“Gracie?”
Cass nodded. “She told me last night she was going to figure this out herself if the police didn’t let her mother off the hook soon. I think she’s worried about what would happen if Julianne disappeared.”
“They haven’t completely ruled out that Alphonso might have been the intended victim,” Nell said.
“Because of contract disputes?”
“That’s one thing. And competitors dislike Alphonso. D.J. and Alphonso had a showdown at a recent council hearing. D.J. suggested Alphonso was using his wife to smear Delaney’s reputation.”
“What does that mean?” Izzy took a sip of her wine. She pulled out a skein of lavender baby alpaca. “Is Alphonso in danger?”
Nell glanced over at the pattern lying open on the table in front of Izzy. The belted sweater was beautiful, perfect for someone long and lean like her niece. She would attract attention in a potato sack, but this sweater would cause people to stop her on the street.
“No. There’s too much scrutiny to do anything to Alphonso,” Nell said, still looking at the pattern.
“Well, I think it’s all hogwash.” Birdie leaned forward and set down her soup bowl. “Everyone around here knew Sophia was the only one who drove that car. And we know for a fact that Alphonso had his truck at the club that night. THE SANTOS COMPANY is painted across the side of it as big as a moose’s head. It was even in some of the photos on the society page that had been taken that night. After he gave up the Ferrari, Alphonso always drove that behemoth of a truck. Free advertising, I guess.”
“It might have been someone we know, someone sitting at a table in the same dining room, eating the same food.” Izzy shivered and the group grew silent, pondering the disturbing thought. Strangers were one thing; friends and neighbors were another. But someone had killed Sophia. Someone had become angry enough with her or disliked her enough to end her life. And that was fact.
“I wonder if Alphonso and Sophia were having problems. One never knows what goes on behind closed doors.” Nell pulled her knitting from a large bag at her side. “That story Gracie told us about Alphonso giving Sophia the car indicates something happened between them.”
“She said they argued. And it must have been a doozy to merit a Ferrari as a peace offering. Which I think is downright weird,” Izzy said. “And now . . . seeing him with Liz Palazola. So intimate like.” She looked up at Nell. “That’s how you described it, Aunt Nell, even though I know you don’t want to think that.”
Cass picked up Izzy’s thought. “Why would Liz be with Alphonso? And in an out-of-the-way place, not even a week after his wife was murdered? They didn’t just bump into each other there.” Cass wagged a knitting needle in the air. “Okay, let’s just get it out there—were they having an affair? She’s about as gorgeous a woman as he’d find anywhere, besides his own wife.”
“Younger, but that shouldn’t matter. There are plenty of women Liz’s age who would give their heart to Alphonso if he’d ask.”
Nell collected the empty soup bowls and set them on a side table. “I don’t know what to think about it. But seeing them together reminded me of how solicitous Liz was at the wake. Almost as if she could anticipate what Alphonso would want of her, would like—the way people do who know each other very well.”
Nell mentioned the conversation she and Birdie had overheard at the club when Sophia was leaving. It occurred to her suddenly that they might have been the last people to have seen Sophia—along with Alphonso. “She could have just meant she was leaving him to go home. But what if she knew there was someone else?”
“So if we’re talking suspects, Liz and Alphonso belong on the list,” Birdie said with some force. “Having Sophia out of the way would definitely benefit them. Sophia was so religious—I’m not sure divorce would be acceptable to her.”
“Liz is a really fine woman,” Nell began.
“Of course she is, Nell dear. And so is Julianne. Liz is also a woman with fine mechanical skills.” Birdie repeated the scene with Stella fixing the lawn mower. “Liz could fix anything, Stella said. Including cars.”
“So we’re officially trying to find the killer?” Izzy said, her voice lifting. Her brows shot up.
“Someone has to,” Cass said, “And before Gracie goes and gets herself killed. No matter what her relationship is with Julianne, Gracie can’t abandon her—and a lot of people are pointing their fingers directly at her. Gracie went down to the police station today and she nearly made Tommy Porter cry, bombarding him with questions, telling him that her mother needed to move on with her life.”
“Poor Tommy,” Izzy said, feeling instant empathy for the young policeman. “He doesn’t do well under stress.”
“Gracie felt sorry for him, too, so she backed off. And once she was being nice again, his lips loosened and he told her that they had to question her mom because everyone knew she hated Sophia Santos. It would be irresponsible not to, he said a little solicitously, Gracie thought. But then he added that he personally thought they needed to look more closely at the owner of the Gull Tavern, Jake Risso.”
“Jake?” Nell said. “Jake is a curmudgeon, not a killer. Tommy is probably upset because Jake always cards him when he goes to the Gull. He won’t let Tommy grow up.”
“No, it could be more than that,” Birdie said. “Jake’s been on a toot lately. He rented the Pisano house after old Enzo died last year. Mary Pisano inherited the house from her grandfather and she couldn’t do much with it until Enzo’s estate was all settled. Jake said it was his dream house—so Mary rented it to him for the year while the family decided what to do. Why a widower needs an eight-bedroom house is beyond me, but it’s none of my business, now, is it?”
Nell smiled at the irony in Birdie’s statement. Her own home—the one Sonny Favazza carried her into on their wedding night—had at least eight bedrooms, and more living spaces than any of the knitters had ever attempted to count. Had she been questioned about living alone in a big house, Birdie would have said she didn’t consider it a “house” in that sense—a building with bedrooms. The Favazza home and land was a part of Sonny. A part of her. It would be like selling my soul, she would have said if anyone had questioned her.
“I always thought that the beach access land belonged to the Pisano house,” Cass said.
“It did. But when Sophia offered Enzo an enormous amount of money for the access land not too long before he died, he sold it to her. He thought it would be less trouble for Mary when he was gone. He never thought Sophia would close it off the way she did, though, or he wouldn’t have done it. Enzo loved having the whole neighborhood traipse down to the cove on his little trail. Once he even made a wooden sign and posted it right at the road. It said, ‘Enzo’s Access. Welcome one and all.’ And he stuck a hook on it with plastic doggy bags attached for anyone who needed one.”
“I remember that,” Cass said. “Mary wrote a nice story about it in her column.”
“But how does Jake Risso figure in this?” Nell coaxed. Birdie told wonderful, colorful stories and knew more about Sea Harbor than the town historian, but sometimes it slowed down the issue at hand.
“Jake didn’t know Enzo had sold off that land. Jake thought it went with the house and he signed a year’s lease with Mary. Poor fool didn’t read the contract carefully, I guess, because he was in such a hurry to live on Ravenswood Road.
“When he found out, he went a little crazy. He had counted on that land as a way to get his boat into the water. Jake is passionate about his fishing—ever since his wife died, he pursues it with a frenzy. And now that he’s finally allowing his son more time to run the tavern, it’s truly his first love.”
“So he can’t get his boat into the water there now?” Cass asked. “That’s a bummer.”
“Well, he can, but he shouldn’t. Jake is nothing if not resourceful. He’s found ways, mostly breaking Sophia’s locks and going down the pathway just like everyone always did before Sophia closed it off.
“Then she bought new locks. And Jake broke those, too. Finally Sophia called the police—that’s probably why Tommy thought of Jake as a suspect. They gave Jake a ticket for damaging property. He paid it happily. Then the next day, he did the same thing.”
Cass laughed. “I didn’t know Jake had it in him.”
“Apparently he does. But in the end, Sophia won. That week before she died, she had four concrete posts anchored into the ground. No boat is going to go down that road again.”
The sky above the knitting studio darkened while they talked, casting long shadows across the hardwood floor. The wind picked up, whistling through the two pine trees that marked the corner of the knitting shop. Izzy got up and pulled closed the windows facing the ocean. “It’s so beautiful out there,” she murmured, half to herself.
“Too beautiful to be tarnished by murder, that’s what you’re thinking,” Nell said, putting her knitting aside and walking over to Izzy. They stood silently for a few minutes, looking out at the same scene that had convinced them a few years ago that the abandoned store with the big back windows was the perfect place for Izzy’s yarn shop. In the distance was the breakwater, and on the farthest tip of visible land, one could glimpse Anja Angelina Park.
Ben had built the seat beneath the two long windows before they’d even begun to clean up the dingy building, and Nell had fashioned the soft cushions that Purl now considered hers. But the view was the same, the colors changing with the season, the life of the sea changing daily.
“It’s not just Gracie’s mother I worry about,” Izzy said to Nell. “It’s Liz. And Annabelle. Think what it will do to her if Liz is implicated in this mess. The Delaneys will surely be questioned, even Joey. Those boys are all so loyal to their father. And Gracie won’t be able to move on with her life and her business and her peace of mind until all this is behind her.”
Nell nodded, her thoughts paralleling Izzy’s exactly, as often happened. Their friends, too many of them, would have their lives thrown into chaos if this weren’t settled quickly. But it was even more than their friends. It was the whole town. The aftermath of murder didn’t just fade away. It would be there every day, staring them in the face, causing an anxious current along the narrow roads of Sea Harbor until the murderer was caught.
A ringing cell phone broke into her thoughts and Nell automatically felt her pocket.
But Izzy had claimed the call as coming from her phone and she stepped into the galley kitchen to answer.
“Birdie,” she called a minute later. “It’s Esther from the police station. She wants to talk to you.” Izzy’s expression was a question mark.
As Sea Harbor’s longest-running dispatcher, Esther Gibson was in the know before almost anyone. Sometimes, Ben would tease her, before things even happened. “Our prescient Esther,” he’d call her.
Izzy handed Birdie her phone. “She said she didn’t have your number handy and she knew you were here because it was Thursday. God help us if we ever change the day or place.”
Nell saw a flicker of worry pass across Birdie’s face. She’d be wondering if Ella and Harold were all right. But Stella was at the house, doing some painting for Birdie. She would have called if anything was wrong. Surely.
“Yes, Esther, dear,” Birdie was saying. “No, it’s not mine. It belongs to the Santoses. . . . Well, of course I will tell them . . . Yes . . . Right now . . . That’s fine, Esther. Go back to work now, dear, and don’t worry your head about my daffodils or those new bushes that Harold planted this spring.”
Birdie set Izzy’s phone down on the coffee table and began folding her knitting into her backpack.
She looked up at the three faces staring at her.
Birdie sighed. “It seems we underestimated the power of one Jake Risso. Esther says Sophia didn’t win the battle of the road after all. And the police are on their way.”
Chapter 13
“Esther was concerned that the police would trample my new bushes,” Birdie explained as Nell drove quickly down Harbor Road.
Izzy and Cass had piled into the backseat and leaned forward to listen. “Bushes, yarn, flowers. Esther’s worries know no bounds,” Izzy said.
“She’s sweet to think about the plants, I suppose.” Birdie nodded. “But I’m more concerned about Harold and Ella. Apparently Ella called the police and was single-handedly taking on Jake Risso.”
The police were a short distance ahead of Nell, the light spinning around, and she pulled over on the easement, right behind Tommy Porter’s black-and-white Chevy. Birdie was out of the car before Nell’s engine died, running across the road as quickly as her short legs could take her.
Jake Risso sat atop a small tractor aimed at one of the round cement posts that Sophia Santos had strategically planted at the end of the pathway to the beach. Three posts had already been pummeled, broken off at the base by the force of Jake’s self-designed battering ram. He had one more to go, and it was looking wobbly as Nell, Cass, and Izzy rushed up behind Birdie.
“Jake, what the hell are you doing? Get off that thing.”
It was Tommy Porter, his stuttering gone in the heat of the moment, his voice strong. Several police spotlights added definition to Jake’s machinations and emphasis to Tommy’s words.
Birdie’s attention shifted from Jake to her housekeeper, whose narrow body was planted in front of the one remaining post. “Ella, dear, I don’t think that’s a good place to be. Come over here now.”
Birdie’s words were gentle, but her voice was stern.
Ella shifted her glare from Jake to Birdie, then back to the source of her anger. “I’m protecting Sophia’s property.”
“I tried to stop her.” Stella stood nearby, her purple hoodie wrapped tightly around her. “She’s crazy. I told her it wasn’t her business.”
“It’s police business now, right, Tommy?” A tall figure, standing directly behind Tommy, stepped up next to him.
“Danny Brandley, that you?” Jake said.
“Hey, Jake,” Danny said.
“He’s with me,” Tommy mustered. “He’s riding with me tonight.”
Jake turned off the tractor’s engine and silence fell around them. He looked over at Tommy and Dan, the bookstore owner’s son. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “The lady’s dead now. Finally. Game’s over. We need to get things back to the way they used to be.”
Nell looked over at Ella. If looks alone could kill, Jake would be lying on the ground at that moment.
The group moved closer to the police car, all of them, and Stella whispered to Cass, “That guy’s hot.”
Nell glanced at Danny Brandley, who either hadn’t heard, or had graciously ignored Stella’s comment. Danny must be in town visiting his parents, she thought. She made a note to drop by the bookstore and say hello.
“The way I hear it, Jake,” Tommy said, “is councilwoman Beatrice Scaglia is fighting your battle nicely—and legally—with the council and Mr. Santos.”
“That takes too long,” Jake pushed. “Even Beatrice is at her wit’s end. Couldn’t get Sophia Santos to listen to common sense.”
Dan Brandley spoke up. “Tommy here knows what he’s talking about.”
“Aw, come on, Danny. I’ve known you since you were a snot-nosed kid. No harm done here. I’ll clean up the mess. I know you’re a big-shot reporter now, but this is small-town stuff.”
“He has no right to do this,” Ella blurted out, her shaking finger pointed at Jake Risso.
Birdie walked over to Ella. “The police will take it from here, Ella. It was brave of you to come out in the dark, but why don’t you go back to the carriage house and check on Harold? He must wonder what all the ruckus is about.”
“That Jake’s a crazy man. Not right in the head,” Ella said to Birdie. “This was so important to Sophia. So very important. He made it so hard for her.” Ella looked over at the crushed cement. “Sophia wasn’t selfish, no matter what they say. It was for her sister, it was all for her sister. Jake Risso has n
o right—”
Nell, standing on Ella’s other side, nodded, although she wasn’t sure what Ella was saying nor why Sophia had blocked the path for her sister. In fact, she didn’t know Sophia had a sister. But she was fairly sure about Jake Risso. He clearly had no right.
Ella looked once more at the chunks of concrete littering the ground. Then she sighed loudly and walked back up Birdie’s long driveway to check on her husband. Nell had no doubt that Harold would be waiting on the small deck, peering into the darkness and worrying about his wife, who had suddenly turned into a social activist.
As Ella disappeared from sight, another vehicle came up the hill, sending Tommy into action. “It’s . . . d-dangerous for all of you to be hanging out here near the road like this,” Tommy said. “It’s dark. Cars might not see you.”
The car drew closer, slowed, then came to a sudden stop. Behind the wheel of a canary-yellow BMW convertible, his jaw set, sat Alphonso Santos.
“What the hell . . .” Alphonso’s voice flew up over the car door and through the dark night. He turned off the engine and got out of the car. His body towered over Jake Risso. “What’s going on here, Jake?”
“H’lo, Alphonso. Just burning the midnight oil. Opening up this walkway so the ocean isn’t just for a privileged few. No need to bother you about it.”
They all turned toward Alphonso. Although Nell had never witnessed his temper, Ben had seen it at yacht club board meetings. Nell’s good friend Rachel Wooten had been the object of Alphonso’s ire a few weeks before, and it had shaken the always-composed attorney considerably. It was over the beach access, Rachel had told her. As a city attorney she’d hoped to convince him the city would keep the walkway maintained if he would consent to open it again for the convenience of the neighborhood.
But he’d turned red, Rachel had said, and in angry tones that called the entire office to attention, he bellowed out that it was his wife’s wish, her land, and if they tried in any way to dishonor it, there’d be hell to pay.
Moon Spinners Page 10
