Knot the Usual Suspects Page 23

  “I’m sure he put everything back the way he found it,” she said. “And we’ll hope he wore gloves. Do we know where he found the truck? Never mind. You can ask him that, and if he’s drawn any conclusions, when you see him at Handmade.”

  * * *

  We’d decided that one of us should go to Handmade Blue Plum—to check out the opening ceremony, stick around for the memorial tribute to Hugh, and find out what his connection to the show might be. As Ardis pointed out, Joe would be busy with his booth and unable to circulate freely. Geneva took the opportunity to point out that she hoped Joe continued to practice careful burgling so he didn’t end up in jail and unable to circulate anywhere at all. When Ardis further pointed out that she thought I should be the one to go, I said, “Fine.” From the way she and Geneva backed away, I realized that had come out with more bark than I’d meant. The truth was, I wanted to bark at Joe for taking such a chance. But I couldn’t bark at him in good conscience; it would be the proverbial pot-and-kettle scenario if I did. At last count, I’d let myself into more places I shouldn’t have been than I knew—for an absolute fact—that he had. Telling myself that didn’t make me any less testy, but when Debbie arrived, she brought something with her that went a long way toward lightening my spirits.

  “I’m calling them ‘Yarn Bomb in a Bag,’” she said. “I’ve made twelve styles, each style with its own tag for leaving at the scene of the yarn crime.” She held kits up one by one and read the tags. “‘Fibers are fantastic.’ ‘Crochet is cool.’ ‘Knitting is nifty.’ ‘Textiles are terrific.’ ‘Fabric is fabulous.’ ‘Needlework is nirvana.’ ‘Knotting is novel.’ ‘Purling is pleasing.’ ‘Embroidery is excellent.’ ‘Darning is daring.’ I’ve also made one with the Einstein quote Joe used, and then one more—‘Hooking’s a hoot.’”

  By the time she held up “Hooking’s a hoot,” a customer had picked up “Knitting is nifty” and “Knotting is Novel” and put them in her shopping basket.

  “You’re a hoot,” Ardis told Debbie, “and these are going to be a hit.”

  Abby came in, then, wearing her T-shirt that said THE WEAVER’S CAT IS WHERE IT’S AT. We’d offered her the part-time job when she made the shirt and wore it for the heritage festival during the summer.

  Before taking off for the opening of Handmade, I looked around the shop. Abby was laughing over “Needlework is nirvana” and helping Debbie make room for the kits in the window display. Argyle had attracted a sunbeam and tamed it with a nap. Ardis, still wearing the shawl, hummed behind the counter, unaware that Geneva floated by her side, humming the harmony to her melody. It felt good leaving at that point, knowing the shop was in talented and caring hands.

  * * *

  It hadn’t occurred to me that “opening ceremony” really meant “opening” and no one would be allowed in the gym until the ribbon tied across the double doors was cut. Looking on the bright side, the wait let me people-watch while we milled in the parking lot. It seemed to be an out-of-town crowd; there weren’t many faces I recognized. The two women—Ellen and Janet—who’d been spending time knitting in the front room upstairs at the Weaver’s Cat saw me and waved. They’d come prepared with roller bags. Beyond them, toward the edge of the crowd, I saw the back of a head that looked as though it could be Rachel. Probably not, though. The woman disappeared around the edge of the building at a good clip, no limp in sight. I moved to the edge of the crowd and called Joe. He said the artists and crafters inside were standing ready.

  “Is that Souza playing in the background?” I asked.

  “One of the woodworkers thought it would help gird our loins for the onslaught.”

  “Everyone happy with their booth space?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You caught up in the marching in there?”

  “Ducking under the table. Everything’s fine.”

  “Those two sentences don’t seem to go together, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Ceremony’s about to start. See you in few.”

  “Wait. Who’s taking the mayor’s place?”

  “You’ll be surprised.”

  Ardis and I had wondered if Olive Weems would ask someone to stand in for Pokey at the ceremony. It seemed unlikely, under the circumstances, that he would feel like making an appearance. I didn’t know how Olive felt about Gladys, but assumed she would ask another member of her committee or someone from the Chamber of Commerce to take over that bit of limelight. Joe wasn’t on the committee, but if it came down to asking him to do the honors, I could picture him making a quick snip with his Swiss Army knife and ambling off, and the ceremony going down in Handmade Blue Plum annals as the shortest on record. I moved back into position so I could watch the show.

  And imagine my surprise when Shirley and Mercy Spivey appeared, carrying a pair of oversized ceremonial scissors between them. They wore matching maize-yellow blazers and black slacks. I called Joe back.

  “How did this happen?”

  “Does anyone ever know?”

  I pocketed my phone and watched the twins wrestle to get the scissors in position. They succeeded with that, then realized they hadn’t welcomed the crowd. One of them let go of the scissors to dig in her pocketbook. The twin left holding the scissors dropped them. The other pulled out what looked like notes for a five-minute speech, and then lost them to a gust of cold wind. Ellen and Janet rolled their bags forward and picked up the scissors. They made the cut, bowed to the crowd, and rolled their bags inside, looking delighted to be first through the doors. Someone inside yelled, “Incoming,” and the craft fair was open for business.

  I stood to the side and watched people stream in, and only jumped an inch or two when Mercy and her cologne came up behind me.

  “Glad to see you’re taking this seriously,” she said.

  I waited for Shirley’s contribution, and when I didn’t hear it, I looked around and saw why. Shirley was twenty or thirty feet away, talking to a woman standing by a Prius. Shirley put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, the woman pulled away, and then I saw who it was—Olive Weems, dressed in black slacks and sweater and wearing sunglasses.

  “Tragic,” Mercy said.

  “Mmm.” My murmur was noncommittal. She was probably referring to Gladys’ death. Then again, she was a Spivey; she might have been commenting on Olive’s rejection of Shirley’s shoulder squeeze.

  “If we hear anything else, you’ll be the first to know,” Mercy said.

  She was still standing behind me, and it felt as though we were acting in a bad spy film. I decided to go with that. “Any recommendations on how to proceed?”

  “Watch your back.”

  Bad spy film or not, I wasn’t about to laugh off her advice. Two people were dead, and Ardis had said the same thing the night before when I was under a dark bridge with Al Rogalla. I thanked Mercy and went inside.

  * * *

  The craftspeople and artists—with their booths, their handmade goods, and even the clothes they wore—had transformed the space before me from a school gym into a market bazaar. Colors, designs, and sounds swirled around the room. People filled the aisles—pressing forward to admire and touch—drawn from booth to booth by textures, scents, and ready smiles. A woman at the door handed me a flyer with a map of the booths and exhibitors on one side and the schedule of Saturday’s classes and demonstrations on the other.

  “Do you know anything about the memorial tribute to Hugh McPhee?” I asked her.

  “Who?”

  “McPhee.”

  “Sorry. I’m only here for the first hour.” She reached past me to hand a flyer to the next people through the door.

  I checked the map to find Joe’s booth—in the far corner. The tide was moving in that direction, so I let myself be carried along. I stopped at a few booths, but passed many more I knew I’d like to get back to if there was time. I saw turned bowls so smooth
I wanted to stroke them, woven table linens, knitted socks, mittens, hats, scarves, quilted jackets, carved walking sticks, embroidery on almost every kind of clothing, soap, candles, photographs, pottery, and a line of people waiting for a caricaturist.

  A Christmas tree decorated with red, green, and white monkey’s fists caught my eye. My grandfather had known how to make the neat, round knots, and I wondered if John did. Granddaddy had told me it was a sailor’s knot. A sailor’s weapon, too, if it had a long tail for whirling and whacking. That was a nasty thought to have while looking at a Christmas tree. I slipped back into the stream and didn’t stop again until I reached Joe’s booth. “Booth” was a loose definition for his setup.

  “Nice boat,” I said.

  “You like it? John found it for me.”

  “Aboard the Pequod?”

  The “booth” was a large, heavy wooden rowboat, cut in half across the wide midsection and standing, prow up. It must have been seven feet tall, making its original length at least fourteen feet.

  “It was orange when John found it,” Joe said, scratching his ear. “Took a couple of gallons to cover it.” Now it was aquamarine on the outside and white on the inside. He’d built multiple shelves in it to display his watercolors and trout flies. He had a card table beside the boat, with a couple of wooden crates on it, where people were flipping through more watercolors. A coat tree, hung with his kumihimo braids, stood on the other side of the boat.

  “The dang thing is heavy as the dickens,” he said, patting the boat.

  “It’s eye-catching.”

  Other people thought so, too, and I could see he was going to be busy. I asked if he’d heard when or where the memorial tribute would be, or who was doing it. He hadn’t. But he had an idea who might know all the details.

  “Shirley or Mercy. Fingers on the pulse, those two.”

  “Are they why you had to duck under the table earlier?”

  “No comment.”

  “Olive might be here, too. I saw her outside. Oh, one other question.” I moved closer and dropped my voice. “Where and how did you find Hugh’s truck?”

  “I was lucky.”

  “Lucky how?”

  “Tell you later.” He gave me a kiss. “Customers. Gotta go.”

  As I turned away, I saw a flash of yellow Spivey blazer. It disappeared down the aisle I’d just come up, and I went to chase after it. But not too fast. It was a Spivey I was tracking, after all, and I knew that Spiveys, like dandelions, always popped back up. With that brilliant piece of philosophy under my belt, I slowed even more to enjoy some of the booths I’d skipped earlier. While I looked over a display of ceramic spindle whorls, I heard someone say my name. But not to me.

  As best I could tell, the voice came from the next booth over, but I couldn’t hear any more because a couple started chattering behind me. I peered between the displays in the ceramics booth and saw the monkey’s fist Christmas tree. And Rachel Meeks sitting in a chair at the back of the booth talking to Al Rogalla.

  “Aren’t they beautiful? Breakable, too.” The ceramicist took the whorl I was paying no attention to from my hand.

  I apologized, gave the poor woman my card, and told her if she was interested in selling her whorls locally to give me a call at the Weaver’s Cat. When I left her booth, Al was bagging a set of monkey’s fist ornaments for a customer and Rachel was gone. I saw her ahead of me at the end of the aisle, though, and was sure she was the unlimping woman I’d seen earlier. I debated going after her, phone in hand—Kath Rutledge, forensic videographer, proving to the world that a banker’s twisted ankle was a figment of her prevarication. I didn’t do that, but I did move quickly past Al’s booth, and was nearly run over by Olive leaving another booth. She grabbed my arm to steady herself, and put a tissue to her eyes.

  “Olive, I’m so sorry for your—”

  “Next year,” she said, slashing a hand through my sorrow, “I won’t allow anything with perfume. It is killing me.” As soon as the word was out of her mouth, she looked appalled. And then she looked at me, and obviously hadn’t realized who she was holding on to. And she held on tighter. “I do not appreciate your sense of humor,” she hissed.

  “Sorry?”

  “You told Lonnie Haynes those ridiculous things at the courthouse—” She made another angry slash with her free hand, but it didn’t help her come up with any more useful words.

  “It’s a form of urban art called yarn bombing, and you’re hurting my arm.”

  “You told him it was part of Handmade Blue Plum. It looks degenerate.” She let go of me and stalked away.

  “Are you all right?”

  I looked at the man who asked—Pokey Weems, sadly watching his wife push her way through the crowd.

  “Please forgive her,” he said. “She wanted so much for this to be a happy, successful weekend.” He hadn’t looked at me, hadn’t taken his concerned eyes off Olive. I should have offered my condolences, but he sighed and followed in her wake.

  My phone rang then. Joe with a lead on the memorial tribute.

  “Al Rogalla,” he said. “Not verified.”

  “He has a booth.”

  “He isn’t registered for one.”

  I told him about seeing Al and Rachel at the booth with the knotted monkey’s fist ornaments, and Rachel’s fleet and limpless feet.

  “I don’t remember her name on a booth, either,” Joe said. “If you’re still looking for the twins, someone saw them down the hall, checking on classrooms for tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take a look.”

  * * *

  The pea-green walls made the school hallway timeless—it could be any school, anywhere—and it was a relief to hear nothing but my footsteps after the roar of the crafting crowd in the gym. I didn’t find the Spiveys in the first few rooms along the corridor, but according to the map, some of the classes would be held in the art room around the corner and down the next hallway. Mercy’s cologne wasn’t evident, but it might have met its match in eau de school floor wax.

  There were three trophy cases around the corner and I stopped to look at them. Three seemed like a lot, but they held trophies going back decades. I didn’t need to read dates on the labels or yellowed newspaper articles—the stratigraphic layers of dust in the cases were clue enough. The progressively more faded team photographs, and the style of uniforms and safety equipment, told the story, too. I looked for a trophy or an article or some kind of ballyhoo over Hugh McPhee’s amazing and long-standing record in each of the cases, but didn’t find anything. I did find a big trophy with Al Rogalla’s name. And was tickled to recognize two young Dunbars in a couple of the pictures—Clod on the football team and Joe on the cross-country team. The difference in sports suited the brothers.

  I found the art room. No Spiveys lurked within, but I tested my bloodhound skills and sniffed the air. A trace of Mercy lingered there—not enough to bay about, though. Instead I was nosy and looked at the materials and kits laid out for a needle felting demonstration. While I was examining one of the kits, and thinking Debbie could put some together for us to sell at the Cat, someone ran past the room, going farther down the hall. I went to the door and heard the running feet stop around the next corner.

  Another sound came from that direction—a door being rattled? Rattled, but not opened, because then the steps came back toward me, slower. Slower and quietly and . . . carefully? Creeping?

  Craven amateur sleuth that I was, I shrank back into the art room, plastered myself to the wall, and closed my eyes. If Geneva were with me, she would have called me pathetic. And she would’ve been right, too, doggone it. So I steeled myself to open my eyes and act like a—like I didn’t know what—like a proud member of the TGIF crime-fighting posse.

  And then those furtive steps crept into the room with me.

  Chapter 27

  “Are you about to hurl?
” Zach asked. “Because if you are, I’ll move.”

  I opened my eyes. Nothing but concern showed on his face. For me, or possibly for his shoes. “Was that you running down the hall? If you ran down, why did you come creeping back?”

  “Thought I heard someone.” He pointed over his shoulder in the direction he’d come from. We listened. He shrugged, then gave one of his quick smiles. “You looked like you’d stepped in what I left on the floor in front of the cafeteria. You want to see?”

  We walked down the hall and around the corner to the cafeteria. On the floor, like a doormat, lay a knitted puddle of OMG—old moldy gravy.

  “Abby wanted me to put it in the kitchen in front of the sink,” Zach said, “but the doors are locked.”

  “Best yarn bomb ever.” I took out my phone to get a picture. And heard footsteps again, farther down the hall. I held myself together this time. And told myself I was being strong because I was there for Zach’s sake, and not because he’d moved so that he stood between me and the approaching feet.

  Feet that belonged to Al Rogalla. He saw Zach first. “Hey, are you supposed to be back here? Oh, hi. Do you know this kid?”

  “We’re working on a project.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be wandering around the school.”

  “Like you?” I could hear Geneva, in my mind’s ear, exclaiming, “You are rude!” Even if only in my mind, she was right. I had no good reason to be rude to the man, especially if I wanted him to answer questions. “Sorry. I saw the monkey’s fist ornaments at your booth. Really cute. Where’d you learn to make them?”

  “It’s not my booth.” He looked at the knitting on the floor. “Nice vomit,” he said, and walked away.

  “You should practice your technique,” Zach said.

  “Yup.”

  I didn’t stay for the memorial tribute. I finally crossed paths with Shirley and Mercy and they told me it was scheduled for five o’clock.

  “I notice your chagrin,” Mercy said. “Other plans?”