The Wedding Shawl

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “And all I wanted was for the guy to tell her to go away. To let her loose.”

  “But maybe he tried.”

  Sheila nodded that it could certainly have been the case. “Tiff probably wouldn’t have heard it. She was determined. I guess it’s not Andy’s fault. But when you’ve been blaming yourself for so many years, it’s a relief to have someone else to lay the burden on for a while, unfair or not.”

  The waitress cheerfully announced that their feast was ready and began filling the table with baskets of warm rolls and honey butter and a bowl to hold shells. Next came the plates, steaming hot and piled with corn, baked potatoes, and a magnificent lobster sitting in the middle of each. “Careful. They’re hot and they’re heavy,” she said. “Dig in.”

  And they did, as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks. Cass instructed Sheila on the process, first by gently twisting off the legs.

  Sheila dropped the skinny appendage into the bowl, and Cass immediately retrieved it. “Oh, no, no, no. Plenty of good meat in there.” She put it back on Sheila’s plate and continued with a lesson in using the nutcracker, showing her how to break off the tip of the claw, pushing out the meat with a forefinger, then all the way to what was arguably the pièce de résistance, the tail. Finally, with exaggerated drama, Cass pulled out the digestive tract and dumped it ceremoniously in the bowl.

  Sheila’s cheeks flushed with enjoyment. “I don’t think I ever had lobster when I lived here. Not once. And once I left, I never wanted it. Nebraska pork chops helped me create new memories that were easier to live with.”

  The talk spun around them, cheerful and upbeat, and the earlier conversation drifted to the background. Not gone. But removed. When Gracie sent over a bottle of chardonnay to go with the lobster, no one objected. Birdie poured glasses all around. “Gracie refers to the Lazy Lobster as a shack. I’ve scolded her for that.”

  “Not a shack, no way,” Izzy agreed, wiping a dribble of butter off her chin and pushing her chair back a few inches.

  “Right,” Cass said. “Shacks don’t have fireplaces.”

  “The Lazy Lobster and Soup Café is the jewel of Pelican Pier, as I like to think of it,” Birdie concluded.

  “Speaking of jewelry . . .” Nell reached into her purse and pulled out the velvet pouch they had retrieved from the backpack. “Sheila, I almost forgot. We found this in Tiffany’s things and thought it might be a family keepsake. We didn’t want to give it away until we’d checked.” She held the chain and amulet in the palm of her hand.

  Sheila looked at it, puzzled. “I wonder where this came from. It’s old, don’t you think?” She looked at it closer, touching the worn letters.

  “Would your father have been in some kind of club? The Elks club, maybe, or something like that?” Cass asked.

  Sheila looked at Cass, startled at the question. She stared down at the necklace. And then she laughed, a sad laugh with a touch of pain. She took a drink of water and then apologized. “I’m sorry; the question surprised me, is all. My father was a drunk, plain and simple. I think maybe he started drinking when he was just a kid and never stopped. He barely finished high school. And the thought of him even knowing what a civic club was is as bizarre as wondering if he’d ever been president. But you didn’t know all that. You must think me a little off balance.”

  “Not in the slightest,” Birdie said. She reached over and patted her hand. “We’re all a bit daft around here. And proud of it.”

  Sheila looked at the necklace again. “Are you sure this was Tiffany’s? I can’t imagine her having something like this, honestly. It’s old, so it must have belonged to someone else first, and if anyone gave her something like this, she’d have told me. At least, I think she would.”

  Nell slipped it back in the sack and into her purse. “Maybe it was someone else’s,” she agreed.

  “And maybe we’ll regret it terribly if we leave here without a piece of dear Gracie’s amazing key lime pie,” Birdie said. “What do you say?”

  A short while later, filled to the brim with lobster and key lime pie, the five women pushed back their chairs and agreed to call it a night.

  Birdie and Sheila were the first to leave. Sheila volunteered to drop Birdie off on her way back to Ravenswood-by-the-Sea—and her last night in the most fantastic bed she had ever met.

  But first she hugged each of them as if they were lifelong friends. She passed around business cards with her phone number and address scribbled on the back and brushed away the moisture that collected in her eyes. “I suspect we haven’t seen the last of each other,” she said. “At least I hope not.”

  “The welcome sign is always out,” Nell said.

  Nell, Cass, and Izzy stayed a few more minutes, standing near the fireplace and listening to the Fractured Fish close out the evening with a rousing rendition of “Twist and Shout.” The Lazy Lobster, its diners, and the empty plates of key lime pie vibrated in appreciation.

  “You’re wonderful,” Nell said, hugging a perspiring Pete as he came over to say hello.

  “Yeah, aren’t we great?” Merry said, an inch behind Pete. She was still jiggling her tiny body. Hank stood right behind her, his eyes confirming their greatness.

  Andy was across the room. He’d stopped at Esther and Richard Gibson’s table to say hello. Nell noticed Esther’s face soften as Andy leaned over and kissed her cheek. She could almost feel what the police dispatcher was feeling, the urge to wrap him up and keep him safe, just as his mother would have wanted her good friend to do. Andy straightened up and saw Nell watching him. He nodded, offered a half smile, and made his way across the room.

  “Hey, Nell, like the show?”

  “Of course.” She tucked her arm in his and asked if he had a minute.

  They stepped outside and stood beneath the Lazy Lobster and Soup Café sign hanging above the door. “We cleaned out Tiffany’s office today, Andy. Please keep this between us, but we found Harmony’s backpack.”

  “What?” Andy’s eyes widened, suddenly alert.

  “She was supposed to have an overnight at Tiffany’s house the night she died.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Tiffany told me to come by for doughnuts the next morning. But that would have been the last thing Harmony wanted.”

  “She left the backpack at Tiffany’s, and it seems she kept it.”

  “From the police?”

  “From everyone. Tiffany’s sole purpose in life seemed to be protecting you. Maybe she thought there’d be something in it that would look bad for you.”

  “Bad? Why? Like what? What was in it?”

  “It was overnight things, mostly. Harmony’s clothes. But there were a couple of other things.” Nell pulled out the chain and medallion and showed it to him. She watched his face carefully. At first it seemed as if he’d never seen it before. Then a distant memory flickered in his eyes.

  “I saw Harmony with this on just once. It was at school, toward the end of the year. I asked her what it was, and she got mad. Covered it up with her hand, as if it was a secret. And when I saw her later that day, she wasn’t wearing it. Weird.”

  Not so weird. Harmony had secrets—and they were ones even her friend Tiffany knew nothing about. If she were secretly seeing someone, and this came from him, she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see it, Nell suspected.

  She slipped it back into her purse. “There’s one other thing—something that Harmony wanted Tiffany to hang on to for her. It was a lab report confirming her pregnancy.”

  Andy’s expression didn’t change. Nell might as well have told him it might rain. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and listened for what Nell would say next. With the tip of his boot, he kicked a stone across the pier.

  Nell said nothing.

  Finally Andy spoke. “Okay. I didn’t know Harmony was pregnant until the other night at the Artist’s Palate. We had this great secret, Tiff said, that would bond us together for life. I think she thought if the police knew Harmony had been pregnant, maybe t
hey’d reopen the case. Come at me again. So she wouldn’t tell them. She’d protect me. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “There was a kind of threat in her voice. She knew she should have handed everything over to the police after Harmony died, she said. All these years later, her conscience was bothering her. But if we were together, she’d hold on to the secret until she died. It was a subtle kind of blackmail. I’d never have gotten together with her if I’d known how she felt about me, how needy she was. I sure didn’t mean to hurt her. I thought it was just a fun thing, someone to be with. But it got heavy and she started suffocating me. When I distanced myself, said we had to cool it, she pulled out the baby secret. She thought it would cement the relationship or something, I guess.”

  “Did she think you killed Harmony?”

  “I’ve thought a lot about that. From where she stood that night, all she saw was the two of us disappearing between the parked cars. I think she assumed I got in the car with her. That Harmony told me about the baby, and we argued. What would that do to our future? Our scholarships? And somehow during the argument, Harmony accidentally fell into the quarry.”

  Nell took it all in, heavy with the sadness of Andy’s story. If he was right, for fifteen years Tiffany had held on to her own version of what had happened that night. She probably played it over and over in her head. It must have been as real to her as anything in her life. And probably why she never went to see Claire Russell after Harmony died. What could she say to her without revealing what her mind’s eye saw?

  “And you know what the awful part of that story is? I would have jumped in after her so fast. Harmony couldn’t swim. I’d have saved her in an instant, pulled her out. Saved her life.”

  And she’d have loved you forever. The thoughts in Andy’s head were as clear as if he had spoken them aloud. Nell felt his fifteen-year-old sadness ripen right before her. But she went on, needing more answers.

  “The other night we assumed the baby Tiffany was talking about was hers, and you let us go on thinking that. Why?”

  “Why?” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Because of Harmony’s mom, I guess. Tiff said no one knew, not even her mother. Why have Claire suffer all over again, knowing she’d not only lost a daughter but a grandchild? Made no sense to me. And what difference did it make if you thought it was Tiffany’s?” He paused and opened the door to the café. “Gotta go. I’ve some drums that need to go home.”

  Nell stood, unmoving, on the step. “Andy, just one more thing. About the baby’s father . . .”

  Andy’s face grew hard. His voice was even and his blue eyes pierced directly into Nell’s soul.

  “No, absolutely not. I didn’t get Tiffany or Harmony or anyone else in this town pregnant. Not fifteen years ago or one day ago or one month ago. End of story. Now, shall we?” He opened the door wider.

  Nell walked past him and into the restaurant, jostled by a group of diners filing out.

  When she looked over their moving heads for Andy, he had disappeared.

  Chapter 30

  “He was angry,” she told Ben the next morning. “I can’t blame him.”

  They sat at the island, an unopened newspaper between them. Ben put down his mug. “I don’t blame him, either, though I know why you asked him. You needed to hear him say it. But if Andy’s telling the truth, he’s been a pawn in this mess. Not only in Tiffany’s death, but back when he was a teenager. Imagine having to answer question after question, and never being sure if people believe you? You’d get damn tired of it.”

  “I believe him,” Nell said. “But we need proof, Ben. Without it, how many more years will he have to live under this cloud? Even if they can’t charge him with anything, it’s still a terrible thing for him to have to live with.”

  “And Jake, too. But Nell, you’re putting yourself out there again, asking questions. How do you know that there wasn’t someone right there in the Lazy Lobster, seeing you talking to Andy and wondering what you were asking, where you were going with it? Someone who might be knee-deep in this mess.”

  Someone who might be the murderer, was what Ben didn’t say, at least not out loud. Nell wouldn’t admit it to him, but she’d had the same thought. And so had Izzy and Cass. They’d talked about it on the way home from the restaurant and vowed to one another to be cautious. Nell thought of all the marital problems and kids’ indiscretions that she’d overheard on Coffee’s patio.

  “Confirmation of Harmony’s pregnancy adds a new twist to this,” Ben said. “In a way, it’s even worse for Andy. It’s another reason he’d have to want her dead.”

  “But if he’s telling the truth, then someone else got her pregnant. Someone else who may have wanted her dead. She had just turned seventeen, Ben. Sixteen, probably, when she got pregnant.”

  “Rape” was the unspoken word that settled between them.

  “From what Claire has told me about Harmony’s father, he’d have stopped at nothing if he thought someone had violated his daughter. Harmony was the youngest in her class. It could have been someone over eighteen.”

  “Was there any talk of Harmony seeing someone else in their class? It’s hard to keep things like that secret. Kids see each other in the hall and around town. Where do you go to keep a relationship like that secret? Especially one that ends up in pregnancy.” Ben refilled their cups.

  “Andy kept his eyes open at school when he suspected something but never saw anything suspicious. Sometimes girls are better at that, but even Tiffany didn’t know about it. It was a deep, dark secret.”

  The ringing of Nell’s cell interrupted them. She glanced down.

  “It’s my sister,” she said, looking up.

  Ben smiled. “Then I’m out of here.” He stood and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be over at Father Northcutt’s place if you need me. I’m reworking his budget for a new homeless shelter. Make sure you close your sunroof—they say it might rain.”

  Nell kissed her cautious husband back and pressed the TALK button on her phone.

  Caroline wanted to go over the to-do list again, and Nell listened patiently, knowing that managing a daughter’s wedding from half a country away was difficult. She knew Caroline trusted her to get things done, but having organized her fair share of charity galas in Kansas City, Caroline had a difficult time completely releasing the reins.

  Nell dutifully took notes and realized as Caroline talked that she had, in fact, forgotten one thing. The vases. Laura Danvers had a collection of them that she was loaning them for the reception at Ravenswood-by-the-Sea. She’d pick them up this week, she promised Caroline.

  “And the wedding shawl?” Caroline asked.

  “Almost finished,” Nell assured her. She’d been texting Caroline photos every few days so she could watch it grow. “Like a grandbaby,” Nell had teased.

  Caroline loved it. And loved the shawl.

  “It’s . . . it’s exquisite, Nell,” she said.

  Nell could hear the emotion coating her words. Gone was the sometimes rigid, organized Caroline. In her place was the soft, vulnerable mother of the bride.

  “And, Sis?” Caroline said, her voice so low now that Nell could barely hear her.

  Nell looked at her list to see what else was missing. “Hmm?” she said, mentally ticking off items.

  “I love you,” her sister said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Birdie said. “I’m teaching my tap class but will stop by right after. Wait for me.”

  The timing was fine with Nell. It would give her an hour to work on Izzy’s shawl. And to think. She carried Birdie’s bag out to the deck and spread out a sheet on the table, not taking a chance on what a breeze might whip up.

  The sun peeked through the hazy sky and warmed her face and arms. For a minute she could almost forget the shades of gray that hovered over their lives.

  Caroline was right. The shawl was exquisite. She touched the lace with her fingertips. It was a true lace design—some of the lace rows being stacked
without plain knitting in between.

  A labor of love.

  Just like a baby was.

  Who did Harmony Farrow love, or think she loved? Some seventeen-year-old boy who hadn’t begun to live his life but now had a baby on his conscience? What a difficult time. Telling her mother would have been impossible, Nell supposed. How would they keep that silent in a small house? Her father would find out. And then . . . ? What decisions would have been stripped from Harmony? It was beyond Nell’s imagining—and her comfort level, she realized. But somehow that pregnancy, planned or unplanned, had triggered events that had touched each one of them. And as irrational a thought as it might be, she didn’t want it to be a shadow in the background when her only niece walked down the garden pathway to marry Sam Perry.

  Ninety minutes later Harold dropped Birdie off in the big Lincoln. Although he offered to chauffeur them around, they preferred the Endicotts’ CRV. “Easier to park,” Birdie told Harold, and waved him off.

  Nell made sure there was room in the back for the vases, and they set off toward Sea Harbor Point and the Danvers’ home.

  Laura met them at the door and had iced tea ready, insisting they sit for a minute before loading the vases.

  “This is a good time to come—the kids are with a babysitter and I’m actually free for a while.” She threw her arms open wide. “A glorious feeling.”

  They laughed and followed Laura into the family room and a grouping of comfortable chairs.

  “So tell me everything,” she said. “How are the wedding plans going?”

  “Things are fine,” Nell said.

  “But there’s this awful murder investigation going on at the same time,” Laura said. “It’s horrible. Do you think it’s connected to Harmony Farrow’s death? It’s brought back such awful memories of those times.”

  “That’s right,” Nell said. “You were in her class.”