Angora Alibi

by Sally Goldenbaum

  And just as dear Red once saved a child from drowning off Paley’s Cove, we, the citizens of Sea Harbor, must save our town from drowning because of the Paley’s Cove murders. And we will. We will come together, we will examine everything we have seen and heard in the last two weeks. No matter how small and meaningless it may seem, this is how we will find the perpetrator of this crime and bring peace back to our amazing town.

  “Dear Mary,” Birdie said. “Izzy and Sam will be embarrassed, but perhaps her words will unearth something. Who knows?”

  “She has more to say than the poor reporter who tried to write about the murder,” Cass said. She sat across from Birdie and Nell on Coffee’s patio, steaming mugs of dark roast and the morning paper on the table between them. Nell told them about the vial Izzy found—and the results that it definitely held morphine at one time. Whose . . . and how it got in Horace’s front yard . . . and whether it was the drug that ended up in the glass of whiskey were still unknowns.

  The article included a short paragraph that covered Horace Stevenson’s long life: his marriage to his true love, Ruth Adams Stevenson, her death a few years ago. His occupation as assistant manager of McClucken’s Hardware Store. His hobbies—bird-watching and walking along Paley’s Cove with his dog, Red, tracking patterns in the sand.

  And the rest was a reporter’s attempt, without any factual information, to connect the murder of an old man, slowing down in life, to that of a young man, off and running with the world at his fingertips.

  “The only connection the reporter could make to the two was that Horace used to scuba dive and Justin died while diving,” Cass said.

  “And the location,” Birdie said.

  “Jerry must have been very closemouthed to the press,” Nell said. “The article said it was definitely a murder, but not how or where.”

  “I suppose that’s best for now, though it will leak out. Those things do,” Birdie said. She took a drink of her coffee, then held her head back to catch the breeze, her eyes half closed. Spikes of white hair fluttered around her small face. “I liked the old man,” she said. “And Ruth, too. His death in itself was sad, but that is the cycle of life, and Horace had had a happy life. But now—turning that death into a murder tarnishes all of it. It’s such an awful thing. It’s poisonous. It’s . . .”

  “Scary,” Willow Adams said. She pulled out a chair and sat down, slipping a huge backpack from her narrow shoulders. “Do you think there’s a connection, like that reporter is trying to say?” Her thick eyebrows lifted into black bangs as she looked at Nell. “What does Ben say?”

  “Oh, sweetie, not much. It’s all up in the air right now, I think.” Nell patted Willow’s hand in a motherly way. Ever since the young artist, lost and waiflike, had shown up in Izzy’s yarn shop several years ago, the knitters had taken her into their hearts and their lives. And there she stayed, moving into the studio her father had bequeathed to her and becoming a successful artist in her own right. No one could remember now, nor wanted to remember, a time when Willow hadn’t been a part of their lives.

  “Horace hardly ever left Paley’s Cove. He was either sitting on his porch watching birds or walking the beach with Red. He was a contented guy, or so it seemed to me, anyway,” Cass said. “It’s hard to imagine him doing anything that would get him murdered.”

  “But something did,” Birdie said. She looked beyond Willow to the table beneath the maple tree, where Mary Pisano sat, her computer on her knees.

  Mary looked up, smiled, and took that as an invitation. She closed her laptop and walked over, her sneakers silent on the brick patio. “I don’t know anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. Esther Gibson said she took chowder and bread out to Horace now and then and they’d talk while he ate. He didn’t always recognize her face, but he knew her voice immediately—that and that Emeraude cologne she always wears were giveaways, he told her. Recently she said he was complaining about things going on in the cove.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I don’t really know, but Esther said she didn’t take him too seriously. She knew that the college kids and friends would gather there at night sometimes, her Tyler included. She assumed it was that. Probably innocent fun but too much noise for his sensitive ears. Horace hated loud noises. But it was probably nothing. The thing is, his murder is something, something really bad. And coming so close to Justin’s, it has the whole town on fear alert. What are we going to do about it?”

  “Maybe you’ve done something already, dear,” Birdie said. “That was a lovely column you wrote.”

  Mary pushed away the compliment. “It was a great thing for Izzy and Sam to do, what with the baby coming and all.”

  “And speaking of Izzy, the baby, the dog . . . I promised her I’d help her get some things she needs for Red. Like food, a bed.” Nell checked her watch.

  Mary laughed. “Maybe we should have a shower for him.”

  “No, no, no,” Birdie said, pushing back her chair. “Two showers would definitely send Izzy over the edge.”

  Mary hugged them off, saying she had to get back to work. Not only did she have a bed-and-breakfast to run, but ever since her column went online, she was deluged with comments that needed replies. And Mary would reply to every single one.

  They made their way through the patio crowd, buzzing with today’s news, and studiously avoided eye contact with neighbors and friends, knowing they’d draw conversations they would rather avoid. No one knew much, and somehow talk about suppositions and hypotheses didn’t appeal to any of them.

  Willow grabbed her bike from the stand outside the patio gate and hopped on. “The shower is next weekend. You all ready?” She wriggled her backpack into place and was off, flying down the road toward Canary Cove.

  Nell waved at Gus McClucken, leaning against his post outside the hardware store.

  He waved back with a shake of his head. He’d heard the news, they could see.

  “He looks older,” Cass said quietly. “I think it has gotten to him.”

  But Gus mustered a smile as they came closer and called out, “I just talked to Izzy—great dog. Good decision.”

  They laughed and crossed the street to Izzy’s shop, hoping he was right.

  Mae met them at the door. “Can you believe it? Now we have two mascots. Jillian and Rose are beside themselves.”

  She pointed to the steps leading to the back room. “The menagerie is that way.”

  “I don’t know why I feel we should whisper,” Birdie said. “This isn’t a baby we’re coming to see.”

  Izzy appeared in the archway and waved them down. “Wait till you see this. Hurry.”

  In front of the fireplace, on a stack of blankets Izzy had pulled from the closet, was Red, looking like an advertisement for L.L.Bean. And curled up as tightly as a calico cat could curl was Purl, her small body pressed against the dog’s chest.

  “Shhh,” Jillian Anderson said. “They’re sleeping.”

  Her twin sister, Rose, was sitting alongside the curled-up animals, snapping pictures with her iPhone. “Can you like believe it?” she whispered between snaps.

  “Barely,” Nell laughed. “Picture-perfect, that’s for sure.”

  Izzy hugged Nell. “Isn’t Red beautiful? And Purl loves him, so we know he’ll fit in. I just called Janie and she’s taking a break to come see the two of them.”

  She looked at Nell. “And then we’re off? Mae says she can spare me. With Jill and Rose here, I’m just a piece of furniture.”

  The teenage twins laughed.

  “We’re just better at helping Gabby with her class than you are,” Rose said. “We know the lingo, Iz.”

  It was true, Izzy had told them. There were plenty of teens who signed up for Gabby’s new hat class, and having the high school twins around made Mae and Izzy both feel better. They sometimes forgot Gabby was only ten.

  “Who’s available to help me outfit my dog?” Izzy asked.

  “It’s my day off,” Cass sa
id. “What better way to spend it? But only if I get some Red time at the end of it.”

  They walked to the front of the store, nodding at a steady stream of customers filling wicker baskets with skeins of yarn and new bamboo needles.

  “Congratulations, Izzy,” Tamara Danvers called out from behind a display of supersoft merino. “Red is a wonderful dog.”

  “You know him?”

  Tamara stepped from behind the display. She wore a strapless sundress, bright blue, that showed off her golden tan. “The Stevenson house is just down the hill from us. Horace and Red walked that beach all the time.”

  “Sure, I forgot you lived close,” Izzy said.

  Izzy waved good-bye to Mae and led the way to the alley. “We can take my car. Sam brought it over this morning. We finally got it back from Pickard’s Auto. Sam said I should probably drive it some.”

  “What was wrong?” Cass asked.

  Izzy explained about the broken trunk lock. “It seems ages ago, not just days. But anyway, they fixed it. But not before agreeing with Sam that I must have taken some serious tools to it when I was trying to open it.”

  “Did you? You’re not very mechanical, Iz,” Cass said, walking over to the car.

  “Thanks, Cass. But no, I didn’t. Jeez. But it was definitely messed up. I couldn’t say anything to Sam because he would have called the national guard in, but I think maybe he was right. It looked like someone tampered with it. But why would anyone want to get in my trunk? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Hey, guys, what’s up?” Janie walked across the street, her plastic name tag pinned to a crisp white blouse. Her hair was pulled back today, and as much of it as possible captured in a silver clasp. “I came to meet Red and see how Purl’s doing—and maybe to take a quick twenty-minute nap before I go back to work.”

  “Not sleeping, Janie?” Nell asked.

  “Not so much. Just when it seems it might be getting better, something else happens.”

  “You mean Horace?” Birdie said.

  Of course she did. There’d be more questions, more distress.

  Nell touched her arm. “It will get better, I promise.”

  “Well, one thing that will make you smile is inside the shop,” Izzy said, pulling out her keys. “We’re off to get Red some supplies.”

  Cass looked back at the trunk. “Iz, you better try the trunk before we leave, just to be sure. I don’t want to be carrying a dog bed on my lap. Those scratches look serious.”

  “Skeptic,” Izzy murmured, and walked to the trunk, opening it on the first try.

  Inside, exactly where she had tossed it days ago, was an infant car seat, toppled over on its side.

  Izzy gasped.

  “What is it?” Nell moved to her side and looked inside the trunk.

  “Are you all right, Izzy?” Janie asked.

  Izzy took a deep breath. “So much has happened the last few days that I had almost forgotten about this. This infant seat . . . I kept seeing it when I was running over on Paley’s Cove beach. It wouldn’t go away, it was there day after day and I couldn’t get it off my mind. I started having nightmares about it. There was never a baby, a mother. Just this car seat. Finally one night—it was raining, I remember—I couldn’t stand looking at it anymore, so I drove over and tossed it in the trunk. And then, a couple of days later, I couldn’t open it. And I nearly forgot about the car seat—”

  By now they were all standing at the rear of Izzy’s car. Cass pulled the carrier out, along with a handful of sand. A yellow knit blanket snagged on the lock and hung there, wrinkled and dirty.

  “It’s filthy,” Cass said.

  “It smells,” Birdie added.

  “It’s mine,” Janie said, her voice barely a whisper.

  Chapter 21

  Janie looked unsteady, and Izzy suggested they take her upstairs, rather than into the crowded shop.

  Nell got a glass of ice water, Birdie a washcloth, and rather than leave it in the alleyway, Izzy and Cass brought the car seat and blanket into Janie’s apartment.

  “I’m fine, honest,” Janie said. She stared at the infant carrier, now sitting near the coffee table. Finally she reached over and pulled it to her, then tipped it toward her so she could see the top. “See this?”

  They looked over at an orange oval-shaped sticker, stuck to the top. Someone had written $5 on it with a Sharpie.

  “That’s a garage sale sticker. I’ve bought lots of car seats—but for some reason, I remember this one. It was almost new and I talked the lady down to three dollars. Maybe that’s why I remember it. . . .”

  She fingered the yellow blanket that had been tucked inside, a soft knit that was now lumpy and matted from rain and sand. “Remember this yarn, Izzy? It was so beautiful.”

  Izzy nodded. “We got it in last winter, right?”

  “Yes. You received a whole shipment and Dr. Lily bought me some because I was so crazy about it and she didn’t want me spending all my money on things I gave to the free clinic. The twins had made a huge window display to show the yarn off. It came in every color of the rainbow, and that’s how they featured it—a giant rainbow that spanned the shop window—and all of it was created from skeins of this gorgeous angora yarn. They had a yellow brick road beneath it.”

  Izzy smiled, remembering it. The display had brought in more customers than expected and they had sold out of the yarn almost completely, a bonus month for the small shop.

  “It’s not so gorgeous now, I’m afraid,” Nell said, fingering the edges of the sad-looking blanket. It was torn in several places, with frayed edges disguising the once-lovely angora yarn. “I remember the yarn because it came in just as I was getting used to the idea that Izzy truly was pregnant. I bought it in nearly every color to celebrate.”

  “I made three baby blankets out it,” Janie said. “But only one yellow one. I thought I’d lost it, or that maybe I was just forgetful and had taken it to the Community Center.”

  The question was sitting there in the middle of the room, unasked. The silence became louder and louder—and finally Birdie looked at Janie. “How did your blanket and your garage sale car seat end up on the beach at Paley’s Cove?”

  Janie sat still, her back slightly bent and her eyes on the blanket as if it would tell them everything they needed to know. When she looked up, her eyes held sincere bewilderment. “I don’t know.”

  “But . . . ,” Nell said.

  They all knew the single word was really a question.

  Janie answered, “But Justin always carted around my garage sale items for me. And stored them in a room at the clinic. He knew where everything was, so he would be the likely person to have taken it or given it to someone. And yet that makes absolutely no sense.”

  It didn’t make sense, not to any of them.

  “Assuming he took it, there’s no easy explanation for how it ended up at Paley’s Cove,” Birdie said. Her voice was gentle and firm at once, in that way Birdie had of laying things out for consideration without being threatening. “Justin was a conundrum to all of us. And why he’d leave an infant seat on a beach is a mystery we may never solve. . . .”

  Although the sentence ended, the thought did not, just as Birdie intended.

  Janie perked up immediately. Her back straightened and her eyes and mind focused on Birdie’s words. “No, I think we have to solve it, Birdie. If only to learn more about Justin—who he was and what he was about and why he did the things he did. And maybe that will help us figure out who killed him.”

  Nell watched Birdie, her wise friend, who knew the decision to look into the car seat further should be Janie’s decision—and not anyone else’s. It was Janie who should decide to peel off more layers of the young man she had cared for and protected.

  Janie ran her fingers over the padding inside the car seat. “I always wash these as soon as I bring them home. They can be absolutely filthy. I remember washing this one because it was really pretty clean and didn’t take long. It looked like it ha
dn’t been used much, maybe a grandparent’s extra car seat or something—and it wasn’t out of date, so we could still use it for moms at the free clinic. Then Justin helped me stash it in the clinic room where Lily lets me keep things. And then . . . then it left my mind.” She lifted the carrier to the coffee table while Izzy shook out the blanket.

  “It smells bad,” Izzy said.

  “It does,” Janie said, wrinkling her nose. She unhooked the buckles that held the cushion to the seat and pulled it out. Beneath the cushion, along with twigs and dried leaves and mud, was a wad of bills—curled up and held together by a rubber band.

  Janie took off the band and smoothed out a large stash of ten- and twenty-dollar bills.

  Cass ran her finger along a row of crumbled leaves that had collected in the curve of the seat. She lifted up her finger and sniffed the orange residue that stuck to her skin.

  She looked up. “You know what this is?” But Izzy wasn’t really asking a question. She stared again at the residue on her finger and said carefully, “It’s pot.”

  When no one responded, she repeated it. “It’s marijuana. Grass. Cannabis. Whatever you want to call it. It looks to me like Justin Dorsey might have been delivering pot on Paley’s Cove—and Janie’s innocent car seat was an accomplice.”

  They all stared at the car seat, then the crumbled debris that lay in the bottom. It was crazy, ludicrous. But the odor was distinctive and definitely coming from the carrier.

  Janie shook her head, a deep frown settling into her forehead. “No matter what’s in that car seat, I know for a fact that Justin didn’t do drugs,” she said. “He got sick once when he was in foster care—seriously sick. It turned out to be an allergy to marijuana and some other plants that affected him internally. They made him bleed. He went to Doc Hamilton for a checkup when he came to town, and he confirmed it. Justin never touched it again. I’ve researched it, and it’s all true.”