Knot the Usual Suspects Read online

  “All right, listen up, people.” Thea put her hands on Zach’s shoulders and pushed him toward an empty chair. I slipped into the chair between Zach’s and Mel’s. “No Show Joe is busy with less important things like getting his booth ready for Handmade Blue Plum. Rachel’s in her countinghouse counting out someone else’s money. Tammie is babysitting the destructosaurus and the wailer, but was kind enough to not to bring them here. They’ll be here tomorrow night. Tammie without the terrors.”

  Tammie Fain, an indulgent grandmother of two under the age of three, had made the mistake of bringing her darlings to a meeting only once. It was a meeting none of us was likely to forget.

  “First point of business,” Thea said, “when and where do you show up tomorrow night?”

  “Excuse me, Thea,” Ardis said, turning to face the room, “but the first point of business is a bigger question. Should you show up tomorrow night?”

  “What?”

  Ardis went on as though Thea hadn’t just exploded. “My answer is yes, and I’ll tell you why, but each of you will need to make your own decision. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the death that occurred here in town last night. I will show up tomorrow night because of that death, to honor the memory of Hugh McPhee. Hugh was a student of mine, way back when, and he planned to join us tomorrow night. But now, given the circumstances of his death, we’ll understand if anyone would rather not participate in the yarn bombing. I’m thinking of our younger members in particular,” she said, looking at Abby and Zach. “And of your parents who might be worried.”

  “Handmade Blue Plum hasn’t been canceled, though, has it?” Thea asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “The question had to be brought up,” I said. “I agree with Ardis; we should go ahead with the yarn bombing, but no hard feelings if anyone has second thoughts before tomorrow night.”

  “Good,” Thea said. “Let’s get back to business. When and where do you show up tomorrow night? By ten minutes to ten, here. Back door only, though, right?” She looked at Ardis for confirmation, but Ardis was staring into her coffee cup.

  “Right. Back door,” I said.

  “And here’s what to bring with you,” Thea said, reading from a list. “Backpacks with extra yarn, knitting needles, hooks, blunt needles with large eyes, scissors, and flashlights. If you have duct tape, that isn’t a bad idea, either. We’ll have the strips ready to go in black garbage bags. Any strips you haven’t already dropped off here at the Cat, bring tomorrow night. In black garbage bags. No white. Wear dark colors tomorrow night. I won’t call out the names of you with gray heads, but cover them.”

  “Are the tags ready?” John asked.

  Thea turned to me. “Kath?”

  “Joe said he’ll have them.”

  Our pre-bombing research told us that yarn graffiti artists often tagged their work—as a way of claiming it without signing their names to it—just as paint graffiti artists did. Tags might be symbols, nicknames, or the name of the groups involved, and some bombers knitted or crocheted their tags right into their designs. We were working with so little lead time we’d decided to print our tags and tie them on like package labels. Joe had offered to design and make them, and he wasn’t in the habit of letting people down, but he didn’t always step into the same river of time as the rest of us.

  “Have you seen the tags yet?” Thea asked me. Then she turned to Ardis. “Have you seen them?”

  “He told me they’d be ready,” Ardis said.

  “If Ardis says they’ll be ready, they will be,” said Mel.

  I couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t said, “If Kath says they’ll be ready, they will be.” And I couldn’t help wondering if that was a tribute to Ardis and her wise ways and the fact that she’d known Joe most of his life, or if it was a veiled comment about the solidity of my fairly new relationship with him.

  “Moving on,” Thea said. “Our targets are identified—”

  “Except for our secret targets,” Ernestine cut in.

  “Aren’t all the targets supposed to be somewhat hidden?” Wanda asked. “So that when people notice them, they’ll go looking for more? Wasn’t the point to let visitors search and discover?”

  “The point is to amuse visitors and citizenry alike,” Thea said.

  “With the discovery of hidden delights,” Wanda said. “Someone said that at the last meeting. I took notes.”

  Thea looked at Wanda over the top of her glasses.

  Wanda didn’t notice. She rummaged in her project bag, then switched to her purse. She shuffled the contents but didn’t take anything out except for a snarl of embroidery floss. She scowled at the tangled floss and jammed it in her pocket, then glanced at Thea. Catching Thea’s quelling librarian eye, she visibly startled. “Oh well,” she said, “I don’t have the notes with me, but I wondered—”

  “Yes?” said Thea.

  “I wondered why we added the courthouse at the last minute. The columns are lit up at night. That kind of defeats the purpose of sneaking around. Besides, the columns are huge.”

  Thea pointed a crochet hook at me. “Tell her, Kath.”

  “Neckties,” I said.

  Wanda looked confused.

  “We’re tying neckties on the columns,” I told her. “Six yards of our five-inch stuff should be plenty for a tie on each column. By now we’ve got enough yards of material to work with for all the targets, and it shouldn’t take too long to tie—”

  “Windsor or four-in-hand?” John asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “If you want them to look like neckties, yes. And if you know how, it won’t take any time at all. Do you know how to tie a Windsor knot, young man?”

  “I’m a knot kind of guy,” Zach said without looking up from the strip he was crocheting. “Windsor knots are cool.”

  “Windsor it is, then,” I said. “We can leave the necktie tying to the cool ones, or if you want to become one with the knots, you can probably find a video on the Web.” I made a mental note to look one up.

  “Here’s how you solve the visibility problem,” Mel said. “Drape some of your strips over the floodlights before you run up the steps. The lights are right there in the grass. Cover them and you’ve got instant blackout. Then after you dude-up the columns, you grab the draping strips and head for the next target. Piece of cake.”

  “See?” Thea said. “No worries.”

  “And the reference to cake leads us straight to salivating for cinnamon sour cream strudel.” Mel rubbed her hands.

  “Superb.” Thea paused to breathe deeply in the direction of the Welsh dresser.

  Ardis, who hadn’t moved from the dresser, stepped aside, to give interested eyes and noses an unobstructed view and a whiff of cinnamon.

  But Thea held up a hand. “No strudel yet. Let’s make sure we’re all clear about how the bombing will work. We’re hitting one big target—the courthouse columns—to get everyone’s attention. Then we’re hitting all the rest of the targets to tickle their fancies and encourage them to look around town. Feel free to call the other targets ‘hidden delights’ if you want, Wanda. In fact, that sounds so good that your notes must be right and I said that. But to stir up some immediate wham-bam excitement, our target needs to be large and obvious. Like me.” She struck a pose and looked at the teens. “When I make a joke about myself, it’s okay to laugh.”

  Abby did, along with most of the rest of us. A smile came and went on Zach’s face, but he continued concentrating on the strip he was crocheting. It was brown and not more than an inch wide. I leaned closer to see it better.

  “Why so narrow?” I asked.

  “Not telling.” He bared his teeth in a fake smile, then looked across at Ernestine and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “I’d like to say something else.” Ardis spoke quietly, c
radling her coffee cup, shoulders drawn. When we were all looking at her, she spoke again. “For the record, I’d like to say that bombing the courthouse columns makes a statement.”

  “What record? What statement?” Wanda asked. “I’m not being contrary. I want to understand.”

  “I think I’ve got this.” John looked to Ardis. She nodded. Then he turned to me and mimed writing.

  “I’ve got a pencil and paper, Mr. Berry,” Abby said.

  “If you’ll take this down, then, I believe it will be record enough. Although we want to be careful and not let that paper get away from us. You should find your notes, too, Wanda. A document with the words ‘Blue Plum’ or ‘courthouse’ and ‘bomb’ might raise eyebrows, even if ‘bomb’ is coupled with a word as innocent as ‘yarn.’”

  “I’ll see your ‘might raise eyebrows,’” Mel said, “and raise you the certainty of brown and khaki panties in a twist.”

  “Good point. We don’t need ‘bomb’ or ‘courthouse’ for our statement anyway,” John said. “How does this sound? Whereas Blue Plum is our town, and whereas we love Blue Plum, we therefore and hereby claim Blue Plum in the name of freedom for textile and fiber arts and for all other forms of creative expression.’ What do you think, Ardis?”

  She and Wanda both nodded.

  “Wanda, you were here the day we added the courthouse to the target list,” I said, “but that was the meeting when Tammie brought her grand-terrors.”

  “Enough said.” Wanda shuddered. “I dropped more stitches that day than I have in the last ten years. It’s no wonder I lost track of any intelligent conversation.”

  “That’s settled, then,” Mel said. She put her needles down and stood up. “On to strudel.”

  “But first—” Ardis moved back along the Welsh dresser so she blocked our view of the strudel.

  We waited. Her silence prompted Zach to stop crocheting, and he watched with the rest of us as she stared into her coffee cup again. She’d been subdued since Clod brought the news of Hugh’s death, but even more so since coming down from the study. Unless I was imagining that. But she worried me. I was about to go to her when she roused and spoke again.

  “Right now. Especially now.” Without turning to see, she reached behind to the dresser and set her coffee cup down. She stood straighter and looked at each one of us. “Especially now,” she repeated, her voice stronger and full of conviction. “We’ll be making the right statement. That Blue Plum is our town. That we’ll stand together, we’ll work together, we’ll hold fast together. That we won’t be cowed—”

  The others might have thought Ardis finished her statement at the word “cowed.” She did a good job of making it appear so—she closed her mouth, crossed her arms, and gave a single, sharp nod. And a look of satisfaction eased the strain that had troubled her face. Ernestine, John, and Mel clapped. Then Mel got up and headed for the strudel, followed by Zach, Abby, and Thea. But I’d caught a momentary widening of Ardis’ eyes just before the look of satisfaction smoothed her brow, so I knew that something else was going on.

  Then again, I would have known something else was going on without the eyes and brow for clues, because someone whispered in my ear and put her ghostly arm around my shoulders, making me shiver.

  Chapter 10

  “Why is Ardent bellowing about cows?” Geneva asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Her bellowing is not all bad, though. It made me think of a riddle. A paranormal puzzler, if you will. Par excellence, if I do say so myself.”

  She disengaged her arm from my shoulders and moved around in front of me. Seeing Ardis and the others through the vaporous form floating before my eyes gave me the feeling of disappearing behind a swarm of gnats. I was tempted to flap my knitting at her, but that wouldn’t have been kind, and it probably wouldn’t have helped. She was intent on telling me her riddle.

  “Of course, you cannot give your answer without sounding batty,” she said, “so I will be helpful and pretend that you give up. Ready? What did the bellowing bovine say when it gave up the ghost? What? You’re giving up already? Okay, you asked for it.” She leaned in close so that we were nose to nose. “Moo!”

  After telling me her riddle and rocking with laughter, Geneva sat on the arm of my chair “discussing” the others, who were enjoying Mel’s strudel. Ignoring her running commentary was easier than ignoring the strudel. But I told myself that my wits and my waistline would both thank me for staying strong. I tried humming quietly to myself to drown her out. It rarely worked, and didn’t this time, either. It also didn’t drown out the oohs and aahs over the strudel.

  Geneva didn’t say what brought her down from the study. She didn’t usually come to our “knit and natter sessions,” as she called them. She didn’t like the clicking of so many knitting needles. If you will imagine a dozen mice clattering their tiny claws across a cold stone floor, you will understand my aversion, she’d said. I assumed she’d arrived early for the posse meeting, and that that was why Ardis had gone to the study. Ardis smiled and waved at us, but stayed on the other side of the room. Giving Geneva her space, no doubt.

  “Red,” Mel called, “I can’t help noticing that you’re avoiding my strudel. Should I be affronted?”

  “I’m saving my calorie splurge for the après bomb party.”

  “Good enough. Coffee?”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine.” After knitting the town red—and orange, yellow, green, blue, and all shades in between—we were all meeting back at the Weaver’s Cat for debriefing, celebration, and refreshments Mel said she’d send over. She, being an early-to-bed and up-before-dawn café owner, wasn’t joining us for the bombing.

  “I wonder if her alert hair makes her more alert,” Geneva mused, looking at Mel. “She is good at noticing things, such as your delusion that you will lose weight by eating tomorrow what you avoid eating today. Have you noticed that I am practicing my noticing skills and that I’m using them well, this afternoon? For instance, I have noticed three things about you. Would you like to hear them?”

  I pulled my left earlobe. That was supposed to mean “no,” but she wasn’t paying attention.

  “First, I noticed that you failed to compliment me on my paranormal puzzler. However, that was not your fault, because we are not alone, so I am not affronted. Although it was udderly fantastic.”

  I swallowed a sputtered laugh.

  “The second thing I noticed is that you are finally knitting something other than one of those tiny hats you have been such a slave to. I applaud the fact that you are branching out, but now it looks as though you are using the dregs of someone’s uninspired basket of leftover yarn, and it is not an improvement.” She looked around at the work the others had set aside for coffee and strudel. “Good heavens. You all are. I think someone should warn you that you are likely to scare people with all these long, narrow, ugly scarves.”

  That comment threw me. Did she really not know what we were doing? But no, maybe she didn’t. The yarn bombing was supposed to be hush-hush. Ardis and I had been careful not to talk about it in front of customers. Geneva had been avoiding Ardis for weeks, so even when we had discussed it, she would have taken herself off in a sniff. And she really didn’t like the sound of many needles knitting, so she hadn’t come to any of our planning meetings. With her slippery grasp of time, she seemed to think this was a meeting of Fridays Fast and Furious, the subgroup of TGIF dedicated to knitting one thousand baby hats for charity by the end of the year. I hadn’t specifically asked her to join us for the yarn bombing because it was the kind of activity that frustrated her—she couldn’t manipulate anything, so she couldn’t help us. And she was a homebody, for the most part—although she would probably have something to say about the “body” part of that. But since moving in, she only occasionally left the Weaver’s Cat.

  “The third thing I noticed about you, other than your sudde
n and rude lack of attention to me, is that you are not downstairs keeping the dear Spiveys from bopping Debbie on the head. I would have thought—”

  I didn’t wait to hear what she would have thought. I was up and out of my chair and flying down the back stairs.

  I leapt the last two stairs and landed in the kitchen feeling like a ninja juiced on adrenaline. Or a nut. Running recklessly around blind corners in a shop specializing in pointed sticks, hooks, and needles, when I might plow into someone holding one or a quiverful, wasn’t the best plan. Besides, Shirley and Mercy Spivey might be irritating, but I’d never known them to be violent. Just irritating and sneaky.

  I listened and only heard the pleasant murmurs of customers fondling merino or alpaca in the next room. No annoying Spivey voices. No cries of protest from Debbie or sounds of bopping. But had they bopped and left? Bopped and hidden? Bopped at all? Geneva hadn’t come down the stairs with me—a big, fat clue that reports of bopping were exaggerated. She being a huge fan of bopping as well as bar fights. And yet.

  I peered around the corner into the hall. No one lurked beyond the racks of patterns. Neither of the twins would be able to hide behind the coat tree draped with scarves and hats. I slid into the hall and along the wall, stopping where I could peek around the edge of the doorway into the old dining room where the fondling was taking place. I recognized the women. They had their hands full of alpaca. When they looked up, I raised my eyebrows in a “can I help?” sort of way. They waved me off with smiles and shifted their attention to gently mauling the merino. Shirley and Mercy were nowhere to be seen in the room. I sniffed the air. They were nowhere to be smelled, either, although traces of Mercy’s terrible cologne lingered, evidence that Geneva was right; they had been in the shop.

  I tiptoed to the front room and stopped at the edge of that door, too, my back pressed against the wall, the better to avoid detection or contact. Not that I detested Shirley and Mercy, but there was a prickly strand running through my relationship with them. The most recent chafing from that strand came when we invited them to teach a quilting class at the shop. Ardis had been leery. I’d been optimistic. And it hadn’t worked out. To put it euphemistically. They’d alienated half a dozen of our longtime customers, a fabric sales rep with whom we’d been trying for months to get an in-shop appointment and who’d left the shop in tears, and a cake decorator in Asheville. That all happened on the first and last day of their class. The cake decorator didn’t matter so much. The twins had only gone to Asheville because Mel had come up with an excuse not to deal with them. But as Ardis had said, the incident with the decorator was the icing on the cake.