“I did, too. Michelle was about ten years younger than Dolores and she died young. Dolores brought up the fact that the Danvers Bank was built on the same land that the old factory occupied—the one Sonny’s family owned and where Mr. Cardozo had worked for years. I never made that connection but now I remember the old building, Sonny’s office. Dolores was reminiscing how she and Michelle used to come into the office with their dad on weekends and play around his desk. It was the same office she eventually worked in.”
Izzy sat up forward in her chair. “Michelle? That was her sister’s name?”
Birdie nodded.
“I had a friend in grade school, Michelle Wittchen. We called her Shelly.”
Nell was the first one who remembered Izzy’s sweet story. “Your part dream/part memory, Izzy. Dolores kneeling down in front of Abby when they met in the woods.”
“And she called her Shelly,” Izzy said, her voice hushed and her eyes smiling.
The tender story brought quiet for a moment, and then Cass brought them back to business.
“So Dolores mentioned your name to Elliott. What else?” Cass asked.
“It was more about Sonny, but Dolores knew I was his wife, Elliott said. I was riding on his coattails. Dolores talked about how kind Sonny had been to her family—especially to her and Michelle when her parents died. She repeated something Sonny had said to her one day, something she never forgot and that touched her deeply. Elliott didn’t understand it at the time but he remembered it. Sonny told Dolores that he had fully intended to save two lives, but he had only been able to save one—and for that he harbored deep regret.”
They were all quiet for a moment, Sonny’s words filling the room.
“No wonder he’s perplexing you,” Cass finally said. She looked over at the laptop on Sonny’s old leather inlaid desk. “May I?”
Birdie nodded.
“She opened up to Elliott on the anniversary of her sister’s death?” Izzy asked.
“Yes. She went on to say that her gratitude to Sonny Favazza knew no bounds—and she promised him that she would pay it forward.”
“Pay it forward. . . .” Izzy tried to put the words into context. “Well, that I understand. Maybe that began her path of giving.”
“Maybe. Elliott thought Sonny’s personal files might shed more light on it if I needed to know more. He wouldn’t have used the company funds for helping individuals. So Elliot and I ransacked his personal file cabinet over there.” Birdie pointed across the room to a dark wooden cabinet, and then a brown folder on the table.
“Life before computers,” Nell said with a smile.
Birdie nodded, her eyes on the old files as if Sonny himself were holding them, sitting there beside her, one arm around her shoulders, dropping a kiss now and then. “I’m not sure I need to know more than that. From what Dolores told Elliott, we know Sonny helped her financially. That should be enough. The amount doesn’t matter.”
“It explains why Dolores would appoint you as executor. But what’s not clear is what he meant by saving lives,” Nell said. She watched Birdie retreating into her memory. Not only were they all learning about Dolores Cardozo, but Birdie was hearing her husband’s words, learning about his role in a life that she hadn’t been privy to before.
Birdie pulled the typed sheets and banded canceled checks from the brown folder. “These are around the years that Antonio Cardozo worked at the factory and after, when Dolores was hired on. Sonny was neat and very exact.”
Antonio Cardozo’s name was typed at the top of a sheet, the family members listed below it. It took only a few minutes to learn how Sonny Favazza had walked into the Cardozo family after Antonio and Anna Cardozo had died in that freak car accident one icy December night, leaving two daughters, one with the formidable task of raising the other.
“Hold on a minute,” Cass said, her head lifting. “I found something. Listen. It’s an obituary from a New Hampshire newspaper.”
Michelle A. Cardozo passed suddenly in the New Hampshire Correctional Facility for Women. Cardozo was twenty-one. She leaves one sister, Dolores Cardozo, of Sea Harbor, MA.
They stared at Cass.
She pushed a handful of hair behind her ear. She read it again, more slowly this time.
“Her sister was in a correctional facility—” Izzy said.
“And passed suddenly.” Birdie’s voice was hushed as she pondered the euphemism.
Cass looked down and read the last line that confirmed their thoughts. “‘Donations in her memory can be made to the Agency to Prevent Suicide in Youth.’”
“Suicide and jail,” Nell said, the combination unraveling a devastating chapter in Dolores Cardozo’s life.
It took little time for the file in Birdie’s hands to reveal Sonny Favazza’s efforts to help save that second life. Through bonuses and finally a trust, he had assisted Dolores financially in raising a child who seemed doomed to a life of addiction. Canceled checks showed payments to rehab centers across New Hampshire, to therapists and hospitals. To a private school for troubled youth and the best addiction doctors in New England.
“Oh, dear Sonny,” Birdie said out loud, looking around the room to be sure he heard her. She looked upward. “But you can’t always save everyone, my love.”
Footsteps in the hallway drew their attention away from the drama spinning out in the room.
Ella Sampson appeared in the doorway, apologizing for interrupting. “You have company, Birdie,” she said.
Standing just behind her were Gabby and Daisy Danvers, and behind them, a larger woman standing in the shadow.
Sister Fiona took a step inside the door, explaining her presence. “I was bringing the girls home and we spotted the cars in the drive. Gabby suggested I come in to say hi.” She looked down at the papers, the computer on her niece’s lap.
“We helped Sister Fiona teach some of the diners at the Bountiful Bowl Café how to knit scarves for the HMS project. Wait’ll you see the stack of things for the clothing center, Izzy. You won’t believe it. It’s way cool.”
Izzy started to thank the girls, but in the next minute, Gabby and Daisy were gone, up to Gabby’s third-floor room to do whatever preteens did when they escaped adult company.
Fiona walked further into the room. Her corduroy pants were decorated with scraps of yarn, and the knit sweater she wore, bearing a smiling lobster on the front, belied the serious expression on her face. “Truth is, Gabby didn’t suggest we come up to say hi. I did.” She sat down in the one remaining chair. “It’s been busy at the school, but I wondered how all of you were doing.”
“We’re wondering the same, Fiona,” Birdie said.
“It’s hard,” she said. “Dolores was a friend. I miss her every day.”
“Of course you do,” Birdie said. “We’re glad you came up.”
Nell watched a range of emotions pass across the nun’s face, not the least of which was grief. In the aftermath of Dolores’s tragic death, the fact that Fiona had lost a friend had largely gone unnoticed. Of course she was grieving, an emotion lifted to unnatural proportions by the way she died.
“Dolores was a lovely woman who certainly didn’t deserve this.” Nell offered Fiona a tissue. “There aren’t many words to ease the loss of a friend.”
Fiona took the tissue and nodded, her round face grateful.
“Murder is a strange and awful beast,” Birdie said. She motioned for Fiona to sit. “And so terribly human.”
Fiona looked into the glass Nell handed her, swirling the liquid against the sides, a whirlpool that seemed to match the emotions on her face. Finally, she set it down and nodded. “What’s that we say? To err is human, to forgive . . . divine? But it’s difficult to take that second step until we know whom we’re forgiving. Someone killed my friend. How can they bear to let others suffer because of their silence? And why did they do it? It’s so difficult to understand the taking of another’s life. No matter what reason. No matter the person.”
“T
he motive could be very simple,” Birdie said. “And very human. Exploring Dolores’s humanity may help us find that person.” She looked intently at Fiona. “That person will be caught, Fiona. This will end.”
The conviction in Birdie’s voice surprised the nun, and she managed a small smile. “And then we shall grieve in peace.”
“Yes, we shall.” Birdie sat back in the chair.
“Kayla must be grieving, too, in her own way. We sometimes forget that,” Nell said.
“Sure she is. But there’s more than grief going on inside her. And I’m not sure what it is. This unsolved murder is a horrendous thing and Kayla is tied to it no matter what. And I feel responsible for it—I knew Kayla needed a Dolores in her life. Even more, Dolores needed a Kayla. I just knew it right here,” Fiona placed a hand over her heart. “Charlie and I talked about it today. He came by the cafe to carry in some supplies for us.” Fiona turned and looked at Izzy. “Your brother understands life in a way that I wouldn’t have expected. Insightful, he is.”
“He’s been around the block a few times. Maybe that’s part of it,” Izzy said. “But you’re right. Charlie’s compassion is sincere. He’s turned into a sensitive guy.”
“He thinks Kayla’s stress is rooted in protecting her kids. Something is threatening that and he doesn’t think it’s related to Dolores’s murder. At least not directly.”
“That’s vague,” Izzy said.
Fiona agreed. “But I think Charlie and Kayla have had more late-night talks than any of us realize and he’s trying hard to figure it out. He says she’s complicated—I agree with him there—but in some ways he thinks she’s naïve. She knows she didn’t kill Dolores Cardozo, so Charlie claims that in her mind it’s a given that she won’t be convicted. So she isn’t afraid of being put in jail.”
Nell found some relief in knowing that Kayla didn’t lose sleep worrying that the police might show up at her door, even though her rationale might be naïve and her comfort premature.
“If she isn’t worried about being arrested, what do you think she’s afraid of?” Izzy asked.
“I don’t know. Charlie is determined to find out. He’s getting close, he says.”
Nell tried to pull apart the strands of thought tangled in her mind. Two roads diverging in the woods. Her head told her they needed to travel both. She looked over at Birdie, who was looking down at Elliott’s records of Dolores’s giving history. She was thinking the same thing.
Getting close. One path leading to a murderer. And one to a mother trying to protect her children.
Nell looked back to Fiona. “What did Charlie think of the café? It’s an amazing place.”
“It is that, but now that you ask, I don’t have a clue what Charlie thought of it. Gabby and Daisy showed him around and then left him to wander on his own. I saw him in the kitchen staring intently at the bulletin board as if it held the secrets to the universe instead of the menus for the week and other things people tack up there. The next thing I knew he was heading for the door at high speed, shouting a good-bye over his shoulder, and disappearing up the stairs as if his pants were on fire.”
“Maybe he had an emergency at the family clinic,” Cass said. “Or the free health clinic. Poor guy seems to be on call twenty-four hours a day.”
“Maybe.” Fiona fidgeted in the chair, her wine untouched, her expression still bothered. “I’m sorry to keep barging in on you like this.”
“No, no, you’re not barging in,” Cass said. But her voice was gentle and there was a smile that started in her eyes. “And we’re not sorry, either, Aunt Fiona. All of us are thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same wretched sadness, and trying to get our lives back to normal. Better to do it together than apart. Heck, you’re not so bad to have around.”
Nell looked over at Cass. There was something different about her these days. But she knew better than to ask about it, for fear of it disappearing. In the middle of all the uncertainty around the town, Cass seemed . . . well . . . settled, somehow.
Fiona was touched by her niece’s words, too, but in true Halloran fashion, she acknowledged them with a brief cough, a pat on Cass’s hand, and a change of subject.
“So”—she glanced at her watch and rose from the chair—“dinner with your mom tonight, Cass. I’d better get on over there. She eats earlier and earlier. Next thing I know we’ll be having pork chops for breakfast.”
Birdie looked up. “Fiona, before you leave, there’re some things about Dolores that confuse me, and you knew her better than any of us.”
Fiona stayed standing, her look wary. She wrapped her fingers around the top of a tall chair.
“You seem somehow protective of her—her life, her background.”
“She was a private person,” Fiona said. “She’d hate people talking about her. I respect that, so I don’t.”
“You knew she had a sister, right?” Birdie asked.
Fiona nodded. “Sure. It was in the obituary. I’m not sure how Mary Pisano unearthed that, but none of this matters now, does it? Her sister was at the center of her life, always in her thoughts. She devoted her life to her after their parents died. The girl died young and it broke Dolores’s heart.”
“Do you know how she died?”
Fiona seemed surprised at the question. “No,” she said. “She told me once that her sister was a troubled person. She ran away in her teens and got into drugs. Dolores didn’t like talking about it. I think she thought she had somehow failed her sister.”
Cass leaned forward in the chair, the computer still open on her lap, the blue screen lit with a faded newspaper obituary. She looked at Fiona and told her about Michelle Cardozo’s death.
Fiona released a lungful of air. She shook her head slowly. “How awful for Dolores. No wonder she was so understanding, so helpful to kids who had problems.”
“Sonny Favazza helped both Dolores and her sister,” Nell said. “He set up a trust for the two girls after their parents died, and he tried to find help for the sister for years after that.”
Fiona listened, putting the pieces in place. “Dolores never mentioned that.”
“And then Dolores herself set up one for Kayla,” Izzy said.
“There are obvious themes weaving through this story,” Birdie said.
“That explains why Dolores chose you to manage her will,” Fiona said.
“Or, more accurately, why she chose Sonny’s wife,” Birdie said. “I’m a stand-in for someone she trusted deeply—and I’m very happy to play that role. Her parents were killed leaving a company party. It’s what Sonny would do. But what I can’t figure out is why Dolores helped the Stewart family the way she did. I mean specifically. Was there something about that family that set them apart?”
They all looked up at Fiona.
She had loosened her grip on the back of the chair and started walking toward the door. She paused for just a moment. “It’s simple,” she said. “She was just paying it forward.”
They listened to Fiona’s footsteps fading away as she wound her way down the wide staircase, her words trailing after her.
The phrase echoed around the room, taking on different shades of meaning. Paying it forward was clear. But it still wasn’t clear why Kayla Stewart had been singled out. And they all knew the nun now walking out the front door had held something back.
Finally, Nell broke the silence, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner. “It’s almost time for our reservation, and we haven’t gotten to Elliott’s printouts. I think it’s critical that we do. We don’t want these getting in the way of Don Wooten’s Sunday night chef’s special.”
Izzy began spreading the sheets out on the table as she talked and stepped into her orderly lawyer mode. “Nell’s right. Kayla and Dolores’s relationship is interesting. And Sonny’s involvement with the family, especially his attempts to help Dolores help her sister, is generous and wonderful. Beneath her worry Kayla is grieving this woman just like Fiona is. All this is good for us to k
now because we care about the people involved. But there is more we need to know about Kayla, things she is holding tight to herself for reasons that probably seem legitimate to her.”
She paused for just a moment, looked around at her audience. “But right now that might be a distraction. Maybe Charlie can go down that road for us. But to find out who murdered Dolores Cardozo, we need to follow some other path. We’re on it, I think. All we need to do is stay the course.” She grinned. “There. That’s what I think.”
“Yes,” Birdie said, smiling broadly at Izzy. “Thank you, Isabel. You have brought us focus.”
“So shall I start?” Nell asked, then responded to the nods by filling them in quickly on her visit to the library and what she’d learned about Dolores’s studious and exact approach to the charities she sponsored. “She knew everything about every organization who received money from her. And probably about those who didn’t. And that’s something these records will tell us more clearly.”
Birdie had organized the sheets, one for each year since Dolores had retired and begun helping Sea Harbor in a myriad of ways.
“This is interesting,” Cass said, pointing to the columns on one of the sheets. “It’s like the New York Times best seller list, which, by the way, Danny has been on for every single book. He’s quite remarkable, you know.” She smiled as she said Danny’s name, a goofy kind of smile was how Izzy explained it later to Sam. Not Cass’s usual look.
“Cass, you’re getting soft on us,” Izzy said.
“I’d call it something else,” Birdie said wisely, looking into Cass’s deep blue eyes.
“Aw, come on, you guys,” Cass said, brushing off the teasing. “As I was saying, look at the lists carefully. They not only list each organization and the amount received, but indicate if it’s a new beneficiary or, if old, how many years it’s been on the list.”
Izzy held up a sheet she was looking at. “And at the bottom, she boxes those who were removed from the list that year.”
Birdie leaned over and scanned the sheet. “But it doesn’t say why.”
Murder Wears Mittens Page 27
