Read Online A Fatal Fleece by Sally Goldenbaum - Free Book Online Page B

poured her soul into their songs like a seasoned performer, but here in her bar and grill, the tiny blond dynamo took care of the world, or at least this little corner of it.
    “And?” Cass prompted.
    “And then Finnegan came in. He hangs out here sometimes. He’s like our own Canary Cove security guard—watches out for all of us and never takes a dime for it. So I give him coffee or food when he stops by. Payment, sort of.”
    “It’s a wonder you make any money, dear,” Birdie said.
    Merry laughed. “Oh, don’t you worry about me, Birdie. I’m doing fine. Anyway, Finnegan sat down over there at the bar and I could tell he was watching us. Soon as I left Beverly’s table, he walked over and took my place.”
    Nell glanced over again at the object of their conversation, but Beverly was gone, a coffee cup left behind. She looked around the lot and toward the galleries, but the only thing she saw was the tail end of Davey Delaney’s truck rounding the corner.
    “Finn went over to her? That couldn’t have been good,” Cass was saying.
    “Unless they’re both swallowing old feelings and making up,” Izzy suggested.
    “Well, I was hoping for that, too. Lately I’d seen some signs that maybe she wanted to make up. But I don’t know. There’s bad blood there. It had something to do with her mother’s death, I think.”
    “Moira Finnegan died of cancer,” Birdie said.
    “That’s what I hear from the Brewsters. Ham and Jane liked Moira. They said Beverly never came to see her. No one even knew where she was. So I’m not sure what her gripe with her father is. Seems he might have the better reason to be upset. Don’t you think?”
    Birdie had told Nell the story of Finnegan’s daughter one night while they sat on the Favazza veranda, Hudson’s Bay point blankets covering their legs as they looked up at a star-filled sky. She and Birdie had gone to the art opening where Beverly Walden’s paintings were on display for the first time. Later, under the spell of a full moon and Birdie’s sherry, they’d hashed over the evening—who was there, conversations they’d had. The art they’d liked and not liked.
    Beverly’s paintings lent themselves readily to the conversation. Turbulent, rolling oils, bright and bold, filled her canvases as unpredictably as the sea itself.
    Beverly had been a fifteen-year-old runaway, Birdie told her, long before Nell and Ben had settled into the sprawling Endicott home on Sandswept Lane. She’d been a troubled child and youth—a bad seed, some called her—and one summer she began stealing things from local stores, hiding bracelets and books and T-shirts beneath her loose clothing. But nothing was really hidden in Sea Harbor. Most people looked the other way because she was Moira and Finn’s daughter.
    But after a while, and with hopes that the girl might get some help, Archie Brandley had turned her in. It wasn’t the books she’d taken from his store, he’d said. He didn’t give a hoot about them. But he guessed Beverly was stealing for the thrill of it, grabbing obscure books on business planning, menopause, and physics. Pencils and bookmarks. Things he rightfully assumed she had no interest in. Stealing for thrills was a sickness, in Archie’s opinion, and the girl needed some help.
    But instead of facing the consequences, Beverly had run away. And taken a substantial amount of Finnegan’s hard-earned money with her.
    For Moira’s sake, Finnegan hired an investigator to find her, but to no avail.
    “I don’t know why Beverly came back all these years later. Finn says it was to torment him,” Cass said.
    Merry shrugged. “She told me she’d changed. But I told her I was about three when she ran away, so what did I know?”
    “Maybe she doesn’t steal anymore, but she sure doesn’t treat her father well,” Cass said. She wiped some muffin crumbs onto the deck for the birds. “So, what happened last night?”
    “Oh yeah, that. Well, Finnegan was huffing