Read Online Murder in Merino by Sally Goldenbaum - Free Book Online

for a long time in the shop, knitting away, and Esther was in heaven—she loved having someone interested in all her old stories.
    “Customers liked her, too. Even Mae likes her, and she’s a pretty good judge of character. She likes that Jules seems unaware of her looks, as if it’s totally irrelevant to anything important. She’s almost careless about herself.”
    Nell had noticed that, too. Unlike many beautiful women, Jules didn’t try to bring attention to herself. She was who she was—that was the message she gave out, and whether people liked her or not didn’t seem to be anything she worried much about.
    But there was something else about Jules Ainsley. Something just beneath the surface. A kind of determination that Nell couldn’t quite put her finger on. She was friendly, but directed, and Nell suspected she wouldn’t take kindly to people getting in her way.
    “Do you know if she’s been married?” Birdie asked.
    “No husband, now or ever. Mae came right out and asked her.”
    Nell laughed. “Mae Anderson is the perfect shop manager for you, Iz. She probably knows the complete history of every deliveryman who steps into the shop. No unsavory characters allowed.”
    “Was Jules offended?”
    “Not at all. She laughed, in fact, and told Mae that she’d had a couple of relationships but none that ended in permanency. She said she probably wasn’t cut out for that kind of commitment.”
    A familiar voice traveled across the sand beach and stilled the conversation. They all turned toward the sound.
    “Hi, guys,” Jules Ainsley called out from the water’s edge. She waved a baseball cap in the air.
    A bright red tank top was plastered to her damp tan skin. Green sneakers kicked up sand as she jogged along the beach, her shoes just touching the tide. A headband was only partially successful in holding her hair in place.
    They waved back, but Jules had already passed them and soon was just a moving dot in the distance.
    Jules’s appearance caused an end to the conversation. The feeling that somehow they’d been gossiping hovered uncomfortably as they kept up with the fat wheels of the stroller moving along the sand. For a while they walked in silence, the breeze off the water blowing away remnants of the uncomfortable conversation and energizing them with the smells of the sea. When the beach narrowed to a sliver, they turned their backs on the beach and headed toward the road.
    “Is your house on the market yet?” Birdie asked, looking down the road to the hilly neighborhood that Izzy had lived in before her marriage to Sam. The cottage was at the top of a gentle rise in the land on the quiet Ridge Road cul-de-sac. Trees, brambles, and bushes crowded the low hill that led up to the homes.
    Izzy laughed. “Supposed to be. But no. We thought it’d be ready to show sooner, but Abby put her chubby little foot down. It’s amazing how a person as sweet and tiny and wonderful as Abigail Kathleen can determine our days with such indomitable force. With a tweak of her finger she pushes everything else in our lives to the backseat.”
    “As it should be. And you love it, Isabel,” Birdie said.
    Izzy nodded happily. She looked back at the hill. The potting shed and back porch were just visible above the trees. “As for the house, Sam did some minor fix-ups last night. We didn’t get around to the potting shed as we’d planned—it’s still a mess from the last tenant. Gloves and tools all over the place. But Stella thinks that’s okay since, as she so sweetly put it, we’re selling a house, not a place to pot plants. She’s having an open house Friday. She even bought a new dress for it. Can you believe it? She’s so excited.”
    Watching Stella Palazola, a young Sea Harbor resident they’d known nearly her whole life, setting out on a new career was nice to see.
    Izzy turned Abby’s stroller down the beach road and toward a shortcut that would take them back to Nell’s house, where scones