Murder Wears Mittens

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “Joe Duncan had access,” Birdie said. “With those powerful binoculars, he probably knows every inch of Dolores’s house. I only hope the dear lady didn’t know how little privacy she had. I agree with Izzy that the motive is sound enough. He clearly loves Marlene and he seems to take his job as her savior seriously.”

  “But he already had what he wanted—what Marlene wanted. They had the quiet they craved while Dolores was alive. He didn’t need to kill for it,” Cass said, playing devil’s advocate, a role they would toss back and forth many times.

  “Unless he thought she might sell? Change her mind—” Birdie said.

  “Which she obviously did,” Nell said.

  “That’s only if you buy the Duncans’ story that she considered giving it to them. Sounds a little crazy to me,” Cass said.

  “So Marlene and Dolores were friends?” Izzy asked. “If so, I can’t imagine he’d want to kill his wife’s friend.”

  Birdie gave the question thought while she filled her plate. “I think Marlene made friends with Dolores in her mind. And Dolores was kind enough not to shatter the illusion. I don’t think they sat in each other’s kitchens and chatted.”

  Nell agreed. “That’s more logical. Just like Marlene coveted quiet, I think Dolores coveted her aloneness. And I can’t imagine what they would have had in common. But Dolores was kind, so she wouldn’t have been rude to Marlene. From all we’ve heard, Dolores’s connection to others wasn’t through companionship but through acts of kindness and her long walks, communing with nature. Maybe that’s all she needed.”

  “Almost like a contemplative nun,” Birdie said.

  Birdie uncorked the wine and carried it over while they settled themselves in the cozy corner of the room. Norah Jones’s husky voice followed them, a comfortable companion in the background.

  Once I was seven.... Izzy hummed along as Norah began singing one of little Abby’s favorite songs, and her thoughts turned automatically to a sleeping toddler cuddled in her crib a mile away. Warm and safe.

  Purl curled up next to Birdie on the cracked leather chair near the fireplace, rubbing her head against Birdie’s soft knit slacks, and the others sank into the remaining chairs, the cushions shaped to their bodies after years of Thursday night knitting. Years of friendship.

  “To friends,” Birdie said as glasses were lifted and forks unwrapped from napkins. With plates on laps they dug into the tangy meatloaf, appreciation lighting their faces.

  For a while the music and food absorbed them, senses satisfied and spirits soothed. It wasn’t until Nell poured more wine that she gently brought Kayla Stewart into the room.

  “There was a police report made that may involve Kayla,” she said. “Charlie was upset when he heard. He’s heading over there tonight.”

  They looked up from their plates.

  “What kind of report?” Birdie asked.

  “It’s probably nothing, but there’s a chance it could be connected to why Kayla went out to the Cardozo home that night. She still hasn’t told the police why she was there. Yesterday Ben was talking to a neighbor who’s an aid at Our Lady of Safe Seas School. She mentioned that she’d heard something about one of the Stewart kids.”

  Mention of a child got everyone’s attention.

  “That’s crazy. One of the kids was mentioned in a police report? What is that about?” Cass’s voice had an edge to it, as if she was fully prepared to refute it immediately, whatever it was.

  Nell put down her fork. “It was disturbing, so Ben called Jerry Thompson right away, hoping to stop a rumor before it grew legs. Apparently Christopher Stewart was buying school lunches for himself and little Sarah Grace, and when he went to pay, he pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. A couple more fell out of his pocket.”

  There was silence.

  Cass broke into it. “Since when is having a fifty-dollar bill a crime?”

  Nell continued. “The cafeteria lady was only concerned that Christopher might lose such a large amount of money so she walked with him up to Sister Fiona’s office, suggesting they keep the rest of the money in the principal’s desk for safekeeping until it was time for him to go home. But as sometimes happens, things careened out of control when the security guard—a man who apparently would much rather be on the police force and is following the Cardozo case as if he’s going to singlehandedly solve it—saw the money and called the police.”

  “Because he’d heard about Dolores keeping fifty-dollar bills in her house,” Birdie said softly.

  “Yes.”

  Izzy sighed. “That’s not good.”

  “Ben says the irony of it is that after talking to people who had any contact with Dolores, the police discovered she gave out fifty-dollar bills like candy, rewarding random kindnesses—people along the trails who picked up trash, a teenager helping an older man shovel his walk—kind of like she did in her will. And somehow she did it invisibly, although after her murder, recipients of the surprise bills came forward, suspecting for various reasons that she was probably the one who did it.”

  “So now Kayla has to go and tell Jerry Thompson why she has fifty-dollar bills?” Cass said. “I have a fifty-dollar bill in my wallet right now. Am I next?”

  But she knew how hollow her words were. Cass’s bike wasn’t found leaning against a tree the night Dolores was killed, nor did she suffer a wound leaning over a dead woman’s body.

  Birdie took a drink of wine, then a deep breath, and then she told them for the first time how she and Charlie had found an envelope Kayla had dropped at the market last weekend. “It was none of our business,” she said, “so we simply gave it back to her and never mentioned it again. Although we didn’t try to pry, the envelope had buckled and we could see what was inside.”

  “Fifty-dollar bills,” Nell said.

  Birdie nodded. “Neatly bound with a rubber band. Kayla was relieved when we gave it back, as if finding that envelope had somehow saved her. From what, we weren’t sure. She was nervous—but definitely relieved to have it back. Maybe simply because it was grocery money, food for her children.”

  “It’s strange, though. Who sends kids to school with fifty-dollar bills?” Izzy asked rhetorically.

  “Sometimes the odds are stacked against you,” Nell said. “And this seems to be one of those times.”

  “It can be easily explained away,” Cass said. “If Dolores handed out money the way you described, Nell, who’s to say she hadn’t handed some bundles to Kayla? Aunt Fiona said they were friends, they liked each other. And Kayla did favors for Dolores by delivering food to her.”

  Izzy looked at Cass. “I could have used you in the courtroom. Good argument.”

  “I’m practiced at arguing,” Cass said, a slight smile lifting her concern. “I’m not sure why those kids have gotten to me the way they have. I think of Kayla handling this all alone and it really gets to me. I look at Danny and think how lucky I am. No matter what comes our way, I have someone there who will fight the lions with me.”

  “I think of that, too,” Izzy said. “Maybe that’s why we feel so involved in this.”

  “Sure it is,” Cass said.

  “But we’re basing it on emotions. That isn’t going to convince the police,” Birdie said.

  “So what will?” Cass said.

  Birdie put her napkin on her plate and sat back. She spoke with the same resolve that those sitting around the table felt. “Finding the murderer. Crawl inside Dolores. She did more than walk around Cape Ann. She had a life. She spent hours in the library, for example. She had a brilliant mind, and people with brilliant minds usually use them. And she was a genuine humanitarian. Dolores walked into people’s lives as silently as a cat burglar, but with kindnesses. So what if one of those lives was touched by Dolores in the opposite way? We have lots of walking to do.”

  Izzy stacked up the empty plates as she talked. “Wanting the land is a motive, for sure. Dolores didn’t want to sell it to the people pounding her door down. She probably made them an
gry. But that scenario is flimsy. Contractors have other ways of getting what they want without resorting to murder.”

  “Like sending roses. You joked about this, but Davey Delaney actually did it. He sent Aunt Fiona roses! Two dozen, long stemmed. Ma took them and put them on the altar at the church.”

  They laughed.

  “Neither the Delaneys nor the other investors and builders were secretive about wanting the land, and that’s not something a murderer would broadcast,” Birdie said. “They wasted a lot of the city council’s time pleading their case. To then go and murder Dolores doesn’t seem to be a way to go.”

  “Let’s set them aside for now,” Cass said. “What about red-haired Richie. He might have discovered the hidden money in Dolores’s house when he rode out there with Kayla.”

  “Joe saw him watching Kayla and Dolores through the windows. He knew the inside of the house, that’s true,” Birdie said. “And if he didn’t see the money Dolores kept around her house, maybe Kayla mentioned something to him as they rode back into town. It was a curious thing, money stored in cookie jars and around the house. Something you might mention in conversation.”

  “But how would killing her have played into that?” Izzy asked.

  “Maybe a simple robbery gone bad?” Cass said. “That would fit his profile. I don’t think the guy is brilliant. He could have gone out that night to steal the money—remember his talk about opportunity? Maybe this is the kind of opportunity he was talking about. And then Dolores came in from a walk and surprised him, and he killed her.”

  “And then Kayla showed up, and he knocked her out so he could escape?” Izzy wondered.

  They mulled over the possibility, unable to come up with little to refute or substantiate it. Richie would stay on the list. “He’s done something,” Cass said. “I don’t know what it is, but he figures in all this. There’s something about Richie Pisano that smells bad.”

  Like dead fish could have come next. But the lobsterwoman was polite enough to hold the words back.

  “And I don’t think we can cross Joe Duncan off either,” Birdie said.

  “You said he’s a birder,” Izzy said. “Birders aren’t killers. They protect.”

  “They protect birds,” Birdie said quietly. “Humans might be a different story. I’m not sure how fond Dunc is of humans. And he might have spotted loose money in the house with the binoculars. ”

  Nell looked up. She had taken out her knitting and was stroking a silky skein of Bluefaced Leicester yarn. “Maybe we need to check further into the will, just to see if there’s anything there. Find out what Joe was talking about.”

  Birdie nodded, scribbling a note on a yellow piece of paper. Loose ends that needed to be tied off.

  Izzy watched her shove the pen back into her purse. “And I will try one more time to teach you how to take notes on your phone.”

  Birdie smiled sweetly and reached across the table, patting Izzy’s hand. “I’ll make a note of that. Now back to walking in Dolores’s shoes. . . .”

  They sat together comfortably, the way of old friends, knitting needles moving to the tempo of a conversation about a murderer as if it were the norm—and not the awful shaking up of lives.

  “Dolores walked through town, along the shoreline, through the woods. In her quiet, nomadic way, she probably knew as much or more about our town than any of us. All those footsteps. Just think about it,” Nell said, working the short rows of the heel of her sock.

  Nell’s imagery was effective, expanding their thoughts. Walking in Dolores’s shoes meant more than walking trails with an ornate walking stick. It meant moving into her solitary life, dissecting her thoughts and her motivations, looking at her life and into her soul with a magnifying glass, and finding therein the reason someone wanted to end her life.

  It was all there, waiting for her to show them.

  Chapter 27

  Charlie was the first one to arrive, his hair looking more shaggy than usual, his brown eyes tired. He gave his aunt a giant hug and settled on an island stool in the kitchen, watching her whisk together a grilling sauce for the fish.

  “My mother never taught me how to cook,” he said, flipping the top off a bottle of Heinekens.

  “That’s because your mother wasn’t very good at it.”

  “But you came from the same gene pool, had the same mother. What happened?”

  Nell laughed. “My sister is an expert at teaching high school math. I wouldn’t know a hypotenuse if it bit me.” She set a cutting board and knife in front of Charlie, then added an onion and handful of mushrooms. “Chop,” she said, putting an empty bowl in front of him. “Small little squares. Now tell me how things are going at Glenn Mackenzie’s family practice. Are you enjoying working there?”

  Charlie held the onion with one hand and sliced it in half. “Glenn is my idea of a perfect family doctor. He knows his medicine, but he’s also terrific at relating to patients. He even charmed Kayla Stewart when we took her stitches out.”

  Nell finished grating the lemon zest into the sauce, pushing the remaining fragments off the tool with the pad of her finger. “Kayla is ever present these days. She’s been on my mind a lot. And other people’s, too. Cass especially.”

  “I know. Cass thinks those little kids are great. Yeah, it’s touch—”

  He concentrated on his chopping, but Nell could see that he wanted to say more. “Did you see her last night? And Christopher? Poor little guy, just trying to pay for a lunch and ending up in the principal’s office.”

  “Chris is fine. Fiona probably gave him a lollypop. I took all of them down to the pier while it was still light. Pete was there doing something to one of the lobster boats and he let the kids run along the deck. The kids’ll be okay.”

  “And Kayla?”

  “Kayla? She hasn’t talked to the police again, that much I know. But I don’t know how she is. I honestly don’t. It’s a mess, though. You wonder what shoe will drop next. I asked her about the money Chris took to school. She said it was a mistake. They were all rushing around that morning and she told him to take some dollar bills out of her purse for their lunches because she hadn’t had time to make them. He took the wrong bills.”

  “That could easily have happened.”

  “It did happen.” Charlie scraped the onion chunks into the bowl. “I believe her. It’s exactly what happened. But it doesn’t explain why she seems to be so flush with fifty-dollar bills, I suppose. I’m sure Birdie’s told you about the envelope we found.”

  Nell nodded. “Did you ask her about the money?”

  “Sort of, in a roundabout way, kind of joking about it. And her answer was equally as vague. She said, ‘I work, you know.’”

  “And that was it?”

  “I think she was about to say something else. She got real quiet and looked at me for what seemed like a long time, her eyes combing my face as if trying to read something there. Acceptance maybe? Trust? Her mouth even opened.” He began chopping the handful of mushrooms Nell had set on the board. “And then it shut again.”

  “So maybe she wants to let you in but just isn’t ready yet.”

  “Could be. I threw a ball with Christopher for a while before leaving. She sat on the steps watching us, braiding Sarah Grace’s hair. She seemed to be okay with the company. She didn’t mention the money again, or whether the police had contacted her.”

  “Do you think she took money from Dolores? Could that be why she was going out there that night?”

  “To steal, you mean?”

  Nell was quiet.

  Charlie took a deep breath. “No. I haven’t known her long, but she wouldn’t steal. I’m sure of it. I think she went out there that night because it was important to her to talk to Dolores Cardozo about something. Why she doesn’t want the police to know what it was is beyond me. Fiona is as confused by it as I am.”

  Outside the sound of voices and slamming car doors told them their time for quiet talk was almost up.

  N
ell checked the clock, then looked at Charlie. His brows were pulled together and he was looking out the back window toward the ocean, searching for something. “What is it, Charlie?”

  He looked at Nell, then picked up his beer, shaking his head. “It’s nothing.” He took a long swig. “No, it’s not nothing. It’s something. It’s this eerie feeling I have that gets stronger by the day. I feel this almost visceral connection with Kayla. And maybe because of it, a kind of responsibility. I care about her. And it’s all intensified by the fact that I think I have met her somewhere. Or at least that I’ve seen her before. But I can’t put it together and I can’t get it off my mind. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “You’ve been many places,” Nell said.

  “That I have. And I am willing to bet she has, too.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “She never saw me before in her life, she said, and she’s quite sure the circles we ran in didn’t intersect.”

  Nell smiled to herself. She whisked the basting ingredients one more time and set the sauce aside. “They say we all have a double somewhere. Maybe you saw her double?”

  That made Charlie laugh, and he finished off his beer, just in time to greet a noisy stream of people filling up the house. Abby led the parade, toddling full speed over to her uncle, who picked her up and swung her around.

  Ben came in from the deck, where he and Danny had been piling coals into a perfect searing configuration for the fresh tuna steaks. The fact that it had taken them nearly an hour meant world problems had been solved and beers drunk while the coals turned gray.

  Ben greeted Don and Rachel Wooten and suggested Don help Danny uncork some wine. He kissed Abby on the top of her curls and wound his way around Birdie, Cass, and Izzy to the kitchen sink and Nell. He pulled her aside and spoke quietly. “I forgot to tell you earlier, but I ran into Fiona at the fish market. She looked tired and worried, so I invited her to join us tonight. Friday night therapy on the rocks, I told her.”

  Nell looked up at Ben and smiled. “You’re a good man, Ben Endicott. That was a nice thing to do.”