Dyeing Wishes (11 page)

We had a final spurt of late-afternoon business. Then, while we counted down the till, I told Ardis about the wannabe journalists and the Spivey visits of the day before and that morning.

“Spiveys,” Ardis said, shaking her head.

“I don’t think Carolyn Proffitt is the twins’ source, though. Carolyn didn’t use the word ‘stalker,’ and they didn’t think the stalker was Will. I think there’s someone else Shannon confided in.” I jotted that on a scrap and added it to my pocket.

“That’s why you’re the brains of this posse,” Ardis said, nodding at the pencil in my hand. “I’d be more likely to take anything the Spiveys say and run it down the garbage disposal. These other two, now, Ledford and Furches? There are some of both families in the area.”

“Pen Ledford and Sylvia Furches, yeah. They acted like they’d never been here before. But they knew more than they let on. Maybe they lied about their names, too.”

“And none of them bought anything? That’s typical of the twins,” Ardis said, “but it would have been nice if the wannabes had greased our counter with a modest angora or alpaca purchase. I’ll give them this, though. They’re showing more initiative than the professional news crew from Knoxville. The Knoxville bunch parked their van behind the courthouse early this morning and acted like the natives might be contagious. They interviewed Sheriff Haynes on the courthouse steps; then they had a pizza delivered to the van and they haven’t set foot outside since. I heard all that from Ernestine when I ran into her at the bank. Did these other two sound smart enough to find Cloud Hollow?”

“I tried to discourage them, but sure. They’ll find it or they’ll find someone who’ll tell them.”

“Spiveys.”

“Maybe. But Debbie’s cousin Darla was on duty out there today.”

“And Debbie can take care of herself. And as for the budding journalists and the Spivey blight, we’ll just have to wait and see what misery they sow or reap.”

T
hursday evening, Mr. Berry and I arrived at Mel’s from opposite directions on the dot of seven. He walked toward me with a clipped, almost jaunty step as though he heard parade ground music in his head. He was average in height and average in looks, but he wore his blazer and khakis with such an air that, with his white moustache and beard and his thin face still tan from however many months on his boat, I could imagine a director casting him as an ancient soldier or sailor, upright in every sense of the word. In fact, when I’d last seen him, probably ten years earlier, he’d played the sea captain in the Blue Plum Repertory Theater’s production of
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
. I could also believe, as he walked toward me, that he thought of himself as classic movie leading man material. David Niven or Gene Kelly.

He held the door for me and I stepped inside, inhaling as much of my favorite atmosphere as I could while maintaining some semblance of decorum. Since meeting Geneva, I’d decided that if I were lucky or unlucky enough to linger as a ghost, I wanted my haunt to be Mel’s on Main. Surely inhaling the aromas of that café for eternity would be heavenly. Unless inhaling without tasting was closer to the opposite, but I was willing to take the chance. Tonight the aromas on tap were crusty
cheese, roasting sweet potatoes, and the ever-present hint of melting chocolate.

“What’s Red doing over there?” I knew that question came from Mel and she was referring to me, even though my eyes were closed, the better to luxuriate in the bouquet of French Onion Soup Night at Mel’s on Main.

“Falling in love, I think,” Mr. Berry said.

“She’s blocking traffic,” said Mel. “Sorry, folks. She just completed a ninety-day sensory deprivation experiment and it might be dangerous to restimulate all five of her senses too soon. Are you receiving sound yet, Kath? If you are, then let your nose bring you on over here and let these good people out to enjoy the rest of their evening.”

I opened my eyes, startling an elderly couple standing uneasily in front of me. I apologized for holding them up and opened the door for them. They edged past with uncertain smiles and a tentative wave to Mel.

“It’s kind of an unwritten municipal policy that citizens try their best not to make the tourists nervous,” Mel said. “You might want to keep that in mind now that you’ve seen the light and become one of us.”

It was
my
policy to ignore Mel’s pot-calling-the-kettle-black statements. If we had a falling-out, she might not cut off my café habit, but why take that risk? Although that café habit, acquired since relocating to Blue Plum, probably had something to do with the weight gain Geneva had so helpfully mentioned.

Mel was fortyish, bright, and intense. Her hair was bright and intense, too. Her current style was short spikes dyed mustard yellow. Her normal look included a pencil stuck behind each ear and several more in the bib pocket of her mustard yellow apron. Taken altogether—the spikes, the pencils, the strength and honesty in her eyes, and the prickles in her direct personality—there
was no doubt that she meant to make a success of her café and catering business or that she would stand beside any friend who needed her.

“What kind of salad do you recommend tonight, Mel?” I asked.

“Roasted radish, beet, and carrot. Here, take a look.”

“Ooh,” was all I could say.

“The gorgeous vegetables, a bed of spinach and romaine, a hint of balsamic, fresh thyme, cracked black pepper, a grind of sea salt, and a smattering of pecans halves lightly sautéed in olive oil and dusted with curry powder.” Mel kissed her fingertips.

We placed our orders and took a table at the window.

“We’ll watch the great big world of Blue Plum pass by,” he said as he held my chair. “And although I’m making a joke about the size of Blue Plum, I do think it’s one of the nicest towns on the face of this earth.”

“You’ve done a lot of traveling?”

“I’m an old pirate. I love the water and I’ve sailed the seven seas.”

“That sounds like a line from a song.”

“Close. It’s a line from a story I used to perform. You didn’t know
that
about me, either?” He shook his head. “Sad, sad. I can tell Ivy didn’t talk about me nearly enough. A sure indication I should have spent more time here. That you still think of me as Mr. Berry is another. Please, it’s John.”

“Not Yarn?”

He laughed. “The legend, yes. It really isn’t much of anything. Believe it or not, Yarn was my mother’s maiden name. She was Rose Eleanor Yarn, she became Rose Yarn Berry, and she named me John Yarn Berry. She always told me Yarn was a variation of Arne and meant sea eagle, and I suppose that might be true. And maybe between that and growing up in landlocked, backwater
Dry Creek Cove, Tennessee, I was destined for the three things I love best.”

I knew I was supposed to ask. “What are they?”

“Sailing, storytelling, and knitting. My mother was a great knitter. She knit anything and everything we needed. If we’d lost the roof off the pig shed in a windstorm, she would have sat right down and knit us a new one, and more pigs to go under it. She had no girls, though, so she passed her love of knitting on to me along with her maiden name. I was the apple of her eye until I broke her heart and left to join the navy. She died while I was at sea, too.” He was quiet for a moment, then smiled sadly. “She had a wonderful sense of humor. Ivy reminded me of her.”

A waitress brought our dinners—piping hot French onion soup with browned and bubbling Gruyère for me and a slice of fresh tomato tart with a side of the roasted beet salad for John Yarn Berry—and two glasses of a local winery’s cabernet.

“To absent friends,” he said, raising his glass, “wise and warmhearted. To Ivy McClellan, our dear departed.”

It may have been more than two months since Granny’s death, but there were still words and gestures that closed my throat, and I found I wasn’t immune to hokey toasts, either. The glint of tears in John’s eyes and our simultaneous reaching for tissues and blowing of our noses helped get me past it. Then, while my soup cooled to a safer temperature, I told him some of my ups and downs since Granny’s death and about my decision to keep the Weaver’s Cat.

“Do you enjoy being at the helm?” he asked.

“I’m really more of the cabin girl.”

“You’ll grow into it. Don’t doubt yourself. Ivy never doubted herself or you.”

“Sometimes, in the middle of the night, what I worry
about more is that I’ll grow out of it instead of into it. That I’ll get tired of small-town life, small-business headaches, the lack of professional stimulation…” I stopped and thought about that. Out of all my worries, in all the world, that wasn’t one I’d put into words to anyone else. But that wasn’t true. There were quite a few worries I hadn’t put into words to anyone else. Worries about the existence or nonexistence of secret dye journals. What those journals meant if they did exist. The weird sense of transferred emotions I felt from time to time when I touched a sleeve or shoulder. But, first and foremost, the worries about seeing and believing in a ghost. I shook my head to dislodge those last words before they had a chance to leak out. John was kind and easy to talk to, but I wasn’t about to share too much with him.

“You know that’s a perfectly legitimate worry, though,” he said.

“What is?” My words and worries about ghosts hadn’t leaked out after all, had they?

“Outgrowing Blue Plum. I won’t tell on you, though.”

“Oh good. Thanks. Ardis has enough on her plate without having to worry about me jumping ship, too. What about you, though? From what Granny said, you leave and come back and leave again. I don’t even remember the last time she mentioned seeing you. How long have you been away this time?”

“Guilty as charged,” he said. “Personal experience is exactly how I know your worry is legitimate. Coming and going—quite often with the emphasis on the going—is how I’ve kept my mental balance. It might work for you, too. Have you thought about taking the occasional consulting job out in the bigger world?”

I told him I had and that I wasn’t sure I was ready for that kind of balancing act yet. He seemed willing to talk about why I was reluctant, but by then my soup was cool
enough and we’d spent more time talking about me than made me comfortable. Instead I dove into the perfect brown soup, felt like smacking my lips, and asked about his brother.

“Ambrose,” he said. “Mean as snakes. Maybe one of the reasons I left in the first place. But the farm and I are all he’s got and, except for the boat, he’s all I’ve got. I’m selling the boat, did I tell you that?” He drank the last of his wine and stared out at Main Street growing dark. “I’m sorry I missed Ivy’s funeral. I’ve definitely been away too long this time.”

I didn’t ask again how long that was. He hadn’t answered the first time, and I knew what it was like to be asked questions I’d rather ignore.

The next morning, Debbie was waiting for me at the Cat with the latest issue of the
Blue Plum Bugle
, hot off the press and fresh off the front stoop.

I
f the font the
Bugle
’s editor used wasn’t called Screaming Headline, it should have been. I could have read it if Debbie held the paper up across the street. The point size left room for only three sentences on the front page. The first two were merely sensational. “Tragedy in Blue Plum” and “Motive Cloudy in Cloud Hollow Calamity.” The third was the whopper. “Gun Belongs to Missing Security Guard.”

“Has anyone ever told you your face is easy to read?” Debbie asked. “Even Ernestine wouldn’t need a magnifying glass to see the questions racing through your head.”

“Do you know this guy, Eric Lyle?” Lyle was the missing security man. He worked for Victory Paper.

“Never heard of him,” Debbie said, “but I’m ready to hear he’s guilty. I knew that gun didn’t belong to Will.”

“Why didn’t we hear about him or the gun sooner?”

“Good question,” Debbie said. “Maybe the
Bugle
scooped everyone else?”

“Or they don’t have a good source of insider information.”

According to the
Bugle
, the gun we found with the bodies, a Smith & Wesson Chief .38-caliber revolver with a two-inch barrel and holding five bullets, belonged to Eric Lyle. I pictured the reporter proudly getting the
gun’s description exactly right. Eric Lyle worked as a night security guard at Victory Paper. He was thirty-two. There were photographs of all three—Shannon Goforth, Will Embree, and Eric Lyle. Smiling pictures, probably personnel shots from the company for Shannon and Eric. Will’s picture showed a younger, softer-looking guy than the man than I’d seen under the tree in the field.

“They can’t find him,” Debbie said. “Eric Lyle. He’s missing. Did you read that part? If that isn’t incriminating, I don’t know what is.”

Eric Lyle was last seen the day of the deaths, Monday. He clocked out of work at six that morning. He spoke to the day-shift security supervisor coming on duty. He waved to the man at the gate on his way out. He bought gas at a convenience store along the highway. They had a positive ID on the store’s security tape. He used his credit card for the purchase. Neither he nor the car had been seen since, and there was no further activity on the credit card.