. And CDs. Father Northcutt?”

  Nell nodded, and Cass closed the box and marked it.

  Birdie pulled a pair of flip-flops and a bathing suit from another compartment in the backpack. “I guess this is it for the backpack.”

  Cass stared at the items. “These are odd things to carry in a backpack. It sure doesn’t look like yours, Birdie. No yarn, needles. Not a single bottle of pinot grigio.”

  They laughed.

  “Cass is right, though. It’s odd. Where do you suppose Tiff was going?”

  “It almost looks like she had packed for an overnight,” Izzy said.

  Nell looked at the pile of clothes on the floor near Birdie’s feet. “That would be my guess. Claire said Tiffany mentioned meeting someone at the salon later that night. She assumed it was a client, but maybe not. Maybe it was someone she was going away with.”

  “What about that front pocket?” Cass said. She pointed to the bag. “It has a bulge.”

  Birdie unzipped the remaining compartment. She frowned, then pulled out a package. The wrapping paper was slightly torn and dirty, but the design on it was distinct. Caps and gowns. It was a wrapped present.

  “A graduation present?”

  “It’s June. Maybe she knew a graduate and was giving them a gift.”

  “I wonder who.” Birdie tore the paper off and stared down at the paperback sitting in her lap.

  The title leaped off the cover. It was a perennial best seller, a book they’d all seen staring out at them from bookstore racks.

  What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

  “Good lord,” Nell said.

  “So Tiffany . . . was pregnant?” Izzy said. “Tanya was right?”

  Nell took the book from Birdie’s lap and opened the cover. Across the inside, in the loops and swirls of teenage penmanship, was written:

  Happy Graduation(!) to Harmony, my best friend in the whole world. I will always be with you, through thick (ha, ha!) and thin.

  From your secret keeper, your soul sister.

  BFF,

  Aunt Tiffany

  Nell stared at the inscription. Aunt Tiffany.

  Izzy reached over for the jeans they’d pulled from the backpack. Size 2. “This isn’t Tiffany’s backpack,” she said. “These aren’t her clothes. These jeans are outdated, and much too small for Tiffany.”

  Cass said what they were all thinking. “It’s Harmony’s. All packed and ready to spend graduation night with her best friend, the keeper of her secrets.”

  “Tiffany had the present wrapped and ready to give to her friend when they got back from the party,” Nell said.

  “So it was Harmony who was pregnant.”

  A hush fell across the den. An eerie quiet, except for the silent thud of more puzzle pieces falling like bricks to the floor.

  “So the baby that Tanya heard Tiffany mention . . .” Cass began.

  “Was Harmony’s baby,” said Izzy, her voice hushed.

  “That’s what Tiffany must have been talking about that night at the Palate,” Nell said. “But, why? Why all these years later?”

  “Do you think Andy knew about the pregnancy before Tiff told him the other night?” Cass asked. “Maybe that’s what she was telling him.”

  They all thought back over the days, the conversations.

  “He knew last night when he was over here; that was clear. He was surprised when we assumed it was Tiffany who was pregnant,” Birdie said.

  Nell nodded. “He almost seemed amused by our mistake.” She thought back to the night on the Palate deck, Tiffany needing to talk to Andy. It was urgent. Something she had to tell him.

  “This was the secret Tiffany talked about,” she said out loud, the words spilling out. “Harmony’s secret that she had entrusted to Tiffany.”

  “And a secret she kept for fifteen years,” Izzy said.

  “She was desperate to get Andy’s attention,” Birdie said. “That would certainly be a way to do it.”

  “I wonder why Andy didn’t say anything last night, correct our thinking.” Izzy smoothed out the jeans and folded them absently.

  And Nell wondered whether Claire Russell had known she was going to be a grandmother.

  Izzy took the backpack and opened the zipper as far as it would go. She splayed the canvas apart on the floor. On the inside, shadowed in the faded material, was written in black marking pen: Harmony Farrow. Phone #: 978-555-0982.

  Izzy massaged the bag, feeling for anything they’d missed. In an open pocket, folded in half, was an envelope. She pulled it out and read the words written across the outside:

  Tiff, I may need this. Please
keep in a safe place. Luv ya. Harmony.

  Izzy tore it open. It was a lab report from a free clinic in New Hampshire. She scanned it quickly, then passed it around the group.

  Patient ID: 972456555

  Patient Name: H. Markham

  PT Medications: multivitamins

  D.O.B.: 4.6.78

  Specimen collected: May . . .

  Test: hCG

  Result: Positive.

  Blood type: AB positive

  Comment: Patient request copy of lab report.

  It was followed by a list of tests, with numbers following them, and signed at the bottom by a physician.

  Harmony hadn’t settled for an at-home pregnancy test, though Nell suspected she’d probably done that, too. And then she’d gone somewhere where no one would know her to have her pregnancy confirmed.

  She’d been happy that graduation night, Claire had said. Radiant.

  Radiant because she was pregnant?

  “Harmony Farrow wanted this baby,” Birdie said out loud.

  “I wonder if the father did.” Nell looked again at the dates. Harmony was seventeen. Young for her class. Underage. She was probably sixteen when she got pregnant.

  “If Andy’s story is accurate, he’s not the father.”

  “And if it’s not accurate . . .”

  But that thought was too hard to hold in their heads for long. The police might be able to do it, but Nell, Izzy, Birdie, and Cass refused to.

  Nell looked at the sheet of paper once more. She frowned, then looked closer. “The false name she used.” She showed them the lab report again. They hadn’t noticed it before.

  Markham.

  The place where she was killed.

  “Why would she use that?”

  But none of them had any answers.

  “Wouldn’t the autopsy have shown that she was pregnant?” Cass asked.

  Birdie explained what Claire had told them the day before. The incomplete autopsy. External. No one knew she was pregnant.

  Probably not even Claire, Nell realized now. Unless Harmony had told her, and that seemed unlikely.

  They pulled themselves up from the floor, more questions than answers cluttering their minds. But new facts required a shifting of things. And perhaps in the shifting, there’d be clarity at last.

  They lined up the items that hadn’t been put back in the boxes headed for Father Northcutt’s shelter.

  A book.

  A pregnancy lab report.

  A teenager’s backpack, filled with all the things she’d need to spend the night at a friend’s house.

  “The pack needs to go to Claire,” Nell said. “It’s hers to do with as she wills.”

  They all agreed.

  “And the necklace?” Izzy asked. “Could Harmony have been giving that to Tiffany for graduation?”

  But it wasn’t wrapped as a gift. And it was worn, not new, as you’d expect a graduation gift to be.

  Izzy’s brows pulled together. “I know I’ve seen those lines or letters somewhere before on something.”

  “I’ll bring it to dinner tonight. Just in case Sheila can shed some light on it.”

  It wasn’t until later, as Nell pulled out of the driveway to pick up Izzy and Cass for a night at Lazy Lobster and Soup Café, that Nell second-guessed her decision. Should she have shown the necklace to Claire first? But something inside her said that Claire would have no idea where the necklace had come from, even if it belonged to Harmony. She probably had never seen it before, which was why it was hidden away in a velvet pouch at the bottom of a backpack.

  Chapter 29

  Music streamed from the open door of the Lazy Lobster and Soup Café as the five women walked down the pier to Gracie Santos’ restaurant.

  “Sounds like a band playing,” Izzy said.

  “Sounds like the band,” Cass said. “I forgot the Fractured Fish were playing here tonight.”

  Nell looked over at Sheila and wondered if she had put it together. Tiffany would probably have mentioned to her sister that Andy played in a band. But Sheila had been in town only a few days, and she might not realize that the drummer in the well-loved Sea Harbor band the Fractured Fish was Andy Risso.

  Sheila’s face showed no emotion, leaving Nell without an answer.

  Gracie met them at the door. “We’re rockin’ tonight. Where would you like to sit?”

  Nell looked over the room. The band was out on the deck at the far end of the small restaurant, squeezed up against the railing and surrounded by picnic tables, where broiled lobsters were greedily pulled apart and eaten off paper plates. She pointed to an empty table near the fireplace, far enough away from the band that they’d be able to hear one another. Gracie led them over and passed tall laminated menus to everyone. She gave Izzy a quick hug. “Hey, bride-to-be, I can’t wait for the big day. And can’t wait to see the ‘secret’ shawl—I’ve been hearing about it for weeks.”

  Izzy laughed. “The best thing about the secret shawl is that it will draw attention away from the bride, and I can be invisible and have a fantastic time.”

  “Oh, Iz, that’ll never happen—but you’ll have a fantastic time anyway. We all will. Joy. That’s what we all need.”

  Nell introduced Gracie to Sheila, and Gracie murmured her condolences. “Tiffany used to come in here with Andy sometimes. She loved my lobster rolls.”

  Sheila smiled her thanks and showed no reaction to the mention of Tiffany’s companion. Nell watched her settle in. She seemed more relaxed, more comfortable. Mary Pisano had worked her magic at the bed-and-breakfast, she guessed. Someone new to “mother” was Mary’s cup of tea.

  “I’m anxious to get back home,” Sheila said, accepting a beer the waitress handed her. “But I didn’t expect what I found in Sea Harbor. I came back here, knowing full well how awful it would be, facing a town I ran away from. The murder of a sister I loved—and deserted. A mother I hadn’t seen in decades. But there’s been some closure, some things set straight, and that’s good.”

  “But not everything,” Birdie said. “I wish we had more closure for you.”

  “That will come. I feel it right here.” She pressed a hand against her heart.

  And Nell felt it, too. They were close. Very close.

  A basket of fried clams appeared magically on the table, along with a spicy red sauce and plenty of napkins. “Take your time, ladies,” the young waitress said.

  Through the open deck doors, Pete was singing a ditty about the walrus and the carpenter, much to the delight of a family of five seated at one of the picnic tables.

  Sheila smiled at the clapping and laughter. “This is a great little place.”

  “Gracie, the owner, is a friend of ours,” Cass said. “She built this café with blood, sweat, and tears—hers and ours—but it’s been worth it. Everyone in town loves it, and you won’t find better lobsters anywhere in Sea Harbor.”

  Izzy explained to Sheila, “Cass and Pete’s company provides the lobsters. So yes, as Cass so humbly reports, the lobsters are the finest, bar none.”

  “Oh, quiet, you,” Cass said, then snagged their waitress and suggested she bring them five specials. Steamed lobster with lemon butter, sweet potato fries, fresh corn on the cob, and coleslaw, with Gracie’s crusty sourdough rolls on the side.

  “What’s the band?” Sheila asked, looking through the crowd of people.

  For a second no one said anything; then Izzy said matter-offactly, “The singer-guitarist is Cass’ brother, Pete. I think you’ve met Merry Jackson, the singer-keyboardist. And the drummer is Andy Risso.”

  Sheila’s smile dropped for a minute, but she collected herself quickly and took a quick drink of beer. “They’re good.”

  “Sheila, if we’re not being too bold here, could you tell us why you dislike Andy so much?” Birdie looked across the table with the peaceful, loving countenance of a confessor. “He’s a lovely boy, and I know he and Tiffany had a long history together.”

  Sheila accepted the qu
estion thoughtfully. She nibbled on a fried clam while the waitress handed out Gracie’s heavy silk-screened bibs.

  “Maybe that’s what I dislike, Birdie—that long history. The history I purposefully extricated myself from. Maybe I resented that? Or maybe it’s because Tiffany was so head over heels in love with the guy. And then, when they finally got together after all those years, he treated her the way he did.”

  “What do you mean, all those years?”

  “Tiffany loved Andy since high school. She used to call me about him and talk endlessly. But that was the kind of person she was. She had this teenage crush—but she’d never, ever let her friend Harmony know. In fact, there was a time before graduation when Harmony was pulling back from Andy and Tiffany was depressed about it because it made Andy sad. She wanted him to be happy—even if it meant she didn’t have a chance with him.”

  “After Harmony died, what did she do?”

  “Nothing. She was desolate over losing Harmony. I wanted her to come stay with me, but she couldn’t be that far away, she said. Far away from our mother. So she got a waitress job up in New Hampshire. She told me once that she thought Harmony’s death was really an accident. And she wished the police would leave it alone.”

  “But she came back to Sea Harbor?”

  “When my mother had to go into a home, Tiff came back and took care of it. See? She was the good daughter. Always pleasing everyone. But when she came back, she discovered Andy was here, too, and it started all over again. She went away to that beauty school, lost a bunch of weight, fixed her hair, and it was all for him. She told me as much. Her time had finally come, she said. This was it.

  “And I thought it was, for a while. They started going out. She’d call me, ecstatic. She was going to marry him, she told me. Then just like that, he pulled away. It was like he was playing with her, you know? But she wouldn’t give up. She had more confidence this time around, and she told me she’d get him by hook or by crook. She had a few tricks up her sleeve, she said.