The Wedding Shawl Read online

  “I snuck in,” Merry Jackson said. “My knitting is worth squat and I spend little money here, so I’m not much of a customer. But I try, I’m getting better, and mostly I just wanted to come.”

  Nell hugged her. “That counts. Trying is good.” She stood back and looked at Merry again. “Are you all right?”

  Merry shrugged off Nell’s concern. “I’m fine. Fit as a fiddle, as Birdie says. Working too hard, I guess.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Hank about that.”

  “Believe me, I have. I told him possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but not of a marriage.” Her face grew serious. “Actually, it’s Hank who works too hard. But he loves me to be with him. Not working, necessarily. Just with him.”

  “He loves you.”

  She shrugged. “How silly can you be to complain about someone hugging you too much? What’s wrong with me?” Her smile returned, and she dropped her keys and purse on the table. “Let’s party,” she said, and did a little dance, her fingers snapping in the air and her body twisting its way over to Izzy.

  Laura Danvers slipped in late, in the middle of Harriet’s welcoming speech.

  “You forgot the photos for Claire,” Laura whispered, coming up behind Nell and slipping the envelope into her hand. Nell mouthed a thank-you and pointed to her forgetful head. Then she looked at Laura again, remembering something else in her purse. With a crook of her finger, she asked Laura to follow her back up the step into the shadows of the archway.

  “What’s up, Nell?” Laura whispered.

  Nell pulled the velvet bag from her purse. “You know everyone and everything in this town, and if you don’t, your parents do. Do you have any idea what the lines on this medallion mean? A civic group or club maybe? A boys’ club?” She slipped it from the bag and held the chain in her fingers, the gold rectangle dangling from it. “It’s some lines with a crooked fence at the bottom,” she said.

  “Strange.” Laura looked closer, then lifted the charm into the palm of her hand. She turned it this way and that, and finally her confusion faded away. “Of course. It was sideways; that’s why you couldn’t read it. It’s not a civic club. It belongs to a Pike.” She grinned. “Crazy Pikes. Looks like it was taken from a keychain and made into a necklace.” She gave it back to Nell and started back to the party.

  “Pikes? As in Pikes Peak?”

  Laura covered a chuckle with her hand. “No. The fraternity. Pi Kappa Alpha. Those are the Greek letters. See?” She held it sideways and pointed to each one.

  Merry stood in the archway and strained to look at the necklace in Nell’s hand. Nell handed it to her and she laughed. “Yep, crazy Pikes,” she agreed, handing it back. “Was Ben a Pike?”

  “No. We found it with Tiffany’s things. It belonged to her friend Harmony.”

  Beatrice Scaglia was talking as they turned their attention back to the party. “This shop is a special little community, all its own,” she was saying. “It’s our own little therapy haven. Trouble with cranky husbands? Unruly kids? Neighbors who don’t cut their grass? Come to Izzy’s, pull out your knitting, and your troubles will evaporate in a heartbeat.”

  “Give me a lifetime membership,” Merry Jackson joked, and they all cheered.

  The music was turned up and people did as Beatrice ordered, pulling out balls of wool and needles. In minutes the room was filled with needles clicking and the happy chatter of friends and neighbors whipping up soft wool hats and squares, happy to have an excuse to celebrate.

  Nell found her purse and slipped the envelope of photos into the back pocket. She looked down at the velvet bag in her hand. A fraternity. Could Harmony Farrow have been dating a college guy?

  She leaned against the wall between Cass and Birdie, not hearing a word of the tributes to Izzy spinning around the room.

  “Your shop is like a womb,” Cass was saying to Izzy. They were looking around the room at the crowd of people who had made the Seaside Knitting Studio a part of their lives. “People feel safe and secure here.”

  “Sometimes too safe. Mae says she could blackmail half the town because of the things she hears in here. She’s threatening to write a book.”

  Birdie laughed. She’d finished her squares and put away her needles for the night. “A knitting exposé. I’d buy it.”

  The evening moved along quickly, and not until Izzy herself turned the music down a notch did the group consider winding down.

  The punch bowl had been drained, leaving nothing but small threads of lime peel on the bottom, the pizza platters were reduced to scraps of spinach and tiny pieces of crust, and Harriet was plugging in the coffeepot.

  “A very nice party,” Esther Gibson said, gathering up her things.

  “I’m glad you could come, Esther. You work too much,” Izzy said.

  “Nonsense, Izzy. I’m cutting back, but someone has to keep those boys in blue in check.”

  “Are things busy at the station?” Birdie asked.

  “Birdie Favazza, I know you like the back of my hand. What you’re asking is, ‘What’s going on with the Ciccolo investigation?’ ”

  Birdie smiled.

  “It’s slow moving—they’re turning over every stone. But I’m dreadfully afraid it will be shelved. As much as I want that to happen, to just let it all go away, we can’t let that happen again.” She looked around at all of them. “We simply can’t.”

  The resolve was unspoken, but it was in each of their eyes. An answer to Esther. No, they couldn’t let it happen again. Cold cases warmed over were sometimes the worst kinds of all.

  Esther was the first to leave the party, but others followed, and soon Izzy, Birdie, Nell, and Cass stood alone in an empty back room, swept clean and free of crumbs and punch bowls and paper plates.

  The party had been a success.

  “And now,” Birdie said, “we need to unwind.”

  They sat around the fireplace, weary, needing to talk, but finding comfort in the silence.

  “So who?” Cass said finally.

  “Who?”

  “Who was Harmony hooked up with? Who got her pregnant? It’s looming over us like a hot-air balloon, and yet we can’t see it.”

  “It wasn’t Andy. If you had seen his eyes the other night, you’d be as sure of that as I am,” Nell said.

  “And Tiffany’s role? It doesn’t sound like she knew about the other guy, but she had something that could have opened the case up all over again.”

  “The lab report, for starters. Harmony had requested it from the lab, which means she anticipated someone might want proof of the pregnancy.”

  “That’s right,” Izzy said, jumping into the conversation. “And if a guy demanded proof, he probably didn’t want to become a father.”

  They nodded. Certainly a motive.

  “It’s also possible that going out to the quarry wasn’t a onetime thing.” Nell told them about Claire finding Harmony’s shawl full of thistles and berries, and the possibility that she was more familiar with the Markham Quarry than anyone had thought.

  “She’d tell her mother she was going to Andy’s—but wouldn’t show up,” Cass mused. “She went somewhere. And it seems likely it was to meet a guy.”

  “Her beautiful shawl, covered with thistles,” Izzy murmured, the image vivid in her mind.

  “But why there?” Cass asked. “No one ever went out there. The lady who owned it was crazy; at least those were the rumors when we were in high school. She’d come up from her Boston mansion sometimes to stay in a little house out on the property. A story went around that some guys snuck into the quarry one night to skinny-dip, and she took a pellet gun after them. Actually hit one of the guys in the butt. It was off-limits after that.”

  Birdie laughed. “I heard those rumors, too. Penelope Markham was her name. She was a character. No one really knew her—she was a recluse when she was up here—but there were certainly stories that spun around her.”

  “So there was a house out there on the land?” Nell asked
.

  “A small cabin, as I remember,” Birdie said. “No one lived in it, except when she came up. The lady could have built something lovely, but for some reason, she never did.”

  “Have you ever seen it? Was it near the quarry?”

  “Could it have been a love nest?” Izzy said, jumping on Nell’s thought. “No one ever saw this couple together, at least as far as we know. What better place to meet than a cabin hidden in the woods?”

  Birdie was silent, thinking back. “I wish I were better at dates. I remember that the cabin burned down one summer. But I can’t remember when that was or when the woman died—or when she stopped coming up here.” Birdie pulled her brows together, thinking. “I’ll check into that. I agree with Cass that if they were meeting out there, it seems like an odd choice. Penelope Markham wouldn’t hesitate to press charges against trespassers.”

  “Or to shoot them.”

  Finally Nell brought up the necklace. She repeated her conversation with Laura. “I’ve been thinking about where she got it,” Nell said.

  “Someone in college?”

  “Maybe. But everyone has noticed how old and worn it is. We could barely read the letters.”

  “So you’re thinking the person could have been older than that? Out of college?” Birdie frowned.

  “Yes.”

  The only sound in the room was the clock above the fireplace. In their minds, each of them was recasting the scenario.

  “An older man. Why does that cast an uglier light on all this?” Izzy asked.

  A question no one could answer.

  “She seemed so protected. How would they have met?”

  “That’s true—her world seemed small. As far as we know, she went to school, to Andy’s, and she played basketball,” Birdie said.

  “We have these basketball photos,” Nell said, reminding herself. She took the envelope out of her purse and pulled out the photos Laura had collected. “Maybe they’ll tell us something. The fellows in the background are cheerleaders or assistant coaches.”

  Cass looked at the top photo. “I recognize a couple of these guys. They would have been college age.”

  Izzy squinted in an attempt to bring the faces into focus. “I wish it popped a little more. Some of these guys are fading into the background—especially those in the back row.”

  “It looks like Harmony has something around her neck,” Izzy said. She squinted to bring the image into focus. “The necklace, do you think?”

  They took turns looking, but the figures were too small.

  They flipped through the others quickly. Photos of players running down the court, a blur of movement. Others of the girls sitting on the bench and some candid shots taken at a team picnic.

  Nell slipped the photos back into the envelope. “I’ll see if Ben can blow these up. Maybe there’s someone in the background or something we’re missing. That will be my homework.”

  “Speaking of homework—it’s been a long day,” Birdie said.

  Nell agreed. “And it’s late.”

  There were no objections, and the weary group stood and gathered their bags and knitting supplies. They barely spoke, moving back and forth in slow motion, used to the routine—pulling shades, checking windows, helping Izzy lock doors and turn out lights.

  Harbor Road was peaceful when they finally made their way out the front door and across the street to their cars. “We’re the quiet end of Harbor Road,” Izzy said, nodding toward the sound of music coming from the pier. “That end never sleeps.”

  They hugged one another good night and climbed into their cars.

  From across the street, Purl watched the cars pull out of their parking places and drive on down the street. She circled the window, flicking her tail, then jumped directly onto a pile of cushy green cashmere, right next to the sand castle. Life was good.

  Purl settled in—and she would have gone right to sleep, her evening at an end, except for the intriguing shadow that passed in front of the window.

  It paused, big and dark, and peered through the window. Purl’s back curved, and she stared through the glass, as still as a statue. The figure nodded, as if acknowledging her presence, then slowly began to walk back and forth, a faint sound accompanying its movement. Swish. Swish. Once. Twice. Three times.

  And then it was gone.

  Quiet fell again, and Purl curled back into a ball, comfortable in the heavenly cloud of yarn. And in minutes—or maybe less—the only sound filling the glass display window was the soft purring of a sleeping cat.

  Chapter 32

  The call came early the next day from Mae Anderson. Her words were clipped and demanding. “Come down to the shop, Nell. And bring Ben.”

  “Izzy?” Nell’s heart was in her throat.

  “She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. That’s the good news. Just come.”

  Ben had the engine running by the time Nell had grabbed her purse and climbed in beside him. In minutes they pulled up outside the shop. Tommy Porter and Chief Thompson stood on either side of Mae. She was fuming.

  But the color in her angry face was no match for the jagged line of red paint sprayed from one corner of Izzy’s window to the other.

  Tommy had a camera and took some shots, then slipped the camera back into his pocket.

  Izzy and Sam pulled up next. Izzy was out of the car in an instant and stood in silence, staring at the window.

  “What do you think, Jerry?” Ben said, standing next to the police chief.

  “I think someone is desperate.”

  “And dangerous,” Tommy added.

  “Maybe,” Ben said. “But it’s a damn cowardly thing to do. Slashed tires, then spray-paint a window?”

  “I’ve already called a window washer,” Mae said. “Got the fellow out of bed.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Izzy said. “An easy fix. Thanks, Mae.”

  “We can’t hide Mae’s nieces’ window display,” Nell said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Certainly not.” Izzy smiled. “Jillian and Rose did a beautiful job.”

  Nell was amazed at the calmness in Izzy’s voice, but when she stepped closer and wrapped Izzy in her arms, she could feel a shiver pass through her.

  “This was meant for all of us, Aunt Nell,” Izzy whispered. “Another warning.”

  Nell nodded.

  They gave Tommy the information that he needed, letting him know what time they’d closed up the night before. By the time he had finished his notes, the window washer had arrived with paintremoval equipment, and before they had even moved on inside, the river of red was reduced to a trickle.

  “That will show the villain,” Mae said through clenched teeth. “He’ll get no satisfaction whatsoever from people seeing his handiwork. For all he knows if he walks down this street today, it never happened. It was all a bad nightmare. Maybe it’ll drive the fool crazy.”

  But they all knew it wasn’t satisfaction the “fool” wanted; it was cessation. And there was no way that was going to happen. Not now.

  When Ben and Nell arrived home a short while later, Birdie was in their kitchen.

  “Harold dropped me off. I’ve put the coffee on.”

  “Did Izzy call you?” Birdie’s sixth sense mystified Nell. Sometimes she seemed to know things before they happened.

  “Esther called me. She took Mae’s call at the police station. I’m going to string this person up by his toes.”

  “No harm was done, Birdie,” Ben said. He walked around the island and gave her a quick hug.

  “Not to people, maybe. But think of Izzy’s window. And Purl sleeps in that display window, the poor thing.”

  “If only she could talk,” Nell said. “Whoever did this must have been waiting for us to leave last night.”

  “Somehow, doing something to the knitting shop is doing something to all of us, and I think that was intended. Just like slashing your tires. We were all going to be in that car. We were all in the shop last night.”

  “He knows entire
ly too much about you,” Ben said. “That is dangerous.”

  Nell had watched the worry lines deepen in Ben’s forehead as he talked to Jerry Thompson. But strangely, both men seemed to be calmed down by the vandalism, almost as if, as Ben had said, it made the man seem more cowardly than anything else. She had overheard the chief say something to Tommy to that effect, too—that if the guy wanted to, he could have seriously hurt someone. Even the tire slashing could have been worse—something done to the brakes or steering column, for example, that would actually have hurt the women riding in the car. But these were cowardly scare tactics, not the kind of maliciousness they could have been.

  “Did it point to a teenager maybe?” Tommy had asked. But the question had gone unanswered.

  What Tommy’s question did do was remind Nell of the photos of teenage basketball players that were still in her purse. While Birdie put in some toast, Nell found her purse and pulled them out again.

  Ben cleared off the island, and Nell spread them out one after another. Ben stood next to her, looking closely. “Can’t wait to talk to Dave Harrison about his exposure settings,” he said wryly.

  “It was fifteen years ago,” Nell retorted. “Besides, Dave was a great dad to Laura, sitting through all those games and taking pictures on top of it.”

  “The community center didn’t have much support back then. I guess Dave stepped in as photographer so they didn’t have to pay someone to take an official team photo.”

  A sudden thought flitted through Nell’s head. “Ben, will you be seeing him anytime soon?”

  “Him?” he said absently, picking up one of the photographs and looking at it more closely.

  “Dave Harrison. Laura Danvers’ dad.”

  Ben set the photo down. “I see him all the time. We joke about who joined which committee first; the curse of retirement, Dave calls it.”

  “Then there’s something I think you should ask him. I think this basketball team might be important. It’s the one thing Harmony seemed to enjoy. Something beyond school, beyond home.”

  “And beyond Andy Risso,” Birdie added.