Death by Cashmere (6 page)

Nell followed the nod of Izzy's head and saw Pete standing next to Cass a short distance away. His handsome face was drawn, and Nell suspected he hadn't been sleeping. His blank gaze moved over the crowd, from one small clump of people to the next, as if he'd find what he was searching for somewhere in the closed, warm room. Cass had one hand on Pete's arm and looked, Nell thought, as if she'd rather be anywhere in the whole world than here in this crowded church basement. It had been a rough few days for her, but Cass was a survivor, and Nell knew she'd be fine. Pete, she wasn't so sure of.

Izzy caught Cass's eye and waved her over. Cass waved back, then tugged on Pete's arm and started to walk their way.

Pete glanced over at the group, shrugged off Cass's hand, and stepped back against a wall.

"He'll be okay," Cass said when she reached the group. "He just wants to be alone."

"That's understandable, Cass," Nell said.

"He's eyeing Jake Risso as if he'd like to kill him," Izzy said. "Are you sure he's okay, Cass?"

Cass looked back at her brother.

Pete's body had stiffened, the limp, hunched figure straightening, as if ready to strike.

A few yards away, the owner of the Gull Tavern was talking to a group of neighbors and shopkeepers. Accustomed to speaking over the din of tavern noise, Jake Risso spoke in a big gravelly voice that carried above the clatter of beer bottles and merrymakers in his bar. In a room filled with mourners, it was a foghorn on a still, soupy night.

"She could drink with the best of us, that one could," Jake bellowed to the group.

Archie Brandley and his wife, Harriet, were standing nearby, holding plates of egg casserole and chunks of melon and talking to Salvatore and Beatrice Scaglia. Archie and Sal both looked over at Jake and gestured for him to quiet down.

But subtle gestures went unnoticed by Jake, and he continued. "I liked Angie, make no bones about it. Who could not like her spunk? But she nevah shoulda drank and then gone out like that on a bad night. And to jump off the breakwater, fah chrysakes? "

Nell put one hand over her mouth, her eyes on Pete. His face was beet red, and even from a distance, she could see the throbbing in his temples. He lifted a tight fist and his eyes, unblinking, fastened on Jake Risso's bald head.

In the next instant, Pete was beside Jake, his fist raised and an angry torrent of syllables pouring from his mouth.

Ben thrust his paper cup into Nell's hand and headed toward Pete.

Archie and Sal approached from the other side.

But it was Tony Framingham who saved the day.

Flying from his post against the wall, Tony wedged himself between Jake and Pete. In one swift movement he wrapped Pete Halloran in a grip so tight it would have knocked the air out of a slighter man.

And in the next instant, Tony had pulled Pete across the room and out the side door of Our Lady of the Seas basement.

Cass heaved an audible sigh of relief.

Nell released the air trapped in her lungs.

And before anyone could react, the crowd filled into the space left in the two men's wake, like water spilling into a sand hole, and the gentle Father Northcutt stepped up onto the small platform at one end of the room and announced to everyone that there were more desserts up on the front table. Plenty more.

And Josie Archer, God bless her, wanted everyone to eat up.

Funerals have a way of sobering towns, especially when the service is for someone beautiful, feisty, and far too young to die. But summer in Sea Harbor wasn't a season; it was a happening, and the sun-drenched streets of Sea Harbor, the small restaurants and shops and smooth sandy beaches, refused to give in to the dourness of death.

Life goes on,
Ben had said at lunch that Wednesday.
No matter if we'd like to stop it for a while. Make sense of the senseless. It goes on.

So it did, Nell thought, as she walked down the winding streets of her neighborhood toward the village shops. And as if to prove it, a gaggle of preteens, towels wrapped around their necks, bicycled by on their way to the beach for a late-afternoon swim.

Nell had taken a pot of chowder over to Josie Archer the night before, and knew that her life, too, would somehow move on, though it would never be the same.

The unanswered questions that plagued Izzy and Nell didn't seem to touch Josie. The whys and hows and incongruities of a strong young woman drowning in familiar water were of no consequence to her mother.

"Angie is with her father in heaven," Josie told Nell. "She never stopped missing Ted. Not for a single minute, not for all these years. And now they're together."

Nell walked past the road where Izzy lived, automatically looking up the hill toward the green-shuttered house that Izzy had turned into a cozy home. The polished hardwood floors, bright rugs, and comfortable furniture suited Izzy far more than the decorator-styled Beacon Hill town home her law firm had helped her find. The town home was status; the Seaside Harbor cottage was Izzy. And it was close enough to the knitting studio for Izzy to walk or ride her bike to work if she wanted to, though she often drove her small car to carry things back and forth to the shop--paperwork and supplies, CDs and fresh flowers for her sales manager, Mae's, desk.

As Nell crossed over Harbor Road, she spotted Cass coming from the other direction. "Are you through for the day, Cass?" she asked as they met up in front of Izzy's store window.

Cass's nose and cheeks were flushed--clear signs of a day on the water. Her jeans were clean, but the bottom edges were dark with permanent saltwater stains. Her sea-blue eyes were tired today and lacked the laughter that Nell was used to seeing there.

"Maybe
through
as in forever, Nell." Cass held the door for Nell and followed her into the shop.

Mae Anderson, Izzy's shop manager, was standing behind the checkout counter with a bundle of receipts in her hand and a pencil held between her teeth.

She smiled a greeting and nodded toward the next room. "Izzy's thataway," she mumbled without dropping the pencil.

Izzy looked up from her spot on the floor as they rounded the corner. A half-empty shipping box of new yarn sat in front of her. "Hi, you two. What's up?"

"I'm here for needles." Nell leaned over and gave Izzy a peck on the cheek.

"And I'm here because I need my friends," Cass said.

Nell looked at the tired lines around Cass's eyes. It seemed way too soon for Cass to have to face a reminder of finding Angie's body tangled in her lobster warp. "The
Lady Lobster
is back in business?" she asked.

Cass nodded. "I have to, Nell. Lobstering is what I do. I need to be back on my boat. But my stomach lurches with every trap we pull. I keep seeing her--you know? But I have dozens of traps out there--and they need to be checked." She pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans. "Life moves on, you know?"

Nell nodded. Cass and Ben. Two peas in a pod. But they were right. You had to get back on the horse that bucked you.

Cass leaned against the wall. "It's as if my traps are jinxed, Nell. Someone got into them again last night. I thought maybe, with all that's happened out there, the poachers would move on to another spot--"

Nell slipped her glasses up into her thick hair. "I'm so sorry, Cass."

"It's hard not to take it personally, you know?" Cass ran her fingers through her hair, and black strands fell loose from the elastic band. "I'm sure the poachers don't have a clue whose traps they're pillaging. They don't know me from Adam. But I can't help but feel they've violated me somehow."

"Could it just be a lean season, Cass?" Izzy gathered skeins of periwinkle, celery, and sky-blue cashmere from a shipping box. She slipped them into small cubicles.

"No. Folks farther north have been hauling in plenty of keepers, and my bait bags are empty, so someone's been visiting the traps. But it's not just that. I know when my traps have been fiddled with, even if lobsters haven't been in them. Just like you'd know, Izzy, if someone came in here during the night and messed with your yarn. Someone is definitely doing bad things out at the breakwater. And I swear I'm going to make them wish they hadn't."

Nell's fingers played with the smooth finish of the needles. "Cass--this is a hard time. Finding Angie the way you did was awful. And the loss of lobsters--of income--on top of it. But the police will figure it out soon."

Cass managed a smile. "Maybe. But it's not a pleasant place to be right now."

Nell could only imagine. The image of Angie had stayed with her all week, and she hadn't seen it directly, only through Cass's words and the endless replays in the news.

"Maybe it's selfish to be worrying about my own problems," Cass went on, "but if I don't start selling lobsters soon, I'll have to throw in the towel. But what else would I do?" Her voice cracked with uncharacteristic emotion. "This is what I love. You two know that. This is what I do."

Nell slipped an arm around the younger woman's shoulders and felt the worry in Cass's frame. Being out on the water, driving the boat she had spent her life savings on, was truly Cass's life. She had allowed Birdie, Nell, and Ben to invest a little in the
Lady Lobster,
but she was already well on the way to paying it back with fresh fish and lobster--and cash when the haulings were good. They'd get back every penny, whether they wanted it or not. Nell knew that.

"If there's any crime around here that people won't tolerate, it's poaching, Cass," Izzy said. "The thing is, I think Angie's death has put other things on the back burner, but now that the funeral is over--"

"Is Angie Archer going to dominate our whole summer?" Cass blurted out.

Her abrupt tone jarred Nell and Izzy.

"Sorry," Cass said just as quickly. "That was awful of me. But you can't walk into Coffee's or get a bagel at Harry's Deli without being served up the latest gossip about Angie's life. And people look at me as if I'm somehow connected to it. Let the dead rest in peace. Isn't that what the good padre says?"

"Her funeral was just two days ago," Izzy said. "Angie grew up here--people are bound to talk about it, Cass. This isn't like you. What's wrong?"

Cass seemed to give the question serious thought. Finally, she said, "I think I resent her. I didn't trust Angie Archer in life, and I don't trust her much in death."

"Because of Pete," Nell said.

"Sure, because of Pete. He's a mess--I don't think he said three words to me on the boat today. A week ago he was bothered to the core about the poachers, but he doesn't seem to care anymore. And who knows, maybe he was just a plaything for Angie. But it's more than that. I may be silly, but Angie had a bad aura about her. She was kind of secretive."

Izzy uncurled herself from the floor. "She didn't talk about herself much, is all."

"Some people are like that," Nell said. "I suppose we all have secrets of one sort or another. But I've known Angie nearly her whole life, Cass. And I don't think she would have intentionally hurt Pete."

Cass shrugged. "Maybe you're right, Nell. Maybe I'm blaming Angie for the black cloud over my lobster traps. I just wish she'd picked somewhere else to go swimming that night."

Izzy brushed sand off her jeans and bent over to pick up the empty shipping box. She straightened up. "Let's face it. Angie wasn't swimming. Not in those fancy boots she spent two months' salary on. We know that."

And not in the exquisite, one-of-a-kind cashmere sweater that Izzy had loaned Angie, Nell thought. The sweater must have crossed Izzy's mind. But it wouldn't be mentioned, not by either of them. Not now. A lost sweater was nothing when compared to a lost life.

Izzy walked down the two steps to the back room, and Nell and Cass picked up the rest of the boxes and followed her.

"Has Pete been able to talk about Angie's death?" Izzy asked. She collapsed the box and set it on the floor. "He wandered in here yesterday, hung around for a while as if he wanted to say something, but we were really busy and I didn't have time to talk."

"Not much. I've asked a few questions, but he doesn't want to go there."

"Give him time," Nell said.

Cass didn't answer. She picked up another shipping box, collapsed it, and placed it on the pile for recycling.

Nell could feel her unrest. Cass would be fine, but probably not until at least one of her issues was put to rest. She picked up a stack of collapsed boxes to take outside to the Dumpster and pushed open the side door with her hip, then stopped still in the doorway. "Did you hear that?" she asked, looking back into the shop.

Nell peered out the door and scanned the narrow alley that ran alongside the shop down to the water's edge. It was empty, except for George Gideon striding down to the waterfront as he began his nightly security stint. Cocky Gideon, as Cass called him. He looked back, nodded a hello, then moved on, his heavy backpack shifting between his broad shoulders.

"What do you hear?" Izzy asked, stepping out onto the small doorstep beside Nell.

"A whiny sound, like a baby crying. There. I hear it again."

Cass stepped past Nell and Izzy and looked toward the water. "I hear it, too. An injured gull?" She frowned and walked over to the green Dumpster pushed up against the clapboard siding.

Nell stepped outside. And then she heard the small cry again, coming from above. She leaned back and her eyes traveled up the side of the Seaside Studio, past the windows of the back room, to the apartment above. "Izzy, look. Up there."

Cass and Izzy stood out on the gravel pathway and their eyes followed the direction of Nell's finger.

And then they saw it.

Sitting on the windowsill inside Angie's apartment, its eyes as big and round as quarters, was a fluffy calico kitten.