A Finely Knit Murder Page 29

  Izzy nodded. “Blythe was pregnant.”

  They all knew how Blythe felt about having children. She would never have them, nor husbands. Never, she’d said many times. Another scar afflicted on her by the Westerland men.

  Nell looked over at the bills again, then the calendar. The brief hiatus that her social life took.

  August.

  Liz’s conversation about Blythe and the guest cottages came back to her in a rush. A dam burst as the dates lined up.

  Nell repeated the conversation they’d had with Liz the day before.

  “So Liz said she’d been there a couple times with this guy?” Izzy said.

  “Yes. The timing would fit. That was probably when she got pregnant.”

  “And Bob took her to the clinic in August. Not unusual, since they depended on each other for that sort of thing. But it was Bob, not someone else, who took her, and perhaps that is significant. He clearly wasn’t the man who got her pregnant,” Birdie said.

  “I wonder who else besides Bob knew about the pregnancy,” Izzy said.

  “Or cared.”

  “Or maybe cared a lot?” Nell’s comment brought an eerie, uncomfortable quiet. She looked around the table, and then her gaze came back and settled on Cass. She sat in one of the large slipcovered chairs, scratching absently at the stiff spot on her jeans. Then she stared more closely at it. She looked up and saw Nell watching her. “Plaster,” she said. “Just like on the scarf.”

  Cass turned her attention back to the bills and the calendar and checks, into Blythe Westerland’s personal life, now laid out on the Endicotts’ coffee table for all to see. It seemed a violation of sorts.

  Nell watched her as she scanned the checks that had been set aside, the calendar, then picked up the clinic report and read it again. Then put it down and looked off into space.

  In that moment Nell knew she wasn’t the only one who had heard the story that had haunted her for the last couple of days.

  Cass had heard it, too.

  Sweet sounds came through the baby intercom announcing that Abby was awake, a welcome break to the ponderous silence in the room. Izzy hurried up the stairs while Nell stacked the coffee cake plates and carried them into the kitchen.

  Cass followed her. She stood at the kitchen window, staring out into the gray day.

  “Are you all right, Cass?” Nell asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “None of us are.”

  “Do you remember Blythe coming over to our table at the party?”

  Nell’s memory was crystal clear.

  Cass’s was, too.

  Izzy and Abby appeared, and attention turned immediately toward a baby who woke up from her naps smiling, nearly every time. Her blond curls were slightly matted, pressed against her head, her cheeks rosy. Nell kissed her on the cheek, but Cass got the first hug. “Godmother prerogative,” she said to Nell, scooping the cheerful baby into her arms.

  Nell watched the power of a child. In an instant, terrible thoughts could be pushed aside by a toddler’s joy.

  She watched them for a minute, seeing Cass’s lovely face transformed for the moment.

  “Take care of her, Abby,” she said to the baby. She turned to Izzy and Birdie. “I’m going to check back with Ben and see if there’s a change in Bob’s condition.”

  Izzy and Birdie looked at her, Izzy’s clear lawyerly look in place. They both knew she wasn’t calling Ben. Izzy and Birdie knew exactly what information Nell would be trying to attain. Almost all the stitches were cast on.

  Nell stepped into the den and quickly looked up a number in her contact list.

  She punched in the numbers, hoping Liz Santos wouldn’t mind being disturbed on a Sunday.

  Of course the yacht club manager didn’t mind. Her memory hadn’t served her well, but she had checked the guest cottage log. She was going to call Nell later that day. There were several reservations for the same couple. Or for the gentleman, at least. It was one of those lifetime memberships that the club didn’t do anymore. In the case of this family, there was only one family member left.

  Nell scribbled down the name of the family, then stood silently in the den, the dots connecting so loudly it was deafening.

  She walked into the kitchen and looked around. “Where’s Cass?” she asked.

  Birdie was jiggling the baby on her knee, singing an old nursery rhyme.

  Izzy was rinsing the dishes. “Her ma texted her,” she said.

  “Mary Halloran texts?” Birdie asked.

  “Incessantly,” Izzy said.

  “Did she need Cass?” Nell asked.

  “She wanted to be sure Cass had her prescription card. She needs to pick up some medicine for Mary later today.”

  “So she went home?”

  “No. She couldn’t find the card in her purse and thought maybe she’d stuck it somewhere in the car. She’s looking for it.”

  Nell walked to the front door and looked out. She saw the backside of Cass in the open driver’s door, digging around.

  She walked back into the family room. “Izzy . . . ,” she began.

  Izzy nodded before Nell had a chance to say anything. “It fits, Aunt Nell. It’s awful, but it fits.”

  Birdie looked over the baby’s head. Her face said that everything they needed sat on the coffee table or in things they’d observed in just one short week—a week that seemed like a lifetime. Maybe they didn’t have proof, but in their minds they had certainty. And the scarf that Daisy and Gabby had found might well provide whatever else the police would want.

  Nell walked back to the front door. The car door was still open, but Cass was standing beside it now, staring at something in her hand.

  Nell pushed open the screen door. “Cass,” she called out.

  Cass looked up. Her face was filled with anger. She held up what she had found. It wasn’t Mary Halloran’s prescription drug card.

  It was a large gold ring holding a Ravenswood B&B key—with Bob Chadwick’s room number on it.

  Chapter 34

  “C ome inside, Cass,” Nell said, one hand reaching out as if to protect her, to pull her back from a busy street.

  But Cass had already climbed into the small, fast car—too far away to feel Nell’s touch. And before Nell could do anything, she backed out of the driveway and headed down Sandswept Lane, the BMW tires squealing,

  Nell hurried back into the house, dialing Ben on the way. The call went directly to voice mail.

  Izzy was standing by the counter with her car keys in her hand.

  “I’m driving,” she said. “Birdie is staying here to wait for Sam and Ben and play with Abby.” She kissed the top of the baby’s head. “I know Cass’s anger better than anyone. We need to get to her.”

  Nell pulled out her phone and dialed Ben again, then sent a text.

  In minutes they were driving along the beach road, headed toward the lighthouse and the oceanside cottage that was being brought back to its pristine glory.

  “It’s a good thing Red isn’t with us,” Izzy murmured. “She’d never let us stop at that house.”

  “It’s a lot scarier now than when it frightened sweet Red,” Nell said.

  A minute before they reached the cottage, Nell’s phone beeped. It was a text from Birdie. Ben and Sam on way. Police called. Bob Chadwick is awake.

  Where is Danny? Nell texted back. If they needed someone to keep Cass calm, Danny would be the one. Probably the only one.

  He was the first out of the parking lot, driving like a madman, Birdie replied.

  They reached the cottage and slowed to a stop. Nell looked over at the main driveway. Cass had pulled right up to the cottage door, scraping Harry’s BMW against a bush.

  On a side drive, hidden in a thicket of bushes, was Danny’s car.

  Both cars
were empty.

  Nell and Izzy parked and walked up to the open door cautiously. Inside, the smell of fresh wood and paint greeted them. Through the screened door they saw a narrow hallway that led from the front door into a light-colored room that ran across the back of the house. Paint cans, plaster buckets, and new windows with stickers on them were visible.

  But they couldn’t see Cass.

  There was a figure in the shadowy hallway that they hadn’t noticed at first. He turned and looked toward them. It was Danny, with a finger pressed to his lips. With the other hand he motioned them closer.

  They moved toward him and stopped at the end of the hallway, Danny’s broad shoulders shielding them from whatever was ahead of them.

  And then they heard Cass’s voice. Angry and threatening. Her voice grew louder, almost as if she knew they were there.

  “You took a life, Harry. A life!”

  His angry answer equaled hers. “She took a life. My life. Stripped it away, without even letting me know there was a life. She took away my progeny!” He was screaming now. A frightening sound, as if he couldn’t control the volume—or the words. There was a shuffling of shoes. Then Harry went on talking.

  “We had been good together. We came up here, went on a couple trips, fooled around. Then it broke up, just like her cousin Bob warned me it would. I didn’t see her around Boston, she didn’t answer my calls, and Bob—he introduced us, you know—told me she was up here most of the time now. I thought, just maybe, we could put it back together again. I loved her. Maybe the first time I loved anyone. So I came up to just get the lay of the land, go slow. I called her a couple times, but she didn’t want to see me. I knew she’d be at that party, though. And somehow I thought if she saw me there, maybe it’d be a start anyway. And sure enough, she recognized me, even with the beard. And she didn’t turn away.”

  No, Nell thought. She didn’t. “Later,” Blythe had said to Harry.

  “I looked back and saw her point to the boathouse.” His voice rose and fell as if he was unsure of his own emotions. “She wanted to meet me there. It was going to work out after all.”

  “So you went, you foolish man.”

  “You’d gone home. I went down. I thought this was it, sure, we’d get together again. There she was, behind the boathouse, looking gorgeous. I was going to play it cool, but seeing her waiting there for me, it took my breath away. I blurted out that I loved her. I wanted to marry her.

  “At first she was in shock. And then she began to laugh. ‘Marry me?’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea how over we are?’ Her words were filled with laughter. She was meeting me there to tell me never to contact her again or she’d call the police.

  “And then . . . then she told me what she’d done.”

  “‘That’s how over we are,’ she screamed at me.”

  There was silence. Even those in the hallway felt the anguish Harry Winthrop had felt. A pain so great.

  They waited while the quiet grew, not knowing if Harry had a weapon. They tried to assess where Cass was in the room, if she was bound, how close she was to Harry—and what Harry’s next move might be. Above all, what was the safest way to get Cass out of that house?

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” Harry finally said. “I don’t kill people. She laughed at me, said I was just another foolish man. She took something away from me that was mine, that was a part of me. Can you understand that?”

  But Cass wouldn’t let go. She pushed and nudged—and scolded. “All those casualties—the whole town suffered at your hands. Especially Elizabeth Hartley. You tried to destroy her, too. What a cowardly thing to do. You stole her scarf and planted it. You didn’t care who you hurt.”

  Cass sounded like a schoolteacher, reprimanding a wayward student. Nell restrained herself from telling her to be quiet, to remind her that the man she was scolding had killed someone—and tried to kill another.

  But Cass was angry. Injustice did that to her.

  “You’re selfish and hateful and destroyed a life. Nothing justifies that. Not your pain or your suffering. Nothing.”

  “I didn’t plan to hurt the headmistress,” he said, so quietly that those in the hallway could barely hear. “I had no choice. Everyone would have kept looking if they couldn’t arrest someone.”

  Nell remembered the look Harry had given Elizabeth when he biked by them in Canary Cove. As if an idea had come to him suddenly, out of the blue. The headmistress wasn’t going to be home. How easy to find her house, to find something of hers.

  It was also clear Harry Winthrop didn’t plan. Perhaps Cass’s approach to him was correct. Harry was a child, foolish and selfish—and that was how she was treating him.

  “And that nice Bob Chadwick?” Cass said, her voice rising again. “Did you lose it there, too?”

  Harry seemed to have regained his anger. His voice was louder. “Nice? Sure. For the ten minutes it took him to introduce me to her. That was nice.

  “If you and your friends had left him alone, it would have been okay. He’d have buried his cousin and gone back to Boston. But you swarmed around him, comforting him, talking about finding her killer. He got religion. Started to feel bad, became determined to find out who was responsible. You made him realize Blythe meant something to him.

  “So he started thinking about Blythe’s life and piecing it together. And he succeeded. He even found e-mails about how I wanted her to have our baby. He took Blythe to the clinic that day. Did you know that? At first he didn’t know who the father was and he didn’t care. It was when he cared that it fell apart—and that’s when he became dangerous. When he knew the father might have wanted a say. And he began to piece it together.”

  The steely edge came back into his voice. “I thought I could reason with him. So when he wanted to talk I said I had to check out a boat that night. We could talk there. He loved sailboats—I thought I might make him see reason, out there on the water. Private, nothing but the sea around us. So I grabbed a key from the club board and took him out. I could make him see what Blythe had done to me, what she had destroyed in me. I wanted to make him see. But he was beyond seeing. We argued, and he tried to grab the controls. The boat rolled to port, then starboard. Then back. He screamed at me, just seconds before the boom swung across the cockpit and pitched him over the side.”

  “And you left him there in the water?”

  Harry was silent.

  “And me?” Cass asked, her voice suddenly pleasant and ordinary, as if she were asking him for a ride home. “Do you want to kill me, too? And then who? Who’s next, Harry?”

  Those in the hall froze.

  Harry’s voice disappeared, replaced by a shuffle of boots, and then they heard an echoing, sickening click.

  Cass’s shout was all that was needed to send Danny Brandley racing around the corner. He skidded on the hardwood floor at the exact moment Cass broke free of Harry Winthrop’s grasp and flew directly into Danny, with enough force to send him flying back against the wall. His head hit the plaster with a resounding thud.

  And then silence, and Danny Brandley’s long body slid in slow motion to the floor.

  Before anyone could move, police sirens traveled up the hill and through the neighborhood, and in an instant the cottage was crowded with boots and uniformed men. Ben and Sam came in on their heels, pushing their way through to find Izzy and Nell.

  They found them standing behind Cass, their faces pinched with worry.

  On the other side of the room, on a police command, Harry Winthrop dropped the gun, which turned out to be a blunt plastering tool he had shoved into Cass’s side.

  He hung his head while Tommy Porter read him his rights.

  Before walking Harry out, Tommy told them—and Harry—that Bob Chadwick was going to make it. The guy was a true sailor. They were having him flown to a hospital in Boston, but he’d be as good as new in no time.<
br />
  And ready to testify.

  An ambulance was called for Danny. Cass crouched at his side, cradling his head in her lap. He was perfectly still, his face as pale as the plaster that had tarnished Elizabeth Hartley’s shawl.

  And whether he heard Cass or not, she didn’t know for sure. But it didn’t stop her from leaning her head low and whispering into his ear, over and over, that she had never stopped loving him, not for one single minute. She needed to straighten herself out. To be the kind of woman who could handle love in a way deserving of someone like Danny Brandley.

  Harry Winthrop was a foolish diversion—almost a deadly one. A sad man whom she could make smile while she sorted through her own life. A selfish diversion.

  But her life needed no more diversions.

  It only needed Danny.

  * * *

  Cass wouldn’t leave the hospital, but she promised to keep Nell, Izzy, and Birdie updated on Danny’s progress—provided, that is, that they vowed not to tease him forever for his heroic attempt to rescue her. He had a concussion, a broken shoulder, and a broken pair of glasses.

  But Danny Brandley was going to be fine, and no one on earth was quite as happy about that fact as Cass Halloran.

  Chapter 35

  N o one had known quite what to call the evening, not even the faculty and staff. A fall festival conjured up thoughts of pumpkins and bobbing for apples—and Sea Harbor Community Day School’s evening event was not that.

  But it was a festival of sorts. It was fall. And it was going to be a beautiful night.

  “Celebrating Autumn” was the name used for the event on the colorful posters Josh Babson had painted and spread all over town. The description fit the spirit of the evening.

  But every single person who gathered on the lawn that autumn evening knew that the real celebration was one of life—a season of life. The life of Sea Harbor, life of friends and neighbors and artists, of the people who owned the shops and restaurants and bistros.