Knot the Usual Suspects (26 page)

I went into Mel's for Ardis' coffee and doughnuts, and absentmindedly bought two for me as well.

Clod arrived so soon after Ardis unlocked the front door that he must have been waiting and watching. That was an unpleasant image, so I was surprised when the first thought springing into my mind wasn't “creepy Clod,” but “poor dope.” It was probably good that I kept it to myself, though, just as I kept most of my knee-jerk reactions to him. He marched up to the counter, his posture and gait not having received the suspension memo any sooner than his jeans or shirt.

“I would like to clear up a misapprehension,” he said. Sententious clod.

“Very good, Coleridge,” Ardis said. “Confession is good for the soul. If you'll remember, Ernestine gave you the chance yesterday.”

“Clearing up, not confessing. Apparently it has been suggested that I hold a grudge against Al Rogalla over the fact that he grabbed the McPhee house out from under me.”

“That didn't happen?” I asked. I shifted my doughnuts to the left, out from under his interested eye.

“That did happen.”

“Then where does the misapprehension come in?” Ardis asked.

“That I care a rat's—”

“
Language
, Coleridge.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“How did he grab it out from under you?” I asked.

“Pfft. He got it through EMT Realty,” he said, giving the name of the realty company in air quotes. Then he looked at our faces, mine probably a mirror of Ardis' total blank. “It's not a real company; it's a shi—a
shifty
kind of insider trading in properties. Happens all the time. EMTs, firefighters, cops—they go out on a call for, say, a heart attack. But the attack is massive and the person dies before they can transport. If one of the guys is in the market, and likes the look of the place, he takes the opportunity to do a walk-through. And he's first in line if it comes up for rent or for sale.”

Now our faces were probably mirrors of dumbfoundedness.

“Yeah,” Clod said. “Now you get it. So, McPhee's grandfather owned the house. Had a stroke one night. Left the house to Hugh.
Great
house.”

“How long ago?” I asked.

“Twelve, fifteen years. Rogalla got to Hugh first. Hugh had no interest in coming back here.”

“But it turned out he held on to the house all that time,” Ardis said, “and only this week sold it to Al.”

“Everyone thought he bought it back then. With his accountant's salary.”

“But you didn't then, and still don't, give a duck's diddly-squat,” I said.

Apparently not; he didn't comment. He did, however, take my two doughnuts and leave.

“Nice segue into the ducks,” Ardis said. “But I wonder if you aren't obsessing.”

“I'm not. Darla thinks Cole's suspension is a crock, but what if Gladys wouldn't go to the police because she saw a policeman kill Hugh?”

“Not Cole!”

“No. But what if he's being railroaded with this suspension? Olive said Sheriff Haynes looked as though he'd seen a ghost when Hugh played his pipes Tuesday afternoon. I didn't tell you, but Geneva saw Hugh with someone Tuesday night.”

“No, you did not.
Why
didn't you?”

I looked around but didn't see Geneva. Even so, I spoke quietly. “At first she didn't know if the person with Hugh was a man or a woman. Now she says it was someone about Hugh's height who marched like a lawman or a piper.”

“Not the most reliable witness.”

“No. But what do we know about any history between Hugh and Sheriff Haynes?”

Ardis thought for a minute. “Leonard Haynes was coach at the high school. Unreliable witness or not, it bears looking into. This might get nastier than it already is.”

*   *   *

Thea called shortly before noon. She spoke so softly it was hard to hear her.

“Modeling good library behavior?” I asked. “I thought you didn't care so much about it being like a mausoleum.”

“It's my day off. I'm in my office with the door closed. If they don't hear me, they hardly know I'm here, and I can troll without interruption. Stealth librarian at your service.”

“Cool. Anything new?”

Her first two offerings we'd already learned—Rogalla living in the McPhee house, and Sheriff Haynes coaching at the high school while Hugh attended.

“Any hint of problems when he was coach?”

“Not so far. That's the era of sweeping things under the rug, but I'll keep looking.”

“Can you do another search for me?” I told her what we knew of Clod's suspension—including our duck gibes—then asked her to look for the original complaint about stolen ducks.

“How do you mishandle a complaint about ducks?” she asked.

“By making dumb jokes, like we're doing?”

“A complaint might be in the public record,” Thea said. “But if it's anonymous, what's it going to tell you?”

“I don't know. See what you can find.”

“Hey, I'm a miracle worker, not a magician, but I'll see what I can do.”

“Thanks. Anything on Tammie or Wanda connecting them to Hugh?”

“No, but that reminds me. There's something I've been thinking about that's getting me more and more steamed. Something that's creeping over me like a red haze ever since Gladys died.” The red haze was creeping into her voice, too.

“Are you going to blow your stealth there by getting upset and shouting?”

“It'll be worth it,” she said. “Okay, so two people are dead. That's the worst part of this, I know that. But the murderer also took advantage of the yarn bombing.
Our
yarn bombing. The murderer
knew
we were knitting and crocheting strips, and used one to kill Hugh and Gladys. That was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. Or maybe killing Hugh while he was blowing his pipes at midnight
was
a spur-of-the-moment decision, but we hadn't bombed anything at that point. So using a crocheted strip, and part of the same strip to kill Gladys, means the murderer knew beforehand about the bombing and took advantage of us. Took advantage of all our planning. Of our
art
.”

“Of TGIF.”

“And that's what really gets me,” Thea said, “the betrayal. Because it had to be a member of TGIF.”

I didn't want to think the murderer was a member of TGIF, but knew I had to face that possibility and told Thea so.

“Or not,” she said.

“Wait. You just told me—”

“My brain won't turn off, so hear me out. It could've been loose lips. Bomb squad members were knitting and crocheting. Other members of TGIF were knitting and crocheting to help the cause. And we don't know who or how many others were supplying us with strips, even though we asked everyone to keep quiet.”

“True.”

“Lots of strips, too many lips.”

I sighed, thanked Thea for continuing her Internet search, and hung up. She was right; there were too many lips involved to lay blame anywhere in particular. And there could easily have been several loose pairs. But that
didn't stop me from sifting through my favorite candidates for the role of Loose Lip Louse. I tried to be objective, weighing Tammie's excitement and calling attention to herself in the middle of Main Street against Wanda, who took notes during meetings, disappeared during the bombing, and then reappeared, and weighing both of them against Rachel, who'd been married to Hugh and “twisted” her ankle. Objectivity wasn't actually all that hard; any one of them could have told someone else about the yarn bomb project.

Then Geneva shrieked into the room. “A spy!” she shouted. “Upstairs! She's reading the whiteboard to someone over the phone, and spilling all our supersleuth secrets!”

G
eneva swirled up the stairs ahead of me, and I arrived, heart thumping, and clutched the doorframe of the TGIF workroom. Tammie, her back to me, stood in front of the whiteboard, phone to her ear, spilling our sleuth scribblings. She turned when she heard me gulping air at the door. Geneva went into the room and threw herself in front of the whiteboard, arms spread wide—protecting our data about as effectively as I had done. Tammie disconnected after a quick “see you later.”

“The door was locked,” she said, “and you-all were busy. I didn't like to be a bother, so I thought I'd try the key for the supply closet in the kitchen. You know—old doors, old keys, and there you go. Here's the key back.”

“You can put it on the table.” I stayed in the doorway. Call me overly cautious, but I didn't like the idea of being in an enclosed space with Tammie Fain.

“You don't usually keep the door locked, do you? But I can see why you would now, with all that going on—” She waved at the whiteboard.

“Did you need something in here?” I asked.

“My snips. I couldn't think where I'd left them, and then I realized it must have been here the last time I brought the grandbabies. Found them, though, and now I'd like you to move away from the door and let me out.”

I stepped aside, and she moved past me. Not too close.

At the top of the stairs she stopped and said, “You scare me.”

“Who were you talking to?” I asked.

But her phone rang and, rather than answer me, she answered it as she ran down the stairs.

*   *   *

“It might not be so bad,” Ardis said when I told her about Tammie breaching our limited security. “She could've been on the phone with someone in Alaska for all we know.”

“Only if she's going there. She said, ‘See you later,' when she hung up.”

“And Geneva didn't hear a name?”

“No.”

“I hope she doesn't feel too badly about that. She did us a great service by giving the alarm.” Ardis darted glances around the room. “Is she here?” she whispered.

“She vowed to stay in the workroom and guard the whiteboard with her life.”

“How worried do you think we need to be? Should we warn the posse to be vigilant?”

“I think we should. But Tammie doesn't know who all has been working on the board, and it only has my handwriting. So you're right; it isn't so bad.”

“Except for you,” Ardis said. “I don't like the sound of that. No walking home alone at night until this is over. In fact, I'll worry about you being alone in the house.”

“Well, you know, there is that guy named Joe who hangs around sometimes.”

“And I've a mind to call him up and tell him to hang around more permanently.”

“That's kind of you, Ardis, but we can probably make our own arrangements.”

“
Permanent
ones, hon? Am I the first to hear the news?”

“What news?”

“Never mind. Joe's tied up with Handmade this evening, though, isn't he?”

“Until the last booth is taken down and taken away.”

“Then I want you to come eat supper with Daddy and me tonight. And if we can get him in his chair, we can take him for a tour of the yarn bombing.”

“Not the footbridge.”

“No, I suppose not. We'll skip that part, and we'll let Joe know he can pick you up at my place when he's finished.”

So much for letting us make our own arrangements, but it sounded like a nice way to spend the evening. So after a day of normal yarn shop activity, tinged with abnormal worries about a murderer loose in our fair town, Ardis and I walked up the hill to her house. At the last minute, before leaving the shop, I'd run up to the workroom and invited Geneva to come with us. She declined, saying her new catchphrase was “vigilance is vital.” It wasn't easy to read subtle expressions on her face, but at a guess, her vigilance was slightly wistful.

In Ardis' big, homey kitchen, she whisked eggs for an omelet. I tossed a salad and made toast. And in the den, her daddy caught the tail end of
Top Hat
, and got the itch to go dancing.

*   *   *

“Come on, Fred,” Ardis said to her daddy after supper. “If you'll hop in your carriage, we'll go downtown and cut a rug.”

“I've got a better idea,” her daddy said. “Let's go to Pokey's.”

“Does Pokey's sound okay to you, Kath?” Ardis asked.

“I can hardly wait.”

“Me, neither,” her daddy said. “Oh my, oh my.”

Ardis got Hank in his wheelchair and we strolled and rolled down to Main Street. Hank sang snatches of songs and we showed him the striped signposts, the giant trout flies, and the new beanie on the fire hydrant. It had only been a few days, but we were happy to see that most of the yarn bombs were still intact, including the Groucho glasses and pouting lips on the courthouse columns, despite Olive's assertion that they were ridiculous.

It was another evening that smelled of woodsmoke and early frost. Not many people were out. Ardis asked her daddy if he was warm enough. He said he felt fine and dandy, oh my, oh my.

The moray eel had disappeared from the electric company, and that was disappointing, but we hoped someone had loved it so much that it now swam in a bedroom somewhere. Ardis hadn't seen the lion's mane, so we headed down the street to the Extension office. My phone rang. It was Thea.

“I saw you three out walking as I was on my way home,” she said, “and I thought you'd get a kick out of this. I looked up Pokey's roadhouse of thirty years ago—for grins, but the trivia might help Ardis and John with
those old boys. You never know. Anyway, the live music Hank remembers? None other than Ms.
Oh My
. And I think you have to say it like that to get the flavor of it—
Oh My
. Ever heard of her?”

“No.” I slowed as I listened to Thea, and Ardis and Hank got to the Extension office ahead of me. Ardis lifted part of the lion's mane and waved it at Hank.

“‘My' is short for Myers,” Thea said. “‘Oh' is a cute way of designating the first initial. Ms. O. Myers. O for Olive. Olive Myers, who became Mrs. Pokey Weems. She was a roadhouse singer, Kath, and pretty hot.”

“Interesting.” Interesting, too, that Mrs. Pokey Weems, taking her Boston terrier for a walk, was up ahead there and talking to Ardis' daddy. As I closed the distance between us, I heard Hank swearing on his life that he'd seen her in the park Thursday night.

“Oh my, yes,” he said. “I'd know you anywhere.”

“You still there, Kath?” Thea asked.

“Oh my,” I said faintly.

“That sounded completely lifeless,” said Thea. “Try it like this:
Oh My
.”

“It
is
Oh My, Thea. Olive's here.” But I wasn't sure Thea heard me, because Olive had grabbed my phone and smashed it.