A Fatal Fleece (29 page)

“A private jungle that didn’t allow visitors. And yet he was so present in the town, down at the harbor, patrolling Canary Cove. Finnegan was not an antisocial person.”

“His haven, I suppose. Perhaps we all need one.”

“Though maybe not to this extreme.” Nell looked off to the sides where a rusted lawn mower stood beside a few garbage cans tipped on their sides. At the end of the drive was the low-slung, two-story building, its shingles hanging loose from years of weather and neglect.

A weathered sign hung crookedly over a window:
TIMOTHY PULASKI, DDS.

Birdie looked at the dentist’s sign, then looked intently at the window behind it. Through the dirty glass, an old dental chair was visible. She took a few steps back and took in the rest of the building.

“Finnegan lived on the second floor?” Nell asked.

Birdie nodded. “He spared no expense when he fixed it up for Moira. She loved it there, Finn said.” They looked up at the green patches of moss clinging to the roof, a chimney visible at one end.

Birdie walked the length of the building, then back to Nell’s side.

“I’m remembering when Joseph had his office down here.” She pointed west, beyond the rubbish and trees and fence, to the nicely kept property on the other side that now housed the Arts Association office. “That building matched this one. Twins. There was even a small path of green between them with picnic tables. I suppose the tenants all knew each other.”

“Did you visit him down here?”

“Only a time or two. His office came furnished. We’d laugh about it, that if I aimed my telescope just right, I might be able to check up on him from across the water.” She smiled at the old memory. “But, no, I wasn’t the kind of wife who brought lunch to her husband in a
nice little black box. Joseph would not have liked that—nor would I. That was how we handled our life together: he had his little office; I had my den. We came together in other places.”

Birdie looked again at the dentist’s sign. “Joseph mentioned Dr. Pulaski once or twice. He was a funny little man, quite odd-looking. He was . . .”

The crackling sound of dry wood startled away the rest of her sentence, and both women automatically took a step toward each other. Birdie clutched her chest.

Gabby Marietti appeared in the clearing, small twigs and leaves stuck to her green crocheted beanie. “Hi,” she said.

“Gabby, sweetheart, you scared the life out of me.”

Gabby skipped over the distance between them. “Don’t you love it here? Look.” She pointed to the water, where the rickety dock protruded like a bruised thumb. “It’s so . . . so amazing here. So beautiful.”

Gabby pointed at a small life vest hanging from a post.

“Finn got that at McClucken’s for me. He made me wear it when we fished.”

Nell watched the happiness in Gabby’s eyes. She didn’t see the rusty, broken-down appliances, the smashed cans and broken windows. Instead, she saw what Finn must have seen: the beauty of plants meeting the sea, and the happy memories that she and an old man had created in the middle of it.

A young reflection of Moira, thinking it was the most beautiful spot in the entire world.

No wonder Finn loved this child.

They walked around the house and looked down to the dock where Finnegan had kept his boat.

“That’s where kids fish sometimes,” Gabby said. “Finn didn’t like it because he was afraid they’d fall off. It was okay for me to do it because he was with me.”

Nell looked down at the dock, and in her mind’s eye, she saw the three teenage boys huddled together, watching a stranger move through Finn’s house, a flashlight moving from window to window,
room to room. She looked up at the second-floor apartment that Finn had renovated for his wife. Skylights were still in place, though it was difficult to see if they were broken. A deck, leaning precariously to one side, fronted a wall of windows overlooking the water. It must have been a beautiful place.

The dock was similar to the one near the Artist’s Palate, probably built around the same time and both in need of a good carpenter. She thought of Beverly coming around the fence and seeing her father on the dock with Gabby. Then arguing with him. Being chastised for something that went against Finn’s moral code, whatever that might be. And adding insult to injury, her getaway thwarted by tripping on the path, thick and slippery with dead seaweed.

Beverly coming . . . Beverly fleeing. And in between the two, getting a lay of her father’s land.

“Can’t you just see why Finn loved it here?” Gabby tossed a stone down into the water. “And why he went ballistic when people tried to take it away from him?”

“I certainly can,” Birdie said. “There’s a kind of peace here. That must be what Finn found.”

“Yes, he did,” Gabby said, excited to have someone understand.

The realization that Gabby had been on the property before they arrived suddenly occurred to them. “But what were you doing back here, sweetie?” Birdie asked.

Gabby had appeared out of the brush like Puck. Their own mischievous woodland elf.

She seemed surprised at the question. “I brought flowers.”

“Flowers?” Birdie looked back at the house.

“Not there. There.” Gabby tossed her head, pointing toward some bushes, scrub trees, and a broken door leaning against a stump. “Finn used to do it, so now I do it for him.”

“Where are the flowers?”

“Back there,” Gabby said. She walked past the women and headed toward the broken door, then around two overgrown euonymus bushes. Though thick with weeds, there were signs of a pathway that led farther back into the brush.

Nell and Birdie followed the quickly moving child.

In a small clearing, barely identifiable as such, Gabby had put a handful of daylilies in an old bottle and leaned it up against a tree. Beyond the tree was a hole, carelessly filled in with dirt and debris.

A hole from which a casket had been recently removed.

Chapter 28

I
t wasn’t yet lunchtime, but the day felt full, with chunks of a puzzle falling onto the ground, waiting for order.

Gabby said she was off to Willow’s to work on some things for the Garden Celebration.

She hadn’t offered more information about the flowers, just that she’d seen Finn take flowers into the woods and come back without them. He never let her come along, she said. “Maybe he talks to the woodland nymphs. I do that sometimes.”

But Nell and Birdie suspected it was more than woodland nymphs that lured Finnegan into the woods.

They made their way back up the drive and climbed into Nell’s car. “Where do we start?” Nell asked, pulling back into traffic. “It’s as if a storm has tossed pieces of people’s lives—and deaths—up in the air. Now all we need to do is put them into an order that makes sense.”

“How about we talk to Father Northcutt? He’s wise—and old. He’s seen a lot.”

Nell nodded. Father Northcutt knew as much about Finn as anyone. Perhaps he knew some secrets about Moira, as well.

Birdie checked her watch. “We’ll lure him with the promise of food.”

She took out her phone and punched in Father Larry’s number. Mary Halloran answered, as she usually did, her sweet Irish lilt a pleasure to hear. “The good father is with a parishioner,” she said,
“but he has no luncheon plans.” She assured Birdie there was nothing he’d like better than having lunch with her and Nell. She would see to it that he was at the Ocean’s Edge in thirty minutes.

“That gives us time for a stop,” Nell said. “I’ve been curious about the people checking out the deed to Finn’s property. We already know Nick visited the deed office. But Sal was hesitant to tell me much more. He should have been a priest, the way he holds confidences so close.”

“Even when he doesn’t have to,” Birdie said. “I think Beatrice trains him to keep everything in their life confidential so she’ll never have to worry about little things leaking out and surprising her during some campaign.”

Nell laughed. “A wise woman, perhaps.”

Parking karma, Birdie called it, when a parking spot magically appeared right in front of the city office building.

And the karma walked inside with them, for when they opened the door to the register of deeds annex, a young woman sat in Sal’s place, her head buried in an open chemistry book. There’d be no need to finesse their way around Sal Scaglia.

The college student looked up and a smile instantly lit her pretty face. “Yay! Nell and Birdie, two of my favorite people in the whole wide world.” She jumped up, nearly toppling the chair.

Birdie hugged her. “Dear Janie. Now, what in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

Janie Levin held up the textbook. “Studying organic chem. Next-to-last semester of nursing school,” she said proudly. Then she looked around and pointed to the desk. “Oh, but you mean
here
. I’m a substitute gal Friday. That’s what my boyfriend calls me.” She laughed. “This office needed some major computer upgrades, so I’m doing that, bringing them up to the twenty-first century. Or at least trying to. And I do pretty much anything else they need me to do around the offices. Great summer job, especially on days like this when I get to study.”

Nell hugged her warmly. “We’re very proud of you, you know. Tommy tells me—and everyone he sees—how well you’re doing in school.”

Janie blushed. She and policeman Tommy Porter had been dating for a while now, and Nell suspected that a diamond would arrive before nursing school graduation, but an engagement wouldn’t alter Janie’s plans one iota. She was the first in her family to go to college, and sweet Tommy was as proud of her as if he’d single-handedly made it happen.

“What brings you two into this musty old office? I told Sal that it was unhealthy in here, and I made him open every single window. Years ago, before people knew any better, someone used to smoke in here. I can still smell it. I can. It’s in the books and that carpet around the computers and those old upholstered chairs. It’s dreadful.”

If Janie’s enthusiasm for disease, health, and diagnosis of her friends and neighbors matches her grades, she will graduate with the highest honors,
Nell thought. “So, Sal’s not here?” she asked.

“Sal? Nope. He just left. So for today, I’m him. Sitting in his chair, anyway.” She looked sheepish, then laughed. “And studying my organic chem. But enough about me. How are you two, and what brings you in here? Would you like to look at some deeds? A little local history? A . . .”

Nell laughed at Janie’s antics, swinging her arms theatrically toward the computers and the wall of dusty books.

“Actually, it’s simpler than that. We’d like to see the sign-in book that Sal keeps.”

“That’s it? Easy as pie. Here.” She picked up a lined tablet from the desk and handed it over to them. “But don’t sit in those upholstered chairs. Try the wooden chairs at the table. Less germs.”

They thanked her and moved to the library table, sitting down and opening the book, leafing back over the past few weeks. There was Nicholas Marietti, signing in with his distinctive scrawl. Sal made people indicate what they were looking for in another column, along with time in and time out. Nick was looking up the deed to the Francis Finnegan property, it said, and he stayed exactly one hour. As far as they could tell, that was his only visit.

Birdie ran her finger over the columns, backing up to a couple of weeks before Finnegan died and taking it up to the most recent
entries. Lots of developers’ names checking out Finnegan’s place—Davey Delaney, some Boston companies, some investment bankers.

Birdie’s finger stopped:
Beverly Walden
was written clearly on several different dates. They checked across the rows to see what she was interested in: Canary Cove deeds one day, Francis Finnegan land another, some random places. All in all, they came across ten entries for Beverly Walden, even including the property on which she lived, and a couple of refurbished homes in the most expensive neighborhood in Sea Harbor.

Birdie looked at Nell. “How strange.”

“Indeed.” Nell slipped her glasses back into her purse and scribbled a few notes on the tiny notepad she kept in the bag, and they quietly exited the office, careful not to disturb Janie, her head once again buried in organic chemistry.

“We need to keep our thoughts going in a straight line,” Birdie said as they drove the few blocks to the Ocean’s Edge. “I feel we’re going in too many directions.”

“But there’s overlap in all of this. The body in Finn’s yard. His murder. His changing his will. Nick’s interest in the land.”

“I hope not too much overlap,” Birdie said.

Nell knew what Birdie was thinking. Not enough to implicate Nicholas Marietti in anything more serious than . . . More serious than what?

A boatload of questions—and not even a tugboat of answers.

Father Northcutt had already arrived and was seated in his favorite booth when they walked into the restaurant.

Jeffrey Meara, who had tended bar for at least thirty years at the Ocean’s Edge and probably knew as many secrets as Father Larry, said the priest had already ordered his favorite stout and they should go right on back.

The priest greeted them effusively, his broad hands grasping theirs. “To what do I owe this extraordinary pleasure, my darlin’s?”

A waitress appeared before they could answer. Birdie and Nell
ordered the salmon salad special with glasses of iced tea. Father Larry would have his usual, he said, and the waitress beamed.

Nell frowned at him. “Father . . .” she began.

“I know, I know, dear Nellie. It’s that nasty cholesterol beast you fear. But I promise you that Mary Halloran, bless her sweet soul, insists on stuffing my refrigerator with lettuce and uncooked vegetables most days, so this is a treat I save to complement the pleasure of dining with two such beautiful women.”

“Father,” Birdie said sweetly, “you’re full of it.”

The waitress laughed at Birdie’s choice of words, then went off to place their order: two salad specials and a grilled filet mignon, rare as a bottle of Midleton’s, with just a hint of béarnaise sauce drizzled on top.