The Wedding Shawl (34 page)

Ninety minutes later Harold dropped Birdie off in the big Lincoln. Although he offered to chauffeur them around, they preferred the Endicotts’ CRV. “Easier to park,” Birdie told Harold, and waved him off.

Nell made sure there was room in the back for the vases, and they set off toward Sea Harbor Point and the Danvers’ home.

Laura met them at the door and had iced tea ready, insisting they sit for a minute before loading the vases.

“This is a good time to come—the kids are with a babysitter and I’m actually free for a while.” She threw her arms open wide. “A glorious feeling.”

They laughed and followed Laura into the family room and a grouping of comfortable chairs.

“So tell me everything,” she said. “How are the wedding plans going?”

“Things are fine,” Nell said.

“But there’s this awful murder investigation going on at the same time,” Laura said. “It’s horrible. Do you think it’s connected to Harmony Farrow’s death? It’s brought back such awful memories of those times.”

“That’s right,” Nell said. “You were in her class.”

Laura nodded. “We had a big class, but I remember her, at least a little bit. Tiffany, too. They were inseparable. We all thought it an odd pair—trio, really, since Andy was usually around.”

“Anyone else?”

Laura frowned as she pushed her memory. “No, it was pretty much the three of them. The pretty, slender Harmony, cute Andy, and Tiffany. She was as tall as Andy back then, kind of gawky, but sweet.”

“And Andy and Harmony were a couple?” Birdie said.

“Seemed so. They were always together. Even in pictures.” She got up and walked over to a cabinet beneath the bookcases. She knelt down and rummaged around in the cabinet. “We had a reunion a few years ago, and I dug up a bunch of photos for it.”

The box she pulled out and carried over to the coffee table was bulging. “Here it is, my youth in a cardboard box.” She laughed and lifted off the top.

“Your yearbook?” Birdie said, pointing to a cushioned blue book on top of a stack of loose pictures.

“This takes real humility.” She took the book out, flipping through the pages. She found the National Honor Society page and handed the book over to Nell and Birdie. “There they are.”

Nell scanned the shot. In the back row was Harmony Farrow, beautiful, with full, wavy blond hair falling to her shoulders. And next to her, a younger but unmistakable version of the Fractured Fish drummer, Andy Risso. Both teenagers were smiling, slightly self-conscious. Laura was in the photo, too, in the front row, one of the officers.

Nell turned to the senior section. On the first page were large photos of the class officers, with Laura in the middle.

“President Laura.” Nell smiled.

“My fleeting claim to fame,” she said.

“Do you remember if there are any other photos of Harmony and Andy? Or maybe of Harmony with another boy?”

“Another boy in our class?”

“Well, we think there might have been another boyfriend. Andy said Harmony had pulled away that last semester.”

“These photos were all taken in the fall. Yearbook deadlines, you know. And I think I’d remember if there’d been a photo of her with someone else. I … I edited this thing, so I looked at these pictures a zillion times. Also, you know how there are certain people you just assume will always be together? That was Andy and Harmony.”

She pulled the box onto her lap. “There are some other loose photos of Harmony—we were on a basketball team together.” She rummaged through the box. “My dad took most of these—he never missed a game. I wasn’t a very good player, but he refused to believe it.”

Nell and Birdie shared a look that said they sincerely doubted Laura Danvers could be mediocre at anything, even basketball.

“Here … here we are. The Red Hots in all our glory.” She laughed and passed the eight-by-ten photo over to the two women. “These would be more recent than the yearbook photos. We played basketball in the spring. It was a community-center team—the school didn’t have a girls’ team that year.”

Nell slipped on her glasses and scanned the photo, looking for familiar faces. The photo was a little out of focus, but they found Harmony easily. Her blond hair shiny and a bright, glorious smile on her face. Tiffany stood right behind her, and down the row was Laura, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Behind the girls was a line of gangly teenage boys in shorts and red T-shirts. “Our cheerleaders,” Laura said with a laugh. “We thought it was only fair so made our friends or boyfriends come be our squad. They were awful.”

Nell looked at the photo again. She scanned the boys’ faces. Andy Risso was definitely not one of them.

“I’ve got an idea,” Laura said suddenly. “I have enough of my father’s photos to wallpaper my hallway. Why don’t you give these few to Harmony’s mother?” She began flipping through the stack, pulling out photos and slipping them into a large envelope. “Dad gave some to my friends, but I bet the Farrows never got any. They weren’t usually at the games, I don’t think. Maybe these would mean something to Harmony’s mom.” She handed the envelope to Nell.

Nell thanked her. She suspected Laura was absolutely right. “I think Claire would love these.”

They talked about other things then, mostly wedding details that seemed to grow more ominous as the day drew closer. Laura offered to help arrange pickups from the Boston airport when the relatives started to arrive. Their large van would hold nine, she said. And Elliott was a very responsible driver. “It’s the banker in him, I guess,” she joked.

Finally Birdie pushed a platter of cookies to the opposite side of the table and announced that if she ate one more, she’d never fit into the new dress she’d bought for Izzy and Sam’s wedding.

Laura had put the vases in the driveway, wrapped in Bubble Wrap and packed in cardboard boxes. The three women loaded them into Nell’s car.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Laura said, waving them off. “The customers’ party for Izzy. Don’t forget!”

And they nearly had—another jolting reminder that there were too many things rattling around in their heads. Too many balls to juggle, too many distractions, when there should be only one.

“We have three days left,” Birdie said as they drove down the hill.

Nell glanced over at her friend. Birdie always worked better with deadlines. One week, she’d said. That was what they had to bring some closure to the unrest in their town.

They’d already shaved off a couple of days.

“Three days left to put this all to rest. The week is wearing thin.”

When Nell pulled into her driveway a while later, she noticed Ben’s car wasn’t back yet, but several boxes were stacked on the porch.

“More wedding presents,” she said to Birdie. “Ben’s relatives send them here without thinking.”

Birdie laughed. “Saves them from having to look up the address.”

She and Birdie had unloaded the vases at the bed-and-breakfast, run a few errands, and finally came back to Nell’s to spend some time on the wedding shawl. Nell would sew beads; Birdie would cheerlead. “These fingers just don’t like those tiny little needles anymore,” she said. “But first, food. I’m starving.”

Nell opened the windows and the deck door. She stretched out her arms and threw her head back, soaking in the fresh air. “Ben was wrong about the rain. This would be the perfect day for a wedding.”

“It will be a perfect day, no matter what. Even if it storms like crazy, it will be a perfect day. Izzy and Sam’s wedding could be nothing else.”

Birdie stepped out onto the deck while Nell pulled a container of peach and yogurt soup from the refrigerator. Chilled and spicy. Perfect for a day like today. She filled two mugs and went to the door to find Birdie.

Birdie stood at the long teak table, furrows lining her forehead. It was empty, except for the white sheet draped over its surface. She looked at Nell, a question hanging huge in the air.

In her hand she held the cloth bag in which they’d passed Izzy’s wedding shawl back and forth for months.

It was empty, too.

Nell’s expression was blank, and then, inch by inch, the blood drained completely from her face. She set the soup mugs on the table. The thick liquid sloshed over the sides. “The wedding shawl … It was right there… .”

In minutes she and Birdie had scoured the house, upstairs and down.

Nell racked her brain, trying to retrace her movements. She’d been sitting on the porch sewing on beads, she told Birdie slowly, as if each word would bring her closer to where she’d left the shawl. She remembered going inside a couple of times, once to answer the phone and another time to put some clothes in the dryer. She remembered hearing Harold pull into the drive.

But she couldn’t remember putting the shawl in the house.

“Could Ben have put it somewhere?”

Ben … had he come home? His car was gone. Nell dialed his number, talked just a minute, then hung up and shook her head.

“He hasn’t been back home. He’s still with Father Larry.”

“Who would have been here?”

“I remember locking this door,” she said, pointing to the deck door. “It’s been blowing open, so I latched it at the last minute so it wouldn’t bang in the breeze.”

“Did you see the shawl outside when you did that?”

“I didn’t see it. But I didn’t really look. I heard Harold in the drive, locked the door, grabbed my purse, and came outside.”

No one wanted to worry Izzy, so Birdie called Cass, but she wasn’t answering, which meant she was out on the
Lady Lobster
, working. She wouldn’t have been near the house.

“Let’s just sit out here for a minute. Think about this,” Birdie said calmly. “No one would come up on your deck and steal Izzy’s shawl. It simply wouldn’t happen.” They sat, their faces grim, sipping the soup and pretending it tasted fine. Pretending it tasted at all.

“There were boxes delivered,” Birdie said, then stopped and shook her head. They were grasping at straws. A delivery person wouldn’t go around back.

Nell stared out toward the ocean.

“Claire,” Birdie said. She stood. “Is she here? Maybe she heard something?”

Without waiting for an answer, the two women were down the steps and across the yard. They crossed the narrow porch in front of the guest cottage and looked in the open window.

Claire Russell stood in the center of the cottage. In front of her, draped over the couch, was the wedding shawl. She was looking down at it, tears streaming down her face.

The movement from outside drew her eyes to the window. Embarrassed, she brushed aside the tears with the back of her hand and rushed to the door.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, the expression on Nell’s face explaining the fear she’d caused. “Oh, Nell, I’ve frightened you so. I should have left a note.”

Nell and Birdie stepped inside. Nell’s hand pressed against the pounding of her heart.

“It’s fine now, dear,” Birdie said, relieving the tension in the air.

“Your door … it was locked. And it looked like rain earlier. So when I saw the shawl out there and both cars were gone, I brought it down here.”

Nell breathed deeply and finally managed a smile. “I should never have left it there. Thank you for caring for it. It would have been awful if it had rained.” She walked over and touched it, as if making sure it was really there.

“You were crying,” Birdie said gently. The word lifted into a question.

Claire tried to brush away their concern. “It’s so beautiful.” She walked over and pointed to its center. “I was remembering, is all, and remembering often brings tears—both happy and sad, but more often happy these days, thanks to you.”

“Did Harmony have a shawl?” Nell asked. And then she remembered the newspaper article that replayed the day Harmony died. It was how they found Harmony’s body. A lacy shawl, caught on a branch that jutted out from the quarry’s edge.

Claire nodded. “The design was similar to this, only smaller, and I knit it up in grays and deep blue, just like the sea. Harmony loved it.” Claire looked over at a side chair. Another shawl was folded on the seat, shimmering in the sunlight. “I kept it. It was torn when they found it at the quarry, but I repaired it and washed it. When I saw Izzy’s out there on the deck and the breeze was picking up, I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to it, too… .”

“May I look?” Nell asked. She picked it up and gently shook out the folds until the shawl hung loose from her fingertips. Like Izzy’s, it was knit in the round—a shell-and-heart motif forming the graceful rows of lace.

“Claire, it’s gorgeous. Harmony must have been beautiful in it.”

“She was. I finished it the week before graduation. She loved it so much she insisted on wearing it one night. She was just going over to Andy’s to study for finals, nothing special, but she absolutely insisted I let her wear it. So of course I did. It’s not easy to please a teenager, and I was so thrilled that she liked it.”

“I can just see her, in jeans and this gorgeous shawl. I bet she looked like she stepped off a magazine cover. The ultimate study outfit.”

Claire smiled, and then she said sheepishly, “I’m not sure that’s what they did, though. But I didn’t say anything. I just let it be. I was trying hard to pick my battles.”

“You don’t think they were studying, you mean?” Birdie asked.

Claire looked embarrassed. “Yes, that’s what I mean. Unless they were studying in the woods.”

Claire noticed Nell’s puzzled look and went on.

“I found the shawl the next morning in the kitchen, hanging over the back of a chair. It was covered with thistles. And there were wild berries smashed into some of the folds.”

“Did you ask her about it?”

“No. It was so close to graduation, and I saw the look on her face when she came down that morning and saw what she’d done. So I worked on it, repaired a small tear. And the berry stains were minor. The color of the shawl was nearly the same shade of blue. So I plucked off the thistles, one by one, removed the stains as best I could, and it was almost as good as new for graduation.”

As good as new.

Birdie and Nell carried the thought up to the house with them a short while later.