Knot the Usual Suspects Read online

  “Not a bad idea.”

  “Ardis, what do you know about Al Rogalla?” I hadn’t told her about Shirley and Mercy’s visit the night before, or about the update they’d sprung on me at Mel’s back door. Ardis’ feelings for the twins were visceral, and I wanted to hear her views on Al unfiltered through her Spivey senses.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever trusted him,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She screwed her mouth sideways to give the question serious thought. “I don’t suppose I have a good reason. He’s a volunteer fireman, and that speaks well for him. He’s an accountant. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that.”

  “Joe says he’s a nice guy.”

  “Well, Joe is Joe, and that doesn’t make him the best judge of character, does it.” She said that with the kind of offhand chuckle that suggested this shouldn’t be news to me.

  “But you like Joe.” Her statement was news to me. Except for the first time we’d met—when I’d caught him in a house he had no business being in—I hadn’t seen or heard anything that would lead me to think he or his judgment couldn’t be trusted. Nothing concrete. Nothing specific. But this “old news” played into some of my questions about him that I’d found it easier to bury since we got together. “You like Joe and you trust him, right?”

  “In every way that matters.” She said that without hesitation, with sure conviction.

  “But not Rogalla.”

  “I feel like we’re overthinking this,” Ardis said. “Allegiances aren’t always rational. Humans are funny that way, as I know you’ve noticed. It might be something nebulous that comes down to familiarity and comfort level. But why do we care about Al Rogalla? He knows how to put out a fire and he doesn’t do our taxes. Two pluses in my admittedly irrational human worldview. And that leaves you still holding the bag.” She pointed at the lunch bag.

  “Do you want me to tell you why we care about him before or after lunch?”

  She sighed and dropped onto the stool behind the counter.

  “I’ll be quick. First, Cole mentioned Al Rogalla Tuesday morning. Like he has a competition going with him. That makes Al interesting right off the bat. Second, the twins told me they saw Hugh and Al together Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Busybody snoops.”

  “Hold on. Believe it or not, you and they are on the same wavelength where Al Rogalla is concerned. If you’d told me that you like and trust him as unequivocally as you told me you like and trust Joe, I’d take their information with more than a grain of salt.”

  “I think we’ll still take it with a grain of salt.”

  I nodded. “My thinking, too. But they say they found out that Hugh and Al went to the Register of Deeds together, and then to meet with Rachel Meeks.”

  I handed her the lunch bag. “Here, you eat first.”

  “And I’ll chew over that bit of news while I do.”

  * * *

  The phone rang while I was ringing up a substantial purchase of the kumihimo silk cord. I apologized to the customer and picked up. It was Thea.

  “I’m with another customer. Do you mind if I call you back?”

  “I’m not a customer. I’m reporting case information.”

  “Text it?”

  “You know I won’t. Story time starts in five minutes. This won’t take thirty seconds.”

  I apologized to the customer again. She was the best kind of patron; she took the delay as an opportunity to resume shopping.

  “Hugh McPhee played his pipes at a funeral for Walter Jeffries in Knoxville on Monday.”

  “Do we know who he was?”

  “No. I’ll find out what I can after story time. We’re doing Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett today. The kids get to decorate boxes and take them home with a ball of yarn. See you tonight.”

  * * *

  Ardis’ eyes were red when she came back out front after eating.

  “It’s the downtimes that are hard,” she said. “I find it very easy to make myself cry. Maybe I shouldn’t eat lunch for a while.”

  “Or not alone. Geneva used to cry a lot when we first met.”

  “And that breaks my heart, too. All that time, all those years and years she spent alone. She must have been a very strong person to have held her wits together through all that.”

  “She still is a person, Ardis. Just extremely differently abled. Did you know that she used to draw?”

  “Speaking of which.” She handed me a piece of lined notebook paper folded in quarters. “This was in the bag with the salads.”

  “Just the salads? Mel said she put in something extra.”

  “That must be it.” She mimed flipping the paper over, where Mel had written Dish. I think you’ll like it.

  “Have you looked at it?” I asked as I unfolded it.

  “I thought I’d read over your shoulder.”

  I unfolded the paper, revealing a couple of paragraphs in rounded cursive, followed by a small stick figure. But no sooner had I smoothed the paper on the counter between us than the camel bells at the door jingled. I refolded the paper and handed it back to Ardis. And in walked a man Ardis was beginning to warm up to, but not much.

  “I’ll go on upstairs and do that straightening I didn’t tell you about that I really must do immediately,” she said. “Call me if you need me. Or send smoke signals.”

  Her comment wasn’t the politically incorrect remark it sounded like. And if Ardis hadn’t been warming up to Aaron Carlin, she would have made the crack about smoke signals loud enough for him to hear. She didn’t, though, and he stepped inside with a wave and his sweet smile in place. Aaron was the handyman whose pickup truck I’d thought of when Ernestine told us she’d heard a vehicle backfire late Tuesday night. His truck was leprous, and backfiring might be its least toxic trait. Ardis was of the opinion that Carlins in general were toxic. They were known as the Smoky Smokin’ Carlins, because they had the bad habit of starting fires in the national forest down around Newport where they lived. More than a few of them had spent time as guests of the federal government. Aaron himself had stood trial on arson charges, but had been acquitted. That was before he and Mercy’s daughter, Angie, got together. I didn’t know Aaron well. Joe trusted him, though . . . dang.

  “How’s it going, Aaron? Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Fine,” he said, rocking a time or two on his heels. “Yeah, yeah, fine.”

  “And Angie?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s, you know, fine.” He stuck his hands in his pockets.

  Aaron never did have much to say, and that generally seemed to suit him. But that afternoon he didn’t sound or look as copacetic as I’d come to expect. In fact, he looked as though he might develop a twitch any minute. By the way he kept turning around and looking over his shoulder, I might have thought his unease came from being surrounded by so much yarn. But a fear of fiber seemed unlikely for a man who wasn’t afraid to tickle a rattlesnake under the chin—and I had firsthand knowledge of his delight in doing that.

  He sidled over to the front window, possibly to admire the kumihimo loom. But he stopped short of the window, and seeing him slowly and carefully peer around the edge to scan what he could see of the porch jogged a memory. I’d seen a few others behave like that. It was taking a chance, but I decided to test a two-word theory.

  I took a deep breath and enunciated clearly, “Spivey twins.” And I was immediately sorry.

  I took him into the small office behind the desk and made him sit with his head between his knees. He wasn’t quite hyperventilating, but it took a good five minutes to calm the poor guy down. He told me that, yes, Angie was fine, Angie was more than fine (which, by the way he said it, sounded like too much information to me), but her mother and aunt—the Spivey twins—were more than he had bargained for.

  “Did you know that neither one of the
m has been a Spivey for decades?” he asked. “One of them, and I don’t even know which one it is, has been married two times, and that makes her twice removed from the blighted name, and they still call themselves the Spivey twins, and so does everyone else. And,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, “I can smell them before I see them.” He took a few tentative sniffs and shuddered.

  I commiserated and told him I wished I had Granny’s bottle of dry sherry to offer him.

  He shuddered again. “I gave up drink after I met the twins. Can I tell you why I came? Then I’d like to leave out the back door if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll check it before you do. Trust me, it’s a good idea.”

  “I believe you, and boy howdy, I’d appreciate it. I have a, uh, a person I do business with from time to time. Sort of a . . .”

  “A client?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Client is what we’ll call it. This client—I’m not saying he or she because the client doesn’t want anyone to know who—durn. I almost said it.”

  “Your client wants to remain anonymous?”

  “Bingo.”

  “We could agree to use ‘he’ to make it easier.”

  “Okeydoke. That’ll work. He says he was in the park the other night when that feller got killed.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yep. That’s about what I said.”

  “Did he see—”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” That and a few dozen other questions flew through my head. Some that it might be better not to ask.

  “My client told me to tell you he might or might not have useful information.”

  “But—”

  “He can’t go to the police.”

  “Okay.” Why he couldn’t was probably one of the questions I shouldn’t ask.

  “I got him to agree to talk to you,” Aaron said.

  “May I ask why you or your client think I can help?”

  “No need to, is there?”

  “Huh. So, how does your client want to do this? Do we pick an out-of-the-way place or some kind of neutral location—”

  “Tomorrow morning’s good. And here’s good, too. My client’s been in here and liked it. I told her I’d bring her and stay to lend moral support.”

  I could see a load lift from Aaron when I agreed to meet. So much so that he’d relaxed and slipped—he and his female client would be at the Weaver’s Cat around midmorning. He’d told her he’d bring her and stay to lend moral support. Angie Spivey?

  * * *

  Ardis laughed when I filled her in. She thought the idea of a Carlin lending moral support to anyone was hilarious. Geneva, maybe attracted by the laughter, floated into the room and huddled on a shelf near the ceiling between a box of rarely used display stands and another of never-used tablecloths. If she’d noticed the labels, she might have chosen that space because it made a statement and suited her mopish mood. Or she might have chosen it because I could see her but from where Ardis stood, she couldn’t.

  “It could be Angie,” Ardis said, “but why would he call her a client and say he did business with her? Not much of a romantic, your Mr. Carlin.”

  I thought back. “‘Business’ could’ve been a euphemism. ‘Client’ was my word. He was trying to be careful and I fed that word to him to speed things along. Geneva’s right. I need to improve my interview skills. I bet she knows which TV shows I can watch to pick up tips and techniques.”

  “You’d be better off getting hold of a textbook from a police academy. Thea can find one for you.”

  I glanced up at Geneva. She’d turned her wispy gray back and looked like something else forgotten on the top shelf.

  “For a well-rounded education, I could try both. A book for the nitty-gritty; TV for the dramatics. That reminds me, though. Thea called while you were eating. She found out that Hugh was in Knoxville on Monday, playing his pipes at a funeral for a guy named Walter Jeffries.”

  “The name means nothing to me.”

  “She said she’d dig further after story time. Judging from the book and craft they’re doing, it sounds like she might be indoctrinating the kids so they can organize and go out and do their own preschool yarn bombing.”

  “Trust Thea for the literacy tie-in. I’m not sure preschoolers can learn to purl, but they can sure get things into knots. But here’s another thing, Kath—if Aaron wasn’t talking about Angie, then what in heaven’s name kind of client does he have who hangs out in the park at midnight, seeing but not being seen? What exactly is Aaron Carlin’s ‘business’?”

  “Being in the park at midnight might not have anything to do with being his client. Don’t you think we should just be grateful they’re coming to talk to us?”

  “You’re right. And if Aaron is that afraid of the twins, then we know he has his head screwed on at least halfway right. Now let me tell you what this is that Mel sent. I read it while you and Aaron were in conference.” She held up the piece of lined paper. “What we have here is proof that Sheriff Haynes is not the only who looked as though he saw a ghost after catching sight of Hugh on Tuesday.”

  The paragraphs and stick figure turned out to be from one of Mel’s waitresses. Mel had asked her to put down in writing what she’d seen happen Tuesday at the café while Ardis and Hugh were there eating lunch.

  “I think it’s accurate,” Ardis said. “I had my back to the front door and Hugh was facing it.”

  The waitress had been delivering orders to a table near the one where Ardis and Hugh sat. She looked up when the front door opened, ready to smile as Mel had taught her. She saw a woman walk in, freeze, and “literally do a total physical double take.” Then she turned around and left. The waitress was sure the woman was looking at the man sitting with Ardis. She was also sure the woman wasn’t just startled to see him, but also upset, because she had called in a to-go order. The order was waiting for her at the pickup window.

  “She never did pick it up,” Ardis said. “She never called to apologize. It was only a sandwich, but it’s a telling point. She could’ve gone back later.”

  “Or sent someone else. If there was an order, then we know who this is, right?”

  “In a minute. This part is brilliant. The stick figure was the waitress’ idea, in case we couldn’t picture how the woman looked when she saw Hugh. When you know that, it doesn’t matter that it’s a stick figure. Big round eyes, tiny o for a mouth. And the hair nails it.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Pokey Weems.”

  Chapter 17

  “We have a lot of names all of a sudden,” I said. “With no idea how they fit in.”

  “These investigations are like some of the more intricate embroideries I’ve worked on. Here—” Ardis looked through our plastic “hospital” bin behind the counter. It was where we kept the projects tearful customers brought in that needed the ministrations of experts—sometimes including surgery or the laying on of last rights. She brought out a piece of linen, flosses dangling. “In this state, it looks hopeless: patterns and images you can almost see, but not quite because they have no definition; a border that looks like it’s going nowhere, which it might be, because she got way off on her counting; and threads tangling into a rat’s nest.”

  “But we’ve fixed worse.”

  “With time and patience. These things always look worst when they’re partway finished—needlework and investigations.” Ardis put the linen back in the bin. “Go get your sleuthing notebook, and let’s make a list of these names we’re collecting.”

  “It’s in the study. Be right back.”

  Geneva must have followed me up the stairs. She drifted into the study and slumped onto the desk. While I rummaged for the leather notebook in my shoulder bag hanging on the back of the desk chair, she traced figure eights on the desk with a finger. Neither h
er tracing nor her heavy sighs disturbed a single speck of dust.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” I asked.

  “Which would be useless to me, not to say worthless in today’s economy. Here is a valuable tip for you, though. You should keep a small notebook in your pocket at all times. Patrolmen on the best shows keep them in a breast pocket.”

  “I could keep one in a hip pocket.”

  “That would look better on someone with your figure. You will find one in the kneehole drawer. Also your grandmother’s drawing pencils. Your grandmother was talented. That waitress could never be a police sketch artist.”

  I laughed. “She wouldn’t even make it in the door of sketch artist school, would she?”

  “I was not making fun of her.”

  “I didn’t think you were.” I watched as she continued tracing with her finger, now working on something more elaborate than an eight. “Geneva?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Which do you miss more, turning the pages of a book or drawing?” Borrowing recorded books from the library had made a difference in the quality of her life—her afterlife. But I couldn’t see any way around her problem of not being able to touch or hold anything.

  She curled her hand into a fist, and then stretched her fingers and used her whole hand to erase the tracings that neither of us could tell were there. “Before you go, will you please put the next disc in the machine? The Lovely Bones is a sad book. I am enjoying it.”

  * * *

  “Call this list ‘People of Interest,’” Ardis said, “and put Olive’s name first.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, sure. She likes to think of herself as rising to the top of any social occasion.”

  “I mean about a title for the list. It makes me nervous to call a list ‘People of Interest’ and then put the sheriff’s name on it. And we have to add Cole’s name, too. He was practically foaming at the mouth to find out if Hugh was in town, and to find out before Al Rogalla. We need to find out what that was all about.”

  To please Ardis, I wrote Olive Weems at the top of the list, then added Sheriff Haynes, Cole Dunbar, Al Rogalla, Walter Jeffries, Aaron Carlin’s client, and Rachel Meeks.