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Authors: Sally Goldenbaum

The Wedding Shawl (2 page)

BOOK: The Wedding Shawl
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“That much we know for sure. And we also know that on that night, Harmony Farrow, who had just graduated from Sea Harbor High—with honors, they say—went out to the quarry in her mother’s car. And sometime that evening, we don’t know exactly when, Harmony’s young body was swallowed up by the deep quarry water. It brought an end to a life that was just beginning.”

A sigh escaped Laura’s lips. “I remember her. We just didn’t notice her; you know how that is? I didn’t talk to her much. Not in four years of high school …” Her voice dropped off.

A hand flapped in the air, waving away Laura’s sad confession. Beatrice Scaglia, a city councilwoman, spoke up. “I remember it well. It frightened parents half to death that such a thing could happen right here on Cape Ann. A few days after the girl disappeared, a hiker—my neighbor’s cousin—spotted a lacy shawl stuck on a conifer growing out of the quarry’s wall. It was a privately owned quarry back then—trespassers were not treated kindly—but sometimes some brave soul wandered in.”

Danny nodded. “So they brought in divers. And hours later they pulled her body out of its watery grave. It had been caught beneath the surface, tangled in a tough vine. Trapped.”

Archie Brandley, who was Danny’s father, had come up the stairs and sidled up to the group. A scattering of customers, lured by the story and the tangible excitement spreading through the room, left the book aisles in the back of the loft and filled in beside him.

Archie nodded his head gravely and spoke. “The girl’s folks lived over near the highway, just on the edge of town. The girl had gotten a scholarship—people said she held lots of promise. An awful thing.”

Harmony hadn’t been alone on the quarry’s edge, Danny told the group. But no one came forward with more information. None of her friends. Nobody. As silent as clams. She just disappeared into the night air and the quarry water.

A few days later the autopsy revealed that the death was suspicious. There wasn’t much, but she had bruises on her fingers and arms, as if she’d tried to grab on to someone or something before losing her grip. But although they were sure from the muddied footprints that she hadn’t been alone—and the man who lived across the road had heard two voices going down the path—there wasn’t any real proof that someone had pushed her.

“No one was ever arrested,” added Esther Gibson, Sea Harbor’s longtime police dispatcher. “The poor family received no closure. The parents split up, as often happens. Moved away.”

“And the tragedy was shelved as a cold case,” Danny concluded.

Some of the older knitters who followed such things remembered that other teens were mentioned as people of interest.

“I remember now,” Margaret Garozzo, the deli owner’s wife, said, searching back through the years. “The whole affair was hard on families.”

Archie nodded. “They were good kids, the whole bunch of them. It was a shame, a real shame when they had to be questioning innocent kids and messing with their families like that.”

“But they were only doing their job, Archie,” Beatrice Scaglia, stepping into her city-councilwoman mode, reminded him. “That’s why we have a police force. That’s why we pay taxes.”

Nell hadn’t remembered any of that. Weekenders—which was what she and Ben were back then—weren’t privy to such gossip. But she knew, as Archie stated, that families could be torn apart by tragedy. What an awful ordeal it must have been—for Harmony’s parents, especially, but also for her friends. And even for kids in the school who weren’t her friends, such as Laura, who knew of Harmony but didn’t really know her at all.

“Harmony was pretty,” Merry Jackson said. The co-owner of the Artist’s Palate Bar & Grill tugged on a strand of platinum hair that had escaped her ponytail. “I was in that class, too. She was really smart. I think she played on our basketball team at the community center. That and studying seemed to be all she did. We didn’t know much about her … not until after. And then people remembered all sorts of things, and who knew if they were true or not.”

Her voice fell off as if the conversation was getting too personal, too close to home.

There was a shifting of bodies on chairs, and shoulders rose and fell with a certain uncomfortableness. It was one thing to talk about a cold case, but bringing up people who might be very much alive was another matter.

Esther Gibson sat straight up in her chair and said with her usual frankness, “As the police report clearly stated, no one they questioned was guilty of anything. The rumors put one of the families through a terrible time, as rumors often do.” The older woman’s voice was unusually stern. She picked up her fat knitting needles and resumed work on a pale peach throw, as soft as a feather and perfect for a cool night sitting on the deck.
Enough talk about our neighbors, our friends,
her silence said.

Nell looked over at Izzy, who had also sensed the tension in the room.

The yarn shop owner stood up now, her voice traveling over the tops of heads to Danny. “Okay, Danny, so when you’re coming up with ideas, how does a cold case really help?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Merry Jackson said, her silky ponytail moving between shapely bare shoulders. “You don’t want to write about real people, so what’s next? You take a case like that and then you make up what
could
have happened?”

Danny nodded. “Something like that. Cold cases can provide springboards. You keep some facts if you want, triangulate them. Anything goes. You end up not writing about the actual people or event, like you said, Merry, but instead what your imagination has done with it. It’s fiction.”

Nell half listened as the group pitched in with dozens of different roads the story line could travel, taking it from the neighborhood tragedy to one that could have happened anywhere, and involved a cast of characters pulled from imaginations that ran wild.

But Nell’s imagination was tied to the piece of land that she loved—Cape Ann—and her mind toyed with the tragedy of the young girl who had died that night. It wasn’t fiction for her family—but a horrible happening that must have changed their lives forever. She could only begin to imagine their pain.

Nell looked over at her niece. Izzy was nearly as close to Nell as any daughter could be. Nell loved her fiercely and could only imagine the pain that Harmony’s parents must have experienced.

She pulled a ball of bright green cotton from her bag and pushed aside the disturbing thoughts. One more sleeve to the cropped sweater she was making for her sister Caroline’s birthday and she’d be done.

Hopefully in time for the wedding.

Izzy’s wedding.

Izzy and Sam’s wedding.

Tiny goose bumps rose on Nell’s arms, and she rubbed them briskly, her heart expanding as it did so easily these days. A smile lifted her lips and her eyes grew moist. Ben teased her about wearing her emotions on her sleeve. But he felt it, too. It was a special time in Izzy’s life, the beginning of a new chapter, and the joy that surrounded it was almost palpable—and certainly better to think about than cold cases.

“Daydreaming?” Birdie Favazza looked at Nell. A web of tiny lines fanned out from the octogenarian’s bright eyes and framed her small face. “I know that look, Nell dear. You’re thinking of lives beginning, new chapters. Not ending. I’m with you, dear friend.” She patted Nell on the arm. “We’d be much better off talking about weddings than cold cases.”

Nell pulled her attention back to the animated conversation Merry Jackson had instigated with the group. Of course Birdie knew what she was thinking. Years of friendship allowed certain privileges, like crawling into one another’s thoughts without an invitation.

“So, okay, we have someone at a quarry,” Merry was saying. “Maybe meeting a lover, maybe, or let’s say she was blackmailing someone and was meeting him that night for money. She needed money for college? Or maybe it was a guy out there instead.”

Merry’s ideas were pounced on by others as the quarry quickly turned into a wealthy industrialist’s swimming pool on a dark and stormy night and a band of unruly teens crawled over fences to skinny-dip in a stranger’s pool. Intrigue. Murder.

Danny sat back and smiled at imaginations that had run rampant.

By the time he had reined them back in, the crime was outlined in a dozen different ways, and Danny had made his point.

Real life can lead to fascinating fiction.

Chapter 2

I
t was an hour later, longer than the normal meeting time, when Danny finally wound up the discussion to a round of robust applause.

After Izzy reminded the group of the next book club meeting, people began to disperse, some heading back to the aisle with the MYSTERY sign posted on the end, and others making their way downstairs. Animated talk about the extravagant plot they’d fabricated filled the air.

“Interesting discussion, Danny,” Izzy said, collapsing chairs as the group thinned out. “Thanks.”

“It was fun. Maybe I should have dug up an older case, but it sure stimulated talk. I could build ten new plots from all those ideas.”

Cass handed Danny a chocolate chip cookie. “Why’d you pick that case?”

Danny shrugged. “No real reason. It’s interesting, that’s all, and I remembered it without having to do much research. I was in grad school when that happened, but I remember Mom and Dad talking about it when I came home that summer.”

“It was the talk of the town for a while,” Cass said. “I was away at college, but I lifeguarded at the yacht club over the summer. The high school kids were all into it. The girl was quiet, like they said, and not many people seemed to know her—but that didn’t stop the gossip. But then summer settled in. People moved on.”

“I brought it up in a J-school class once. Investigative reporting, I think it was. Those kinds of cases grab the attention of would-be reporters. They always think they could have solved it, given a chance.”

Esther Gibson was sitting in the back row, packing up her knitting bag, watching them. She caught the end of the conversation and grabbed her cane, pulling herself up off the chair. She picked up her bag and walked over, imposing herself firmly into the group. Her eyes locked onto Danny’s, her gaze steady and compelling. “Well, the investigative reporters didn’t solve the case, now, did they?” she said. “So it’s over. Finished.” Her white brows were pulled together, and her usual smile had disappeared.

Esther continued to look at Danny, letting her words settle in. Then without another word she turned and headed slowly to the stairs, one hand reaching out for the railing to balance herself. She hesitated there, as if she couldn’t remember what to do next. Then she looked back and focused again on the group. Her look was stern.

“Sometimes it’s best to let the dead stay buried, let the living live in peace,” she said. Her tone was measured and louder than usual.

A few lingering knitters, getting ready to leave, stopped chatting. People standing in the narrow aisles, leafing through books, paused. They all looked in Esther’s direction, surprised by the weight of her words.

“Forget about cold cases,” she said finally. “Leave it alone, for goodness’ sake.”

Before anyone could reply, Esther turned again and, with an agility that defied her bad back, made her way down the bookstore steps.

Archie Brandley’s eyebrows lifted as he looked after the disappearing police dispatcher. “Esther likes to have the last say, now, doesn’t she? Seems we hit a sore spot.”

A flash of memory pulled Birdie’s brows together. “Of course—that’s why she’s upset,” she murmured. Then she looked at the others and said simply, “Esther was a close friend of one of the families questioned in the case. She’s just protecting her flock. It’s what Esther does.”

Birdie’s words, said with comforting calmness, seemed to set people in motion once again. Sandals flopped down the wooden steps, and from below, the tinkling of the bell above the bookstore door rang cheerfully as people left.

Archie dismissed Izzy from folding the chairs—leave it to the cleaning crew, he said—and reminded them that his wife, Harriet, was downstairs at the cash register, only too happy to help anyone with a book purchase.

Nell held up several books she had pulled from the shelves—a book on sailing for Ben, another garden book. Archie nodded his approval.

Gradually the remaining book club members disappeared down the stairs and into the night. Archie straightened a stack of magazines on a table at the top of the stairs, scanned the loft area a final time, and then followed Nell and Birdie down the stairs.

Quiet filled the loft as Archie’s heavy footsteps faded away.

It was then, when the only sound in the room was the steady ticktock of the old grandfather clock near the stairs, that the attractive middle-aged woman emerged from the shadows. She was oblivious of the book she held in her hand, unaware of the cheery good-byes coming from the floor beneath. For a moment she stood at the window, staring down at the night shadows falling across Harbor Road. But she wasn’t seeing anything, not the gaslights or the laughing couples strolling along in the cool evening air. For a minute, all she saw was darkness.

She pressed one hand against her chest, calming a heart squeezed tightly in a body that suddenly seemed too small to hold it.

She hadn’t intended to listen to the group’s discussion. She’d come only to find a new book or two, something to pass the pleasant summer evenings in the makeshift apartment she was occupying. She’d been surprised when people began climbing the stairs with knitting bags in tow, and then had remembered the sign below. A KNITTING BOOK CLUB, she remembered reading.

Earlier, she had smiled at one or two people, strangers to her, before she’d wandered down the narrow book aisle, reading the spines studiously, straightening a book here and there, pulling two or three from the shelves and tucking them under her arm.

In the background, she’d heard the shuffling of chairs, people greeting one another, the clink of glasses and buzz of light conversation.

She’d leave shortly, before they began their meeting.

BOOK: The Wedding Shawl
3.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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