The Wedding Shawl (9 page)

Harold Sampson, Birdie’s groundsman—or estate manager, as he liked to be called—had driven her over early. She was rummaging around in the back pantry now, looking for cracker bread to go with the spicy crab dip she’d picked up at the fish market.

The scene was familiar and calming in its routine. Normal. Ordinary.

But there was an undertone tonight.

Nell never knew how many friends and neighbors would show up on Friday nights, but she knew one thing from experience—bad news and good news, in equal measure, were sure to bring a sizable group together. They’d nurse Ben’s martinis and find comfort in friendship and the familiar sizzle of fish being seared on the grill. They’d sit, sometimes in silence, listening to the music and watching the day disappear beneath the night sky.

Tonight they’d all come, saddened by the death of a woman who had died too early, though most of Ben and Nell’s friends didn’t know her well—some not at all. But the web that encircled small towns held a collective grief and passed it along from one person to the next.

Nell had walked down to the guest cottage earlier to see if Claire wanted to join them. When no one answered the door, she was almost relieved. She didn’t want Claire to sit in the cottage alone while the sounds and smells of a party rolled down the lawn and through her open windows. But it seemed less than a perfect night to bring someone new into the mix.

She surmised Claire was working at the nursery, since Fred kept it open late on Fridays. If that was the case, it eased a bit of Nell’s guilt, too, since she had been using Claire so much these past days. She certainly had to be the best employee Fred had on staff, and he was being gracious about the time she spent at Nell’s.

“Will this platter do?” Birdie asked, coming in from the pantry. She set the crackers and large platter on the island.

Nell nodded, then looked at her friend for a minute. She took off her glasses and pushed them to the top of her head. “Your hair looks fine, Birdie,” she said.

Birdie smiled, her hand absently patting her smooth, once-again silvery cap of hair.

Lynn had quickly redeemed herself that morning. M.J. had insisted on getting the neutralizing solution upstairs to her so she could apply it to Birdie’s hair as soon as possible. Time was of the essence, she’d said. The toner did its work, and M.J. had calmed Lynn down with a reminder that the bottles were distinguishable only by numbers, the mistake was one anyone could have made, and she would definitely get the lights downstairs fixed.

Nell stayed out in the alley to meet the ambulance. It appeared in minutes, its wheels spraying gravel in all directions as it screeched to a stop beside the salon’s back door. Nell directed them to where Tiffany lay. A police car arrived minutes later and parked behind the ambulance. Nell and M.J. were asked to wait upstairs and to keep the news from the customers in the salon, something M.J. was only too happy to do.

“It was just hours ago,” Birdie said now, breaking the thin cracker bread into pieces. “Time gets so distorted when things unnatural are thrown into a day. That poor young girl.”

The paramedics had not even applied CPR. Tiffany had been dead for a while, Nell heard one of them say. And that fit with what M.J. said. No one had seen her at all that morning, even though she was scheduled to work.

From all appearances, she had climbed a ladder in the dimly lit room and toppled off, her head hitting the concrete floor. A hard, awful fall for anyone.

Izzy walked into the kitchen and pulled herself up on an island stool. Cass and Willow trailed close behind her.

“How unreal is this?” Izzy said. Her brown eyes filled her face. She brushed a sun-streaked strand of hair from her cheek. “We were with her yesterday. Just yesterday. And now she’s dead.”

Tears welled up in Izzy’s eyes.

Nell knew what she was thinking. Even though they didn’t know Tiffany, not really, somehow her connection to Sam and Izzy’s wedding made her death more personal, more intimate, than it would have been a few weeks ago.

Pete carried a tray of martinis into the kitchen and set them on the counter. “Ben says you should have the first batch.”

“Ben’s absolutely right.” Willow picked up an icy glass and handed it to Nell. “Did the police tell you anything?” The young fiber artist washed her hands and helped herself to a colander of cleaned, crisped lettuce and began tearing it into small pieces.

Nell shook her head. “It was Tommy Porter and his partner. He sent us inside, and they stayed with the paramedics. We were glad to disappear. M.J. said her customers weren’t even aware of the commotion.”

“I don’t believe they were. They were more interested in my pink hair. I provided comic relief. Laura Danvers, shame on her, even took a photo of it with her cell phone.” Birdie added the pot of clam sauce to the cracker bread and handed the platter to Pete as he walked by. “For the outsiders,” she explained.

“M.J. liked Tiffany. This will be hard on her. She was kind of a surrogate mother to her.” Nell pulled a tray of lobster tails from the refrigerator while she talked.

“I think I saw her mother once—the real one. She lives around here, doesn’t she?” Jane Brewster asked as she began slicing an avocado for Willow’s salad. “She came into the salon one day when I was there, but it was a couple of years ago.”

“They used to live in a trailer on the edge of town,” Birdie said. “I heard the father drank himself to death a few years ago, or so the rumor went, and I think Mrs. Ciccolo had a difficult time of it all, probably her whole life, then started having trouble remembering things. She’s in that home over in Rockport now with severe dementia.”

Pete listened silently to the conversation around him as he circled the kitchen, eyeing the lobster tails, then moving around the island to the stove and the pan of simmering butter sauce. Floppy hair the color of beach sand fell over his forehead as he leaned into the simmering scents of butter and lemon, orange zest and ginger, rising into the air. He straightened up and grinned. “I love you, Nell.”

Everyone laughed. Like his sister, Pete was a pushover for food. He began topping off glasses, draining the pitcher of martinis. “Ben hates this, you know. Each drink should be shaken separately, have its own icy layer floating on top.”

“Which means he never gets to enjoy them with us. Ignore him, Pete. Sometimes he needs to give a little, not demand perfect martinis.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “That’s what I told him. Though the perfect ones are pretty good.”

“Speaking of telling things, Pete, does Andy know about Tiffany Ciccolo?” Izzy asked.

Pete shrugged. “I dunno, Iz. I called his cell when I heard about it, but he didn’t pick up. It seemed like a lame thing to leave on voice mail, so I just hung up. He’ll know it was me. He’s had the weight of the world on his shoulders the past few days; at least that’s how it looked to me. He never showed up for our jam session last night, and that’s not like him.” He took a sip of Willow’s martini, then handed it back. “Merry and I couldn’t figure out if Tiffany was good for Andy or bad. For a while there in the spring, they were tight. She was always around, and Andy seemed to fall into it, going off with her after jam sessions or shows. But I don’t know—there was something weird. It was almost like they had gone through something that continued to hold them together. You know, like people who survive a catastrophe, like a car crash or something.”

Nell listened at the sink as she snipped through the membrane on the undersides of the tails. Pete’s interpretation of their relationship bond was an interesting one—and she understood, at least in a general way, what he meant. He’d also said that they were close—at least for a while. But they had seemed anything but close on Hank and Merry’s deck a few nights ago.

“Grill’s ready,” Ben called in from the deck. “Bring on the Hallorans’ gorgeous crustaceans.”

Cass lifted her martini glass in agreement. “As always, we saved the best of our catch for the Endicott grill.” Earlier in the day she and Pete had dropped off a huge lumpy sack of scrambling lobsters. “A terrific morning on the water,” Cass told Ben. “Hardly a throwaway in the bunch. My traps are magical this month. Good karma. I think it’s because it’s Izzy and Sam’s wedding month.”

Ben had cut off the tails for tonight’s dinner. Nell would use the rest of the meat for a new casserole she wanted to try.

A giant maple tree growing beside the deck hung over the long teak table like a canopy. Birdie and Jane had already brought out place mats and flatware, pitchers of water, and a ceramic pot of pansies from Jane’s garden. The others followed, bustling back and forth in a familiar rhythm, and in a few minutes they’d filled the table with baskets of French bread, a platter of sweet potato fries, and Willow’s pear salad, complete with homemade croutons and sugared pecans. A heaping bowl of quinoa with bright green slivers of basil, mint, and parsley graced the center of the table.

The rest was up to Ben, who stood by the grill, brushing each lobster tail with the orange-flavored butter sauce. The group fell silent as they relaxed into the evening and the sounds of Dave Brubeck’s quartet filling the night air. They passed around a platter of cheese and sipped their drinks, watching Ben, his body silhouetted against the darkening sky. Dribbles of butter sauce fell on the hot coals as he basted, and a magnificent sizzle filled the air.

In the distance, waves crashed against the shore and peace fell over the group. Ben’s martinis had done their magic; the tension eased away like a receding tide.

The toast before dinner was the same as it always was—“To family, to friends. To peace …”—followed by a resounding “Hear, hear” as raised glasses clinked together.

Izzy sat next to Sam, her thigh pressed tight against his. He picked her hand up from the table and ran a blunt photographer’s finger over the floating sapphire in her engagement ring.

She smiled, and the flush in her cheeks deepened.

“Hey, you two,” Cass said, waving across the table. “None of that. Lobsters are getting cold.”

“Oh? You don’t like that lovey-dovey stuff?” Danny teased, and proved her wrong with a sound, silencing kiss.

In the laughter that followed, the ringing phone almost went unheard. Willow, sitting closest to the French doors, started to stand. “Nell, it’s your landline. Do you want me to get it?”

“It’s probably Mom, Aunt Nell,” Izzy said. “Maybe you can call her back later?”

Nell looked down the table toward Ben.

He met her look and shrugged—he wasn’t expecting any calls, his shoulders said. Nell felt uncomfortable, a feeling she immediately dismissed as being totally irrational. Most of the Sea Harbor people close to her were sitting around this table. And Nell knew it wasn’t her sister Caroline. She’d talked to her a few hours before. It was probably a sales call or donation request for the firemen’s ball—but she’d answer it anyway, then dismiss it wholly. Nell knew she’d never adopt the ease with which Izzy and Cass ignored cell phone calls.

“I’ll get it, dear,” she said to Willow, and walked inside.

Ben followed her, having noticed that the wine was disappearing as fast as the lobster and the water glasses needed to be topped off. Sam took over at the grill, filling another platter with stray chunks of lobster meat for the hearty eaters among them.

As Birdie began passing the quinoa around for second helpings, Ham Brewster took center stage with a lively rendition of the sailing class they’d taught that afternoon. His beard moved with the vigor of his story as he described the new batch of kids who had signed on for a summer of adventure. They were all from low-income families, and Ben, Sam, and Ham had patched together a program with the community center that kept the youths busy every season of the year—sailing and baseball in good weather, and for cold-weather months, they’d gotten Hank Jackson to help coach a basketball league.

Today it was Hank who stole the show, Ham explained. They’d recruited Hank—in spite of his protests—to help with the class because a couple of the college helpers couldn’t make it. They quickly found out why Hank had not come on board willingly. Just out of the yacht-club harbor, the bar owner fell overboard while they were demonstrating a jibe to the neophyte student crew. He’d flown off the side to the enthusiastic cheering of the kids, who’d thought it was a great act.

“Poor Hank,” Ham told his audience. “He hadn’t told any of us his long-held secret—he doesn’t know how to swim.

“He had tried his best to hide his fear, his life jacket buoying him up, but Sam realized what was going on—” Here Ham acknowledged Sam with a bow. “He told the kids to watch carefully, and jumped in after our floundering crew member as if it had all been planned.”

And only the two men left to control the sail knew Hank hadn’t done it intentionally to teach them to be wary. They all make mistakes, Sam and Hank told the boys as they climbed back up on deck. Then they warned them sternly, “But be always watchful of a sail changing directions.”

Sam chuckled. “Afterward we were merciless with Hank. Teased him bloody. And he admitted after his second beer that he was much more comfortable on a basketball court than a boat. He’d not lived near water until he was out of college—and then was embarrassed to learn to swim.”

A good sport, they all agreed. “And a waterlogged one,” Ham added.

They’d gone on then, with sailing sagas, until Birdie’s wineglass went dry and she realized Ben was still gone. She frowned, about to call for him when the door to the deck opened.

Nell stepped out with Ben beside her, his arm looped around her shoulders. She had slipped a sweater over her linen top, and a large slouchy bag hung over one shoulder.

A step or two behind them, standing in the shadows of the living area, was Tommy Porter in full police uniform.

The group grew silent and stared at the odd threesome.

“Have you two been arrested?” Ham joked to break the silence. “I knew it was just a matter of time.”

Tommy’s sober look stilled the laughter. “No. No way,” he said. He spoke in staccato, each word punctuating the air with conviction.

Nell calmed him with a smile. “It’s all right, Tommy. Everyone understands.”