Trimmed With Murder (24 page)

They all agreed. But the thoughts were muddled, tangled, and first they needed to get through the facts and figures at hand.

Birdie picked up one of the books found in Charlie's car.

“Are these the books that Amber bought at the bookstore?” she asked.

Nell nodded. “Ben put them in the car this morning and I haven't had a chance to look at them.” She walked over to the den bar and poured a glass of water.

“Well, we don't want these—” Birdie pushed the two business books across the table to Izzy and Cass. “That leaves this.”

Birdie turned the book over and looked at the cover. “Well, look at this.”

Cass and Izzy looked up.

Nell walked back to the table and took the book from Birdie's hands. She slipped on her glasses and read aloud:
“The Permanent Vegetative State: Medical Facts, Ethical and Legal Dilemmas.”

“Her mother's condition,” Cass said, more to herself than the others.

“We're getting to know Amber through what she left behind,” Birdie said. “She was consistent in how she went about things. She wanted to examine her inheritance, understand it, explore the company's standing, its health, I guess you'd say. And now the same with her mother.”

“Except the company was alive, and she had some control over it,” Izzy said. “Her mother was dead.”

And there was little she could do about that.

Nell opened the book. Some pages were dog-eared; others had pencil marks. There were a couple of loose pages printed from a computer, folded and tucked inside. She looked at one chapter heading that had a coffee spill in the center of the page. “Causes of Death in PVS Patients.”

“Andy said her mother's death was very much on Amber's mind those last days,” Cass said. “She must have been trying to understand it.”

Unfolding a sheet printed from a Web site, Nell read, “Pathology of dying.”

“I suppose this is what Andy was referring to,” Birdie said. “Amber was going overboard, trying to understand something that didn't have an explanation. Maybe it's something each of us would have done, walking in those shoes.”

Nell looked over at Izzy. “Didn't Charlie mention something like that, too?” The weight of Friday night's conversation was ponderous in Nell's mind, coming back in bits and pieces.

“Yes, something about wishing she'd been here to care for her?” Izzy said, unsure herself.

Nell didn't think that was exactly it. It would come back, most likely in the middle of the night.

“It was unusual that Ellie lived as long as she did,” Birdie said. “Maybe that was on Amber's mind.”

“Or maybe she was making up for not being here at the time, trying to get all the facts in place so she could put some closure to it,” Izzy said.

Nell frowned. “I'm not sure. I think we may be missing some pieces.” She looked over at the printouts filled with numbers and columns. “I'm not sure Amber was looking for closure.” But what was she looking for in this tangle of numbers? Or in trips to a nursing home where her mother no longer lived?

Birdie looked at her yarn trail, still in the center of the table. “It's clear to me. We need to go on a road trip.”

I
t was Saturday, not a good time to be visiting offices. But Birdie thought it was worth a try. They'd had that good omen from the sky, after all.

The business office of the Northshore Nurseries was a nondescript brick building hidden behind the nursery's acres devoted to trees and bushes. The outdoor acreage was scanty in the winter months, but the young and hearty oaks, maples, and hawthorns still populated some of the fenced-off areas behind the nursery building itself, and another lot, bustling today with business, was filled with Christmas trees waiting to go to a good home.

Nell drove through the packed parking lot, slowing for people coming out of the nursery shop carrying poinsettias, garlands, and cellophane-wrapped mistletoe. She drove back along a drive that led her to a small parking lot in front of the brick building. A tasteful sign above the door indicated they were in the right place:
CUMMINGS NORTHSHORE NURSERIES
BUSINESS OFFICE
, it read.

“As many times as I've been to this nursery, I never once walked into this building,” Nell said, pulling into an empty space.

“That's good,” Cass said. “It probably means you always paid your bills. I ordered some plants for our new office building once and somehow the bill got lost. Garrett O'Neal had someone calling us hourly until I sent someone over to pay it. He also charged us a sizable late fee. Conscientious fellow, that Garrett.”

“I hope he's conscientious enough to be working on a Saturday and can give us some idea of what Amber was doing here,” Birdie said. “Her printouts have left more questions than answers.”

“To you, maybe. I think there's plenty there. And I think Amber saw it, too.”

Izzy peered through the blinds and knocked lightly on the door. “I see a light.”

A shuffle inside produced a friendly face peering through a slit in the door blind. Immediately the door opened.

“Hi, guys. Whatta you doing here?” Zack Levin grinned at the visitors.

“Well, Zack Levin,” Birdie said, a smile filling her small face. “What a devoted intern you are, working on a Saturday.”

“Hey, I'm hourly. I love extra hours. And they pay me more for Saturdays.” He grinned again and ushered the four of them inside. “What brings you all here? You owe us money?” He laughed.

Nell smiled. “We were hoping to talk to Garrett O'Neal,” she said. She looked around the outer room. It was filled with printers, faxes, computers, desks, and file cabinets. A receptionist's desk was near the door, a beautiful poinsettia plant beside it.

“Hey, sorry,” Zack said. “Garrett's not here. But I am. How about I give you a tour?” His face lit up.

“Sure,” Izzy said. “Let's go for it, Zack. The cook's tour.”

“Cook's tour? Hey, we have a kitchen,” he said. And he led them there first, showing them the small room equipped with shiny stainless steel appliances.

The rest of the rooms were equally as impressive, the whole building proving to be larger than its modest exterior. Several executive offices were tastefully decorated, and the conference room boasted a bar, an oval table big enough for the city council, and a wall filled with Canary Cove artists' works. Above the bar were dozens of wooden award plaques honoring the company.

“They have meetings here for all the managers—all the branches. Board meetings. We're the hub,” Zack said proudly.

He pointed to two large office suites, one on either side of the conference room. “Those are the owners' suites,” he said. “Pretty cool. Though Stu—he lets us call him that—isn't here a lot. He moves around, checks on the other nurseries, goes to meetings. His sister”—he nodded to the other suite—“is here most of the time. She's sort of the inside worker bee. He's the outside guy.”

“Barbara,” Nell said, more to herself than the young man standing next to her.

Zack nodded. “Yep, she's the boss around here. I was afraid of her when I first started working here—she has that big face and doesn't talk much, but she's okay. She plays fair and brings cookies sometimes. She lets us be, do our jobs. Trusts us. She's busy, managing all the different places. Works really hard when she's here. But locks her office door at five, and doesn't expect us to work late, either. I asked her about it once and she said, ‘We all need our own lives. You, me, everyone.' She kind of smiled then, sort of mysteriously, and I imagined hers, a secret life. Cool.”

Zack looked through the glass door of her office. “Some of us wonder what she does at night, but hey, you don't ask your boss that, right?”

“Probably a good decision, Zack,” Cass agreed.

“Yeah, I thought so. But I did hear one of the maintenance guys laughing about it one night when I was working late.”

“Laughing about what?” Cass said.

“Running into Barbara one night. He says she's not the homebody we all imagine her to be. Who knew? But I'm glad—she needs to have fun, too.” He turned and walked toward another office on the other side of the kitchen.

“And that's Garrett's place.” Zack pointed to the smaller office. “He's a different breed. Seems calm, but a little hyper about his domain. He's here a lot. Comes in at night. Kind of freaks out if people mess with his files. And he'll do anything for his boss. He never calls her boss, though. It's like he wants us to see them as a couple.”

“Oh?” Izzy said.

Zack blushed. “Yeah. He's devoted to Ms. Cummings. And she goes along with it, which is what none of us can understand. But hey, maybe she sees something there that we don't. And he's happy, so what the heck, right? And he's a smart dude for sure. He knows the company books inside out.”

Nell thought about the tangled relationships that existed everywhere once you scratched. She looked back toward the kitchen, imagining the staff's break sessions. How interesting it would be to be a fly on the wall.

“So, where's your office, Zack?” Cass asked.

“You making fun of me, Cass?” he asked, playfully poking her arm, a leftover familiarity from the summer he'd spent helping her and Pete repair lobster traps. “But actually I do have one—well, not really. It's the computer room where we keep the server and other equipment.” He pointed to a corner room, then started walking toward it, waving for them to follow. They dutifully did, then stood at the door, smiling at a wall of humming machines.

“Posh, Zack,” Cass said.

Zack laughed, and walked them back to a small, nicely appointed waiting area, separated from the rest of the main room with plants. “Too bad Garrett's not here—but hey, maybe it's something I could help with? I've been here awhile. I sort of know my way around.”

Birdie hesitated, then said, “We were hoping to talk to him about Amber Harper.”

“Amber,” Zack said slowly. He rubbed his chin where a slight shadow of a beard was trying to grow.

“We thought maybe Garrett would have some idea of what she was looking for here. We talked to him once about it, but sometimes things come back to you later, after you've had time to think about it.”

Zack was quiet, listening. Then he looked around as if Garrett—or Amber herself—might suddenly appear. “Garrett didn't like her messing with things, but what could he do? The police didn't ask much about what she was doing here. They figured like most people here did, that Amber was here to find out what she'd inherited. It was only Garrett who had a problem with that.”

“What did you think, Zack?”

Zack shifted from one foot to the other. He rubbed his chin again.

“I thought she was looking into the business she now owned part of,” he finally said. “But other stuff, too. I don't know. Once she started looking through things, her focus seemed to shift. Almost like she didn't care too much about her inheritance, but she just didn't like some people here. She connected them to her mom, to the awful life she had—or didn't have, I guess you'd say, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, he led them back into the room with the humming machines and reached one skinny arm down behind the server as far as it could go. He pulled out a stack of papers, one or two escaping the loose clip and floating back beneath the large machine. He shook his head, then pushed the clip more firmly in place.

“Here,” he said. He rolled up the printouts and thrust them into Birdie's hand. “Amber wanted these files, and she didn't have the password. She knew I was in here on Saturdays so asked if I could get them for her. She had some other things she had to do and couldn't come in that day.”

They looked at the papers in Birdie's hand.

“It was her company, you know,” Zack said quickly, unsure of the looks on their faces. “She had a right to them, even if Garrett didn't think so.”

Birdie patted his hand. “Yes, she did,” she said nicely. “Thank you, Zack.”

They were the printouts that stayed behind the server, gathering dust. The ones he never had a chance to give Amber on Monday, as they'd planned.

Because by Monday, Amber Harper was dead.

C
ass had to go home. Danny was waiting for her. They had started taking long walks along the shore together. Sometimes early in the morning, like the morning they'd found Amber's body beneath the newly planted trees. Sometimes whenever they could fit them in. Walking along the water, she said, was healing, and was helping them both wash away the image that had taken an unwanted hold on their lives.

Walking along the water was time with Danny, time that was becoming increasingly important to the way she lived. To
who
she was, she had confessed to Izzy and Nell earlier. Walking along the water with Danny was as vital a place in her life as Nell's dinners and Ben's martinis and Thursday night knitting.

But she'd take the latest printouts with her and get to them later. There might be nothing there, she said. Zack had been caught up in the drama of it, and as best she could tell, he might have had a crush on Amber Harper. But then, maybe she'd find something that Amber had seen. Something askew.

So far, the financial records they'd looked at that afternoon at Birdie's home hadn't led them to Amber's murderer. But these might be different. And until the murderer of Amber Harper was behind bars, they wouldn't count anything out.

•   •   •

Nell and Birdie had other plans.

“Mind if I join you?” Birdie asked the wide familiar figure sitting alone in the Canary Cove shop.

Birdie sat down before Henrietta O'Neal could answer her. But her neighbor loved company. Birdie knew they'd be welcome. The real question was whether they'd manage to get away from her talkative friend before Christmas.

Henrietta looked up and beamed. “And Nell is here, too. How grand.” Then she lowered her voice to a whisper, shielded her mouth with a pudgy hand, and said, “The tea would be much better with a shot of whiskey. But it will do.”

Finding Henrietta in Polly Farrell's Tea Shoppe would have seemed like a coincidence, except Birdie didn't believe in coincidences. The fact that she and Nell had stopped in after dropping Izzy and Cass off—and had found Henrietta sitting alone—was part of some grand plan.

Nell got up and carried back a tray with a teapot, cups, and an assortment of tiny cakes. “The British may have something on you Irish, Henrietta,” Nell said, sitting down opposite her. “High tea is lovely.”

Henrietta waved away Nell's words with one chubby hand, her lined face crinkling into a grin. “Polly's as Irish as I am. She just pretends to be an anglophile, God knows why.” She waved her cane at her friend behind the counter.

“You have the shop to yourself,” Birdie said. “That's nice.”

“It certainly is because I fit better when it's just me. I tell Polly all the time to make this place bigger. Five tables? What is she thinking? And these rickety chairs are barely able to hold me. But that's my teasing her, that's all. I love this place and Polly knows it.”

Henrietta popped a piece of cake into her mouth and looked at Birdie and Nell over the top of her rimless glasses. “Now tell me the truth, what's going on in the lives of the likes of you?”

Birdie laughed. “That's a mouthful, even for you, Henrietta.”

“It's about the beast, isn't it, now?”

“The
beast,”
Nell repeated. “A perfect word for a murderer.”

“That's what he is. A beast prowling our town. It's shaming us all, that we haven't found him yet. The Cummingses must be beside themselves.”

“I suppose you get Cummings updates from Garrett. He's right in the thick of things, isn't he?” Birdie said.

“I don't see much of Garrett.” Henrietta shook her head. “And when I do he doesn't talk much, never has. But it's a fine thing the Cummingses hired him, isn't it? The youngest of seven, he is. A poor place to be in a family as aggressive as his—especially with the others going off the way they did and making themselves rich. Every last one of 'em, though who knows how they got to the top?”

“Henrietta, what are you talking about?” Birdie asked.

Henrietta slapped the air with her hand and her eyes crinkled with laughter. “I do go on, now, don't I?” She took a sip of her tea. “I never much liked Garrett's appendage of my husband's family. He's my late husband's nephew. My husband didn't much like Garrett's father, or his wretched children. Garrett was the smartest in the lot but lost out on the high achiever gene. Too quiet for his own good, was how his father put it, although my Michael and I laughed at that because the father was the same way; he and his son Garrett were two peas in a pod.”

“I suppose quiet isn't the best trait to have in a big family.”

Henrietta's blue-gray curls bobbed in agreement. “He's as polite as a teacher's pet—and smart, like I said. But sometimes being with him is like being with a rock. What goes on in that head behind those big glasses? I try to see him now and again, but I don't see him often, that's my rule.”

“He seems to be doing well at the Northshore Nurseries,” Nell said.

“Yes, he makes a boatload of money now. You saw that snazzy car, I suspect. I could hardly fit in the backseat. Horrible car.”

“Henrietta, you're awfully cranky today,” Birdie said.

With that, the round woman tilted her head back and laughed mightily. “You're right, Birdie. Life is too short to be cranky, though living as long as I have has given me some rights to an ornery mood now and again. But I shouldn't speak ill of Garrett, like him or not. It isn't who I am, now, is it?”

In a way, it was who she was. Henrietta held such strong opinions about things that she was often cranky. Often found carrying signs to protest a building or a candidate running for office who hadn't met her criteria. But she also had the remarkable ability to wash it away with a smile as big as the moon, and a heart that matched it. Sometimes.

“Does Garrett enjoy his work?”

“I'd say he likes it enough that they'll have to carry him out on a gurney, that's how much.”

“And Barbara?” Nell asked, her eyebrows lifting.

Henrietta chuckled and patted Nell's hand. “I know what you're asking. It's a strange relationship for sure. I always thought he should find himself a quiet little gal over in Lanesville, but there is something about the formidable Barbara Cummings that has a hold on that man. He's crazy about her. I'm sure of it, even though he doesn't say much, though things seem to be changing a tad. Just the other night I took him to dinner and he had a few drinks, something I've not seen the man do before. Frankly I was glad to see it. He loosened up a little—quite frisky, if you can believe it. He told me he was going to ask Barbara to marry him. The man is head over heels in love with that woman. Now, I don't agree with her politics—and her leisure activities are not of interest to me, though I'd love to challenge her in a game of canasta sometime. I'd beat the pants off her. But she is most definitely powerful and smart. I asked Garrett if he thought she'd say yes.” Henrietta paused for effect, then went on. “‘The time is right,' he said. Barbara needed him.”

“Needed him?” Birdie repeated.

Henrietta's head was nodding again. “Needed him. Yes. And I've no doubt she does. The man is a genius with numbers. But need him for romance? Who knows? But that night, Garrett's eyes, even behind those thick glasses, were like a puppy's. If he's right and they go for it, then good for them, and I'll do as Father Larry does, toast them with the finest Irish whiskey. I'll ‘God bless 'em'. . . I suppose.”

Nell felt suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation. Who was to say why people married, why they coupled? What they saw in each other? It was a mystery, plain and simple, and if Garrett O'Neal and Barbara Cummings could bring to a life together one pinch of what she and Ben had in their life, well, as Henrietta said, ‘good for them.'

A young man in the door waved at Henrietta and she pushed her tea aside. “There's Jason come to fetch me. I am off to dinner.” Henrietta's driver was one of her grandsons, a nice young man who was paid an enormous amount of money to drive Henrietta around, a fact that brought great relief to the town of Sea Harbor. Henrietta behind the wheel of a car wasn't a pretty sight.

“One question, Henrietta,” Nell called out just before Henrietta reached the door.

She turned back, leaning on her cane. “And what's that, Nell?”

“I'm just curious. Why did you want to play canasta with Barbara Cummings? It's somehow a scenario that's hard for me to imagine—but a greatly entertaining one for sure. I want to be invited.” Nell laughed.

Henrietta's grin turned her face into a happy maze of wrinkles. “Garrett claims Barbara is quite the cardplayer, but has she ever played canasta with North Shore's 1966 canasta champion? I don't think so!”

Henrietta swung her cane in the air and twirled it around and gave a whoop of laughter so robust that it rolled out the door along with her square body, startling a man across the street.