Chapter 24
The appearance of a waitress had given Tyler an out, but instead of disappearing, he prudently suggested he leave them alone to enjoy their sandwiches, then excused himself.
They’d all laughed a little, just to ease his discomfort, and Birdie suggested he go home and get some sleep; he looked exhausted.
“Do you believe him?” Izzy asked as he disappeared below.
“Which part?” Cass asked.
“That it was all over anyway, and Justin had bigger plans. What did he say? Bigger fish to fry?”
“Maybe he was desperate to change the subject and move the emphasis from what was happening at the beach to something that didn’t involve him,” Nell said. “We’d have absolutely no way of knowing if it was true.”
“A possibility.” Birdie swallowed a bite of sandwich. “Do we believe him? Yes, we need to start with that question. Was Tyler just protecting Tyler? Or was he telling the truth?”
They all liked him, which made answering the question more difficult. And his grandmother was a friend.
Finally Izzy answered her own question. “I do. I believe him. I think he was so scared he wasn’t thinking clearly. Someone who would be that afraid of the four of us couldn’t possibly kill anyone. Right?”
“Besides, what motive would he have?” Cass asked.
“That’s true—it’s hard to come up with one. But that’s only true if you believe him,” Nell said. “If you don’t, if he’s lying about the friendly way he and Justin parted company, about the last deal being fair and square, then there might be a motive.”
“What would it be?” Izzy asked.
“I think any time you’re dealing with money in this way, you’re at risk. Tyler was taking money from the women, then dealing with Justin—he was right in the middle. Maybe somehow Justin was cheating all of them—giving them something inferior, and he had put Tyler right in the middle of it.”
“So he got back at him by murdering him?” Birdie said. “Why wouldn’t he simply find Justin and demand the money back?”
That thought silenced everyone for a short while, though as they all knew, motives for murder didn’t always lend themselves readily to reason.
Finally Nell said, “Perhaps he was concerned that Justin would threaten to tell everyone what was going on. Ty couldn’t bear the thought of Esther knowing.” But it was a flimsy motive, they all agreed.
The night had turned chilly and Izzy shivered, pulling her loose-knit hoodie tightly around her. “He must be regretting the day he met Justin. I think Janie reached that point, too.”
“We’re skirting the most interesting thing Tyler said,” Birdie took a sip of water and continued. “He said Justin had bigger fish to fry.”
Nell nodded. She pushed the basket of calamari toward Izzy. “I agree. And I agree with Izzy. I don’t think Ty made any of it up. It doesn’t make sense for him to do that. And I can hear Justin saying those exact words. He had bigger fish to fry.”
“If he was beginning to make money somewhere else—more money—it would explain some things,” Birdie said. She picked up the pitcher Andy had left on the table, and filled everyone’s glasses. “He’d been spending a lot of money in the few days right before his death. Money, according to Janie, that he couldn’t possibly have earned legitimately. A complete set of original stoneware, for example, that cost him hundreds of dollars. And a hefty donation to a charity. From what Tyler said, that wasn’t the kind of money that changed hands via the baby seat. Tens and twenties, he said.”
“Jane said he paid for the pottery with one-hundred-dollar bills.”
“Don’t forget the motorcycle he showed up on the night before he died,” Nell said. “You’re absolutely right, Birdie. He wasn’t getting that kind of money from the kids on the beach—and we know now he didn’t get it from your necklace.”
“As big and gaudy as the piece of jewelry was, it wasn’t worth the kind of money Justin was spending.”
“Suppose the person supplying him was moving on to something else? Some activity that was bringing in more money. It seems to go back again to the great unknown, the mysterious person in Justin’s life. Someone he knew. Talked to. Met with.”
“Conspired with.”
Their minds immediately went to work dissecting the town, the neighborhood, the artists’ colony, searching for someone they’d seen Justin with, someone who might have facilitated the whole awful mess . . . someone who might have killed him.
But every single person who came to mind was someone they knew. Janie. Tommy Porter. Archie Brandley. Lily Virgilio. Dr. Seltzer. And now, rising like hot air to the top of the pile, there was Tyler Gibson.
But targeting someone they might know—and even like—was a task that soon brought Izzy to her feet. “It’s time for me to roll on home,” she said, patting her stomach. “Junior and I can’t think anymore.”
As if on cue, Sam appeared in the doorway. “Came to claim my best girl,” he said. “Ready, Iz?”
It was time to call it a night, everyone agreed. They stood and made their way single file down the stairway into the mass of bodies below.
Ben and Danny were waiting at the bottom, heatedly discussing the missed fly ball to left field, which they quickly tabled when the women appeared. Ben cleared a path through the crowded bar and out to the sidewalk. The smell of fried fish and fries diminished with each step.
“A long day?” Ben wrapped an arm around Nell’s shoulder.
She nodded and waved good-bye to the others. “They all seem long right now.”
“Long and muddled,” Ben agreed, turning the key in the ignition. “Murder has a nasty way of doing that.”
He made a U-turn, then drove north on Harbor Road, his CRV operating on instinct and heading toward Sandswept Lane. To home, to bed.
As they drove past McClucken’s Hardware Store, Ben slowed down. “Look over there,” he said.
Nell looked. Sitting on a bench in front of the store was a lone figure. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and his hands holding his head as if it would topple to the ground without support. Tyler Gibson looked as if he had just lost his best friend.
• • •
Ben and Nell slept soundly, and awoke to a day saturated in sunshine.
Perhaps it’s an omen, Birdie said, showing up at the Endicotts’ door for a cup of coffee. She and Gabby had come over on their bikes, new ones that Birdie had ordered off the Internet, she said proudly. “They call them city bikes.”
Gabby was in and out, gulping down the glass of orange juice Ben offered her. “Baby shower planning,” she said. Lots to do. Jane and Willow needed her.
She was gone before Ben had filled three mugs with coffee.
“Now you see her, now you don’t,” Birdie said. “But such energy she leaves in her wake.”
“You’re loving it, aren’t you?” Nell said. “Every minute of it.”
“I love her. And her spirit. Somehow that makes me see life a little differently. Gabby doesn’t shy away from anything, whether it’s horrible or joyful. It’s all part of life’s great tasty soup.”
Nell listened and kept her own thoughts private. Gabby’s spirit was energizing, that was true, but Birdie wasn’t learning from Gabby. Gabby was absorbing her nonna’s spirit—a fine tribute to the wise woman who had welcomed the young girl into her life. And Birdie was simply seeing it reflected in a new, younger light.
Nell slid the cream across the island.
“I think we’re looking in all the wrong places,” Birdie said, moving on to the reason she had stopped by—that and Ben’s scones, she said.
“We?” Ben took the scones out of the oven and slid them onto a plate. Fresh blueberries oozed from a tiny slit in the side of a pastry.
Birdie reached over and scooped it up with her finger. “All right, Ben, have it your way. The police, all of us. A big we. But I think this business with Ty and Justin and selling pot to a group of college kids might be a distraction.”
“From what?” Ben asked, but Nell knew where Birdie was going. The same thoughts had accompanied her early-morning shower.
“Well, that’s what we need to find out. But let’s start with the money. Justin had a lot of money that last week or so, and from what Tyler said, it didn’t come from him and his girlfriends. So whoever Justin was working with must have provided him with a bigger, more lucrative opportunity. And one that must have allowed more chances for him to mess it up. . . .”
“And get himself murdered.” Ben handed them each a fork and a plate with a flaky scone and a dollop of Greek yogurt on top.
“Yes,” Birdie said. “Exactly. And from what we’re hearing lately, Horace Stevenson didn’t always mind his own business. He and Red knew everything that went on down at Paley’s Cove.”
“Which could be what got him killed.”
“Of course there’s a big unknown here. Two, actually,” Birdie admitted. She cut into the scone and smiled her thanks to Ben. “You do make good scones—definitely not one of the unknowns.”
“The two unknowns, then,” Ben said, helping himself to the last scone.
“Number one, what is this more lucrative project that lured away our friend Justin? We know it wasn’t the necklace. And it wasn’t the pot, at least not what was being sold to the kids on the beach.”
“Which brings us back to the question we always come back to,” Nell finished.
“Who,” Birdie said, finishing her scone and putting the plate in the sink.
“Who,” Nell repeated.
“Yes. Who. Now ponder that, my friends, while I take me and my bike down to Gus McClucken’s to find out what this dive shop is that seems to feature quite prominently in all this. It’s time we got a little proactive, don’t you think?”
And with that, as was Birdie’s way, she was gone, out the front door with Nell’s “good-bye” hanging in the air behind her.
A habit, Nell realized with a smile, that young Gabby was mastering quite nicely, too.