Murder in Merino (11 page)

Zack brightened. “Hey, thanks, but I’m good. Surprise, surprise. Don Wooten hired me back a couple days ago—that’s why I’m here all duded up like this.” He flipped his tie.

Nell held back her surprise. Without looking, she could feel Ben’s similar reaction. Their friend Don Wooten hadn’t wasted any time in overturning his dead partner’s decisions.

Behind Zack, Ryan Arcado, the fire chief’s son, stood with his hands in his pockets. He had been fired, too, according to M.J., Nell’s hairdresser and Ryan’s mother. A month or so earlier, M.J. had said. Nell had been in the salon for a trim the day before Jeffrey’s murder, and M.J. had not minced words. “Jeffrey Meara wields a mighty stick with his employees. He’s tough,” she had said. “I know Ryan can be a hothead, but the man could have been more forgiving and given him a second chance. It’s impossible for these kids to find jobs and Jeffrey knows that. He’s so smooth and gracious to diners, but let me tell you, Nell, he can be a beast to work for. He was much nicer when all he did at the Edge was tend bar.”

The portrait that M.J. had painted of Jeffrey had surprised Nell at the time. Ben had been more circumspect when she repeated the conversation. “Ryan can be bullheaded. Maybe he deserved it. Who knows? He has some growing up to do.” He had paused and chuckled as he went on to share an old memory. “I got fired from busing tables at the Harvard Club because I tossed out a bunch of silverware with the trash. As my manager politely explained, ‘It wasn’t a good thing to do.’”

Nell had laughed. A decades-old mistake was humorous in the retelling. But one that happened a day or week before had not had the chance to be softened by time.

Zack looked over at Ryan and pointed. “Arcado is back, too. Jeffrey took his phone from him the day he caught him texting and threw it in the trash bin outside. Not a happy sight. There’s a bunch of us who got canned. We’re the Ocean’s Edge’s returning alums.”

Ryan tugged off his tie and sat down on a bench. “Yep. It’s good to be back. Wooten called me Monday. He’s cool. Old man Meara could be wicked hell to work for. I’da liked to have killed the guy a couple times,” he said.

“Zip it, Arcado.” It was a hostess Jeffrey had introduced Ben and Nell to early in the summer, Laura Danvers’s cousin Grace. Jeffrey had liked her, and today she looked both sad and disgusted.

“Sometimes you’re as appropriate as my kid brother. Just let it be. The man is dead.” She looked over at Nell. “It’s sad. As soon as Mr. Wooten was out of sight today they peeled out of that church as if it were on fire. I don’t think they even stayed long enough to hear the nice eulogy Father Larry gave.” She glared back at her coworkers. “In fact, I didn’t see some of you in the church at all. I think you just got dressed up, made sure Mr. Wooten saw you, and then probably went over to the Gull and drank beer. How juvenile. You guys are supposed to be grown-ups.”

“Grace’s right,” Tyler said, holding up his hands as if to stop a fight. “Let’s be fair about old Jeffrey. He helped put that restaurant on the map.” He looked around for nods, then added, “Best on the North Shore, bar none.”

Nell watched Tyler change the course of the conversation with a charming smile. He was a good guy—not to mention a good grandson to Esther. He’d brought real joy back into that house when Esther offered him a place to stay. And maybe because of his grandmother, he seemed to be learning from his rather numerous youthful indiscretions. Hopefully Ryan Arcado would learn a thing or two from the handsome bartender. And Zack Levin could use a role model, too, although she suspected his sister stayed on top of his missteps.

As Nell started to turn away, she noticed another familiar face just behind the stone benches. At first she couldn’t place the tall, dark-haired man with the square chin. But then she realized who it was. Garrett Barros had been Izzy’s neighbor when she lived in the house on Ridge Road. Nell had talked to him a few times while visiting Izzy. And more recently she’d seen him at the Ocean’s Edge.

Was he on Jeffrey’s good side? she wondered. Or had he suffered the fate of Zack and Ryan? He had always been pleasant, which she remembered specifically because his parents had been curmudgeonly, criticizing everything from Izzy’s placement of her trash to the length of her grass. She looked again at Garrett. Yes, he was pleasant enough, but there’d been something about him, something . . . What was it? She pulled her brows together as she tried to tug up the memory. But it was gone, so she smiled instead, waved to the group, and followed Ben down the pathway toward their car.

Sam was standing at the curb checking his watch, his Jeep parked next to the Endicott’s car. He looked up.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Go for it,” Ben said.

“The police chief has taken down the yellow tape from the Ridge Road house. They’re through with whatever they needed to do and it’s been tossed back into our lap. Stella wants to meet over there to go over some papers, look at the inspection report. Izzy won’t go. She says it gives her nightmares. I thought maybe one of you would want to come along.”

They both agreed to join him.

“Funerals have a way of discombobulating me,” Nell said. “I won’t get anything done at home anyway.”

They drove over in Sam’s Jeep, Ben in the back, straddling his long legs across the floor mat. Sam rested one arm on the window edge and headed the car north. “Izzy gave a fleeting thought to tearing the house down and selling the property. There’s always a market for land close to the water. But that would be a mess, finding groups who’ll reuse the bricks and wood. Somehow, I don’t know, some crazy voice in my head rejected that idea.”

“And it would certainly crush Jules Ainsley.”

“That it would. She’s been calling Stella every day, even though we haven’t signed anything and told her we needed some space to say good-bye to our friend Jeffrey. I went ahead and had the house inspected, even though Jules offered to buy it as is. It didn’t seem right to take her money and have the house fall apart the next day.”

“Was she at the funeral? I didn’t see her.”

“She told Izzy she wasn’t going,” Sam said. “She didn’t know Jeffrey, and she thought her connection to him might make it awkward for everyone. She was right. I saw her headed into the bookstore when I picked Izzy up at the shop.”

The Brandleys’ bookstore. Nell looked up, about to say something, then thought better of it, and instead turned and watched the neighborhoods roll by until Sam finally turned onto Ridge Road. They drove past the Barroses’ house and pulled up behind Stella Palazola’s small Toyota. She was standing on the front step.

Beside her, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, was Jules Ainsley.

H
er smile was more subdued today, but she was just as striking, even in jeans and a faded T-shirt. She stood still, watching them walk toward her, her brown eyes large and expectant and welcoming.

Almost as if welcoming them into her own house.

Nell returned her smile.

“Jules has been waiting patiently to see the inside of the house and this seemed as good a time as any, since Sam and I were coming over,” Stella said. “I hope you don’t mind, Sam.” She looked at Nell and Ben and her smile grew, relieved to have the extra support.

“Of course not.” He looked at Jules. “I guess that means the week hasn’t changed your mind about things.”

“No,” she said.

“If the week’s events haven’t, the house may,” he said, then suggested to Stella that they all go inside.

The house had a stale smell, the smell of perspiring police officers tromping through it looking for whatever they thought might lead to a murderer. Mud covered the hardwood floors and a small accent rug was rolled up, as if someone thought there might be a valuable clue beneath it, perhaps a trapdoor in the floor.

“Chief Thompson called and apologized for the mess,” Sam said, looking down at the muddy boot prints. “It was raining that night. It couldn’t be helped.”

Jules stood in the center of the small living room. Izzy had left behind some furniture for renters—a couch and chairs, a kitchen table, beds. The furniture made it easier to imagine the house as it might have been.

But Jules wasn’t interested in the furniture. She was looking through to the back of the house and the yard beyond.

“It’s a great view, once that weedy mess on the hill is cleaned up,” Stella said, then sent a silent apology to Sam, her brown brows lifting up into her bangs.

They all walked through a dining alcove to the kitchen, where large windows framed the backyard, the porch, and a wooden swing that Nell knew well. It had been the main selling point for Izzy when she had purchased the house. The swing was old—even back then—with rusty chains and squeaky brackets, but Izzy had fallen in love with it. And she’d spent more money than she probably should have restoring it, replacing parts, repairing the wood, and refinishing it to what it must have looked like years and years before. Today it was as polished and smooth as Sam and Ben’s sailboat.

Jules stood still, taking in the swing, the yard. When she spoke, her voice was tight and filled with emotion. “It’s . . . it’s perfect.”

Sam stared at her, at the yard, at the muddy footprints on the hardwood floors. And most of all, at the potting shed at the edge of the yard, where a man had recently been killed.
Murdered
. It was as far from perfect as could be imagined.

Nell looked at the emotions flitting across Sam’s face, then pushed the images of the past week out of her mind and walked over to the windows. She looked out, lost in her own emotions, seeing the same beauty Jules Ainsley somehow was seeing. “Izzy and I spent many nights on that porch, dreaming of her future here in Sea Harbor,” she murmured.

“Was I in those dreams?” Sam asked softly, standing close behind her.

“Someone exactly like you, Sam Perry,” Nell said. “I think we dreamed you into being.”

Sam chuckled. “I didn’t have a chance, huh?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Sam, why don’t we sit over here and go over things,” Stella called to them, motioning to the dining table, where she had laid out papers. Ben was already seated and had taken out his reading glasses.

“Nell,” Stella asked, “would you mind showing Jules through the rest of the house?”

“Stella is being all business,” Sam whispered to Nell. “We best comply.”

Nell chuckled and motioned to Jules. “It’s not really big enough to get lost in—except for what we used to call the hidden bathroom—but follow me. The bedrooms are back this way.” She headed through the living area to the small bedroom hallway. She reached the first bedroom before she realized Jules wasn’t with her. “Jules?” She retraced her steps and found Jules still standing in the kitchen, looking outside. “Jules?”

She spun around. “Oh. Sorry, Nell. I’m coming.” She hurried after her, taking in everything Nell pointed out: two small bedrooms, a walk-through closet, with the single bathroom on the other side.

“We used to tease Izzy about this bathroom. Her closet always had to be neat and tidy so guests could walk through it on their way to the restroom. One of the house’s idiosyncrasies.”

“It’s charming,” she said. “The whole house is.”

“It needs some sprucing up. Years of renters can take a toll on a house, but when Izzy lived here it was a lovely, cozy cottage.”

Jules didn’t answer. When Nell looked over at her face, all she saw was happiness.

They stayed another hour, waiting until just before leaving to venture out into the backyard. But it was out there, with the wind blowing up from the ocean and the tangle of weeds waving wildly, that Jules seemed to be most at peace. She sat on the swing, her flip-flops falling to the floor, and swung slowly back and forth, as if she were alone in her own private universe.

Sam and Ben walked back to the potting shed. It was a small structure, with a semicircle of flat granite stones outside the door. The stones had been scrubbed clean. They pushed open the door to the shed and walked into a small space with gardening implements, potting equipment, and lawn tools scattered about. The potting workbench was littered with trowels, gloves, and miscellaneous items.

“Jerry thinks Jeffrey and his killer moved in here to talk privately, out of view of neighbors,” Ben said. “It must have been someone Jeffrey knew, because there were no signs of a fight. The serrated knife that killed Jerry came from that bench. From the bloodstains, they know he was stabbed, then staggered outside and collapsed on the stone path outside the shed.”

“Izzy’s last renter loved gardening,” Sam said. “She left this stuff behind when she skipped out on two months’ rent and disappeared. The tools must have been hers.”

Ben nodded. “The police took the knife, of course.”

“Which sounds like whoever did this didn’t plan ahead?” It was Nell, standing in the doorway, grimacing at an image of the grisly scene that had played itself out where she was now standing.

“It sounds like that, doesn’t it?” Ben said.

Somehow it lessened the horror of it a small bit, the idea that no one had plotted out the murder. Yet someone did kill Jeffrey Meara. Why?

She looked out the door at Jules Ainsley sitting on the swing, her mind a million miles away. Was she seeing it all over, finding the bartender in a pool of blood? If she bought this house, would she wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it, replaying it?

Somehow Nell didn’t think so. Jules looked more peaceful at this moment than she had when Nell first met her—or on any of the intervening days. Even her necklace was at rest, the charm hanging quietly from her neck, not from a chain twisted around nervous fingers.

Sam checked his watch. It was getting late. “Stella, let’s go over Jules’s offer again and get out of here before it gets dark.”

They headed inside, Ben leading the way.

Sam held Stella back and apologized to her. “I know this isn’t the way you’ve been taught to sell houses and negotiate contracts, Stella. It’s . . . well, not the norm, I guess.”

“Sam, do you have any idea how relieved I am that this whole thing is happening with you and Iz and the Endicotts? A few days ago I was ready to burn my license, but Uncle Mario talked me out of it. He told me to calm down, that the nicest people in Sea Harbor had my back on this whole awful thing. That would be you guys. And he’s right.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her eyes filling. She took off her glasses and blinked away the tears. “The miracle of it all is that it looks like I’m actually going to sell this house.”

“We’re an inch away,” Sam said.

“And that’s because of all of you. I love you guys.”

Sam gave her a hug, then led her through the door and to the table, where the others were already seated.

Sam sat and looked at the official offer one more time, then the bank statement, the earnest money already deposited. The inspection report was better than he’d anticipated, with no major repairs needed. “Your offer is more than fair,” he said, looking up at Jules.

“It’s all relative. It’s fair to me.” Jules sat beside Stella, her face still.

“We’ll cover your closing costs—it’ll make Izzy feel better. And we will have the whole place cleaned. I had Stella write that in.” He glanced down at the papers again.

Stella laughed. “How am I ever going to handle another sale, one where sellers actually try to get buyers to fork out more money and buyers try to whittle down the price? You guys are ruining me.”

They laughed and Sam pushed out his chair. “I think we’ve removed everything from the house that needs to go—mostly junk left by old tenants. The furniture is yours to use or give away. Izzy had it cleaned, but who knows what’s happened to it this week.”

They looked around the table.

“That’s it?” Jules asked.

“Almost,” Stella said, trying with great difficulty to hold back her excitement and present a professional face. “I need to run this by Uncle Mario. If you could come by the office tomorrow, we’ll seal the deal and give you the keys.”

And in the next breath she let out a squeal that everyone present was sure was heard in Rockport, Gloucester, and perhaps the northern edge of Boston.

“Sorry we don’t have champagne,” Sam said, laughing. “Maybe at a later date.”

“Later is fine,” Jules said. Her smile was wide, filling her whole face. She looked at Stella. “You’re great, Stella. I will be sending everyone I know to you.”

“But . . . but you’re on vacation, right? This will be your vacation house? I guess in all the commotion I never asked.”

Jules smiled again, a smile none of them could begin to read. And Stella’s question lay unanswered on the kitchen table.

They walked out into the fading light of day. Nell felt a weariness clear through to her bones, deep and suddenly overwhelming.

They all paused at the end of the walkway and, as if by plan, turned and looked back at the small house that had been Izzy’s first home in Sea Harbor. Cass Halloran had lived there for a while after Izzy had moved to the home she and Sam shared, and after that a succession of not always ideal renters moved in and out.

And now the torch was passing to Jules Ainsley. A stranger in their lives who had somehow become—in a very short time—a very intimate stranger.

It was then, when they turned back to the house, that they saw him.

He was standing near his parents’ rosebushes, still dressed in the suit he’d worn to Jeffrey Meara’s funeral. In one hand was a pair of binoculars attached to a black cord around his neck. On his face was a crooked smile.

Garrett Barros released his grip on the binoculars, letting them fall to his well-muscled chest, and waved.