A Dark and Snowy Night

Book 5: Seaside Knitters Society

by Sally Goldenbaum

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

"Winter in Sea Harbor is a feast for the senses—crackling bonfires, the scent of snow in the salty air, carols ringing out on the village green. This year, the Seaside Knitters have a sack full of obligations in addition to their usual Christmas preparations. Izzy is so overloaded with knitting classes that she hires an extra salesperson, but the new addition has trouble fitting into the yarn shop’s holiday spirit. Cass, juggling the stresses of running her lobster fishery, has finally found a nanny for her active toddler. Molly Flanigan seems practically perfect in every way—until she suddenly disappears, taking Cass’s beloved rescue mutt with her. Meanwhile, the holidays are kicking off in style at Mayor Beatrice Scaglia’s holiday party, where a well-dressed crowd admires the mayor’s sumptuous new home and the celebrity chef catering the event. An additional treat for Ben and Nell Endicott at the festive affair is reconnecting with a dear college friend, Oliver Bishop. But it’s not just reunions and the appetizers that are to die for. Before the party-goers can toast the beginning of Sea Harbor’s festive season, the chef—and young wife of the Endicotts' old Harvard friend—is found dead beneath the mistletoe. Izzy, Birdie, Nell, and Cass must uncover the pattern to these mysteries to remove suspicion from those they love, bring a murderer to justice, and keep Sea Harbor’s holiday magic from vanishing into the chill winter air."

Release date: September 27, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

Nell Endicott and Oliver Bishop’s college romance had lasted approximately seventy-two hours, two sessions of Lit 201, and one dinner at a noisy college bar. It ended by mutual consent and relief, and was happily replaced by a friendship that deepened through college courses, graduations, marriages, careers, and life changes.

And one devastating death.

When they met at the front door of the Ocean’s Edge Restaurant that night, Nell’s first thought as she looked into Ollie’s eyes was of Maddie. Oliver’s late wife. Nell’s forever best friend.

Neither Nell nor her husband, Ben, had seen Ollie since Maddie’s funeral a dozen years ago, and this reunion made her happy and sad at once. They’d invited Ollie and Maddie to come visit many times, and for one reason or another, it had never worked out for both couples at the same time. And now here Ollie was, finally.

But without Maddie.

“You look wonderful, Nell,” Ollie said. They hugged, arms wrapped around their puffy winter coats.

Nell finally pulled away and looked into Ollie’s face. “I’m so glad to see you, old friend,” she said.

Ollie reached out and held her shoulders, tilting his head and looking at her as if he were afraid she would disappear if he stopped.

Finally he said, with meaning that spoke of years of friendship, “The years slid right by us, Nellie. Gone in a heartbeat. How did that happen? How did we lose touch?”

“We haven’t lost touch, not completely. Or if we did, we found it. And I’m happy for that, even though surprised. This event is a little beneath the world you live in, Ollie. Are you helping your wife? Doing any of the cooking, I hope?”

“No cooking. Or helping for that matter. That’s Lidia’s department, and what she’s a master at—being the chef extraordinaire. I came to see you and Ben.”

“You won’t even be sous chef?”

“Would you trust me with a knife?” He held up his right hand so she could see the scar running across the width of his palm.

Nell winced, then put a smile in place and took his arm. “Come, my dear friend. I asked them to save us chairs by the fireplace.”

“Sounds perfect, and warm. The little lady running our B and B says we’re in for a lot of snow. I hope it doesn’t spoil the event, which I still don’t quite understand. It’s a Christmas party?”

“Kind of, yes. It’s an annual holiday party for the town, but it’s slightly different this year. In addition to other changes, the mayor is using it to show off her new house.”

Ollie laughed, more heartily than her pleasantry deserved, but still a welcome sound that eased Nell’s discomfort a bit. Although they’d been close those years ago, it had been a long time since they’d seen each other. What changes had the decades brought in both of them?

She put the thought aside and steered him into the restaurant’s lounge to a granite fireplace, flanked by two leather armchairs. A reserved sign sat on a small table.

Ollie looked at the sign. “So I’m guessing they know you here, you and Ben.”

“It’s our favorite place to bring our favorite people.”

The waitress appeared almost immediately and set a plate of garlic oysters on the table, a basket of cheese straws, and took their drink orders. “Compliments of the owner,” she explained with a smile.

“Friends in high places,” Ollie said.

“The owner is a good friend of ours. You’ll like Don Wooten, Ollie. I’ll introduce you.”

Nell took the glass of wine Ollie handed her. Then he picked up the tumbler of Scotch the waitress had poured for him, leaving the bottle on their small table.

Nell took a sip of wine and sat back, thinking of Ollie’s musing. How had all those years slipped by them?

But she knew. It’s life, she thought, then almost immediately corrected her thought. It was Maddie’s death. That’s how it happened.

She looked back at Ollie, his face still handsome, though lined now with the years that life had etched there. His prominent cheekbones were flushed from the fire crackling beside them, or maybe the Scotch, Nell thought, and his chin was more chiseled, more set in place than she had remembered.

“I like this place,” Ollie said, taking in the comfortable sitting areas and the bank of windows looking out to the sea. “I’m an expert critic for these sorts of places, you know.”

Nell laughed. “Yes, you are, and yes it is. A Sea Harbor gem.”

In daylight, the Ocean’s Edge lived up to its reputation with the most coveted panorama—and consequently the most coveted real estate—in all of Sea Harbor, and possibly of the entire northeastern seaboard. Nell was sorry not to get to show it off for Ollie, for him to see it through her eyes. For now, at cocktail hour, winter nighttime erased the Atlantic Ocean. It turned the view from the large windows black, with only the occasional flash of a faraway ship, harbor lights catching the white curl of a wave, and the regular, reassuring beams of the lighthouse.

Where did they begin, attempting to fill in the years between them? Or did that matter, and should they just let them lie?

As she loosened the hand-knit scarf around her neck, Nell thought about her niece Izzy’s yarn shop and considered telling Ollie about that part of her life, the part that lived here in Sea Harbor since she and Ben had retired and moved to his family’s vacation home. About Izzy, who left her Boston law firm and opened the local yarn store, and the two other women who had become her dearest friends, women she grieved with and laughed with and celebrated life’s mysteries with.

She might tell him how the four of them had originally come together at Izzy’s store one Thursday night, each for her own reason: Nell to bring a meal to her niece, who was working late; Birdie to pick up a pair of needles she’d ordered; and dear Cass, knitting impaired back then, who came in because she had smelled the amazing aromas of Nell’s seafood casserole.

And all of them had stayed.

They’d bonded quickly in the way women sometimes do, and kept coming back every Thursday night, week after week, year after year, forming a circle of friendship that would last forever. And then some.

But she decided not to, at least not now.

Ollie was smiling at her now, seemingly pleased with the moment, comfortable with the silence.

Across the room, a long-haired guitar player was singing mellow cover songs, as if the singer somehow knew that some of the customers that night were reliving the past. Ollie watched him for a minute, then tilted his head back and drained the glass, setting it down on the small table with a thud, and focusing again on Nell. “Being with you like this, it all comes back. Lots of years.”

The noise level rose at the bar where a younger group was gathering to watch the final plays of a Celtics game.

Nell leaned in toward Ollie to be heard. “We’ve known each other nearly half our lives, Ollie. That doesn’t go away easily.”

Nell watched the lines in her friend’s face deepen. She could see him touching on certain memories, lingering there too long.

“I miss her, too, Ollie,” Nell finally said. “She was the closest friend I ever had. Maddie’s death hollowed out a part of me—but it also left something that will be there always.”

“I know that. Sometimes I was jealous of whatever it was you two had. It was so . . . I don’t know, intimate, like the two of you wrapped yourself in a bubble and no one else could get in.”

” But I introduced you and Maddie, don’t forget that. I found you the most amazing wife. So our bubble wasn’t ironclad. Ben found a way in there, too.”

Ollie settled back and stretched out his legs, a long swatch of graying hair falling over his forehead. He lifted his glass toward her. “We had some good times, the four of us.”

They did have good times. And Ollie was right, too, about her friendship with Maddie. They were soul sisters, almost from the first moment they met that gray September day. Nell sat back in the chair, took a drink of her wine, and slipped back into time, remembering that day, climbing up the steps in the old dorm building, the musty smell in the old wood floors.

She remembered walking down the narrow hallway until she found a closed door with a brass number nailed to it. She was here. Eighteen years old and excited and nervous in such huge waves she thought she might be sick. Harvard. This Kansas girl’s dream. She took a deep breath, released it slowly, and opened the door to her assigned room.

There, tan legs folded into a pretzel, a girl in a torn sweatshirt and shorts sat on a narrow bed. Her hands were dotted with neon-green paint and hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked up, her entire face opening in a smile. On her lap and bed were scattered the makings of a collage, a sort of WELCOME sign. Somewhere in the mess Nell spotted the letters of her name.

A voice lifted from the bed.

“You’re finally here. I’m Maddie. Welcome to our suite.”

Nell stared as words tumbled out of the woman’s perfect mouth, her face spirited and happy and blotting out every bit of gray from the thick September sky.

Madeline Solomon. Her first roommate. And her last.

It took fifteen minutes, or maybe less, for the two young women to know they were destined to be together in one way or another through the arduous, thrilling, enormously life-changing roller-coaster ride of college. And life thereafter, no matter where they were.

Nell shook herself free of the memories and brought her thoughts back to the man in front of her. The sadness in Ollie’s eyes, the grief etched into the lines of his face, were still fresh and new these years after Maddie’s death. Some things seemed to defy the passage of time.

“Enough about the past,” Nell said lightly, trying to shift the mood. “Tell me about your New York restaurants. And your wife. Ben and I are looking forward to meeting her.”

Ollie’s body seemed to relax as he shifted back into the present. “Lidia. Well, how much time do you have?” He laughed softly. “She’s talented. A fine chef. Not as good as I once was, but almost.”

“No one will ever be as good as you. You were the sole reason for our ‘freshman fifteen.’ Amazing meals cooked up in that dingy Somerville place you lived in.”

“I remember well. Anyway, Lidia would have come tonight, but had an interview or something in Boston. You’ll like her, Nell. Everyone likes her. Unless they don’t.” He took a long drink.

Nell frowned, trying hard to read her friend’s face. “I read somewhere that she gives you credit for giving her a start.”

“I suppose you could say that. Although Lidia isn’t the kind of person people actually give things to. She decides what she wants, and then she takes it. People think they’re offering her things, but that’s because Lidia makes them feel that way.”

Ollie’s face and tone of voice gave Nell few clues as to whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“She came into the restaurant kitchen on a particularly bad day. Maddie was in hospice, I was distracted, the restaurant was suffering. And there she was at the alley door. She stepped inside, looking around, almost as if she’d cased the place first. I watched her from the glass window in my office, slightly wary, although I couldn’t tell you why. She walked around, waving steam from soup pots toward her face, checking out the combination of spices. I even saw her stick a finger in a pot of thick sauce and was about to charge out of the office and send her back out the door.

“But then she spotted my office, headed over, and walked in, as if I had been waiting for her. She checked out the mess of papers on my desk, a couple of crates on the floor, a dirty coffee cup. The expression on her face as she looked around was pure disdain. But when she looked at me, it disappeared. It was business-like, I remember, not flirtatious. She announced that she was there to work. She could start right away.

“I thought she was on something, but she went on, telling me she knew kitchens, and mine clearly needed her. It was a mess, she said, but she’d straighten it out. Prep chef, fry chef, expediter, on and on, naming a half-dozen positions. Then she added that it didn’t really matter. She’d do whatever needed to be done, and from what she could see, that was nearly everything.”

Ollie shrugged, then half smiled at the memory.

“That didn’t unhinge you?” Nell asked. “You never liked people telling you what to do, especially when it had anything to do with cooking. You were one scary cook if anyone got in your way.”

Ollie laughed. “Yeah. Maybe. But you’ll get what I mean when you meet her. Besides, she was dead right. The restaurant was failing financially, although the news of that hadn’t quite leaked out. I wasn’t handling things well back then—”

Nell glanced at his large hand again, its veins prominent, strong fingers that once whisked butter and wine and fresh herbs into award-winning sauces. But it was the angry scar across it that stood out. An angry scar caused by anger. A meat slice in the wrong place.

A reputation Ollie Bishop had finessed. Nell hadn’t seen his anger often, but she’d heard stories of him yelling at sous chefs and cursing at fallen soufflés. Maddie had laughed off the anecdotes, saying, “He’s just under a lot of pressure. I don’t ever see that side of Ollie.”

“So, did she? Did she straighten things out?”

“She did. I was mostly absent, being with Maddie, trying to make her live.”

Nell looked at her old friend, then fell into the sad, shared silence. In the distance, the old Al Green song “Let’s Stay Together” filled the bar, as if the guitarist on the tall stool knew it fit into their memories.

“Things calmed down at the restaurant without me,” Ollie went on. “Lidia fired and hired people right and left. Paid off old debts, unpaid bills. She just did it, going way beyond any authority she had—which was basically none. But I couldn’t have cared less. In the end, her decisions were smart, effective, calculated. Visionary, almost. When I think back, it was eerie that she dropped into my life that way. And that she stayed. Things got better . . .”

“But . . . ?”

“But? No buts. It’s all okay.” Ollie stretched out his legs and looked into the flames. “She teaches a class here and there, is on the board of some of the elite culinary schools in the city. Lidia gets around.”

Nell listened quietly, trying to imagine that world. She had gone to New York to sit with Maddie shortly before she died. Ollie had mostly stayed away that day, giving the two of them space. Maddie talked little. Nell had held her hand, their love passing wordlessly through the gentle clasp. Nell knew when she left that day that she wouldn’t see Maddie again. Not on this planet. But neither woman said good-bye. Their embrace was enough to cement that they would carry one another with them, wherever they were.

And then a few years later she and Ben received a wedding invitation. And Lidia replaced her dearest friend in Oliver’s life.

“It sounds like Lidia’s good for you,” Nell said aloud. “Maybe Maddie had a role in this? So you wouldn’t completely screw up the magnificent restaurant she’d help you build, the one you both put your hearts and souls into.”

Ollie shrugged. “Who knows? Things aren’t always smooth, but it works out. Mostly. Or will—”

The marriage or the business? Nell wondered.

“Lidia has a head for business. Half the time she forgets to tell me about the newest grand plan until I see proposals, whatever. She’s got some new plan going on now. It was the incentive to come up here.”

“Catering the Sea Harbor mayor’s annual holiday party?” Nell chuckled. “That’s ‘big’ for Sea Harbor, maybe. Our mayor, Beatrice Scaglia, is sure she won the lottery, having a famous chef cater her event. But big for Oliver Bishop? For his famous wife?”

Now it was Ollie’s turn to laugh. “No, not the mayor, although she’s a character. She came to New York to charm us. Dressed to the nines and flirting with me shamelessly, not realizing that it was Lidia she should have been impressing. But the catering was calculated, something my wife is good at. She’s always looking ahead to—”

Nell lifted a hand, interrupting his sentence. She half stood, looking beyond Ollie to a tall man coming in from the dining area. She waved to get his attention, then glanced at Ollie and pointed across the room. “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I just spotted the friend I want you to meet. You have lots in common.”

Don Wooten spotted Nell at the same time. The owner of the restaurant and lounge smiled and waved back, raising one finger that he’d be over in a minute, then continued toward the bar, where a bartender was gesturing for the boss’s attention.

“Who?” Ollie said, his forehead wrinkling, straining to see where Nell was pointing.

“Don Wooten,” Nell said. “The owner.”

Nell settled back in the chair. “It looks like he’s busy right now.”

But Ollie had stopped listening, his attention focused on the large television set above the bar.

“You asked about meeting my wife—” He lifted his drink in the air, pointing toward the screen. “Nell, meet Lidia Carson.”

Nell looked up and saw an attractive woman with pitch-black hair pulled back into a knot. The television camera highlighted a narrow face, high cheekbones, a polished smile. Ollie’s wife was sitting across from the evening newscaster, a popular Boston interviewer, who was guiding viewers’ attention to clips of Lidia appearing as a guest on the Bobby Flay cooking show. Next was a large image featuring an architect’s rendering of a nearly all-glass restaurant. Nell couldn’t hear what the interviewer asked or what Lidia answered, but she could see ocean beyond the modish glass walls. “What a beautiful structure,” she said aloud. “Exotic.” She looked over at Ollie and just managed to get out the words “Your wife is beautiful, Ollie” before the screen flickered, then went black.

Next, a shocking crash interrupted everything.

For a startled second, the bar noise was muted, too.

And then, another sound. Behind the bar, Don Wooten slammed the remote control device down on the bar surface, shattering it to pieces. Batteries skittered across the polished teak. Next to him, the young bartender squeezed a towel in his hand as if for protection, his eyes wide. Several bar regulars sitting close to the usual easygoing restaurant owner teased him for his bum choice of a television. Others pitied the bartender who may have caused the commotion.

But all were happy the television hadn’t failed them earlier during the game. And happy that their team had won.

Laughter and voices picked up almost immediately and drinks were slid across the bar surface. The guitarist packed up for the night, and loud, recorded hits filled the Ocean’s Edge Restaurant lounge, bringing the area back to its after-dinner spirit.

But what Nell felt wasn’t the crowd’s spirit, and what she saw wasn’t a room of happy revelers.

What Nell saw was her good friend Don Wooten, his face darker than the wintry night, moving around the end of the bar with angry urgency, then disappearing through a service door and onto the icy cold, wave-soaked deck.

Nell stepped into the welcoming warmth of home, shutting the door to the garage behind her. She could hear male voices coming from the den and smiled at the bass and tenor melody of them.

At the sound of steps, Ben came into the family room and wrapped her in a hug that helped her bones start to thaw out.

“Ah, Nellie, I’m glad you’re home,” Ben said. Then he took a step back and helped her out of her coat.

“Me too.” Nell looked toward the den. “Who’s our late-night company?”

“Tommy Porter.”

“Tommy? Why? Has there been a crime I should know about?”

“Internet mess. Something has made away with our connection. Tommy was at his parents’ house, fixing theirs, and saw our light, so came over to straighten ours out, too.”

“So we now have the town’s most amazing police detective fixing our computers?”

Her comment traveled into the den and to the young man she glimpsed hunched over Ben’s desk.

Without turning around, Tommy sent her a muffled “hi,” along with a request to keep Ben out of his way.

“I’ll distract him.” Nell laughed. She stepped back into Ben’s arms to give him an improved embrace. “You’re nice and warm, I think I’ll just stay here.”

“Sounds good to me. So give me the scoop,” Ben said. “How’s he doing?”

“Hmm. Well, it was wonderful to see Ollie, but honestly, Ben, I don’t think I can tell you how he is. At first, he seemed a little depressed and dispirited—”

“Oliver?”

“I know. But then he livened up and seemed like Ollie again. I think he’s still adjusting to changes in his life.”

“The marriage, you mean? But they’ve been married a few years now—”

“That’s true. And he praises Lidia. It sounds as if he’s stepped back from both cooking and running his restaurants, leaving most of the responsibilities to her.”

“That’s a lot for Ollie to get used to. Ollie was always a bit controlling of his business, I thought.”

Ben nodded toward the large stone fireplace at one end of the room, flames leaping in the grate. “Looks like I’ve been banned from the den, so let’s make use of my fire before it dies on me. A better place to talk.” He headed to the kitchen island at the other end of the room and returned in minutes with a steaming hot toddy for Nell and a glass of Scotch for himself.

Nell curled up in a corner of the couch near the fire, taking the warm mug in her hands. “It’s a perfect fire.”

From the den, Yo-Yo Ma’s soothing strings and Abigail Washburn’s amazing voice filled the warm air with languages foreign and familiar, singing about “Going Home.”

Nell cradled her mug in her hands, welcoming the warmth to her fingers and Ben’s long comforting body beside her. “A hot toddy and Yo-Yo Ma,” she said. “What more could I ask for? But something tells me you need it, too. How did your committee meeting go?”

Ben looped his free arm over the back of the couch and began a one-handed massage of her neck and shoulders. “The usual. Some easy town issues. Some disruptive. The holidays seem to bring out the argumentative side in some folks.”

“Our friend Ms. Risso was there, I presume.”

Ben laughed. “Right. Luna Risso never misses open meetings.”

“She told me the other day that those meetings are more entertaining than Judge Judy. What was she objecting to tonight?”

“She’s upset about the holiday party being held at ‘Beady’s’ mansion, as she calls our mayor. There’s something about Beatrice’s new house that irritates her. And she’s also upset that the annual town event is by invitation this year.”

“Good for her. Luna charges in where others fear to tread. And she’s right about that event suddenly becoming exclusive. Plenty of people are upset about it.”

Ben nodded his agreement. “She ended her objections by saying she just might run for mayor and put Beatrice in her place if she didn’t behave.”

Nell laughed. “Well, she brings chocolate chip cookies to all your meetings. That might earn her some support.” She sipped her hot drink slowly, its warmth easing her body. “What else was on the agenda tonight?”

Ben kicked off his loafers and stretched his legs onto the coffee table. “Some commercial real estate ventures from out of towners—always a hot topic. We get reamed out by people who don’t want Sea Harbor to change, especially if it involves new fancy restaurants along the harbor. And then there are the ones who think we’ll die if we don’t change.” He leaned forward and set his glass on the table. “But you already know all that. I’d rather hear more about your evening with Ollie. How’s the old guy doing?”

“The old guy, who’s one year younger than you?”

Ben laughed and raised his glass to her.

“If it’s any comfort, you look a lot younger than he does. But the woman he’s married to now seems to have helped bring him back to life. She’s younger, attractive, at least from what I saw on the TV screen.” Nell paused, rethinking the evening’s conversations. “I don’t think she’s anything like Maddie—”

“That might be good. He could never find another Maddie. But how’s she different?”

“I guess we’ll find out at the mayor’s party.”

A shadow in the den doorway pulled their attention to their young policeman/computer wizard. He held his jacket in his hand.

“All done, folks. You’ll be relieved to know you’re back on social media, Ben.”

Ben laughed, the term being nearly foreign to him, as Tommy knew.

“You’re the best, Tommy,” Nell said, pulling. . .