by Anne Canadeo
“Somehow they know that I like my hands in working order. This huge guy, twice my size at least, he grabbed my wrist and nearly twisted my hand off. He bent my thumb back so far, I thought he was going to break it off.”
Maggie gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. She quickly stepped closer to Jamie and lifted his hand so she could get a better look.
“Let me see,” she insisted. Lucy saw that the skin under the tape had taken on a dark purplish tone. “Did you go to the emergency room for an X-ray? It might be broken.”
“You have to tell the police, Jamie,” Lucy said before he could answer.
He sighed and took his hand back. “I don’t think so. It won’t help. It might even make it worse.” Lucy had a feeling they had threatened him, but he didn’t want to admit it. “What if the information gets out? I don’t want to have Gloria’s name smeared in the papers, linked with something like that. I’d feel terrible if that happened.”
“What are you going to do?” Lucy felt alarmed. People like that would come back. The next time, it would be even worse.
He looked perplexed, overwhelmed. She felt so sorry for him. First Gloria dies so suddenly. Then he finds out her business affairs are a complete mess … and now thick-necked collection types are harassing him, practically breaking his bones to make their point.
“I don’t know … I told them I really and truly didn’t have any money right now. I could sell my car, but that wouldn’t even cover it. I have to sell the house. Or take a loan against it. Or just wait until the estate comes through probate.”
“What did they say?” Maggie asked quietly, sitting in the wicker chair next to him again.
“They said I’d better figure it out. Fast. Then they finally went away.”
Maggie shook her head. “Jamie … I really think you need to tell the police. This could get dangerous.”
“No police. I don’t want the police involved. They warned me. That will only make it worse. Gloria made a mistake dealing with these people. But she must have felt desperate. Pushed to the edge. I’ll just have to muddle along and handle them the best I can.”
Lucy glanced at Maggie. She felt the same, but there didn’t seem to be any way to change his mind.
Jamie stood up, ready to go. Maggie stood up, too, and walked him to the porch steps.
“Why don’t you stop by Thursday night? Just to say hello if you like. We’ll all be here for the meeting.”
“Oh right.” He nodded and slipped on his sunglasses. He still hadn’t shaved and his beard had grown in quite thick. He looked good in a beard, Lucy thought. More arty, maybe? “Okay, maybe I will.”
Maggie and Lucy said good-bye and watched Jamie walk down to the street to his car. Just as he left, they spotted Dana strolling down Main Street toward the shop. Dana paused to wave to Jamie as he pulled away in the black convertible. He lifted his hand and waved back.
“Hi, guys. Sorry I missed Jamie, was he here long?” she asked cheerfully. She sat in the seat he’d just vacated. She’d brought her lunch in a white paper bag and her knitting tote, Lucy noticed, and set them on a little wicker table between the chairs.
When Maggie and Lucy didn’t answer right away, she gave them curious, appraising stares.
“Something the matter? You both look upset.”
“We are upset,” Maggie replied. “Jamie just stopped by. He had a lot of news about Gloria’s estate. Things aren’t going well for him.”
She sprinkled the flower box with one hand, gently separating the plants with her other so that the water reached the soil.
“Not at all,” Lucy echoed, thinking of Jamie’s bandaged hand.
They quickly filled Dana in on the news, including the visit from the thick-necked thugs. Dana frowned but didn’t say a word. Lucy saw her eyes grow even wider at the end of the story.
“That’s awful. And he won’t go to the police?”
“He says he doesn’t want anyone to find out that Gloria had been dealing with that element. It would tarnish her name.”
“Oh dear … there was a lot about Gloria we didn’t know.” Dana had already spread out her lunch, but had only nibbled at the neat rows of sushi rolls. She sighed and took out her knitting. “She was very secretive. Very compartmentalized, wasn’t she?”
Lucy was tempted to agree … then realized she didn’t really know what Dana meant.
“Able to separate out different parts of her life,” Dana explained. “Which everyone does, to some degree. It’s a very useful tool and most successful people do that very well. But some people go too far.”
Lucy considered Dana’s assessment. “Well, she did have all this debt, but acted like she was still rich. But maybe she thought of it as a temporary setback and had a plan to catch up. She was resourceful.”
“That’s possible, too. I think a lot of independent businesspeople survive sometimes by their wits and by keeping a positive outlook,” Dana said. “They tough it out. Not even allowing the possibility of defeat to enter the picture,” Dana continued. “A lot of the time, they do get through it.”
“Don’t you remember what she said when we were talking about facing hard times in life?” Lucy reminded her friends. “Gloria said, ‘Just pick up your skirts and plough on.’ I had a feeling that she had some specific situation in mind, something going on in her life right now.”
“I did, too,” Maggie admitted. “But she had faced so many challenges, she might have been thinking of something in the past, too.”
That was true. Lucy thought about Gloria’s life history, outlined in the obituary and the article she’d read Sunday about the Avalon Group and their dealings with the Department of Environmental Conservation.
“Dana, who is Michael Novak?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
Dana had carefully exchanged her knitting needles for a set of chopsticks and was picking up a bite of tuna roll with cucumber. “He’s an attorney in town who did some work for Gloria. He belongs to our club and plays a lot of golf. He was at the memorial service, remember?”
“I remember. But … who is he? Is he a nice guy? Were he and Gloria friends? Were they enemies?”
“Why do you ask?” Her eyes were wide, as if she’d hit an unexpected dab of wasabi.
But it wasn’t wasabi, Lucy could tell. “Spill it, Dana. I can always tell when you answer a question with a question that something is up.”
Dana smiled nervously and took a big swallow. “Okay, you got me.”
Then she leaned forward and looked around to see who else was on the porch. They were alone, but she still spoke in a hushed voice.
“I really shouldn’t be telling you this. Gloria told me in the strictest confidence. But it wasn’t in a therapy session or anything like that …”
Lucy was relieved to hear that. Dana honored her client confidentially with the strictest code of ethics.
“But … what?” she prodded her.
“I suppose since she’s passed away and we were all friends, it’s all right to tell you …” She paused and took a breath. “Gloria had an affair with Michael Novak. A very long one. I think it may have even started while George Thurman was still alive. Maybe when he got sick, toward the end.”
Lucy sat back, feeling shocked. Maggie looked surprised, too. She apparently didn’t know this about Gloria, even though she’d been the closest to her.
“How did you learn about this relationship?” she asked Dana. “Did Jack tell you?”
Dana shook her head. “Gloria told me. Not too long ago, either. We were all just getting friendly at the knitting shop. I guess she thought, since I was a psychologist, I could give her some advice. So she asked me out for coffee one day when we met in the Book Review.”
“And she told you about Michael Novak?” Lucy asked. Dana just nodded.
“She wanted advice about the relationship? Does that mean she was still seeing him after she married Jamie?” Maggie asked, sounding totally flustered now.
“No, she’d broken it off totally before she went to Florida. It was very painful for her. They’d been on and off for years. A lot of fighting and making up. But Novak would never leave his wife. So Gloria went down to Florida to get some distance, a change of scene. That’s the reason she stayed down there so long on that last trip. And then she met Jamie.”
“And it was a whirlwind romance and they return to town married.” Lucy filled in the ending of the story, unable to stop herself.
“Exactly,” Dana said, selecting her last bite of maki roll. “Wasn’t Michael Novak surprised.”
“Right … most people bring back a box of oranges,” Maggie said drily, quoting Edie Steiber.
“Like a typical man, once Gloria was unavailable, Mike Novak suddenly decided he couldn’t live without her,” Dana continued. “Suddenly, he could get a divorce and he wouldn’t accept that it was over. He tried to convince Gloria that she’d just married Jamie on the rebound. Or simply to get back at him. A totally egocentric interpretation,” she added with a laugh.
“Did she?” Maggie asked, sounding as if she didn’t know up from down anymore.
“Of course not. She really loved Jamie. I’m sure of that,” Dana said calmly. “She just didn’t know how to shake loose of Mike. They’d been through a lot together. And he was pressuring her, trying to confuse her.”
“What did you tell her?” Lucy asked.
“I told her not to let Mike get into her head again and muddy the waters in her new marriage. It’s easy for an old lover—especially with a volatile history like she and Mike had—to play with your emotions. To make you question if you made the right choice. But she knew she had made the right choice with Jamie and she finally told Mike it was absolutely over and he had to let go.”
“Did he?” Lucy persisted. “I mean, did she ever tell you that?”
“We never spoke of it again,” Dana told them. “She came to me for counseling more or less, even though it wasn’t formal therapy. I never thought it was right to ask her about it, unless she brought it up first. Do you think something more happened between them?” she asked Lucy curiously.
“I don’t know. But I know what Suzanne would say if she was here right now.”
“What would that be?” Maggie asked, her brow creased in a deep frown.
“She’d say, ‘Who came to see Gloria the night she died … and what about those two wineglasses, huh?’”
Chapter Nine
Lucy was right. That’s exactly what Suzanne did say after her friends filled her in on the story Thursday night, when they gathered for their weekly meeting.
It was Maggie’s turn to host, and they met at the shop at seven o’clock. Phoebe had a class but planned on joining them later. A wave of warm, muggy weather had followed Monday’s showers and they decided to sit out on the porch to catch a breeze off the harbor.
There was a round wrought-iron table just left of the front door with several chairs around it and Maggie had set out the dinner she’d made for them, a Greek salad with grilled chicken. Paired with crisp pinot grigrio, a dish of hummus, and some pita bread crisps, it was a perfect light supper on a summer night.
Though it was still light out at 7:00, Maggie had set out several candles and glass lanterns. There was also an antique light fixture hanging over the table, so there would be enough light to knit. Maggie hadn’t turned that lamp on yet, preferring to have the group enjoy their dinner in the twilight.
“Wow, my brain is still reeling.” Suzanne sat back, staring at Maggie and Dana as they finished filling her in. Maggie related Jamie’s various travails with the estate and the thugs who had nearly broke his thumb. Dana told her about Gloria’s relationship with Mike Novak. “I sure missed a lot eating lunch at my desk on Tuesday.”
“That will teach you,” Lucy told her.
“I’ve learned my lesson, believe me.” Suzanne looked around at the others. “Let’s have a quick show of hands. Who thinks Gloria’s late-night visitor—and probably the last person to see her alive on this earth—was her old flame, the sly-looking, silver-sideburned attorney?”
Suzanne raised her hand. Lucy did, too.
Dana said, “I abstain.”
Maggie said, “I vote … we just don’t know.”
“Too bad I washed those wineglasses.” Suzanne sighed. “Fingerprints would have nailed it, even for the police in this town. Who knows if the police even took fingerprints around the house? I mean, they thought it was an accident.”
“Well … the only way to find that out is to either wait for the report or ask Detective Walsh. Who wants to call him?” Dana challenged her friends.
“Not me. I’ve had enough of that man for a lifetime.” Maggie waved off the suggestion, sitting back in her chair.
Lucy could understand her reaction to the mere mention of the deadpan detective’s name. All of Maggie’s friends could.
He’d practically arrested Maggie for the murder of Amanda Goran, a rival knitting shop owner who’d been found dead in her shop back in early March. Of course, Maggie had not been the killer, but once Detective Walsh had zeroed in, he did seem to have tunnel vision.
Was that the problem here? Once he’d decided that Gloria had died of natural causes he’d overlooked crucial evidence?
And where exactly was this line of logic going?
“Wait … what are we saying here?” Lucy asked her friends.
“Do you really think Mike Novak may have been involved in Gloria’s death?”
The words “he killed her” or even “pushed into the pool” still seemed too extreme to say out loud.
Her friends didn’t answer, they just exchanged quick glances. Suzanne dipped a pita crisp into the bowl of hummus. “Despite what Jamie said about her dark moods, she just sounded too normal to me that night on the telephone to end up full of wine and pills, floating facedown in a pool a few hours later. I don’t know if I think Mike Novak pushed her in. Or they fought and it was an accident …”
“Or they had some sort of emotional confrontation that got Gloria so upset that she self-medicated and did have an accident?” Dana offered. “But I think Suzanne is right. There must have been some catalyst. Some important confrontation with somebody. Or some bad news she learned that night that sent her into such a tailspin. Something is missing in this story.”
“I agree.” Maggie’s low, serious voice drifted out of the shadows. “Was Mike Novak the visitor? He sounds like a good candidate. But that’s all I can say. It may have been news about her finances. Or something to do with that bad loan she was involved with. It seems there was so much we didn’t know about Gloria that there may be other situations and other people in her life that could have been part of that fateful night.” Maggie sighed and shook her head. “I will say that something happened. Something important. It might mean there was foul play, or even suicide. And her death was not just a random, unfortunate accident.”
“And it wasn’t her own fault for dying because she got herself intoxicated,” Suzanne added sadly. “Which is what a lot of people must think. Even if they won’t say it out loud.”
That was true, Lucy realized. A classic case of blaming the victim. Perhaps the police were less inclined to ferret out some wrongdoing because Gloria’s blood report showed that she was drunk and full of pills. The thinking might be “Well, too bad, but it was her own fault.”
“What should we do now?” Lucy asked her friends. “I know we don’t like Walsh, but …”
“We can’t go to Walsh on our own,” Dana cut in. “That’s up to Jamie. He’s her husband. It wouldn’t be appropriate for us to jump in. We’re not even related.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Lucy said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate at all.”
“We need to tell him what we think. That there are some elements of this story that just don’t add up and he ought to ask the police to investigate again,” Suzanne recapped for all of them. “But what do we say about Novak? That’s a sticky bun …”
> “Is it ever,” Dana sighed. She put her dish on a side table and wiped her hands on a napkin, then took out her knitting. “Jamie might know about Mike. Gloria may have told him. You know, the way couples tell each other about their past relationships? It was over. She had no reason to hide it.”
“Maybe she did. And maybe she didn’t,” Suzanne offered.
“I’m not sure that she was so open with him,” Lucy agreed with Suzanne. “Look at how many secrets she kept about her business and her finances. You said it yourself. Gloria compartmentalized? I think she kept Mike Novak in a very separate, secret compartment.”
Dana had her knitting needles in hand and starting casting on a golden yellow square. “Very good, Lucy. You’re a quick study.”
“Gloria was always trying to protect Jamie,” Maggie offered. “She didn’t want him to worry about money. Or she just didn’t trust him to understand the pressure she was under, the way you shield a child from serious matters. She wouldn’t have wanted him to worry about this, either, is my guess.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t tell him about the money because she was afraid he would leave her,” Suzanne said bluntly. “Even Gloria wasn’t immune to some insecurities.”
“That could have been part of it.” Lucy had already thought of that.
“Getting back to Mike,” Maggie cut in, “I’m not sure she would have told Jamie about that relationship. She’d broken off with Mike before she went down to Florida. But that affair sounds to me like it was a simmering volcano. I think she would have been afraid that Jamie might have felt threatened. Or jealous. She wanted him to concentrate on his painting and for them to live a carefree life together. Why bring Mike into the picture? He would have been the snake in the garden. He would have just sullied it. The truth about Mike was … too real.”
Maggie’s explanation made sense. It did seem as if Gloria was trying to recapture a lost Eden with Jamie.
