Knot the Usual Suspects Page 14

  When she did, I saw her face and recognized her as the woman who’d called me Kathy at the courthouse Tuesday morning. Calling me Kathy was an easy and common mistake. Joe and Clod Dunbar’s parents had graced them with star-studded literary names, but my mother had been frugal with many things, including names. I’d only ever had the names Kath and Rutledge, with no other syllables tacked on or taking up space between them.

  “Hello again,” the woman said, twiddling her fingers at me. She looked to be somewhere in her sixties, but the twiddled fingers didn’t seem to match her particular style of being sixty. Hers were the kind of sixties it took a fair amount of time and money to maintain, with hair that was coifed and colored, not merely cut and blown dry. It had more of the poodle look to it than might be currently fashionable, but she had the legs of a woman with the self-discipline to regularly run or dance—and the guts to wear leggings and ankle boots. A dark gray lightweight cowl sweater (angora?) hit her at mid–muscular thigh. “I told you I’d be in later this week, Katie,” she said to me, “and here I am.”

  “Kath,” Ardis said, “do you know Olive Weems? Olive is Mayor Weems’ wife. You’ve met Pokey a time or two, I’m sure.”

  A prick of irritation, no bigger than a gnat’s whisker, came and went on Olive’s face. At her husband’s nickname? At receiving second billing as Mrs. Mayor? She must be used to both, but I got the feeling Ardis played them broadly on purpose.

  “I hear you’re in charge of Handmade Blue Plum,” I said. “That must be a huge undertaking.”

  Olive nodded her appreciation of the recognition. “A labor of love,” she said, one hand on her heart, “and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I hope you’ll stop by the fair, Kath.” She smiled at getting my name right. “I know it’s a busy weekend for merchants, too, not just the craftspeople and visitors coming in for the fair. That’s why I take the time and make the effort to come around and personally invite all of you. This weekend is always a fun time for Blue Plum.”

  “Is Pokey opening the fair this year?” Ardis asked. Without waiting for Olive to answer, she turned to me and asked, “Have you ever seen Pokey attacking a ribbon with his giant pair of scissors?”

  Geneva, sitting on the mannequin’s shoulder, appeared to be nodding off. But when Ardis mentioned the giant scissors, her eyes popped open wide.

  Olive didn’t wait to hear if I had or hadn’t seen Pokey wield his scissors. “As long as I’m here,” she said, “I might as well take a look around and see if there isn’t some little thing I can’t live without.” She twiddled her fingers again and went around the corner into the other room.

  Ardis maintained the full wattage of her repertory theater smile until Olive was out of sight, then gave her face a rest.

  “When I came in and saw you two together, I thought you were good friends,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “Friendly enough. But she isn’t a CC.” She glanced at me. “Sorry. CC is shorthand Ivy and I used for people like—” She nodded in the direction Olive had gone. “CC stands for constant customer, something she most definitely is not. Her visit here today is exactly what she said it is.”

  “An invitation to see giant scissors,” Geneva said. “It was friendly.”

  “No,” Ardis said. “She wasn’t doing anything more than drumming up business for the fair. I’ll give you this—she always makes a point of buying ‘some little thing’ she can’t live without when she comes to issue her Handmade Blue Plum invitation. She also makes a point of shopping locally during mayoral campaign seasons. But otherwise she does most of her shopping online or in Asheville and Knoxville. That’s where she goes for her angora and mohair and silk blends, too.”

  “She knitted the cowl she’s wearing?” I asked.

  “If she didn’t, she could have. She’s that good.”

  “Excuse me.” Geneva raised her hand.

  Ardis raised her eyebrows, clearly wondering about the change in Geneva’s behavior. I wondered, too.

  “Is there something wrong, Geneva?”

  “Is there ever anything wrong with good manners?” she asked. “I thought I should point out that Olive can still be called a CC. If she shops locally during campaigns, then she is a campaign customer, and that, also, is a CC.”

  “No,” Ardis said. “That just means her status can be described as OOPS—only occasional paltry sales.”

  “I guess something is wrong, then,” Geneva muttered. “Me.” She started to billow, glanced at me, and stopped. She muttered something else, then drooped over to the counter and sat next to Argyle. He’d stretched out to take up as much acreage as possible on the counter, and greeted her with a lift of his chin and another luxurious stretch.

  Olive didn’t take long to find what she couldn’t live without. Although why she couldn’t live without a hank of orange cotton embroidery floss was beyond me. She stopped short of the counter.

  “Oops,” Ardis said.

  “I should think you’d say that a lot with a cat in a wool shop,” Olive said with a laugh. “It’s a twist on the bull in a china shop, isn’t it? And you’ll never believe it, but this orange is the exact color I was looking for to finish a bib for the first grandbaby. It’s ‘Go, Vols’ all the way with his daddy.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” Ardis said. She took the floss from Olive and made a production of ringing it up and putting it in a bag.

  “And I guess I am wrong again,” Geneva said with a heave of her shoulders.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what she thought she was wrong about, but figured it was better—and possibly safer—to find out. I moved closer to her so she couldn’t miss my sign language, and so we’d be less distracting to Ardis; then I tilted my head and touched my right ear.

  “You are not much of a detective, if you need to ask,” she said. “It is as plain as the nose on your face, and as plain as the small pimple on your nose that I was not going to mention because I thought minding my manners was the right thing to do.”

  I touched my ear again, but she turned her back on me. When I turned back to Ardis and Olive, it was obvious I’d missed something.

  “I’m not sure what it will be, or when,” Olive said, “but I’ll let you know when I find out.”

  “I’d appreciate it, Olive. Thank you.” Ardis handed her the small bag with the hank of floss. “You haven’t heard anything about how he died, have you?”

  “It’s a terrible thing to have happened,” Olive said. “I hadn’t heard from him in years, but it’s still so completely shocking. If Palmer has heard anything about the case, he hasn’t shared it with me. What was Hugh thinking, though, playing those things at that time of night? Especially after he’d been asked to stop playing them that afternoon, when some people might have actually enjoyed them. He never did consider other people, though.”

  “Who asked him to stop that afternoon?” Ardis asked.

  “Lonnie, the poor man. He looked like that noise gave him one heck of a migraine. Or like he’d seen a ghost.”

  It was an expression, of course, but it startled the two of us who were aware of the ghost on the counter not two feet from Olive’s elbow. It startled the ghost, too. Geneva, Ardis, and I looked at each other out of the corners of our eyes. Rather awkwardly, I thought. The obvious question for me was, who was Lonnie? But Geneva asked hers first.

  “Why did she say that?” she whispered.

  “Why did you say that?” Ardis repeated, not sounding entirely natural. “About seeing a ghost?”

  “Well, you know,” Olive said. “Because no one had heard from Hugh or seen him for so long. I suppose that was it.”

  “Because no had seen him for so long? No,” Geneva said, shaking her head, “that was not it.”

  Ardis, still listening to Geneva, nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  “You do?” Geneva said. “Will wonders never
cease?”

  “Yes,” said Olive, “the shock of seeing him after so many years—I’m sure I’m right.”

  “Um, Olive?” I thought I’d better get her attention and give Ardis a few seconds to refocus on the here and alive. “Someone said Hugh was here for Handmade Blue Plum. Do you know if that’s true?”

  “That’s what I was telling Ardis. Some of the craftspeople knew him. Maybe way back when? I really don’t know. They heard about his death, though, and they’ve asked if they can do something by way of a memorial for him at some point this weekend. I won’t forget, Ardis. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  “Who’s Lonnie?” I asked after Olive left.

  “A sensitive creature,” Geneva said.

  “He’s about as sensitive as Olive’s bull in a china shop,” Ardis said. “He’d rattle the shop, but nothing rattles him. There’s no way that just seeing someone, Hugh McPhee or anyone else, after umpteen years would make him look like he’d seen a ghost.”

  “But who is he?” I asked.

  “You and most people know him as Sheriff Haynes. And some call him Leonard. But only a select few call him Lonnie.”

  “Olive is one of the few?”

  “She’s proud to think so. At a distance,” Ardis said. “But to his face? I’m not so sure. Even though she is Mrs. Pokey Weems.”

  “Maybe she does it because she is Mrs. Pokey Weems. Compared to ‘Pokey,’ what’s wrong with ‘Lonnie’?”

  “Perhaps nothing is wrong with poor Lonnie,” Geneva said. “Even if he is as strong as a bull, you are forgetting about the ghost. Seeing one can be quite disturbing.”

  “She meant wrong with the name, not with him,” Ardis said. “Better make a note of that, though, Kath. I don’t know how we’ll follow up on it, but we need to find out why he had that reaction when he saw Hugh.”

  “Maybe it really was a migraine.” I added migraine to the note. “Or Olive’s imagination?”

  “Or the kind of exaggerated memory that sets in after a sudden death?” Ardis said.

  “Or it was the ghost,” Geneva said, enunciating each word.

  “No, really, that’s unlikely,” Ardis said. “Oh.”

  “What?” I looked up from writing.

  “She stuck her tongue out at me and disappeared.”

  * * *

  “If she is so sure that seeing ghosts is unlikely,” Geneva said when I found her stewing in the study window seat, “then I want you to take that green braided bracelet you made away from her. She does not deserve to see any ghost at all.”

  “Sticking your tongue out was childish.”

  “She does not deserve good manners, either. She was being rude to the mayor’s wife. I thought I was being friendly and helpful.”

  “So did I. So did Ardis.”

  “She told me I was wrong every time I turned around.”

  “She didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “I did mean to hurt hers. She made me feel like a scolded child.”

  “Will it help if I ask her to apologize?”

  “It will help if I am allowed to enjoy my death in peace and quiet.”

  * * *

  Running investigations on the QT out of a profitable yarn shop wasn’t easy. The profits would keep walking through the door—as they should. As gratifying as the brisk business was that morning, it kept me from cornering Ardis and making her tell me what she’d learned during her interview with Darla. She took every opportunity to personally guide customers to their destinations, thus keeping out of my clutches. Shortly after noon, she said she’d run to Mel’s and pick up a couple of salads.

  “I’m having a hard time keeping a lid on my B-day excitement,” she said, speaking behind her hand so the customers browsing the display table didn’t hear. “The fresh air will do me good. Might knock the edge off.”

  “Do you mind if I go instead?”

  She stooped, peering into my face. “Are you all right? Here I am, all hyped up, and I just realized that you’ve been awfully quiet. Problems with Her Highness upstairs?”

  “No.” That came out more sharply than I’d meant and I tried to soften it. Hard to do after the fact, though. “I might be more keyed up than you think. Sorry, Ardis. I didn’t mean to sound snappish. You can go if you need to get out.”

  “You go on, hon. I’ll expend my extra energy flinging a dust rag around.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went out the back door, the baa sounding troubled and melancholy to my ears. That sound and kicking a stone down the service alley toward Mel’s back door suited my mood. I didn’t know what I was going to do about my two mismatched, peas-in-a-pod friends. What if they couldn’t learn to get along? Geneva’s interpersonal skills had improved over the months we’d known each other, but they were still rusty from more than a century spent in the limbo of haunting a house where no one knew she existed. And that put the burden of compromise on Ardis. Strong, stable, sure-of-herself Ardis—who didn’t seem to be getting it right.

  I waited in line at Mel’s counter wondering if there was such a thing as a family therapist who specialized in normal and paranormal families, and if so, where I’d find one.

  “Order, please,” Mel said when it was my turn at the counter. “I’d engage you in pleasant banter, Red, but Ardis called ahead to warn me that you’re feeling contemplative.” She pointed at the man behind me in line. “You don’t mind stepping back, do you?” she asked him. “We’re having a private moment here.” She made shooing motions at him, then crooked a finger at me. “Ardis hopes you’re working out an intricate part of the case,” she said almost under her breath. “But she’s worried that what’s really going on is that you and Joe are having problems.”

  “What? Why?”

  “She hasn’t seen you two together much lately. She thought it might be preying on your mind.”

  “He’s busy with Handmade Blue Plum. You had time for this conversation with her during the lunch rush?”

  “She talked fast.”

  “She could’ve talked to me.”

  “She wanted an impartial opinion. I told her not to worry, that you two are fine, and that if there were problems, I’d probably know about them before you did. But going with her first thought, that you’re in a detecting haze, she ordered lunch so you wouldn’t have to waste brainpower wondering what to get. Roasted beet and radish salads à l’orange and a couple of lemonades are waiting at the pickup window.”

  I handed her my credit card.

  “Sorry I can’t join the fun tonight,” she said.

  “We are, too, but we’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

  “You’ll find something extra in your bag you’re going like. Now move along and quit holding up the line.”

  “Thanks, Mel.”

  I picked up the bag with the salads and something extra, visions of another new menu experiment dancing in my head. I didn’t look to see what it was, deciding to let Ardis have the pleasure of discovery. Mel would have made a good bartender, I thought. What kind of commonsense advice would she apply to my paranormal friend and family situation? Could I discuss it with her, using the clichéd “friend with a problem” ploy? Would the identity of the friend surprise her?

  I pushed through Mel’s back door, juggling the bag and the caddy holding the lemonade, feeling more hopeful. Not looking for Spiveys lying in wait.

  “There you are,” said the unscented Spivey to my left when the door snapped shut behind me.

  “Oops,” the scented one said. “And there goes your lemonade down the steps.”

  Chapter 16

  “We thought we’d give you an update,” Mercy said.

  “It’s a good thing the lemonade missed your shoes and tights,” Shirley said. “You might
want to let Mel know it’s there, though, or people will be tracking it into the café all afternoon.”

  I might want to vault over the lemonade—or their heads—and run down the alley to get away from them. “What update?”

  “On the McPhee-Rogalla rendezvous.”

  “On Tuesday afternoon.”

  “We know where they went.”

  “Who they saw.”

  “You look like a metronome,” Shirley said. “Does this help?” They’d been standing on opposite sides of Mel’s back landing. She moved over next to Mercy, giving me a single focal point. It did help.

  “Where and who?” I asked.

  “The courthouse,” Shirley said. “The Register of Deeds.”

  “And then the bank,” said Mercy. “Rachel Meeks.”

  That was so interesting that I looked the twins in their eyes and thanked them—sincerely. Their surprise at my sincerity said something about the usual tone of our interactions. Their surprise wasn’t quite enough to make me feel bad about that usual tone, because I was still suspicious of their motives. But when they shooed me along, saying they would tell Mel about the lemonade, I thanked them again, avoided the worst of the spill, and headed back to the Cat.

  * * *

  “Don’t worry about the lemonade,” Ardis said. “I’ll make tea. There’s nothing wrong with tap water, either, although with the twins on the loose, something stronger wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “Amen.”

  “Ivy used to keep a bottle in the office.”

  “Granny?”

  “For after hours only.”

  I glanced toward the office. “Bottle of what? I haven’t found anything like that in there.”

  “The last was a bottle of dry sherry. We finished it one memorable night last spring. She didn’t get around to replacing it before she passed, and I didn’t have the heart to.”

  “Maybe we should replace it now.”