Murder Wears Mittens

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Dolores,” Nell said quietly. “I wonder if Fiona knew that’s where it came from. They were friends.”

  “Dolores was extremely private about her affairs. Secretive almost, and she seemed to take pleasure in that, almost like it was a game, so it might have been a surprise to Fiona. Dolores was adamant that the bank not reveal where the money came from while she was alive. She claimed she didn’t want people traipsing around her property, pounding on her door and bothering her.

  “Not her words, though,” Birdie added. “Elliott said when she wanted to make a point, Dolores could match and surpass any fishermen talk rolling out of Jake Risso’s bar on a Saturday night. She sent money out once a year and was clear about where it went, choosing the organizations, but only after she had carefully scrutinized them. And afterward she kept close tabs on how it was spent. She didn’t tolerate people who were careless about other people’s money.”

  “She checked up on the organizations?”

  “She wanted to be sure the moneys were used fairly and appropriately, with the utmost integrity.”

  It took a while for the disparate images to settle in—the white-haired, ponytailed, taciturn woman with the walking stick accepting meals from the food pantry and this wealthy woman, seemingly wanting only to give it all away. And with the mouth of a drunken sailor, adding color to the portrait.

  Ben collected glasses and was back shortly with refreshed drinks. He settled down and looked at Birdie’s file of papers.

  “So we know that plenty of organizations benefited—and will continue to, according to the dictates of the will. There are individuals in the will, too. People, I suppose—though no one knows for sure—who moved in and out of Dolores’s life. Elliott said she didn’t give reasons for her choices and refused to talk about it. His role, Dolores made clear to him, was to write things down, run the numbers, but not to have an opinion.”

  Birdie chuckled. “I like this woman, more and more. For being as reclusive as she was in life, Dolores Cardozo seems to be making up for it, reaching out to people from her grave. She sounds like a good soul. And a feisty one. I’ve a strong suspicion we would have been simpatico.”

  “It won’t take the chief long to eliminate the people mentioned in the will as suspects,” Nell said.

  Ben took a long swallow, draining the last trace of gin. He placed the glass on the coaster. “It’s the directors of the organizations that they’ll talk to—reputable institutions, like the library, the community center, the free health clinic. They’ll probably cross most of them off the suspect list after a two-minute conversation. Few people, as much as they might want their organization to thrive, would kill for it. Additionally, how would they know that their organization was in the will? Dolores liked to keep things private most of the time.”

  “Most of the time?” Nell asked.

  Ben frowned and looked over at Birdie. “What did Elliott say about that? He wasn’t clear, I guess. But the gist of it all is that Dolores liked anonymity.”

  “So why do you two look so worried then?” Nell asked. “You’ll let the beneficiaries know. And the individuals. The police will do their job. And, hopefully, before the ink is dry, the real deranged person who took Dolores’s life will be behind bars.”

  “That’s the hope,” Ben said. “But remember this is a murder investigation. Everyone who has or might have a link to Dolores becomes a suspect. People who wanted her land. Who might have had a grudge against her. Others we don’t know about. And now those who are mentioned in her will, some who will get more attention than others. Maybe because they’re guilty of something. The police will have to sort through it all.”

  “Were there surprises in the will?”

  Birdie looked at Ben. She said, “In a way it’s all a surprise. I suspect it will be for most of the people named in the will. There was one name in particular, though, that surprised the chief. It surprised us, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “Elliott said it was the one Dolores was most adamant about getting right,” Ben said. “She enjoyed giving money away, but didn’t do it haphazardly. It was always done in an intelligent, thoughtful way and her will was no exception. But this last one, he said, made her positively joyful. It’s a trust, different from the other simple bequests the organizations and individuals will receive that go through probate.

  “She put it together for someone Elliott didn’t even know. She spent days on it over the summer, he said, making sure all directions were clear, what moneys would go into it, how it would be handled, and the precautions needed to make it fail-safe.”

  Birdie took a last sip of her martini and set it down on the table. “Elliott didn’t know her, but his wife, Laura, did. And we do,” she said. “The trust is for Kayla Stewart and her children.”

  Chapter 11

  Kayla Stewart sat on a chair in the cold kitchen, staring at the cracked Formica tabletop. She rubbed her fingers over the clean screen of a cell phone, shiny and bright, no game icons cluttering it.

  The day wasn’t really cold, despite the lower than usual temperature. It was filled with bright sunshine—a perfect late September day, just like the guy on the morning television show said it’d be. Sarah Grace had only needed her fuzzy pink sweater over her school clothes to walk to the bus stop. Christopher only his uniform—he was the tough guy. No jacket, just his white shirt and pants, looking so much like a little man.

  Kayla’s heart swelled at the image lingering there in the corner of her mind. Christopher and Kayla, climbing on the big yellow bus. Happy. Beautiful. Perfect.

  She wanted to hang on to it, to preserve it forever. But the feeling circling inside her was blurring her mind’s image, the sun’s warmth mocking the icy feeling squeezing her chest.

  She put the phone down and pressed her fingers against her temples. Lapsed memory. It’ll come back. She remembered the doctor in the hospital, a young guy, younger than she was. But he was right about amnesia or whatever they were calling it. It would come back.

  And finally, it had.

  It was like that kind of clean air that a storm sometimes ushers in. It had happened suddenly, in the middle of a disjointed, unsettling dream, pulling her awake with giant creepy fingers. Something in her sleep had sucked away the fuzziness that had been filling her head. She had kept her eyes tightly closed, her head resting back into the pillows as her mind seemed to be acting on its own. And slowly, carefully, the images had begun to play across her mind. A movie, playing in slow, deliberate motion.

  Making Christopher and Sarah Grace’s mac and cheese dinner.

  Giving strict orders to Christopher. No visitors. Lock the door.

  Kisses, hugs.

  More kisses, more hugs.

  Promises.

  I’ll be back soon.

  I love you.

  She remembered the cold that tore at her bones as she rode along the narrow road, so vivid as she lay in bed that she pulled the bed blanket up to her chin. She remembered resting her bike against a tree, staring at the house, wondering if she should turn back, forget it all. Pack up the kids and move away. Surely there were other ways to solve her problem.

  Most of all she remembered sucking in a lungful of air, clenching her fists, swallowing the second thoughts, and walking in through Dolores Cardozo’s kitchen door.

  She could see herself there, as if she were some ghost hovering above, watching it all. She was standing in the familiar kitchen. The kitchen was empty, one dim light left on above the sink. A pot of hot water on the stove, waiting to be made into that awful-smelling tea Dolores liked. Her eyes turned toward the stream of light pouring in from the living room, slanting across the black and white kitchen tiles.

  She followed the light, and then she was there, standing over Dolores Cardozo, staring at a pool of blood, moving across the hardwood floor. Bending down. Her hands in it, her heart frozen inside her chest. Rising. Standing. Her scream catching in her throat.

  Then darkness.

&nb
sp; And Sister Fiona walking into a hospital room.

  As she now sat at the kitchen table, she went over the moving images again for the umpteenth time, wondering if the video recording would change. But each time it was the same. Clear. Distinct. Awful.

  And she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Kayla glanced at the clock on the stove. A doctor’s appointment and picking up a new driver’s license, although the old car she’d driven across the country was still sitting in Shelby Pickard’s car lot, hoping for a miracle to get it running again. In a day or so, Shelby had promised.

  She had lost her backpack that night, or had she even taken it? Surely she would have. Her phone was in it. A worn wallet with little in it but her driver’s license and grocery store cards. A library paperback book and some school papers from the kids.

  Sister Fiona had already replaced the cell phone. They’d stopped on the way home from the hospital. When Kayla had refused it, the nun had practically forced it into her hands, her voice commanding. “The kids,” she had said roughly. “You need a phone for the kids. Don’t be a nitwit.”

  But she needed far more than a phone. She needed a miracle.

  How had it all turned around so quickly?

  Things had been so good—she liked the town; Sister Fiona was right. The vastness of the ocean, the sound of the waves pounding the shore. Taking the kids to the beach, collecting stones and sea glass and wondering where they’d come from. Watching the smiles grow on their faces, day by day.

  Even most of the people were okay. She’d learned early that not every smile meant “friendly.” Some were Halloween masks. But so far, she’d met only one of those. At least one that she knew about.

  There was the lady next door—what was her name?—who had brought cupcakes when they moved in, and her husband had fixed the toilet when Sarah Grace dropped a wash rag down it. The Ocean’s Edge people were okay, even the owner, welcoming her. And the waitress who took her shift today so she could go to the doctor. She liked Laura, who sometimes was at the Bountiful Bowl Café—and those crazy, lively kids who volunteered over there, Gabby and Daisy. And then there were the ladies who brought the kids’ clothes home. Who does that kind of thing?

  But mostly, mostly she liked it because Sarah Grace and Christopher loved it here. They loved every single thing about Sea Harbor. Christopher still harbored a wariness of strangers, but even that was lessening. He laughed more. He loved the guys down at the lobster dock who had let him and Shep climb on their smelly boat. Most of all he loved that old priest from the church. Sometimes he’d be out on the playground with the kids, telling them jokes, kicking the ball to them with his big black shoe.

  Christopher especially liked calling him “Father.” The first man he’d ever known by that name.

  She’d do anything in the world to protect what they’d found here in Sea Harbor—what had brought smiles to her kids’ eyes and filled her house with giggles. She wouldn’t let it be taken away from her, from them, no matter what it took.

  For a brief moment, the resolve soothed her, broke her free of the icy fear that had hardened into a knot inside her.

  But above all, Kayla Stewart was smart and realistic and rarely sugarcoated anything. Today she knew—now that her head was clear—she knew there was trouble ahead for her.

  A sound outside drew her attention away from her thoughts. She looked through the window at a car pulling up to the curb, and her stomach knotted. And then she saw who it was and she breathed again. The car idled, the driver lightly tapping the horn. Kayla pushed back the chair and shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans. A quick glance in the mirror brought her fingers to the bandage splayed across her forehead. She touched it lightly, resisting the temptation to pull it off and erase time along with it. She tugged on a strand of black hair like Sarah Grace did in her efforts to make her mommy’s hair grow faster. What Kayla wanted was for it to disguise the wound. Neither of them had been very successful.

  Kayla gave up and forked her fingers through the short cut to put some order to it, regretting the impulse she’d given into that day to cut it. Then she hurried out and locked the door behind her. A nod, a small smile, and she climbed into the front seat of Sister Fiona’s small Kia.

  The ride to the clinic was quiet, Kayla alone with her thoughts, undecided what she would do with the facts that were now echoing in her head. What to make of them. More importantly, who to tell about them.

  “Dr. Mackenzie is a good man,” Sister Fiona said as they approached the family medical clinic.

  Kayla didn’t answer. She couldn’t remember being seen by a doctor, except when the babies had come. All those hours bringing them into the world, and then the spectacular joy that she’d never before in her life experienced. New life. Her new life.

  Fiona slowed down as she drove through a school zone. The clinic was just a couple blocks from our Lady of Safe Seas School and Church and Kayla strained to see signs of children as they drove by. Although the playground was quiet, her thoughts remained back on the granite building. She could almost see Christopher and Sarah Grace, sitting at small desks, their faces bright, soaking in some kind teacher’s words.

  Fiona glanced over at Kayla and noticed her faraway gaze. She held her silence and drove into the parking lot of the old sea captain’s mansion that now housed two medical clinics, Dr. Glenn Mackenzie’s family practice and Dr. Lily Virgilio’s women’s clinic. There were few, if any, Sea Harbor residents who hadn’t at one time or another walked through the main doorway and into one of the clinics. And in either one they’d be welcomed like family.

  “It’s better to go there than back to the hospital,” Fiona said, leading Kayla up the wide fan of steps into the gracious entry, its walls filled with paintings by the artists of the Canary Cove Art Colony. “You need that looked at, Kayla. You had a concussion. Concussions can affect moods and all sorts of things. You need to be healthy for Chris and Sarah Grace. Don’t be fidgety. Nobody here bites.”

  Kayla followed the nun through the entryway and into the family clinic area. The waiting room was nearly full. On one side a toy alcove for kids was noisy and busy with children in for well-child checkups; intimate groupings of comfortable chairs filled the large waiting area, and a coffee and juice bar was positioned along a far wall. The sound of cartoons spilled from the children’s area, and behind the reception desk, several people bustled about, tapping on computer screens and printing out files.

  Kayla looked at Fiona. “Are you sure this is a doctor’s office? Do they serve beer?” She sat down in one of the chairs, looking toward the coffee bar.

  Fiona walked to the desk. She gave a pleasant-looking young woman Kayla’s name, then returned to their seats with a clipboard and several forms for Kayla to fill out.

  A short while later the side door opened and a woman holding a notebook computer looked around and called Kayla’s name.

  Kayla shot up from the chair.

  Fiona was up, too.

  Kayla turned and looked at her. She frowned. “I’m not a child,” she said.

  Fiona ignored her and followed her through the door and down the hall to an examining room.

  * * *

  Charlie Chambers rotated his shoulders. He’d been working nearly forty of the last forty-eight hours—three emergencies. Glenn Mackenzie wanted him to be an integral part of the practice—his second pair of hands, another mind to make important decisions. Charlie was flattered. And in spite of the aching muscles, he felt better than he had felt in a long time. He felt like he was home.

  It hadn’t been easy to explain to his aunt and uncle—and especially to Izzy—why he hadn’t just stayed in Sea Harbor those months ago when he’d come to make peace with his sister. The volunteer stint at the free health clinic that winter had been satisfying and the town welcoming. He’d made some good friends. He had been content. But when his volunteer time had ended, something inside him nagged and a restlessness returned. A feeling that he didn’t de
serve to settle into his life—to plant roots—not yet. First he needed to sort through some things in his past, revisit people who had played prominent parts, sort through those years. Unfinished things, at least that’s how they appeared in his own mind. Things that needed one more stab at resolution before he could put down roots.

  His mother and father in Kansas City were part of it. He hadn’t spent time with them except for brief weekends here and there. Not enough to make up for dropping out of their lives for a couple years.

  There were others, too, people who had pulled him out of the darkness. Those who knew him during those years after he dropped out of college, months of a wild life that nearly destroyed him. He wanted to revisit some of those stops along that journey to offer a much belated thanks to people who had helped him along the way. The ones who had encouraged him. Like the woman out west, the one he had hung out with for a brief time. A wise and tough woman younger than he was, but far wiser. He would never forget the night she’d thrown a life raft at him. He was stoned, drunk, he couldn’t remember. But he remembered how she had pulled him out of a bar, slapped him hard, then ripped into him like no one had ever done before. She told him boldly that he had two choices left: to kill himself or get his act together and begin to live. She’d help him with one; he was doing pretty well with the other on his own.

  She’d saved his life. And he’d never thanked her for it.

  It was partly selfish, this need to let people know that he had survived it all. That he even liked the person he’d become. Sometimes selfish things were fine. So he’d fixed up the well-traveled Bimmer and traveled from one side of the country to the other. Putting a period to some sentences, a thank-you to others.

  He didn’t set out knowing for sure he’d end up back on Cape Ann, but he had. The ocean’s call was powerful—and he had answered.

  Charlie took the file from the rack on the door, checked that the nurse had already recorded vital signs, and stepped into the examining room.