Last Wool and Testament: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery Page 5

  Thinking back, I realized there was a moment after Ruth wrapped Granny’s coverlet around my shoulders when she said something I missed. Maybe she’d started to tell me about the murder and I was lost in whatever blue-and-white-wool haze I’d drifted into. I would give her the benefit of the doubt and find a way to ask her, carefully, in the morning.

  In the meantime, me and my big perversity buttons.

  Murdered man’s house…murdered man’s bed…murdered man’s shabby, comfortable chair. It took me several minutes of pacing, not quite to the point that I was wringing my hands and muttering “woe is me,” but I finally decided I’d convinced myself I wasn’t squeamish about spending the night with a murdered man’s memory. Maybe.

  There were a couple of things I could do, though, guaranteed to ease the loneliness of the evening and keep my mind from dwelling on the retch, creep, or any other factors of my new dwelling. I pulled Granny’s letter from my purse again and I replayed a message on my phone. I’d lost track of how many times I’d already played it over the past few days, but I held the phone to my ear and listened to Granny’s voice again.

  Hello, Dearie. Got your e-mail about the gig in Richmond next week. I was going to e-mail you back but then I thought I might as well call and chat with whoever’s home on your end. Hello, phone, tell Kath I miss her and I want to hear all about the collection in Richmond, especially if she finds anything interesting. And her birthday present is finished and wrapped and will be in the mail soon. Late, but soon. Ow! Maggie! Keep a civil claw in your paw. That’s no way to behave just because I’m talking to Kath and not you. Maggie sends her love, too. Oh, and I thought you’d like to know, I finally started my Blue Plum tapestry. It’s…well, it is what it is. A bit of a puzzle, but…Well, I’ll stop crowding your inbox now. Catch you later, Dearie.

  Typical Granny. Interested in what I was doing and busy and distracted with her own projects. I’d sent her a quick e-mail in answer. Got busy myself, packing or preparing or whatever. Could have called her back. Didn’t. The birthday present hadn’t arrived before I left home. Maybe I’d find it at her house, still waiting to be mailed.

  After blotting my eyes and nose, I saw the quart of milk and packet of cocoa still sitting on the floor where I’d left them. The episode with Pantry Guy seemed like hours ago but the carton was still cool. I gathered myself and the fixings and went to make the cocoa I wished I were sharing with Granny. Heck, I’d even have shared it with snarly Maggie if she’d been there.

  Now that I wasn’t in vigilante mode, I could see why Deputy Clod had sniffed at my attempt to barricade the pantry door with the kitchen table. It was part of a lightweight tubular metal dinette set. I laid the envelope from Granny in the middle of it, then rummaged through the cupboards and drawers, finding an assortment of mismatched flatware and dishes. I came up with a coffee mug and spoon and gave them a quick rinse. Then I remembered the details Deputy Dunbar had supplied about Emmett Cobb’s death—poison in something he drank. I eyed the mug and spoon, thinking about rational versus irrational reactions. I opted for irrational and soaped and scoured them so thoroughly I could have performed surgery with them. Then rinsed them again for old times’ sake.

  I tipped the packet of cocoa into the mug, stirred in the milk, set it spinning in the microwave, and glanced at the envelope in the middle of the table.

  …make yourself comfortable, read this letter, and remember, always, I am your loving Granny.

  The microwave beeped. I jumped. Then I wrapped my hands around the steaming mug and made myself comfortable in one of the dinette chairs. Somehow this seemed like the kind of moment for a brightly lit room. The envelope waited patiently on the table in front of me as I inhaled warm cocoa vapor. What had Neil Taylor said when he handed the envelope to me? She was one in a million. Don’t let anyone tell you different. And my unanswered question, why should they?

  I hopped up. One more thing to brighten the room and the moment further. I fumbled with the radio sitting on top of the refrigerator. Apparently Em’s taste ran to nasal and twang, though, which wasn’t quite what I had in mind. I tapped the tuning buttons until sounds of a lilting flute and lively fiddle filled the room. Granny would have liked that. I could see her sweeping Ardis or Maggie into an impromptu hornpipe. I was delaying, and I knew it, though I couldn’t have said why.

  I sat back down. Tapped my toe to the jig on the radio. Inhaled more of the calming chocolate steam from the mug, then took a long, deep swallow of the dark, velvety stuff. Felt it slide over and smooth the catch in my throat. Finally slit the envelope.

  Inside were two sheets of paper the color of pale celery, folded together in thirds. I ran my fingertips over them, feeling the thin plant fibers that gave them their faint texture. The texture was like Braille to my fingertips, bringing to mind with a rush the Christmas a few years back when I gave Granny a box of these handmade papers. Before unfolding the letter, I turned it over, looking for…yes, on the back in the lower left corner was a tiny pencil sketch of Maggie washing her paw. Every letter or card or postcard Granny had ever sent me included a drawing of one of her cats. It was Purl before I learned to read her letters myself, Cumber Bund when I started scrawling notes back to her, then Overshot and Raglan. And for the last ten years or so, when we more often exchanged e-mails and phone calls, it was pretty gray Maggie with her white bib and tucker.

  I touched a finger to the sketch of Maggie, then opened the letter.

  Dearest Kath,

  Are you alone and comfortable? Sipping that nice cup of cocoa? Ah, ah, ah, if I know you as well as I think I do (of course I do), you’re sitting bolt upright somewhere pretending you’re as comfortable as Maggie sleeping in a puddle of sunshine. But you’re just pretending. Go on now and sit in my old blue comfy chair. Trust your old Granny. You’ll be glad you did.

  I laughed out loud. Hadn’t Ruth said at the cemetery that Granny was always right? Yes, indeed, she was always absolutely right.

  But this time she was wrong, too, because sitting in her big, soft blue chair was out of the question. It was locked up tight in the house on Lavender Street. And the house was no longer hers and, so, not mine. But was that true?

  I flipped quickly through the letter, looking for a date, and didn’t find one. Not on the envelope, either. The paper was from Christmas two or three years ago, though, which gave me somewhat of a time frame. So, when had she written this, and what had happened between then and now? If for some reason or somehow she’d sold or lost the house, why hadn’t she updated this letter? And why hadn’t she told me? There’d been no hints of trouble or sudden changes in any of our conversations over the last few years.

  Go on now and sit in my old blue comfy chair.

  I wished I could. The radio continued to pipe jaunty airs into the kitchen. I left it playing and carried the letter and the cocoa into the parlor, not even close to laughing now.

  Trust your old Granny. You’ll be glad you did.

  Trust her? Of course I did. Yes, of course I did, despite Dunbar’s insinuations about Emmett Cobb’s murder and his rude presumption in calling her Crazy Ivy. I nestled into the recliner, half expecting Granny to reach over my shoulder to tuck a pillow behind my back and adjust the shade on the floor lamp.

  That’s my girl. Now, you’ve always known everything that’s mine will be yours—the Weaver’s Cat (the business, the building, and the lot it’s sitting on) and the house and property on Lavender Street. Maggie, too, and her catnip mice (if she’ll let you share). But there’s something else that’s yours, which I will try to explain without making you think your old Granny is gaga. Are you sitting comfortably?

  Oh for heaven’s sake.

  That nip was a good idea, too, so I hope you added something to the cocoa.

  Out with it, Granny.

  I’m a bit of what some people might call a witch.

  Oh. My. God. The nip would definitely have been a good idea. I swigged the rest of what I did have without tasting it,
felt blindly for the side table, set the mug on it, and gave my head a shake to see if that improved my brain’s reception any. I turned back to the letter, attempting to feel competent and collected, but I’m sure my mouth was hanging open.

  To say, outright, “I am a witch” is putting it too bluntly. Too black and white. There are so many shades of gray in this, you see, and mauve and lilac and every other color, for that matter. I don’t like using the word “witch,” anyway. I prefer to think of the situation more in terms of having a talent. I have a talent which allows me to help my neighbors out of certain pickles from time to time. It’s a marvelous gift, Dearie, and I hope you know I don’t use the word “marvelous” lightly.

  But I’m not going to burden you with details now. There’s time enough for that later. I’ve kept notes, over the years, in my private dye journals. You’ll want to find them and take your time making a proper study of them. They’re locked away in a safe place in my study at the Cat. Read my journals and all will be revealed. There, that’s rather exciting, isn’t it? I hope it gives you a chuckle to think of your old Granny being mysterious and melodramatic. It makes a change from responsible and unflappable, a reputation I’ve cultivated and tended as carefully as my dye garden.

  I also hope I needn’t tell you that what I’ve just told you is a secret and must remain one. I’ve never discussed it with anyone, not at the Weaver’s Cat or anywhere else. There are inklings and “quiet understandings,” shall we say, at the shop, in town, and around out in the county, but I’m quite good at leaving them unacknowledged and going about my business. Of course, if I’d hung a sign in the shop window all these years, my reputation as “Crazy Ivy” would have been colorfast and permanent. (Yes, I am aware of the nickname and it has never bothered me. Its origin isn’t important, either in the great crazy quilt of life or in my own small patch of it.)

  Enough philosophy, though. Here’s what I really want to tell you. In addition to my worldly possessions, you also now have my talent. I inherited it from my grandmother. You have inherited it from me. Kath, you are a bit of a witch.

  Chapter 6

  Ineeded more than a nip.

  Or maybe I had added something to my cocoa and I was blotto. That could explain the over-the-rainbow sensation I was swimming in. It would be nice if something explained it. Or maybe I’d somehow gotten a dose of the poison that killed Emmett and I was hallucinating before keeling over. Or I was out of my mind with grief over Granny’s death. No, unfortunately, I was pretty sure neither nip nor poison nor abject misery was a likely possibility. But that’s all I was sure of.

  Kath, you are a bit of a witch.

  Oh my God. There were a few more lines to the letter but I couldn’t bear to read them. I dropped it in the chair and resorted to pacing. And muttering. There was great relief in muttering. She must have been going gaga. Senile. Goofy. Whiffy, as she so politely described the mental state of some of her elderly friends. Whatever. This was nuts. And it turned out muttering wasn’t much relief after all.

  …mysterious and melodramatic…

  Loony, Granny. Try loony and out to lunch.

  …what I’ve just told you is a secret and must remain one.

  You think?

  …inklings and “quiet understandings”…“Crazy Ivy”…it has never bothered me.

  I allowed myself a few more pointed mutters, took several deep breaths, slowed my pacing, stopped. I closed my eyes and took several more breaths. This was no time to go crazy myself. I retrieved the letter and sat down to finish reading it. Maybe, just maybe, there was a big “ha-ha, got you” at the end.

  Finish your cocoa, now. Better yet, have another cup and a larger nip. The main thing, the important thing, is that you shouldn’t worry about any of this. In fact, you needn’t ever do anything with the talent. You can ignore it and move on with your excellent career. You are like me, though, you know, and you might be surprised how much you enjoy this gift. A bit of advice from your old Granny: Never take surprise or joy lightly. Look for them. Weave them into your life wherever you can.

  Well, a good night’s sleep will give you perspective. Sleep tight, now, and always remember, I am your loving Granny.

  The radio in the other room took a mournful turn, playing some dirgelike piano piece. I couldn’t be bothered to get up and either change the channel or turn it off. I sat with my head bowed, fingers laced over the top of my skull, probably keeping my wits from flying off in all directions.

  I am your loving Granny.

  She was. I knew she was. And if believing she had a “talent” made her happy, whether in the great scheme of things or in her great crazy quilt of life, what was wrong with that? Especially if she hadn’t advertised the fact. And so what if she believed she’d somehow passed that talent on to me? I thought back to the day she died. I certainly wasn’t aware of any sudden jolt running through me. Couldn’t pinpoint any zap of power transferred. No flash or frisson of abrupt good fortune. I sat back and sighed, absentmindedly running my fingers over the fibers in the light green paper, stroking it as though it were a cat. It was soothing, somehow. More soothing than pacing and muttering, anyway.

  The radio slid from mournful to downright lugubrious. Ridiculously lugubrious. There was even sobbing in the background. Talk about melodramatic. If they were going to keep that up, I’d have to stir myself and turn it off. Thankfully that piece drew to its soggy conclusion and the lively fiddle sprang back into action.

  And then someone hiccupped. In the kitchen.

  What? I strained to hear over the annoying accordion that had joined the fiddle. Was Dunbar back with a last insult? Or Pantry Guy? Had he been drinking and decided to slip back in the window to finish whatever it was he started? This was too much. By God, I’d scare the hiccups out of whoever it was. I didn’t even try to be stealthy. I stomped over to the fireplace, grabbed the poker and shovel from the convenient homeowner’s fireplace weapon rack, and started for the kitchen. I was armed, dangerous, and dangerously close to being unhinged. Kath on the warpath in full cast-iron attack mode.

  Another hiccup. More sobbing.

  I pulled up short, not quite to the kitchen door, not quite sure I could believe my ears. This wasn’t sound effects on the radio; it was live. Live sobbing and distinctly female. What on earth? How many people had keys to this place or were wont to wander in through the pantry window? Two other questions, more obvious, escaped me for the moment, maybe due to that surprise thing Granny was so keen on, which seemed to be disrupting the connection between my ears and my brain. In this small space, how had someone gotten in without my noticing or, conversely, how had that someone not realized I was there, too?

  I hugged the wall and moved closer to the door, weapons still at the ready. I slid my left eye around the corner and spied…a woman sitting at the kitchen table, her head bowed. I saw her and yet I didn’t see her. Thinking my vision must be blurry, I rubbed my left eye with a knuckle. I rubbed my right eye, too, for good measure, then peeked all the way around the edge of the door.

  The woman was weeping with such abandon at this point that I could have taken a flying leap over to the refrigerator and beaten it like a gong with the poker and she wouldn’t have registered my presence. But, still, I was barely able to register hers. If my own eyes had been teary, I’d have understood why I was having trouble focusing on her, but the table, the cabinets, the radio, all the rest of the kitchen appeared crisp and clear. I blinked, tried squinting. Neither did any good. The woman wavered as if I saw her through a film of water or through a raindrop on a windowpane. Details of the hair on her bowed head and the cloth covering her arms and heaving shoulders were distorted. She wept as though alone in the universe, indistinct, colorless, altogether unearthly.

  I stepped all the way into the kitchen, poker and shovel forgotten as weapons, now only deadweight in my hands. The word “dead” repeated itself in my mind several times. No, it couldn’t be. I didn’t believe in ghosts any more than I believed i
n witches. That otherwise sane adults ever did believe in either had always amazed me. But something well out of my sense of the ordinary was going on before my unbelieving eyes. And as bright as I liked to think I was, it took several more blazing road signs before my rational self took the indicated detour.

  The first hint that caught my attention was the appearance of the chair the woman was drooping and dripping in. The parts of the chair that I could see through her were as blurry as she was. That made me feel a little dizzy. Or crazy. I couldn’t tell which. I put the back of my hand to my forehead. I wasn’t feverish, more’s the pity.

  The second clue that my accustomed beliefs might be on shaky ground came when the woman started moaning. If I’d thought my nerves were nearing the edge earlier over the whole Pantry Guy and Dunbar incident or after reading Granny’s letter, those mournful lamentations told me different. Her keening vibrated up and down my spine so that my nerves weren’t just teetering on the brink—they were abandoning hope and preparing to dive. Despite that, my feet refused to carry me out of the room.

  The moaning didn’t last long, thank goodness. The effort seemed to tire the poor thing, and her moans subsided with a few shuddering breaths and another hiccup or two into quieter sobs. I felt as though I’d watched a storm reaching a crescendo and tailing off into a clammy gray drizzle, albeit a drizzle rocking back and forth in a stainless-steel dinette chair.

  Then she spoke. At first it was more of a blubber, not easy to understand. I thought she was saying “Ebb, ebb” over and over again. That was logical, my newly reorganized sense of reality told me, because ebb was something her life had obviously already done. But after she blew her nose on her sleeve, with another sound I’d be just as happy never to hear again, her articulation was better.