Moon Spinners Page 4

  Birdie pulled her small frame onto a stool and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “The Santos house was lit up like the Fourth of July, but never did I imagine anything like this. I thought Alphonso had invited some people over after the party for brandy and talk. They did that sometimes. Sophia wasn’t much into late nights, but Alphonso was another story. His energy well never went dry.”

  “What was the scene at Coffee’s?” Izzy asked. The coffee shop patio was a popular spot all mornings, but Saturdays especially.

  “It was packed. I could sense the talk more than hear it—you know how it is. There’s something in the air when the unexpected happens. First people are shocked, then sad, and then the inevitable speculation and gossip start. Was she drinking? Was she on drugs? Suicide? It’s a shame, but I think people feel a need to come up with logical explanations for tragedies. It makes them feel more in control, a kind of insurance that this couldn’t happen to them because they would never do whatever Sophia did to have her life end so tragically.”

  It was human nature’s way of handling tragedy. Nell glanced at the newspaper photo again and then looked up at Sam. “What an awful thing to have witnessed, Sam—to see someone die in such a violent way.”

  Izzy pressed into Sam’s side as if her presence would make the images go away.

  Sam wrapped one arm around her shoulders. “What was awful was to know what was about to happen and not be able to do a damn thing to stop it. As a photojournalist I’ve seen my share of bad things. But this was . . . personal, I guess.”

  Nell walked over to the stove and slid the warm scones onto a platter. “I don’t imagine sleep came easily.” She carried the platter to the island.

  “I can’t quite get my arms around the erratic driving description,” Ben said. “Sophia was almost too cautious with that car. I don’t think she liked driving it. And the car itself hugged the road and took curves better than any car around here—it’s hard to imagine that a careful driver would run off the road.”

  “Why do you suppose she was alone?” Izzy wondered. She picked up a scone and slathered it with the sweet butter Ben had set out.

  Birdie took a sip of coffee, then slipped a scone onto her plate. “Sophia and Alphonso often drove to parties separately. Sophia didn’t like to stay as late as Alphonso. But even if they went together, Alphonso was quite resourceful, and I don’t suppose he’d have trouble finding a way home after she left.”

  Birdie’s words hung in the silent air for a few seconds. She hadn’t intended them to carry innuendo, but Alphonso Santos was rich, powerful, and good-looking—and most certainly resourceful. And the combination elicited persistent rumors of extracurricular activities that none of the friends gathered in the Endicott kitchen had any intention of addressing—at least not this morning.

  “It makes one wonder . . .” Birdie said.

  “About?” Ben refilled the coffee mugs.

  “The vagaries of life. Here we have one person dead. But maybe if Alphonso and Sophia had left together, we’d be mourning two people today. Or maybe, with a different person behind the wheel of that powerful car, no one would be dead. Or maybe, if Sophia hadn’t driven on that road . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Lots of what-ifs,” Nell agreed. “That’s always the way.”

  Ben and Sam leaned over the newspaper photo again, examining the wreckage.

  “It was his dream car,” Ben murmured. “Alphonso didn’t talk much about possessions—but when he got this car a few months ago, he made us all leave a community center board meeting to go out and look at it. It was last March—a beautiful spring day, I remember. He was like a kid on Christmas morning—or as much as Alphonso could seem like a kid.” Ben took a drink of his coffee. “He loved that car something fierce.”

  Sam agreed. “I took some photos of it for his office. Joey showed up that day—he’s a car nut, too—and Alphonso let us inspect it inside and out. I even have pictures of the engine. Then Alphonso topped it off by letting us take it out for a spin. We ripped up a couple back roads. It was amazing.”

  Birdie frowned as she pulled their thoughts together about Alphonso Santos’ dream car. “That’s right. He loved that car. And then suddenly, a week later, it was Sophia’s car.”

  “And he never drove it again, it seems,” Nell added softly.

  The room grew silent. Sophia had been the only one driving the car since that first week. And she drove it like an old lady, some said. To meetings, to church, to the supermarket. Carefully. Cautiously. Joylessly.

  “Sophia Santos didn’t even like cars,” Birdie finished. “Especially the one that she died in.”

  “The gift from hell,” Izzy finished.

  Chapter 6

  “Two houses so close together and so vastly different,” Nell mused, looking out at the carefully tended lawn of the Santos estate.

  “They fit the personalities of the people who live in them.” Ben drove slowly up the long driveway. “Can you imagine Birdie living behind locked gates and pruned bushes shaped like birds?”

  Nell laughed. Birdie’s three-story captain’s house next door commanded the same view and equal acreage as the Santos home, but it was casual and comfortable. Nell never hesitated to drop her shoes at the door and curl up in one of Sonny Favazza’s deep leather den chairs that still, all these years later, smelled of Birdie’s first husband’s cherrywood pipe. The Favazza home welcomed sandals or bare feet, jeans, cutoffs, or designer slacks. It never mattered.

  In the Santos home, Nell was always a guest, something she’d never in a million years be considered at Birdie’s.

  The brick drive was smooth and shiny from a recent hosing, and tiny gaslights cast slender shadows into the carefully maintained flower beds. Nell looked around at the wide, illuminated grounds, the curved granite benches, and lights shining up into the trees. Statuary—cherubs, decorative urns, and Greek gods in awkward poses—were placed around the main house, gazebo, and flower beds. Nell remembered Cass’ stories of playing with Gracie on the expensive statues and breaking an ear off a unicorn poised for flight. It was a misdeed that Nell suspected was never confessed to Alphonso.

  The steps in front of the brick and stone house were lit, too—each one holding a pot of tulips. For a moment Nell regretted the container of lobster stew that was cushioned tightly in the car trunk. It was habit, she supposed—one took food when paying condolences. But suddenly it seemed an awkward gesture.

  “Out, my love,” Ben whispered in her ear and only then did Nell realize that he had parked the car and was holding open the passenger door. In his other arm he carefully balanced the box containing the soup.

  Nell slipped out of the CRV, glad to have Ben at her side. Ben was comfortable in situations like this, a product of his many years in a boardroom. An experienced semiretired business owner with business and law degrees, Ben Endicott rarely encountered a situation that either his sense of humor or his intelligence couldn’t carry him through. Even the lobster stew, Nell thought with a smile, would seem the correct thing with him carrying it up the steps.

  Nell fell in step beside Ben, her dark summer dress moving against her legs. A breeze lifted her hair, and she pressed it back into place with the palm of her hand and looked up at Ben’s profile. “Birdie will meet us—she’s walking over.”

  “Over the river and through the woods . . .”

  “No river, though.” Nell looked back into the thick stand of trees that separated the two properties. It did, indeed, look like a woods.

  “I suppose that access road that Sophia had gated off might be considered the river,” Ben said, following her look.

  The narrow stretch of land that led from the road to the ocean lay hidden in the middle of the thick stand of trees—but everyone knew of the pathway. For decades, families on the south end of Sea Harbor had loaded up their beach blankets and toys and headed down to the cove below. A curving arm of land kept waves at a minimum and protected the sandy beach. The Chil
dren’s Beach, it had been dubbed by the locals.

  “I don’t understand Sophia’s blocking it off,” Ben said. “It’s not a good way to win friends.”

  “I’m not sure Sophia was about winning friends. I think she simply liked her privacy. For whatever reason, Birdie said she was passionate about this issue.”

  Ben nodded. But when push came to shove, they both knew that the residents inconvenienced by her bold action wouldn’t easily accept the need for privacy as a viable reason. The woods prevented anyone walking down to the beach from being seen from the big house. “Unreasonable” and “irrational” were words hurled Sophia’s way when the topic was discussed.

  “Sam, Izzy, and Willow are probably here. I think Gracie was soliciting friends tonight.”

  Gracie had told them that her uncle would be receiving people for a short time on Sunday night. “Receiving” was the word he had used, one Gracie felt awkward repeating. “It somehow seems so . . . so obligatory,” she’d said. And then she’d managed a laugh and added, “But if you bring food, Nell, well, that’s worth receiving.”

  The heavy walnut doors were opened by a butler. Nell and Ben stepped into a foyer filled with crystal vases of flowers—lilies and white roses in such abundance their fragrance was nearly overwhelming. A maid appeared instantly and took the soup tureen from Ben, acknowledged it with a slight bow of her head, then disappeared without making a sound on the marble floor.

  Ahead of them, Alphonso stood tall and sedate in a black suit, a polite smile on his darkly handsome face, greeting each guest in turn.

  Nell waited in line, listening to the murmur of condolences. She watched the guests move forward, as if mysteriously choreographed, shaking Alphonso’s hand, nodding to friends, then making their way to one of the bars set up in the dining room and out on the terrace.

  The mayor was there, along with many Harbor Road shop owners, neighbors, and people with whom the Santos Company did business. Nell spotted Joey Delaney over near the terrace doors. Joey had probably come for Gracie. To be a support. He was alone, out of the way, but there if Gracie needed him. A guardian angel, Nell thought.

  Behind her, a steady stream of people filed through the door. Nell looked around and noticed Birdie’s housekeeper, Ella Sampson. She was standing alone, her slender frame slightly stooped, as if the weight of the occasion were too much for her. She started to get in line, then noticed where it was leading—to Alphonso Santos—and quickly stepped aside and disappeared into the dining room.

  All around her, Nell heard muted conversations about the accident. The speed of the car. Sophia being alone. The erratic driving. All disparate pieces of conversation that subtly asked for answers that no one could offer.

  Alphonso’s deep voice drew Nell’s attention back to the man now in front of her. He spoke to Ben, then shook Nell’s hand, his controlled smile in place. But when Nell looked up into his eyes, she saw sadness and felt a sudden press of Alphonso’s hand, more firmly, as if convincing her of something.

  “Sophia was a good woman, a good wife,” he said in a low voice. “I loved her, no matter what.”

  His steel gray eyes locked onto Nell’s. He clasped her hand firmly.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you did, Alphonso.”

  But she didn’t know that, not really. And it wasn’t her business to know it. She smiled again and slid her hand from his grasp, allowing Harry Garozzo to take her place, his beefy baker’s hand now clasping Alphonso’s.

  A maid directed them into the expansive dining room, where a series of leaded French doors opened onto the terrace. The polished mahogany table held mounds of shrimp and crab legs in silver bowls, elegant configurations of fresh fruit, and an assortment of crackers and imported cheeses, light salads, toast points, and caviar. Another table was laden with desserts.

  At the end of the room, Liz Palazola stood quietly, motioning to waiters and waitresses, checking trays and bowls, smiling at guests.

  She looked lovely, striking, even with a line of worry marring her forehead. Nell wondered if Liz had ever looked ordinary. Beauty was effortless to Annabelle’s eldest child. And with each passing year she grew more striking. A simple black dress slid over her full breasts and was transformed into a lovely garment. Liz was totally unaware of the effect, Nell imagined.

  Ben began filling a plate with shrimp and crab, reminding Nell that the last meal they had had was a cheese and spinach omelet that morning at the Sweet Petunia.

  “It beats our leftovers,” she said with a smile. She picked up a glass of wine from a passing waiter and walked over to Liz.

  “I wondered who could possibly have pulled something like this together on such short notice. It’s lovely, Liz.”

  “Thank you. Alphonso said if people took the time to come, they should at least have something to make up for the dinner they may have missed. Sophia would have wanted it to be perfect. To be elegant, just like she was, he said. It was the least I could do. This is such a horrible time for everyone.”

  “It looks very much like Sophia, not at all the mushroom soup and bean casserole we’re used to at Father Larry’s church receptions.”

  Liz smiled and nodded toward a gray-haired man standing at the French doors, engaging Ben in conversation. A heaping plate of food was held in one hand, and with the other, Father Northcutt punctuated his words with a wineglass.

  “I don’t think the good padre minds the variety.”

  Nell laughed. “No. I don’t suppose he does. Father Northcutt loves good food. I’m glad he’s here to support Alphonso—especially since I understand the funeral won’t be in his church.”

  Liz motioned to a waiter to refill a water pitcher on the table. “Her family is there,” she said. “In Argentina, I mean.”

  “But Alphonso didn’t have to do that. The husband has rights, and if he wanted to bury her here, to keep her close in that way, he could have insisted.”

  “Here?” Liz seemed surprised at the suggestion, but before she could pursue it, a loud crashing noise came through the kitchen’s swinging door. “I’m sorry, Nell, I need to take care of this.”

  As Liz hurried through the door, Nell spotted a heap of shattered glass and mess of caviar on the floor. Liz Palazola would have that under control in a matter of seconds, she suspected.

  The room was buzzing now, the wine loosening tongues. Waiters wove their way through the groups of people, pouring, picking up empty glasses, offering appetizers. From where she stood, Nell could see the front door and the wide staircase that curved to the floors above, a massive crystal chandelier in the center. She spotted Ella Sampson again, walking down the stairs, one hand gripping the banister. Ella glanced uneasily around her, and Nell suspected the majesty of the house and the formal attire of the guests was overwhelming to the gentle and simple housekeeper. She wore a plain collared dress with a narrow belt, and a cardigan sweater over it. A cloth purse hung heavily from her arm.

  Nell noticed a book sticking out the top of the bag. The chandelier’s light bounced off the gilded pages. It was too big for Ella’s bag, a teal leather volume that stretched the opening of the narrow purse.

  As if she felt Nell’s look, Ella reached over with her other hand and tried to shove the book farther into her purse. Then she looked around once more and hurried out the front door.

  Curious, Nell mused, but before she had time to process her thought, Izzy appeared at her side.

  “Come,” she said, and looped her arm through Nell’s, leading her toward the doors. “We’re on the terrace.”

  Gracie, Willow Adams, and Cass sat at a patio table with Birdie. Cass’ brother, Pete Halloran, Sam, and Ben stood nearby discussing the Sox’s wicked rousting of the Yankees earlier in the day. Father Northcutt had moved on to greet a group of parishioners on the other side of the terrace.

  A lively Baroque concerto filtered out through hidden speakers. The ambience bespoke an elegant cocktail party.

  “No offense, Gracie,” Cass said, �
��but as lovely as all this is, I want you guys to say good-bye to me down on the beach near Perry’s place with endless pitchers of Ben’s martinis and a clam-bake. Throw in Pete’s band and I’ll be a happy camper.”

  Gracie’s smile was halfhearted. “This was Alphonso’s idea of what Sophia would have wanted. It really didn’t matter what anyone else thought.”

  “It feels elegant, just like she was, dear.” Birdie reached over and patted Gracie’s slender arm. “I think he did the right thing.”

  “I suppose. But I bet half the people here never even met Sophia. And at least some of the rest didn’t like her much.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Nell said tactfully. “I think most people simply didn’t know her very well, myself included. Sophia was always lovely, but she didn’t talk much about herself.”

  “You’re right, sure. I didn’t know her very well myself, even though she tried to be an aunt to me. Sophia never shirked her responsibility, which is what she considered me, I think. Sophia and Alphonso always seemed okay with my being here when Mom took off. They weren’t exactly warm and fuzzy, definitely not the Cleavers, but they took me in, and that was good. They didn’t have to, I suppose.”

  “They were your family,” Cass said. “Of course they had to.”

  “I suppose. And I guess the bulk of it was on Sophia because Alphonso wasn’t around much. Someone had to make sure Cass and I didn’t tear the house down or smoke in the bathrooms.” Gracie took a drink of wine. “Weird as it may be, I think she cared about me, even though it wasn’t her choice to marry a man who would end up with a preteen under his watch.”

  “You were lucky,” Willow Adams said softly. The youngest in the group, Willow’s eyes reflected the experiences that made her seem older than her twenty-three years. “It’s hard when your mom isn’t there. Before she died, my mom was kinda like yours, I think. Sometimes she wasn’t there, even when she was. You know?”

  Nell watched the young fiber artist, knowing the words were spoken with difficulty. Willow had come to Sea Harbor a year before, searching for a father she had never known. And by summer’s end she had worked her way into their hearts. When she decided to stay and make the Canary Cove art colony her home, just as her father before her had done, no one was happier than the Seaside Knitters.