Death by Cashmere by Sally Goldenbaum Page B

see that the restaurant was nearly full.
    "Like who would have thought this'd ever happen in Sea Harbor?" Stella asked, her green eyes huge behind blue-rimmed glasses. "It's like CSI --but better. My mom says I can't talk about it to customers, but, like, you guys are friends." She grabbed two menus from the hostess stand and ushered Ben and Nell through the restaurant and out to the small weathered deck that ran along its side and looked out over the sea. "I'll give you a table out here, where you can talk and knit better."
    "It's awful news, Stella," Nell said, sitting down at a small table next to the railing and settling her large knitting bag at her feet. It held the new sea-yarn scarf she had started and hoped to finish this week. She looked up at Stella. "But there's not much to say, is there?"
    Stella frowned and bit down on her bottom lip. Her plucked eyebrows arched as she looked back toward the screen door that separated the porch from the inside of the cafe. Then she leaned toward Nell, her head lowered and her large tinted glasses so close that Nell could see herself in the lenses. "Now, here's what I know," Stella whispered. "Angie was with a guy, like, having a drink. Then plop, the little pill went into the glass. And when he pushed her off, it was all over. She had a way of making men mad, you know?"
    "No, I don't know that," Nell said. "And you don't either, Stella."
    Ben, not willing to engage in Stella's gossip, walked over to the sideboard, drawn by the smell of fresh coffee. He returned carrying a steaming silver pot and filled Nell's mug.
    Stella slapped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry, Mr. Endicott. That's my job."
    Ben sat down next to Nell. "No problem, Stella. I was a pretty accomplished waiter in my college days." He smiled up at her, then pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and unfolded the Times .
    Nell poured cream into her mug and watched Stella's head swing around again, this time aimed at the red-checked curtain of the kitchen window, hoping her mother was busy over a hot stove and not looking out.
    She looked back at Nell. "There's more here than meets the eye, Mrs. Endicott," Stella said in an official CSI way. Her brows lifted again and she held her head high, as if balancing a secret that might slide off her head if she moved too fast. She pushed her glasses back into place and pulled a small tablet out of her pocket. Then, her mind switching to other things, she turned and walked back inside the restaurant.
    Ben looked up from the paper. "Did she take our order?" he asked.
    "No." Nell watched the screen door to the restaurant swing shut behind the teenager. "I don't imagine life at the Palazolas' is ever dull, especially with Stella around." Nell stirred her coffee and thought about the courage of the Annabelles of the world-- single moms raising kids, holding down jobs. Annabelle's husband, Joe, had been a successful swordfish captain until the day his boat and crew were swept out to sea in the middle of a sudden summer storm, leaving his wife with four small children to raise. In the blink of an eye, Annabelle's life was shattered into a million pieces. "I needed to do a one eighty," she had told Nell during those days of shock and forced decision. "The kids had such great needs. And Joe had plans for each one of them--plans that needed money."
    So Annabelle buried her grief and took action to honor her husband's dreams. She decided the one thing she did especially well was talk to people and cook eggs. And so Sweet Petunia's was born. Using her family's old Sicilian recipes and ones she made up on the spot, Annabelle and her restaurant became instant Cape Ann favorites, and Nell and Ben found that going more than a week without one of Annabelle's frittatas wasn't a good thing.
    "People rebuild their lives in ways we couldn't imagine," Ben said, stepping into her thoughts. "It's what the human spirit is about."
    Nell nodded. "It's what Josie is already beginning to do." She