Angora Alibi A Seaside Knitters Mystery - By Sally Goldenbaum Page 0,81
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.”
“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.