Free Death by Cashmere by Sally Goldenbaum

Archer was murdered."

Chapter 9
    The news of Angie Archer 's cruel murder spread through the Sea Harbor community with the force of a nor'easter. According to the autopsy report, she hadn't gone swimming or strolling or jogging along a breakwater on a bad night, a scenario most of the town had tried to cling to. Angie Archer had been murdered, and in an awful way.
    The Sea Harbor Gazette, with a headline bigger than the Sox beating the Yankees, called it a result of a "date rape drug." Although Angie hadn't been molested, the reporter wrote, a drug common in crimes intended to render a person helpless was found in her body. No matter how skilled a swimmer Angie'd been, she wouldn't have been able to move a muscle once the flunitrazepam was dropped in her drink.
    Tommy and Rob had told the knitters the apartment would have to be off-limits for a day or two, though they didn't expect to find much up there. The forensics guys would want to do a check, though, Tommy had said. "And, Izzy," he promised her, "I . . . I'll be s-sure they're quick."
    And Tommy had kept his promise, Izzy told Nell the next day, though the racket they made that morning was unsettling to customers. "They were noisier than Angie," she said with a sad smile.
    Ben and Nell had kidnapped Izzy from the knitting shop Friday, insisting she take a lunch break and have a sandwich with them at Harry's Deli.
    "Is there a lot of talk of the murder in the shop, Iz?" Nell said. Her uneaten pastrami sat in front of her. Nell's phone had rung all morning long, friends and neighbors, Father Northcutt updating her on Josie, board members from the Historical Museum. Everyone was concerned; everyone felt awful; and nearly everyone was sure it was a stranger, an awful person who had committed a terrible, random act of violence.
    Izzy nodded and picked at her mushroom sandwich. "The rumors are starting, as you'd expect. Mostly people are talking about Angie's love life. Wondering if there's a connection there. I guess it's the date-rape drug angle."
    "As far as I know, Angie didn't have much of a love life, except for Pete."
    "And Pete wouldn't hurt a fly," Izzy said.
    "Not only that, but he's so crushed at all this bad news that he can barely function, Cass says," Nell added. But he had been Angie's date that night, Nell thought. And she knew that fact would not escape anyone looking into Angie's murder.
    "I think mostly people who've come into the shop want so badly to move on that they're calling Angie's murder a random act, a beach bum who's long gone."
    Ben took his glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "It makes it all easier, I suppose. If the murderer has moved on, things can go back to normal more quickly. The gossip is exciting for a while. But it's short-lived. Then people want it over, want the beaches safe. Want their summer back."
    " 'Murders don't happen in Sea Harbor,' that's what people are saying," Izzy said. "They happen in Boston and New York and Los Angeles, but not here. Never here."
    "Except one did," Nell said.
    "What did they do in the apartment?" Ben asked.
    "Not too much. They looked through everything, but Tommy was with them, and he said he made sure that anything they didn't need to take they put back neatly."
    Nell smiled. "He's trying to protect you, Iz."
    "I guess it can't hurt to have a sweet guy on the force watching out for my interests. The police mentioned what we noticed, Nell--that it didn't look like Angie really lived there. She hadn't made it her own. They were hoping to find something like a cell phone or a computer, Tommy said."
    "Her cell phone was with her, we know that. It was like another appendage--she never went anywhere without it. It's probably rusting and useless at the bottom of the cove," Ben said. "What about her computer?"
    "She had a laptop," Izzy said. "But it wasn't in the apartment, Tommy said."
    "Maybe at her office at the museum," Nell said. "I'm sure they'll check there."
    "Tommy