Chapter 33
We’re looking in all the wrong places. . . .
The words echoed in Izzy’s knitting room Monday morning as they sat around the library table, trying to collect the random snatches of conversation and observations made over the long weekend. They had arrived an hour before, brisk showers waking them up, along with Nell’s directive that they be clearheaded, alert.
On the table were mugs of hot coffee and half-eaten cinnamon rolls.
None of them doubted that Martin Seltzer had motive and opportunity to kill Justin. And they were just as convinced that he hadn’t done it.
And all of them knew that old Harry was right. Justin’s murder had nothing to do with stealing pot from a small garden on the clinic roof.
Justin had bigger fish to fry.
“He found out something that no one else knew about. It was important enough that someone would kill to keep him silent,” Izzy said. “If we can figure that out . . .”
“I think we will have the murderer,” Cass said.
The room fell silent.
A knock on the alley door broke into the silence, and Janie Levin opened it, peeking in. “Hey, can I come in?”
Birdie poured her a cup of coffee and they pulled out a chair.
“I can’t stay. I want to get in early today to help Dr. Lily put out fires. It’s been crazy.” She reached into her large tote and pulled out a beat-up fanny pack. “But look what I found yesterday.”
“Where did you find it?” Izzy asked.
“I cleaned my car out, the first time since all this happened, and it was stuck down between the seats. I think Justin probably stuck it there when he went to the dive Sunday. And . . .”
And he never had the chance to retrieve it.
Nell unzipped it and pulled the canvas folds apart. Inside, she fingered dozens of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.
Cass whistled.
Janie said, “I know. When I saw that money, I nearly fainted. I didn’t count it—but there’s a lot.” She checked her watch. “I need to run, but, Nell, you had asked me to keep an eye out for this—so here it is. I suppose the police or someone will want a look at it—”
“I can take care of that for you, Janie. I’ll give it to Ben—or drop it off myself.”
Janie waved and was off, prepared for a busy day at the Virgilio Clinic.
“Well,” Birdie said, her hands flat on the table.
“This is what we saw at the Edge.”
“He was meeting someone that Saturday,” Izzy said. “This must have been why it was so important.”
“So whoever he was blackmailing gave him money earlier in the week that he used to buy some things—”
“And donate to the church’s fund,” Izzy added, wanting to soften the crime.
“And then handed this over on Saturday,” Nell said. “And probably realized by the second time that there’d be a third, a fourth, and who knows how many requests?”
“So they killed him.”
Nell fingered the cables on her baby blanket. The facts were there, but still twisted, just like the blanket. She looked again inside the fanny pack and pulled out the envelope, smoothing it out on the table. She frowned.
“What is it?” Birdie asked.
“I’ve seen an envelope like this before. In fact, it was sitting on my counter and I shoved it into a drawer just this morning.”
“It’s a dirty white envelope,” Cass said. “So what?”
“No, it’s not. It’s thicker than most—elegant parchment. Here, feel it. And if you rub your fingers lightly over it, you can feel something.”
“Like a water seal?” Izzy asked.
“Maybe.” She took the envelope and slipped it back inside the fanny pack. “The one I have is the one that Justin put Birdie’s neck- lace in. I don’t know why I didn’t throw it out. But I didn’t, and I think I’ll have a second look at it.” She zipped up the fanny pack and slipped it into her bag.
“There’s one more thing. After talking to Gus and Harry, I’m convinced Horace saw the person who killed Justin. I think that’s what he was trying to say that day in front of the hardware store. He was down there walking the beach that night and saw someone enter the dive shack. But his eyes are so bad he wouldn’t have been able to make out features. And he was probably confused. He didn’t connect the dots—or maybe couldn’t quite process whom he saw—until later in the week. He said something to the effect that it finally made sense.”
“So,” Cass said, “he was killed, not because he knew whatever it was Justin knew, but because he knew who killed Justin.”
“I’m sure of it,” Nell said. “It feels right.” She looked down at the cable, as if it somehow had the missing stitches, the pieces that would complete the picture, hidden in its twisted shape.
“I have to go out on the Lady Lobster today,” Cass said. “But let’s meet back here later, or maybe I can make it back for your appointment, Iz. I’d love to hear that little bruiser—as well as other things.”
Izzy nodded. She glanced down at a half-completed intarsia sweater lying on the table. The loose ends, not yet woven in, stuck out from the sides randomly. “I think we’re getting closer. But it’s still a little bit like this sweater. We need to weave the ends in.”
“There’s one more thing,” Nell said. “I think it’s important.”
Cass was headed for the door. She stopped.
“It’s Tyler Gibson.”
They all looked at Nell.
“I’ve been piecing conversation snippets together, and Tyler has been a piece of this puzzle from the beginning.”
“Because he got mixed up in Justin’s crazy scheme,” Cass said. “We know that, but it didn’t have anything to do with Justin’s murder.”
“That’s right. But maybe something else did.”
Cass nodded, as if she had entertained similar thoughts but wasn’t sure how to fit them into the puzzle. She walked back to the table and listened while Nell refreshed their memories, lining up pieces of conversations they’d all been privy to over the weeks. They lay there in front of them like pieces of yarn, ready to be stitched into the whole.
For a minute no one said anything. All they could hear were silent chunks of a puzzle falling into place.
Birdie broke their trance. She stood up briskly, wiping crumbs from the table with a napkin. “Murder is awful, plain and simple. No matter who, no matter when or where. But an unsolved murder, a murderer walking casually around our town, is worse. I think we are about to stop the madness.”
She looked across the table. “Now, Izzy, we’ll pick you up for your appointment this afternoon. Does that work?”
• • •
By the time Birdie and Nell left the yarn shop, Mae was unlocking doors and opening windows, and Harbor Road was waking up to a sunny day. The two women turned south and headed to Coffee’s. Although they had often tried to teach Izzy, she still made abominable coffee.
“I need a dark roast,” Birdie said, and Nell agreed. In addition, Coffee’s was the first place they needed to go to tie up a loose end.
Mary Pisano wasn’t on the patio with her computer yet, a good thing. The loose ends that might target a murderer were still dangling too freely to be shared, too loose to be believed. They walked into the coffee shop.
Tyler Gibson was two people in front of them in line, just as they hoped he would be. Monday-morning regulars were just that. Tyler hadn’t failed them.
They watched him go to a table in the back, then picked up their own cups and followed him.
Kevin was there, his cup half-empty.
The two men looked up, surprised to see they had company.
“May we sit down?” Birdie asked, then pulled out a chair and settled in it, her coffee cup in front of her.
“What’s up?” Tyler asked.
“Tyler,” Birdie began, “did you kill Justin Dorsey?”
Tyler’s face went white. “No, no, I didn’t kill anybody. Ever.”
“Good, I didn’t think so. And see that you don’t.” She smiled at him.
Nell leaned forward on the table, her hands wrapped around her coffee mug. “Tyler, you told us the other day—and, Kevin, I think you concurred—that you weren’t a close friend of Justin’s. But you hung around on the beach, parties, that sort of thing. And then there was the—how shall I say it?—‘transaction’ you had over that car seat. Is that right?”
Tyler didn’t answer, but his expression had quickly gone from relieved to suspicious.
“What I’m wondering,” Nell said, pulling the monogrammed belt from her purse, “is how this ended up at Mrs. Bridge’s boardinghouse in Justin’s room.” She stretched it out on the table.
Tyler stared at the belt, and then hung his head. Finally he looked up. “Jeez, I’m a screwup, aren’t I?”
“But a very sweet one,” Birdie said. She patted his hand.
Tyler fingered the monogrammed buckle. “I wondered where it went. It’s been missing for a while.”
“A couple months is what we figured. Your early days back home.”
He nodded. “Sounds right. Like I said, Justin was a friendly guy, very accommodating. But mostly he was interested in making a quick buck.”
“So he let people, as Mrs. Bridge put it, ‘use’ his room?” Nell said.
“I believe she called it a rendezvous,” Birdie said.
“Or, as your grandmother would say, a ‘dalliance.’”
Kevin got up and told Tyler to be on time for work. He was off to the Ocean’s Edge. “No dallying for me,” he said, laughing again at his bartender’s foibles.
When he was gone, Tyler groaned. “Okay,” he said. “It wasn’t the greatest move I ever made, but I didn’t know that till later. At the time, I thought it might be something real—I hadn’t lived here for a few years and I didn’t know any of the new people. Especially . . . well. Anyway, I was gullible, I guess. But it’s long over. So . . . what do you need to know? I’ll come clean.”
And he did. Sometimes with more detail than they needed to know.
But as they walked out of the coffee shop, Nell and Birdie looked at each other without saying a word. Tyler Gibson truly was one of the most naive young men they had ever met.
As honest as he had been, it was clear to both of them that Tyler Gibson had no idea at all what his dalliance had wrought.
• • •
By the time they had run a few errands and landed back at Nell’s, Birdie was starving. She began pulling out Nell’s leftovers, wrapping two wedges of a wild mushroom torte in foil and putting them in the toaster oven to heat.
Izzy showed up minutes later. “I couldn’t concentrate on work and Mae banished me. She told me to take a nap. Not much chance of that.”
“This will take your mind off things,” Nell said. She motioned to a basket sitting on the island. “Ben forgot about the basket of lotions when he delivered all the other things to your house.”
Izzy fingered the fancy jars and wrapped bars of soap. Each person had brought her own favorite scented lotion or soap and added a short note to the item. “It’s like being in the room with all my friends.” She rummaged around and found a pot of ginger-scented body lotion. “Here’s you, Aunt Nell. I will forever think of you when I smell this wonderful ginger soufflé.”
“It was such a nice idea,” Birdie said. She took the torte from the oven and began filling plates.
Izzy picked up a green bottle with a bow at the top and laughed. “This is from Esther Gibson, has to be. Horace said he knew when she was half a block away because of her perfume. Emeraude.”
“He’s right,” Birdie said. “Very . . . distinctive.”
They laughed and Izzy pulled out a few others, reading the notes. It was a momentary distraction, a welcome bit of ordinariness in an unordinary day.
An elaborately wrapped package caught her eye and she pulled it out and read the card. “May these begin and end your day with the same happiness as they do mine.”
Nell busied herself at the sink as Izzy tore off the wrappings.
“She outdid herself,” Izzy said. The box was elegant, the Chanel perfume and lotion resting in satin.
Birdie and Nell walked over and looked at it.
And then they stared at the box again.
Horace was right. It all made sense.
Nell headed for the drawer beneath the microwave. Her junk drawer, she called it. The envelope was still there, bumpy from the necklace it had held, and with one corner torn from being shoved in Janie’s glove compartment.
Birdie pulled the other one out of the fanny pack, and Izzy cleared a place on the island where they could smooth them out.
“They’re the same. And they both have the watermark—”
“Both envelopes probably had money in them. Two payments. He took the money out and grabbed one to put the necklace in when he went to return it to Birdie.”
Nell took a pencil and a thin piece of paper from the drawer and carefully placed the paper over the mark. She rubbed the lead back and forth, smoothly and evenly.
They stood back and stared.
“It’s probably time to call Ben,” Birdie said softly.
Yes, it was time. Nell stepped into the den and called him on his cell. He was going to head down to the police station after a boring lunch with the yacht club’s investment officer. He’d pick up the fanny pack on his way and talk to the chief.
“Are we crazy, Ben?” Nell asked.
“There might be some mental deficiencies involved in all this, Nellie,” he said, “but they’re not yours. Not by a long shot.” He paused, his voice dropping the way it did when he was about to say something intimate. “Nell?”
“Yes, my darling. I will be careful.”