Dyeing Wishes (13 page)

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Debbie said when she saw me. “Eric Lyle is the one. He killed them.”

That wasn’t the best topic of conversation for setting a happy mood in the shop, but she was alone at the counter and I didn’t hear floorboards creaking or customers chattering anywhere else. Rather than cause friction by disagreeing with her about the certainty of Eric Lyle’s guilt, or by suggesting other possibilities, I dodged the current murder altogether.

“Have you heard anything about another double murder around here?”

Prefacing that question with a time frame would have been a good idea. Judging from Debbie’s eyes and mouth flown wide, and her hand suddenly pressed to her chest, I’d almost given her a heart attack. The camel bells on the door jingled as she blinked, breathed, and recovered her voice.

“What do you mean, ‘another double murder’?” she asked.

From the look of his set jaw, his flinty, suspicious eyes, and the hand resting on the butt of his revolver, Deputy Cole Dunbar was interested in knowing that, too.

D
eputy Cole Dunbar wasn’t an idiot, and he had good instincts. Neither of those attributes worked to improve our relations. Even though I tended to be a polite, nonconfrontational person, one with a reasonable sense of self-preservation so that I didn’t call him Clod to his face or to anyone else, he sensed it anyway.

“Two bodies weren’t enough for you?” he asked. “You’re back in town a few months so you need to celebrate by finding a couple more?”

“You are an insensitive clod.” So much for being polite. Back in town a few months and I’d already blown my cover. Calling him
a
clod wasn’t the same as calling him Clod, though, so I could still pat myself on the back. “And why are you keeping track of how long I’ve been back in town?”

“As a sworn peace officer, it’s my duty to keep track of movements in and out of town. Forewarned is forearmed. You were here for several weeks following the death of your grandmother. You left to pack up your belongings in Illinois. You moved them here, and here you seem to be staying. Not so hard to keep track. And, as I recall, while here during the initial few weeks, you racked up a pretty good body count.”

Sententious clod.

“It’s also my duty to follow up on information
received, so I will repeat Ms. Keith’s question. What do you mean, another double murder?”

I looked over at Debbie. She was sitting on the stool behind the counter quietly crying. “Oh, Debbie, no, it’s nothing.” I grabbed the box of Kleenex from the end of the counter and took it to her. Touching her tentatively, I was relieved to feel nothing, and I put my arm around her. “There hasn’t been another murder. It was some old story I heard. I think. I mean, I heard it and I think it’s old. Aw, now, it’s going to be okay.”

“Ahem,” Clod said.

“Normal people don’t actually pronounce the word ‘ahem,’ Deputy. They cough or clear their throats. What are you doing here, anyway?” So much for being nonconfrontational and having a reasonable sense of self-preservation. I stopped myself and held up a hand. “Sorry, I’m sorry, can you wait just a moment, please?” I breathed in, breathed out, worked at letting the annoyance slide past. He was a lot of annoyance, but it was good practice. “Sorry, Deputy. Off on the wrong foot. Is there something we can help you with this morning?”

He had the flinty, suspicious eyes again. Or maybe they’d never warmed up in the first place. “I’m looking for Joe.”

“Why are you looking for him here?”

“Isn’t he here on Fridays?”

“Afternoons.” Debbie sniffled into her Kleenex. “Friday afternoons.”

I tamped down a moment of annoyance with Debbie for giving Clod that information. So what if he was looking for his brother? Interesting, though, that he had to
look
for Joe and couldn’t just call or text him. It made me wonder. If Joe caught wind of the fact that Clod was looking for him, would he stick to his Friday-afternoon
schedule or go find someplace that needed to be fished? And given the opportunity, would I provide the notifying wind? I felt a conspiratorial smile sneaking past my guard. It put me in a sunnier mood.

“You might actually be able to help me, Deputy,” I said.

He darted glances at the skeins and balls and scarves and needles and knitting and weaving surrounding him. His eyes went from flinty and suspicious to alarmed and suspicious. That was a curious improvement.

“I mean with this story of an old murder.”

He relaxed back into his own element, cocking one hip and nodding for me to continue. I told him the sketchy details, removing Geneva’s melodramatic grace notes and keeping an eye on Debbie to make sure she wasn’t freaking out.

“Where’d you hear this from?” he asked.

“A woman. I’m not sure who she is.”

“Where’d it happen? How long ago?”

“I don’t know.”

“Victims’ names?”

“No, I…”

“Well, you know, Ms. Rutledge, it’s kind of hard to pin something like this down without a few of the things we call ‘facts.’”

“Why? Because you’ve had so many sensational double murders in Blue Plum you can’t keep track?” Clod might know how to ooze condescension, but I know how to pour on the sarcasm.

“Because they make it easier to search records and archives,” he said.

“Which is why I asked if you’d ever heard about it. I thought if you had, then you might be able to supply some of the missing facts. I hoped your knowledge of crime in the area might provide an entry point for
locating and accessing further information. But you haven’t heard of it, so you can’t help, so thank you anyway.” I moved down the counter away from him and tried to look busy with a pair of scissors. He followed.

“What’s your interest in this old story?” he asked.

I folded a piece of scratch paper and started snipping. “Same reason I don’t like leaving a movie before the credits are over.”

“Because you’re into useless trivia?”

“Because I like to know how things work from start to finish.”

“Could be. Or it could be you’re plain nosy.” He nodded. “Yeah, well, Ms. Nancy Drew, I can understand that. I do think making paper dolls like you’re doing there is a better hobby than hunting up old murders, but even that’s a safer hobby than chasing around after real bad guys. I’m glad to see all your handicrafts here are keeping you off the streets.”

I held up what I’d cut. It looked like a string of paper ghosts. I tucked them in my pocket to show Geneva later and started on a string of paper deputies. Still, I couldn’t help flapping my mouth. “You mean like instead of asking questions about a missing security guard? Or about the gun owned by that security guard that was used to shoot and kill two people? Or why the owner of the field where the deaths occurred didn’t hear anything about the security guard, who is possibly at large and dangerous, before that information showed up in the paper four days later?”

Clod gave me a narrow-eyed glare before ignoring my questions and turning to Debbie. “Ms. Keith, what time will Joe be in this afternoon?”

“Fast and Furious,” she sniffled.

“Is there a translation for that?”

“Four o’clock sit and knit,” she said.

“Pfft.” On his way to the door he stopped. “Ms. Rutledge?”

“Hmm?” I held up the string of deputies I’d cut, refolded them, snipped off their heads, and smiled at him. “Was there something else?”

“The library has old newspapers on microfilm and the historical society has a photograph archive. The archive is open by appointment. You’ll find the number in the phone book.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

He touched the fingertips of his right hand to the brim of his Smokey Bear hat, which he cloddishly hadn’t removed when he came in, and left. Debbie gazed after him, her head atilt, her eyes soft and moony.

“I don’t think he was trying to insult you when he called you Nancy Drew,” she said. “He probably isn’t allowed to share information about ongoing investigations with civilians. I’ve always thought he was kind of cute. And don’t you think what he said about the shop keeping you off the streets was funny and sweet?”

Debbie and Clod? I pegged him for early forties and she was early thirties. But why not? I decided I liked her better when she was egging me on to beat the cops at their own game, though. And did I think he was cute, funny, and sweet? No, I thought he was insufferable and his sweet aspersion sounded like a challenge.

Granddaddy had made the TGIF workroom by removing the wall between the two back bedrooms on the second floor of the Weaver’s Cat. He’d sanded the wide-plank floors and filled one wall with built-in bookshelves. Over the years, under TGIF’s care, a hodgepodge of Welsh cupboards grew along the other walls as storage space for materials was needed. Sturdy oak tables for projects took up most of the floor, but room was always kept at
one end for a circle of comfy chairs. They were mismatched and well used.

TGIF, as a whole, met on the second Tuesday evening of each month. Those meetings consisted of a hospitality half hour and a short business meeting followed by a program of general interest. Throughout the programs, members worked on whatever portable projects they brought with them. They knit, crocheted, spun, tatted—anything they could do quietly with fibers while they listened to presentations on everything from the ancient art of nålebinding to the techniques judges use to grade raw wool to the care and feeding of silkworms. Once, when I was down visiting Granny, I’d done a program for them on how to safely clean and properly store antique unmentionables. I demonstrated on a pair of crotchless pantaloons, always a crowd-pleaser.

The membership of TGIF also divided itself into half a dozen or so special interest groups that met on various weekly schedules. There were the Wild Wednesday Weavers, the Saturday Spinners, Friday Fast and Furious, and other less alliterative offshoots. Friday Fast and Furious was a group devoted to challenges and community service. Their goal that year was to knit or crochet one thousand sweet little hats and donate them to the county hospital for newborns and hospitalized infants. That meant, because we averaged seven active members per meeting, that we should each produce a hat every 2.92 days. I was the slacker of the group.

Friday Fast and Furious didn’t limit their community service to fiber and textile arts, though. They were the group Ardis had encouraged me to ask for help untangling the mysteries I encountered when Granny died. The members of Friday Fast and Furious were the posse, although I still shied away from thinking of them as
my
posse, with me as the intrepid leader of the pack.

“Good, here’s the horse’s mouth now,” Mel said as I joined them that afternoon. Her mustard spikes looked electrified.

“Nice to see you, too, Mel. Hi, Ernestine, Thea.”

Thea, straight from the library, and Ernestine, her thick lenses polished to a gleam, were already sitting, needles flashing. They nodded and smiled. I took the flowered wingback across the circle from Mel and irritated her by fussing with my needles and rosy pink wool, then putting them down and getting up to help myself to a cup of coconut tea and a scone from the plate and carafe she’d brought with her from the café. One of them had put a CD in the communal boom box—instrumental bossa nova, which was surprisingly good knitting music, accommodating both the fast and the snail-paced. It was less stressful for me, anyway, than the crescendo of the
William Tell
Overture, which invariably left me panting and looking for stitches that had galloped off into the sunset.

“Is Joe here?” Ernestine asked, peering around in case she’d missed him or mistaken him for something else.

Debbie came in and sat next to Ernestine. While Ardis and I took turns minding the shop or attending Fast and Furious, Debbie never missed a meeting if she could help it, even though she had Friday afternoons off and could have headed home. She said that as much as she loved the farm and wouldn’t think of giving it up to live in town, and as much as she loved her animals and thought they were more intelligent than some people she knew, the sheep never had gotten the hang of pulling up chairs and settling in for a good, long chat. She made herself comfortable and picked up the thread of conversation.

“Did I hear you asking about Joe?” she asked
Ernestine. “I talked to him in the kitchen a few minutes ago. I thought he said he’d be here. But then I saw him getting in his truck, so I guess not.”

“Did you tell him Cole was looking for him?” I asked.

She pulled three sky blue hats from her workbag and added them to the week’s collection. “Yeah, I did. Maybe that’s where he’s gone.”

Or maybe that was
why
he was gone. I hid a smile in a bite of scone. “Mmm, what is this, Mel?”

“Pear ginger.” Mel was putting the finishing touches on a tangerine-colored hat. She’d previously contributed cherry-, lemon-, blueberry-, and plum-colored hats and a dozen green ones in shades ranging from iceberg lettuce to curly endive. “What’s the plan?” she asked.

I put my tea and scone down and didn’t pick up my knitting. “Following threads. I’ve been collecting a few, pulling them from here and there. Some of them aren’t so easy to tug. Some of them are twisted.”