Trimmed With Murder

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “What did you tell the police?” Izzy asked. It was her lawyer’s voice, crowding out the emotion.

  “Not the whole made-for-TV movie I just told all of you. Amber had texted me really late one night right before she died. She was filled with thoughts of her mother, obsessed with the fact that she was alone in that bed at Ocean View. She was blaming herself, regretting she hadn’t stayed here for her. She kept saying she could have protected her. She was tossing all sorts of crap on herself, and telling me I wouldn’t understand, not with the charmed life I had.”

  “So you jarred her out of it by dropping a bomb.” Ben said.

  He nodded. “But it was real, too. For a long time I felt like I had killed him. I stole some years from him, for sure. His parents would never let me see him, so I didn’t know until an old coach tracked me down for some silly reunion—it was just a year or two ago—and incidentally told me the guy went through a lot, but a couple dozen surgeries got him back on his feet. He was married with a couple kids.”

  “You explained this to Tommy Porter?”

  “And Chief Thompson. But I could see through their eyes what a prosecutor would see.”

  An angry kid who grew up to be an angry man.

  • • •

  It was a perfect Saturday morning outing.

  Ben and Sam, with Abby bundled up in a carrier on his back, were taking Charlie to the yacht club to introduce him to the Dreamweaver, their prized sailboat.

  Nell could have questioned their good sense, since the sailboat was in storage, the sails were removed, and the warehouse the club provided was cold and drafty. But she knew exactly what these men in her life were doing—distracting Charlie from the ponderous weight he was carrying around. Weekends were long, and for Charlie, Saturdays would be especially painful for a long time.

  She waited ten minutes after they left—just in case Ben forgot his phone or came back looking for a pair of gloves—before gathering up the papers and books in his den and heading out the door.

  Izzy was in the drive, and together they headed over to Birdie’s. Cass would meet them there.

  • • •

  Birdie had lit a fire in the fireplace and cleaned off the round oak table in Sonny’s den. They settled around it, gratefully accepting hot glasses of tea from Ella.

  “The Cummings business office, the cemetery, and the nursing home. The Gibsons’ house, Charlie’s car, and the Gull. Unless we’ve missed out on chunks of Amber’s time, these are the places she went in her short week in Sea Harbor.”

  Birdie had pulled scraps of purple yarn from her tapestry bag and placed them like snakes in the center of the table. Colorful stitch markers defined the Gull, the rectory where the will was read, Ocean View, Harbor Park, and Cummings Northshore Nursery. Amber’s journey.

  “Amber found something or did something or saw something she shouldn’t have along this purple route that made someone want to kill her.”

  “All we have to do is find it,” Izzy said. “A breeze.” She pulled back a thick hank of hair and fastened it with a band. “I’m ready.”

  Birdie and Cass had been filled in on Charlie’s journey, at least the parts that mattered in a police investigation. Bits and pieces would be shared later, in the way close friends did.

  “They have nothing concrete on Charlie,” Cass said. “Phone calls and e-mails will verify his explanation. But no matter, Charlie needs to be off their radar completely.”

  “And someone needs to be taken off our streets and out of our lives,” Izzy said, the emotion in her voice showing how personal the quest had become.

  Beyond the mullioned windows of the den, the sky was a bright wash of color, as if a child had taken wide sweeps of watercolor to it. Waves of powdery purple and pink were vivid against the blue Saturday sky. “The yarn color of Amber’s path matches the sky,” Nell observed. “I think that’s an omen, Birdie. A good one.”

  She reached down and picked up the portfolio containing the papers from Charlie’s backseat. “May the good-omen fairy guide our way.”

  But could a collection of ketchup-smeared printouts lead them to a murderer? Perhaps not. Yet they were of interest to Amber—and that made them eminently interesting to them. And hopefully significant.

  Nell pulled the printouts out of the folio and passed them around. Food and coffee stains blurred some words, some numbers, but not enough to make the sheets useless.

  They smoothed them out on the table.

  “Phew,” Cass said. “These smell like greasy french fries.”

  “Charlie’s car became Amber’s office and their diner.”

  “This shows me more than anything that Charlie was falling in love with Amber Harper,” Izzy said.

  “That he let her mess up his car?”

  “Yes. He was always fastidious about cars. And I know he loves that BMW. When he was sixteen my dad got him a new Subaru. Only Charlie, by the way. Jack and I shared a used gold Chevy Blazer. Charlie was so protective of his car that he never took the plastic coverings off the backseat.”

  Cass laughed. “You Kansans. Pete and I shared a clunky beat-up truck my dad hauled lobster traps in. And I mean we shared it—with a crew of fishermen.”

  Izzy smiled and turned back to the array of printouts in front of her. “Somehow I feel like Amber herself is asking us to straighten this mess out. She started it for us, but somebody has to finish it.”

  Nell’s thoughts exactly. She put on her glasses and picked up a dog-eared sheet, then several others with the same head. They were year-end summaries. Amber had used a highlighter and Nell’s eyes went to a bright yellow streak through a headline: SALARIES.

  Charlie mentioned that Amber looked at payroll. Something she was going to address, was his surmise. Low-wage issues, maybe. But as Nell scanned the sheets she saw that the nursery staff—gardeners and landscapers—made very fair salaries, and the cashiers, too, all above minimum wage, all nicely compensated. One star for Barbara and Stu Cummings.

  She ran her finger over the rows. Then spotted the Magic Marker at play again. This time highlighting the word Bonuses.

  Again the managers of the various stores fared well, the owners, too. And then she stopped, surprised at a hefty bonus listed after a name close to the end of the list.

  She leafed back to salaries and double-checked. No wonder Amber was concerned. As an owner, she might not have approved. But Barbara and Stu apparently had.

  Nell pulled the sheet aside and passed it around the table. “Amber singled this out. I see why, except that bonuses are up to the company leadership, right?”

  Birdie read it, and nodded with interest. “It’s high. Nice for the person getting it. But maybe something Amber didn’t like or think equitable.”

  Cass and Izzy looked at it, too, frowned, then placed it in their “pay attention to later” pile.

  Minutes later Birdie assembled her handful of printouts and sat back in her chair, sipping her tea. “I wish my Sonny were here. He loved numbers. But the fact is, I don’t. If there are hidden liabilities and incorrect asset valuations and all those other things Sonny used to talk about, I will never find them. I don’t even know what they mean. I’ve always agreed with you, Nell—you and Fran Lebowitz. There is no algebra in real life.”

  Nell chuckled, happy that Birdie had brought it up. There were certainly more useful things she and Birdie could do. She looked over at Cass and Izzy, barely able to pull their eyes away from their numbers. “I’m sorry, you two; Birdie’s right. You both run businesses. You need to be the ones to go through these. You even seem to be enjoying it, which is beyond my comprehension—but I admire it, I do.”

  Cass laughed. “You’re mathophobes, both of you. Give me those.” She grabbed their sheets and went back to the ones in front of her. “This is interesting. Cummings Nurseries are doing well. Amber should have been pleased a
bout that. It makes me wonder what she was looking for. I do see some oddities in the accounting. Strange accounts that Amber highlighted. Things that maybe got her attention and she needed to check through more carefully. She had pulled old financial reports, too, not just the most recent ones.”

  “Any red flags?”

  “Not sure.” Cass looked at the scattering of papers. “But we still have a lot to go through. It’s fun—a little like reading someone’s diary.”

  “Each to his own,” Birdie said primly.

  “But, Birdie, before you fink out on us completely, I think you and I should go over some of these payments. You’d know the names of the companies even better than I do. Look for anything that seems out of line. Companies that wouldn’t be offering services to a place that sold trees and plants, that sort of thing. Or maybe ones you’ve never heard of.”

  Nell looked at her and frowned. “Cass, what are you looking for here? We’re following Amber, remember.”

  “True. But who knows what she found that she might not have been looking for? Things that made her think people were doing things they shouldn’t be doing. Isn’t that what she said? Bad things.”

  Birdie shoved her chair closer to Cass’s and began looking down the line, making notations, at times her silvery eyebrows lifting in surprise.

  While Birdie conscientiously worked through the printout, Izzy ran her finger down a row of numbers, her eyes moving from one column to another and back again. “There’s always a chance for simple errors in these things,” she said to anyone who might be listening. “But even though bonuses are always up to a company, big discrepancies get your attention. Like at those big Wall Street companies. I can see why Amber was intrigued with these.”

  Ella walked into the den carrying a tray, her interruption and the coffee, fruit, and warm cinnamon muffins a welcome break. They happily shoved back chairs and set papers aside. Ella poured coffee, warning them not to spill it on the rug, and retreated as quickly as she’d come.

  Izzy picked up a muffin and nibbled on its edges, resisting eating the sugary top first. She glanced again at the top sheet on her pile and tapped it with one finger, leaving another grease spot. “There’s an expense on this ledger that stunned me. It’s not a red flag, but definitely startling.” She lifted the paper up. “It’s a year-end summary of expenses from a few years back. Amber highlighted a line on it.” She passed it to Cass, then watched while her friend’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Nell took it from Cass, held it out for Birdie to see, and together they scanned the page. “Oh, my,” Nell said, her tone matching Birdie’s wide eyes.

  “A year’s ‘residency’ at Ocean View,” Nell said, “is that what they call it—residency?” She looked at Birdie.

  “Yes, it sounds better than ‘nursing care.’ I knew it was expensive to live in Ocean View’s homes, but I had never seen the figure for long-term nursing home patients. This is quite amazing.” Birdie held the paper up close and read the fine print. “Ellie had a suite—a very nice one apparently.”

  Cass was awed. “It better have been. You could buy a house with a full-time nurse for less than that. I can’t get my arms around this kind of expense. Who can pay for things like this?”

  “It seems Cummings Northshore Nurseries could. And did. For almost thirty years,” Birdie said.

  They were silent as they all did the math in their heads. No one was able to utter the final figure out loud. It was more than most of them would make in a lifetime, Cass whispered.

  Most of Sea Harbor, Izzy said.

  Nell looked at the sheet again and shook her head. “It’s literally a fortune. The exorbitant price of guilt, in my mind, although Father Larry doesn’t see it that way. He said Lydia was at peace with everything she’d done. She wanted nothing to do with Ellie—so she didn’t visit. Not once, all those years. But she spent a fortune on her care. That made it all right, at least in her mind.”

  “Tit for tat,” Cass said. “It’s certainly a different way of looking at what people need. I suppose Barbara and Stu supported it. It relieved them of any responsibility for Ellie. Or did they visit her? Maybe they did, just to see where those large chunks of cash were going.”

  Nell looked at the summary sheet again. “The family business apparently could shoulder that expense, but imagine less able people?”

  “Which is most of the world,” Cass said. “It’s bigger than most mortgages, for sure.”

  “I remember the relief when Ben and I paid off the mortgage on our Beacon Hill brownstone,” Nell said. “We were young, and not having to pay that amount every month was huge for us. Ben broke out the champagne.”

  Izzy laughed. “Sam doesn’t know it yet, but he’s taking Abby and me to Spain the year we pay our mortgage off,” she said. “For a month.”

  Cass looked up. “Think about it. Suddenly, the day Ellie Harper died, Cummings Northshore was no longer paying this enormous amount of money. It was enough to make a significant difference to the company’s bottom line. I can’t imagine they mourned Ellie’s death any more than they did her daughter’s.”

  They were silent, processing the somber, sad thought.

  “I wonder if Amber had that same thought,” Birdie said quietly.

  “She had the same information we have,” Cass said. “With one difference.”

  “Yes, an important one. She loved the woman whose death freed up that money,” Nell said. She got up and carried the tray back to Ella’s kitchen, her thoughts filled with the Cummingses’ generous care of Ellie Harper—and all of its ramifications.

  Cass looked up when she returned. “If we’re walking in Amber’s shoes, we need to think her thoughts—or what she might have been thinking. And I think this is an important one, at least to consider.”

  They all agreed. But the thoughts were muddled, tangled, and first they needed to get through the facts and figures at hand.

  Birdie picked up one of the books found in Charlie’s car.

  “Are these the books that Amber bought at the bookstore?” she asked.

  Nell nodded. “Ben put them in the car this morning and I haven’t had a chance to look at them.” She walked over to the den bar and poured a glass of water.

  “Well, we don’t want these—” Birdie pushed the two business books across the table to Izzy and Cass. “That leaves this.”

  Birdie turned the book over and looked at the cover. “Well, look at this.”

  Cass and Izzy looked up.

  Nell walked back to the table and took the book from Birdie’s hands. She slipped on her glasses and read aloud: “The Permanent Vegetative State: Medical Facts, Ethical and Legal Dilemmas.”

  “Her mother’s condition,” Cass said, more to herself than the others.

  “We’re getting to know Amber through what she left behind,” Birdie said. “She was consistent in how she went about things. She wanted to examine her inheritance, understand it, explore the company’s standing, its health, I guess you’d say. And now the same with her mother.”

  “Except the company was alive, and she had some control over it,” Izzy said. “Her mother was dead.”

  And there was little she could do about that.

  Nell opened the book. Some pages were dog-eared; others had pencil marks. There were a couple of loose pages printed from a computer, folded and tucked inside. She looked at one chapter heading that had a coffee spill in the center of the page. “Causes of Death in PVS Patients.”

  “Andy said her mother’s death was very much on Amber’s mind those last days,” Cass said. “She must have been trying to understand it.”

  Unfolding a sheet printed from a Web site, Nell read, “Pathology of dying.”

  “I suppose this is what Andy was referring to,” Birdie said. “Amber was going overboard, trying to understand something that didn’t have an explanation. Maybe
it’s something each of us would have done, walking in those shoes.”

  Nell looked over at Izzy. “Didn’t Charlie mention something like that, too?” The weight of Friday night’s conversation was ponderous in Nell’s mind, coming back in bits and pieces.

  “Yes, something about wishing she’d been here to care for her?” Izzy said, unsure herself.

  Nell didn’t think that was exactly it. It would come back, most likely in the middle of the night.

  “It was unusual that Ellie lived as long as she did,” Birdie said. “Maybe that was on Amber’s mind.”

  “Or maybe she was making up for not being here at the time, trying to get all the facts in place so she could put some closure to it,” Izzy said.

  Nell frowned. “I’m not sure. I think we may be missing some pieces.” She looked over at the printouts filled with numbers and columns. “I’m not sure Amber was looking for closure.” But what was she looking for in this tangle of numbers? Or in trips to a nursing home where her mother no longer lived?

  Birdie looked at her yarn trail, still in the center of the table. “It’s clear to me. We need to go on a road trip.”

  Chapter 30

  It was Saturday, not a good time to be visiting offices. But Birdie thought it was worth a try. They’d had that good omen from the sky, after all.

  The business office of the Northshore Nurseries was a nondescript brick building hidden behind the nursery’s acres devoted to trees and bushes. The outdoor acreage was scanty in the winter months, but the young and hearty oaks, maples, and hawthorns still populated some of the fenced-off areas behind the nursery building itself, and another lot, bustling today with business, was filled with Christmas trees waiting to go to a good home.

  Nell drove through the packed parking lot, slowing for people coming out of the nursery shop carrying poinsettias, garlands, and cellophane-wrapped mistletoe. She drove back along a drive that led her to a small parking lot in front of the brick building. A tasteful sign above the door indicated they were in the right place: CUMMINGS NORTHSHORE NURSERIES BUSINESS OFFICE, it read.