Patterns in the Sand

by Sally Goldenbaum

  Nell smiled, too. And it was just as likely that the money he won at his “swimming lessons” was lent to someone who needed it more than he did. Billy did things like that.

  “The feud between Billy and Aidan Peabody is such a mystery to all of us—do you know what it was all about?”

  Natalie waved her hand in the air as if the question was old and used up. “That was business stuff, nothing to worry about. That’s what Billy told me when I would ask him.”

  “He hadn’t always disliked Aidan, had he?”

  “Billy disliked people who got in his way. And he was worried the last few months about business. So he was more irritable, and Aiden sometimes made it harder to do business.”

  “I think there might be a connection in their deaths. To have two Canary Cove people, both important members of the art community, die within two weeks of each other—that’s just a coincidence I can’t buy.”

  Natalie sighed. “Look at that Willow person closely—I know she’s your friend. But we know she had a reason to kill Aidan. And she was hanging around Billy’s shop, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “Billy told me that himself. At first, before Aidan died, she was asking a lot of questions about the Fishtail Gallery. And then after Aidan died, I don’t know, but she’d come in while I was there, just looking around. She never bought anything.”

  Brendan, Nell thought. That was probably why she was in Billy’s shop.

  “Was Billy’s business okay?”

  “Billy was sometimes too generous. You know what I mean? He gave money to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. So I insisted that I take over all money. All bank accounts. I brought a little money to the marriage, too, you know, and I didn’t want Billy giving that away. Besides, we had expenses, the house, other things. And I am very good at keeping dollars straight. I have a gift for that.”

  “Will you sell the gallery?”

  “I’m not making those kinds of decisions today. But, Nell, you know and I know that I don’t know about art. Money, yes. Art, not so much.”

  “Well, whatever you decide, Ben and I will help, Natalie. You won’t have to do it alone.”

  Natalie reached out and patted Nell’s hand. “You’re a good lady. I know you will help. The Brewsters have promised, and even the Marks gals. And that sweet Brendan—Billy liked him so much.”

  Nell wasn’t surprised at the list of offers Natalie had already received. Of course they’d all help. Ben would do any paperwork, and they were all up to packing boxes and arranging shipments and cleaning. And there’d be more people, too, once the need was there.

  “I know you have people who want to see you, so I will be off.” Nell scribbled her phone number on a pad of paper and slid it across the island. “You’ll call me with the slightest need.”

  Without clear intent, Nell followed the curve in Harbor Road that Merry Jackson had made earlier that day, and drove around the bend of ocean into Canary Cove.

  Canary Road was busy with people, eating ice-cream cones or carrying bottles of water, their sunglasses reflecting the blue sky. Some carried bulky bags with names of a gallery printed along the outside.

  It was a typical summer day.

  And not typical at all.

  Nell pulled into the Artist’s Palate parking lot and saw Merry standing just outside the restaurant, chatting with a group of young friends. She waved until Merry saw her, then excused herself and walked over to Nell’s car.

  “Like my new wheels, Nell?”

  “It’s a beautiful car, Merry.”

  “I got it up to eighty along the old highway.”

  Nell cringed.

  “So what brings you over here in the middle of the afternoon? Would you like a beer?”

  “No, thanks. I was thinking of what you said the other night when we came by looking for Billy.”

  “Jeez, that’s awful about Billy. Who would want to kill him? Natalie didn’t like it here much, I don’t think. She never quite got in the groove of Canary Cove. But there’d be an easier way to leave than killing her husband.”

  “I would think.”

  “Ellen is upset. She was here earlier today. She was going to walk down to the dock. She had a flower to throw in the water. I didn’t want her to go alone, so I walked along with her. It was still pretty muddy down there from the rain. We couldn’t see any footsteps, though we couldn’t really get on the dock. They still had it ribboned off. I guess they’ll finally fix it now. Ellen and Billy were real buddies, even though Rebecca didn’t like him much.”

  “Billy was helpful to them.”

  Merry nodded agreement. “He would do things like that. He was a good guy when he liked someone.”

  “What I really wanted to ask you about was Sunday night when we came looking for Billy.”

  “In the middle of that downpour. I remember. I was anxious to get home to see if we had electricity.”

  “Hank mentioned that when you saw Billy that night, you didn’t think he was alone.”

  “Right, when he was leaving. Hank thought I was crazy but that’s because he doesn’t see nearly as well as I do. I swear he needs glasses. He’s forty, for Pete’s sake.”

  “He probably does,” Nell said. “It’s a good thing he has you.”

  Merry nodded. Her long, shiny hair fell over her shoulders, and she brushed it back with one hand. “Billy was alone when he came in. And upset, like he had to do something awful—you know what I mean? I tried to get him to talk to me because he looked so darn upset. But you know Billy. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s needy. So he clammed up totally. I could see his reflection in the bar window, looking out toward the parking lot every few minutes, like he was expecting someone. Drumming his fingers on the bar. Checking his watch. And he was cursing the rain something awful.

  “So I told him to relax, the rain would stop. No need to build an ark. He wouldn’t even laugh, just kept sitting there, the only one in the whole restaurant. Then the lights went out, and Hank came in and said Billy had to leave, that we were heading home. Without saying a word, he took the whole bottle of bourbon he’d been nursing, walked out the door and across the parking lot to where he’d left his Harley.”

  “But the parking lot was dark?”

  “Dark as sin. But there was still a string of lights on across the harbor, and a couple of cars going by. And I could see him moving toward his bike. I moved over to the window, and I swear there was someone standing there beside the bike, waiting for him.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I did. Hank doesn’t believe me. ‘Who’d be out in that crappy weather?’ he said. ‘Well, Billy was,’ I told him.”

  Nell smiled in spite of the serious topic. Merry was unpredictable, but there was something innately sweet about her.

  “Hank was a little worried about Billy leaving with that full bottle of liquor—though by then it was only half full, so when we got ready to leave, he took his humongous flashlight and looked around the lot, but he was gone. The bike was gone. The lot was empty. But I’d swear on my wedding ring that when he left, he wasn’t alone.”

  Chapter 26

  Nell wanted to stop in to see Rebecca and Ellen, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. The least she could do for the clambake was pick up dessert—and she was already late.

  The Marks women had already left the Sobel house the night before, before Chief Thompson came in with more disturbing news. But they would know about it. Nell was certain that by now the entire town was aware that Billy Sobel’s death might well be a murder—the second in as many weeks.

  She slowed down as she passed the handblown glass studio. Rebecca’s lamp-blown beads were hanging in the window from clear fish line, stunning pieces of glass in many shapes and colors floating in the air. They were magical.

  Rebecca was standing not far inside the window, talking to a customer. She looked lovely, as always, her silky hair floating around her shoulders, her back s
traight, her shoulders tan and lovely.

  But her appearance hid an ambiguity that Nell found discomforting. She never walked away from a conversation with Rebecca Marks feeling as if she knew her any better. And her comments about Aidan and their relationship in recent days had been equally perplexing.

  When Nell shared them with Ben, he had agreed. It reminded him, he said, of a girl he hung out with in high school. They had a standing agreement that if neither had a date for the annual prom, they’d go with each other. It was convenient, he had said.

  But there were no adult proms in Sea Harbor—and Aidan Peabody never had trouble getting a date. He didn’t need the convenience of Rebecca Marks.

  And Rebecca seemed to hold Billy Sobel at a distance, too, almost as if she were afraid of him. She was certainly an intriguing mix—showy self-confidence but mixed in with fear. Uncomfortable, at the least.

  A few weeks ago, such encounters and conversations would probably have passed by Nell without a second thought. But with her friend Aidan dead and buried, with Billy’s body in some coroner’s cold, impersonal room—and with a murderer still free—even odd conversations took on ominous overtones.

  Nell turned her attention back to the winding Canary Road, gradually picking up speed. She drove around the graceful bend of land bordering the ocean. It was one of her favorite spots in Sea Harbor, with the sea grass growing wild and free along the narrow road and the sounds of horns in the distance, rolling in like fog from incoming fishing vessels. She smiled, in spite of her troubled mood, and headed toward Harbor Road, Harry Garozzo’s deli, and comfort food. A key lime pie would be just the thing to top off an evening on the beach.

  Ben had gone hours earlier to Sam’s new beach house, driving out with Birdie and an SUV full of food: rolls, cheeses, potatoes, and cobs of fresh corn from the market. Cass and Izzy had met them there with bulging plastic sacks of cherry stone clams and a cooler filled with lobsters, which had been swimming in the ocean just hours before.

  By the time Nell arrived, the bulk of the work was done. Sam had dug the hole earlier in the day and lined it with large rocks collected from above the tide line. When Ben arrived, they all walked the beach—Ben and Sam, Birdie, Cass, and Izzy—filling tubs full of rockweed. When the rocks were hot enough to spit a drop of water back at them, they all scooped up handfuls of the wet seaweed and coated the pit thickly.

  The sizzling smell of the fire and familiar popping of the seaweed greeted Nell as she pulled her car off the beach road and into the gravel drive of Sam’s new home.

  In the short week he’d had the keys, Sam had somehow managed to make the place his own—at least partially so. Through the windows on either side of the open door, Nell could see clear through to the other side of the house—and far beyond, to the endless expanse of the sea.

  “Isn’t it nice?” Izzy appeared from inside the small cedar-shingled house, opened the door, and relieved Nell of one of her sacks. “It’s nearly picture-perfect. A little lacking in furniture, but that’ll come, Sam says.”

  “It’s lovely,” Nell said. She followed Izzy inside.

  The builder had clearly loved nature—nothing distracted from the view outside the windows. One end of the living area was anchored by a simple fireplace with a cherry mantel and soapstone surround, and built-in bookcases and cabinets, all a shiny white, made up for Sam’s lack of furniture. The single cushy sofa, coffee table, butcher block kitchen island—and a couple of tall stools—were all he needed, at least for now.

  “And he has a mattress,” Izzy called out from the behind the refrigerator door. “The rest is on order.”

  Voices outside drew Nell’s attention to the group gathering around the fire. Several dogs from up the beach ran by, chasing a Frisbee. The owner waved as he walked by.

  Ham and Jane had shown up, and helped fill the pit with mounds of potatoes, corn on the cob, and the scrubbed clams and fresh lobster. As soon as Cass, Jane, and Willow covered the feast with more wet seaweed, the men grabbed corners of the tarpaulin and covered the steamy feast, then fastened it firmly with a round of rocks.

  “Beer, bring on the beer,” Ham intoned, and he and Ben went up to drag the cooler from the back of Sam’s Jeep.

  Izzy went over and looped an arm around Sam’s waist. He wore torn madras shorts and a T-shirt, damp and sticky with sand and seaweed. “Good job, Perry. Jeez, I could get to like this place.”

  “More than that little apartment above the shop?” He rubbed one large hand along her back.

  A salty breeze came in off the water, carrying with it the sweet smell of summer. Izzy smiled into Sam’s day-old beard.

  Nell watched the two of them, standing together, their bare feet buried in the sand. An image she would share with her sister when she called her over the weekend, reporting in on what a gift it was to have Caroline’s daughter, Izzy, so present in her life. And now Sam, too—a childhood friend of Izzy’s brothers from summers on their Kansas ranch. The older friend who teased Izzy crazy back then, and who found her again a half country away, and didn’t drive her crazy anymore. At least not in the same way. It made Caroline chuckle when Nell filled her in, as sisters do. And it filled Nell with a warmth she wouldn’t have anticipated.

  She looked beyond Izzy and Sam, to Cass and Birdie up on the deck, stretched out on the Adirondack chairs, watching daylight fade over the ocean. Ham and Jane had walked down the beach, their footsteps weaving with the edge of the tide, bending over now and then to pick up a shell or piece of smooth sea glass that would find its way into a piece of Jane’s pottery.

  “Wicked nice?” Ben said, coming up behind Nell and wrapping a light sweater around her shoulders.

  She nodded against his chest. It was, indeed. The respite they all needed from the fogginess of their days.

  “But the world is still out there with all its warts and unsolved problems, is what my Nell is thinking.”

  She moved her head again. “But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a lovely moment. It’s these moments that get us through the rest.”

  “I talked to Jerry before coming out here,” Ben said.

  Sam and Izzy, hearing the police chief’s name, stepped closer to hear what Ben would say.

  “They’ve been looking into Billy Sobel more closely than we knew, it seems, looking for a connection between him and Aidan. The rifts those two had were more than rumors, apparently. But they couldn’t nail down a logical reason, at least not one that would lead to murder. There were disagreements, maybe personality problems. Billy had a temper, and they haven’t ruled him out completely as Aidan’s murderer. But it just doesn’t quite add up, Jerry said. There are certainly those who want Billy to be the culprit, and Jerry is aware of the comfort in that kind of closure. Billy is dead, too. So no mess, no bother, to put an awful, practical spin on it. But they’re going to talk to Natalie, see where it goes.”

  “Which just might send her over the edge,” Izzy said. “She’s not the most stable woman in the world, especially now. This is an awful time for her.”

  “She’ll be okay, Iz. She’s a tough lady,” Ben said.

  “But if Billy killed Aidan, then how do they account for his death?”

  “If, in fact, someone did make sure that he didn’t get back up out of the ocean, they don’t think it was a local, Jerry said. The police have already done lots of prying into Billy’s New Jersey ties, even before he was killed. It seems Billy’s longtime business associates weren’t always the most upstanding citizens. He owed money, too—to a couple of tough guys. Everyone knew he gambled. They’re looking into it on that end now, and have pretty much dismissed his murder as having a local connection. Fact of the matter is, people here liked Billy. He was a good guy.”

  “Natalie said he got two phone calls that night. One was from you, Ben, and the other must have been from the person he was meeting down at the dock. It had to have been someone he knew.”

  “I agree. That’s a wrinkle.”

  “I don’
t understand how they can tie this up so quickly. It just happened.” Nell took the beer that Sam offered her.

  “As I said, they’d been prying into his life before he was ever killed. Maybe that’s why Billy was so jittery those past few days, afraid something would be discovered.”

  “So they don’t think there’s any connection between the two deaths?”

  Ben forked his fingers through his hair. “That’s the thinking.”

  That, Nell thought to herself, was a fly-by-night assumption. Some people might be able to paint the conclusion they wanted and go on with their lives. But she knew for a fact that most people were not that way. And especially her family and friends so closely touched by these murders. Comfort and closure would take a lot more than suppositions. It would take knowing without a doubt who killed Aidan Peabody and Billy Sobel. And knowing that the person who did it was safely and permanently behind bars.

  But there wasn’t any sense in ruining a lovely clambake with her thoughts. They could wait. They would have to wait. But tomorrow was another day, and even without easy access to the black tablet in her purse that held her week’s schedule, Nell knew what the next day would bring.

  “Have you met any of your neighbors, Sam?” she asked aloud, determined not to ruin the evening. She looked up and down the beach at the lovely beach homes, each one different and inviting in its own way. This stretch of the Sea Harbor coast was mostly residential, with small lanes leading to clusters of houses nearly hidden in stand of trees on the roadside, and wide-open to the sea on the other.

  “Harriet and Archie Brandley’s daughter lives a few houses down, on a little lane that runs back from the sea.” Izzy pointed to a gabled house across the road with a fenced-in area filled with children’s play equipment.