Knot the Usual Suspects Page 3

  “Shall I tell you what will help me out?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger before answering. It didn’t help me out much. “Sure. What?”

  “Go back downstairs and let me have my very valuable alone time.”

  * * *

  The shop stayed busy all morning. That kept us from discussing our plans for Thursday night, but it was good for the till. It was also good for ignoring the difficulties Ardis and Geneva were experiencing. I loved them both, but I didn’t love my new role as counselor and mediator for the suddenly and hauntingly related. It was so much easier helping the shop’s customers develop relationships with the comforting textures and colors of fibers and fabrics. Thank goodness Ardis was willing to be patient with Geneva, though, and that we shared the fiber and fabric passion.

  “I get a particular joy from watching neophytes cradling their first tools and materials,” she said after two young women left with bulging bags. “I feel as though I should follow them to the door and hold it open, blessing them as they go.”

  “Telling them to fly free and come back to us when they’ve learned to soar?”

  “Exactly,” Ardis said. “In reality, they’ll be back tomorrow for help with a problem, but getting them back on track will bring its own kind of joy. Didn’t I tell you we’d be run off our feet this week?”

  “You did.”

  “Like sap rising in the New England sugar bush,” she said, “the creative juices in Blue Plum awaken, they stir, and now they’re in full spate.”

  “You’re full of good analogies this morning, Ardis, except this is October and I think maple sap might rise in February.”

  She waved the quibble away. “It’s a natural phenomenon like any other, and you can count on it happening every year when the kiddos go back to school. It’s that whiff of school paste in the air.”

  “It’s probably all glue sticks these days.”

  Another dismissive wave. “Crafty-minded folks aren’t so particular. They’re in tune. They catch whatever whiff it is, and they see visions of handmade gifts dancing in their heads—hats, scarves, ornaments.”

  “Table runners, afghans, stockings, and tree skirts?”

  “Yes, oh yes.” Ardis put a hand on my shoulder. “And sweaters. Close your eyes, Kath. Can’t you picture those glorious projects?”

  I closed my eyes, though I didn’t need to; we had samples of sweaters and hats and all the rest displayed everywhere in the shop.

  “And although we know an awful lot of those embroidered, quilted, crocheted, and knitted visions are unrealistic,” Ardis said, “there’s nothing wrong with embellished dreams and hopes. We all have them. I have them. And I need them. They give me respite—from reality, from the world, from Daddy’s increasing infirmity. They give me strength.”

  “That’s really nice, Ardis.”

  “I can’t lay claim to the analogy or the philosophy. They were Ivy’s. Your grandmother knew human nature as well as she knew knitting or any other needle art. I’m sure creativity bubbles up and burgeons all over the country in the fall, but you watch, the local flow will turn into a flood—beautiful and abundant. This was Ivy’s favorite time of year, and especially the weeks before and after Handmade Blue Plum.”

  “I haven’t been here in the fall for years. I should’ve come to visit her more often.”

  “She didn’t expect you to run down here every few months. She couldn’t have been more proud of you, or more proud of your career.”

  I closed my eyes again, this time picturing Granny—gray braid and blue jeans, blue eyes with crow’s-feet to prove her good humor, and a tilt to her head to show she saw and heard more than some. “I’ll take a walk around, Ardis. See if anyone needs help.” I moved away before she could reach over and squeeze my shoulder, and a few tears from my own blue eyes. As I started up the front stairs to check on shoppers on the second floor, I heard the smile in her voice as she greeted the next customer at the counter.

  “Good morning. You’ve made an excellent choice with that turquoise bouclé. Soft and cozy, yet carrying with it underlying hints of daring and whimsy. I think you’ll be very happy.”

  I paused on the stairs to listen for an answer and wasn’t disappointed.

  “I picked it up,” an almost breathless voice said, “and I couldn’t put it back down. A scarf, don’t you think? Or no! A cropped vest!”

  I went on up the stairs, missing the rest of their discussion. Ardis was right about the upwelling of creativity in and around Blue Plum in the past month or so. And Handmade Blue Plum, the arts and crafts fair held the second weekend in October each year, was perfectly timed—either to feed the flow of creative energy, or to take advantage of it. The fair, opening Friday at noon in the school gym, was also perfectly timed to take advantage of the three-week fall break in Blue Plum’s year-round school calendar. Having the fair at the school was a win-win. The crafters were under a roof with classrooms for demonstrations and workshops, and the school received ten percent of the crafters’ booth registration fees.

  The Weaver’s Cat couldn’t be an official part of the fair, because commercially produced goods and materials were prohibited, but some of the more prolific crocheters, crafters, knitters, knotters, weavers, and whatnot who belonged to TGIF would be selling their handmade wares. In the meantime, we stayed busy in the shop ringing up all manner of needles, hooks, hoops, patterns, and the manipulable fibers and fabrics that dreams and finished projects were made of. We were busy enough that Debbie Keith, who worked part-time for us and full-time raising sheep on her farm outside town, was coming in for a couple of extra afternoons during the week, and we’d hired a fiber-smitten high school student for weekend hours. The student, Abby Netherton, dressed goth and worked a drop spindle like a pro.

  Ardis was also right that fall might have been Granny’s favorite time of year, although I seemed to remember Granny saying that about every season at one point or another. She would definitely have loved the unofficial part TGIF and her beloved Weaver’s Cat intended to play in Handmade Blue Plum. The project—the clandestine fiber installation project I’d been measuring for, concocted and devised by a select splinter group of TGIF—would have blown her away.

  A whiff of conversation and the scent of coffee led me to one of the front rooms on the second floor. We encouraged drop-in needlework, and a couple of women sat knitting in the comfy chairs near the windows that looked down on Main Street, one working on a blue baby sock, the other something voluminous and raspberry. Their project bags, a thermos, and two steaming mugs sat on the low table between them. The baby sock woman raised a mug when she saw me.

  “It’s okay that we brought our own brew, isn’t it?” She held the mug under her nose and steamed her glasses before taking a sip.

  “We’re in town a few days early for the craft show,” the raspberry woman said. “I’m Ellen and she’s Janet. We came last year and found this shop and decided it was a perfect spot. We promised ourselves the perfect morning in these chairs.”

  “It’s what they’re here for,” I said, “and we’re glad to have you, coffee and all. I’m Kath. Ardis is downstairs. Let us know if there’s anything we can find for you.”

  “There was an older woman here last year,” Janet said. She’d put her mug back on the table and picked up her needles. “She talked me into the extravagance of handspun, hand-dyed wool.”

  Her friend looked over the tops of her glasses at her. “It didn’t take much talking.”

  “Well, no, it didn’t. But I think she had me sized up. Somehow she knew I wouldn’t be able to resist it—it was a gorgeous indigo and knitted up into a shawl that I’ll treasure forever. And I’ve been wondering what she can show me this year that I won’t be able to live without.”

  It didn’t happen often anymore, that someone came in the shop who didn’t know Granny had d
ied in the spring. Still, I should have had a response at hand—something less distressing to customers, anyway, than silence and what must have been the stricken look on my face. It was the woman’s mention of the indigo wool that threw me. That would have been wool Granny had spun and dyed. Indigo was her favorite and her specialty.

  The women stopped knitting.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “She had the amazing knack for remembering everyone who bought her wool, and she would have loved seeing you again.”

  “You were related?” Janet asked.

  “My grandmother.”

  She nodded. “You favor her. She must have had your dark red hair when she was younger. We’re sorry for your loss. And the store’s.”

  “Thank you.” I backed out of the room, hoping I hadn’t made their perfect morning too awkward, leaving them to their socks and the raspberry cloud.

  The other two upstairs rooms were quiet, and I took a few quiet minutes to straighten them. Tidying the shop had been my “job” during my childhood visits to Granny. I’d liked doing it, liked pleasing Granny by putting things in order. I liked tidying now, too, because I found her in each room. In every skein I returned to its bin and every pattern or notion that went back where it belonged, I found her love for everything to do with fibers.

  * * *

  During the next lull in business, when we were both behind the sales counter, Ardis slid closer to me, casting glances left and right. “Yours is the last piece of intel we need,” she said. “So, how does it look? Are all systems go? What do you think?”

  “That you’re mixing spies and astronauts in your jargon.”

  “Pshaw. Mission accomplished? Can we move forward?”

  Ardent Ardis—Geneva had her pegged perfectly. Ardis was fired up and raring to bomb the courthouse and the entire town—with knitting and crochet work. With tatting, macramé, braiding, weaving, and coiling, too, for that matter.

  Ardis hadn’t come up with the idea that we should yarn-bomb the town on the eve of Handmade Blue Plum. But as soon as she’d heard the suggestion, she was behind the project one hundred percent. She was primed and ready to be pointed in the right direction as soon as darkness fell Thursday night. She was gung ho to leave her mark on Blue Plum with yarn graffiti.

  I copied her left-right glances. No customers were in sight. I pulled the coil of string from my pocket, put it on the counter, and held out my hand. “Measuring tape,” I whispered.

  Ardis slapped a measuring tape in my hand and whispered back, “Measuring tape, Dr. Rutledge. This is very exciting.”

  I uncoiled the string and measured from the end to the point I’d marked with the felt tip. “Twelve feet, Dr. Buchanan, plus seven and one half inches. Congratulations, you have four strapping courthouse columns.”

  “Quadruplets,” Ardis said. “And I thank my stars they aren’t real babies. But who would have thought the columns were so big around?” She entered the number in a notebook, under a long list of other measurements. “It’s kind of fun sneaking around like that, isn’t it? I had no idea I’d get such a kick out of it. When did you go?”

  “Um . . .”

  She looked up from the notebook. “You didn’t have any trouble, did you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She put the pencil down. “Exactly how not exactly?”

  “It’s possible I might have been seen.”

  “Possible? Might?”

  “Was. Sorry, Ardis. I was seen.”

  She studied that problem, and the countertop, drumming her fingers on compressed lips. “Okay,” she said, dropping her hands to her hips. “Being seen is the risk we’ll be taking Thursday night anyway, so it’s good to see how we’ll handle that kind of pressure. Besides, in the dark, in the shadows, and as small as you are, you probably weren’t recognized, so it might not be so bad.”

  “Um . . .”

  Ardis stepped closer, looming much the way her great-great-aunt occasionally did. Really, their similarities were much more uncanny—although completely natural—than the superficial similarities between Ardis and Clod. I moved down the counter and smiled, going for the same confidence and nonchalance I’d used while accomplishing my column-measuring mission.

  “You,” Ardis said, moving down the counter after me, “look guilty. Because you didn’t go after dark, did you. That’s not a question, so don’t bother to answer.”

  I didn’t bother and I moved farther down the counter.

  Ardis was ardently relentless. “Mel, who is busier than any two of us combined, finished her assignment last week.”

  “This was a last-minute assignment. A rush job.”

  “Which you’ve known about for three days. You should have been able to find time not in the middle of the day to complete this paltry part of the preplanning for this project.”

  “All those p words are making you spit, Ardis.”

  “You slacked, Kath Rutledge. And you went out in daylight? Who saw you?”

  Thank goodness she couldn’t billow and swirl the way Geneva did. Humor and a confident smile weren’t soothing her, so I tried for calm and matter-of-fact. “It’s okay, Ardis. Everything’s fine. I got the measurement with no harm done. Two people saw me and neither one will be a problem. One was basically a tourist who thought I was working on a school project for my kids. And the other was Cole Dunbar.”

  “You don’t have kids.”

  “See? So no problem.”

  “And I didn’t catch the second person’s name,” Ardis said.

  She wouldn’t have. I’d mumbled it, having failed at feeling matter-of-fact at the last minute.

  I moved around to other side of the counter, so that it was between us, and tried another smile. Ardis closed the space—a mere counter being no barrier for a woman of towering height and piercing eye. My smile faltered.

  The camel bells jingled as the front door opened. I hoped Ardis’ customer service ethic would kick in and give me a reprieve. It didn’t.

  She leaned closer and said, with what would have been a threatening hiss if there’d been sibilants involved, “Cole Dunbar.”

  At that point I stood up as tall as my five foot three let me, and I owned my mistakes. For the most part. “Ardis, I’m sorry I didn’t get it done sooner, and I’m sorry I didn’t do it after dark. But it doesn’t matter if Cole saw me. He was busy being a deputy and getting a kick in the shin from the mayor’s mother. He had no idea I was up to anything, much less anything secret, sneaky, or clandestine.”

  “Until now,” the deputy himself said behind me.

  Chapter 4

  I didn’t turn around and look at Clod Dunbar. Acknowledging him wasn’t going to add anything positive to the situation. Ardis didn’t add anything positive, either, when she crossed her arms at me and said, “Mm-hmm.” But choosing Clod’s side over mine was against her better nature.

  “Good morning, Coleridge,” she said. “Hat off. Someone will be with you shortly.” He made a huffing noise behind me—a noise that ceased when Ardis gave him a sharp look, lowering her glasses to half-mast so he experienced the full power of that look. “Kath, hon,” she said, still holding Clod with her eyes, “come on back here and take a look at these figures for me. See if things are adding up to anything of significance.” She held up the notebook with her list of measurements, emphasizing the word “significance” in Clod’s direction.

  “Of course, Ardis. Happy to.” I scooted around to the business side of the counter and took the notebook from her. For Clod’s sake, I whistled and said, “Wow.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Ardis said. She glanced over when I picked up the pencil and made a note. When she broke eye contact with him, Clod harrumphed and reasserted himself.

  “Until now,” he said, “no, I did not know you were up to anything. But I’ll hazard an informed guess. You think y
ou’re up to something. Something secret and sneaking. And I imagine you think you’re good at that kind of thing. But our fair city isn’t engulfed in any major crime waves, so I’d say it’s unlikely that you’re really up to anything. Anything illegal. Or anything that will hinder the performance of my duties. Sad to say, but there hasn’t been much opportunity in the last month or so for you to dabble in detective work.”

  Unpleasant noises threatened to erupt from his nose. Something in his long-winded and priggish speech must have struck him as funny. Either that or he had indigestion.

  “Ms. Rutledge and Ms. Buchanan,” he said, after recomposing himself, “here’s something that might interest you—a bona fide case for you to work on that’s worthy of your deductive skills.” He didn’t say anything more, being the kind of irritating person who stands and looks pleased, waiting for other people to ask him what he’s talking about.

  And I’m the kind of person who can’t stand that kind of suspense and always has to ask. “Is that why you came in, Deputy Dunbar? To ask for our help with a mystery that’s baffling you?” Unfortunately I’m also the kind of person who’s been failing with her latest sarcasm abatement program. “You know us. We’re always happy to lend a hand. Hang on a tick.” I turned to a blank page in Ardis’ notebook and licked the end of the pencil. “Shoot—not literally, of course. But what have you got for us?”

  “I meant it as a joke.”

  “I know. But my keen powers of observation told me that you really did think of something, just then. So even if it is a joke, why don’t you tell us? How can it hurt? And if our baffled bumbling gives you a few more laughs, then it’ll even be good for you. It’ll help loosen up your auras or chakras or something.”

  “Do you know about auras and chakras, Kath?” Ardis asked with some surprise.

  “No.”

  She turned back to Clod. “She’s right, though, Coleridge. Life is better with a few laughs, so lay it on us.”