Knot the Usual Suspects (27 page)

“O
h
my
! She still has the moves,” Hank said. He clapped as Olive did the two-stomp on the remains of my phone.

“What good did that do?” I asked her. “This is downtown Blue Plum. There are three us. And your dog just jumped into Hank's lap.” I was surprised to hear how calm my voice sounded. “If you're trying to get away with murder, you're doing it wrong.”

Ardis' daddy was delighted by the happy dog licking his face. “A lap dancer!” he cried, and started the wheelchair moving in a slow spin. “Oh my, oh my, she makes me sigh!”

“Stop that, you old fool,” Olive said. She kicked pieces of the phone into the gutter and tried to grab the handles of the wheelchair without letting go of the dog's leash.

“I'm either dazed or confused,” Ardis said. “Tell me if I've got this right. Daddy, in a moment of clarity, aided by a somewhat risqué long-term memory, just ID'd Olive
and placed her in the park Thursday at the crucial time. And Olive, through her panicked reaction and lack of denial, as much as confessed to Gladys' murder.”

“And your daddy is wrapping up the case, but could use some help.”

Her daddy had gotten the hang of spinning the wheelchair, tangling the leash around Olive's legs in the process. Before Olive could free herself, Ardis and I grabbed Ernestine's giant lion's-mane jellyfish from the bushes. In a pincer move so smooth we might have been practicing it for months, and accompanied by her daddy's cackling and the dog's yips, we wrapped the piece of knitting around Olive like a straitjacket, pinning her arms. Ardis tied the package tightly with the tentacles.

“Olive-stuffed jellyfish,” she said with satisfaction, and added another knot for safekeeping. “A Blue Plum yarn bomb specialty. Oh my.”

*   *   *

Between Ardis' daddy singing a rousing rendition of something about a girl from Ypsilanti whose dress was red and scanty, and Olive's dog encouraging him with more licks and yips, our strange party attracted the attention of several other folks abroad in Blue Plum that evening. Clod and Darla had just left Mel's and they advanced on us in a synchronized quickstep. Darla had the pleasure of reading Olive her rights and making the arrest. Clod seemed happy to stand back and watch. More than happy, as Ardis noticed.

“There is a look of extreme satisfaction on your face, Coleridge,” she said. “Why?”

Her “Why?” was more of a demand than a request,
and Clod didn't always react well to demands. But Ardis was right; his extreme satisfaction led him to give us an answer that satisfied us, too.

“Because Ms. Weems made anonymous complaints about stolen ducks,” he said, “and then claimed that I mishandled the complaints. To my mind, murdering two people trumps mishandled duck complaints, and Olive Weems doesn't have a duck leg to stand on.”

“And
that
is why I reported you,” Olive sputtered. “Your jokes at my expense are inappropriate and unprofessional.”

“She has a point,” Ardis said, “but I will gladly be a character witness on your behalf if it's necessary. She didn't inherit her granddaddy's house, but she sure did inherit his sense of humor.”

“He had no sense of humor,” Olive snapped.

“Exactly what I meant,” said Ardis.

“No sense of humor,” Olive repeated, “and he was a fossil. I had as much right to that house, but that idiotic, patriarchal old man favored his son's son over his daughter's daughter.
I'm
the one who loved the house. It should have been mine.”

Darla repeated her warning about speaking without an attorney present.

“Oh, do let her sing,” Ardis' daddy said.

And Olive did. “
I'm
the one who would've taken care of the house properly. I would've made it a showplace. It would've been the perfect home for a rising political career. An
estate
. But would he give it to the granddaughter who loved it and loves this town? No, the
grandson
got it. Cousin Hugh, who never cared. Never cared and never came back.”

“So why didn't you offer to buy it from Hugh?” Clod asked.

“Because I thought he'd already sold it,” Olive said. “How was I supposed to know he'd been renting it out all these years? No one knew that but Al Rogalla, and he acted as if he owned the place. And when I offered to buy it from
him
, he laughed.”

“You would've known all that if you'd talked to Hugh,” Ardis said.

“I hadn't heard from him since he left, and I had no idea where he was. I thought he was lost or gone for good.”

“You never thought to look for him?” Clod asked.

“It wouldn't have been that hard to find him on the Internet,” I said.

“Why should I?” she asked.

“Joe says she's a technophobe,” I told the others.

“If he didn't have the house, then he didn't have anything I wanted,” Olive snapped. “And I had more important things to do than look for him. But when I heard he'd only just sold the house Tuesday afternoon—when I knew that it could have been
mine
all these years—” Her voice rose higher with each word. “I want you to know that Hugh took something away from me. His
existence
took something away from me.” At that point she howled unintelligibly.

Ardis' daddy rolled himself backward several feet. “I believe I'd like to go home now, Ardie,” he said.

Shorty and another deputy had arrived by then. So had Al Rogalla. He stood several yards away, a brindled Scottie at his heel. We all watched as Shorty, the other deputy, and Darla extricated Olive from the lion's mane.
Shorty put Olive in the car, and Darla handed the giant jellyfish to Clod. Then she took Olive's dog from Hank and climbed into the backseat beside Olive.

“Nice use of knitting,” Al said as the car pulled away. “You make that . . . thing yourself, Dunbar?”

“Since when do you have a dog, Rogalla?” Clod asked.

“Bruce belonged to Hugh, Dunbar. Sheriff Haynes gave me permission and his blessing to take him. Bruce seems to be a serious dog, though, with a law-and-order take on life, so I thought I'd improve his name. I toyed with the idea of calling him Deputy Bruce, but then I realized he's better than that. Classier, too. So I'd like you to meet Inspector Bruce of Scotland Yard.”

Clod shoved the wadded-up lion's mane at me and stalked off into the night.

Ardis and I relaid the jellyfish on the bushes in front of the Extension office, and then we took her daddy home.

*   *   *

In the days after Olive's arrest, pictures of her and Hugh as children and young adults emerged, taking shape from the snippets and pieces of gossip popping up around town. Hugh never had cared for glory. Olive craved it. His status as a sports hero never meant anything much to him. He accepted the talents and gifts he was given as though they were nothing or simply expected. Olive worked for everything her whole life, and everything was hard. Darla told us that when they asked Olive why she killed Gladys, she confirmed that Gladys had seen her.

“She told us that Gladys was out there catching ducks again,” Darla said, “and she blamed Cole. She said if he'd followed up on her complaint and stopped Gladys, then
she wouldn't have had to—but then she started howling and we didn't get much more sense out of her.”

Thea told us more of the duck story. In her search for the anonymous complaint about stolen ducks, she came across half a dozen complaints made by Gladys Weems against the ducks.

“She hated them,” Thea said. “And I don't blame her. Look what they did to my shoes. She complained they were too messy, too noisy, and there were too many of them. She was fed up and wanted the town to get rid of them or at least thin the flocks.”

Joe filled in the final pieces of the duck story. Aaron Carlin gave them to him in exchange for Joe's first attempt at making a sporran with a piece of deer hide.

“Gladys really was a pistol,” Joe said. “She started her own duck abatement program. She caught them at night, because they don't see well in the dark, sold them to Aaron, and then he turned around and sold them at the flea market. He says he didn't ask where she got them.”

“Do you believe that?” I asked.

Joe rubbed his nose. “That he didn't ask? Sure. But he knew what nights to park his truck on Fox Street for a few hours, leave it unlocked, and go for a stroll. He said it backfired Tuesday night when he drove back to the campground. He and Angie are living in an RV out there. Hugh was staying there for the few nights he was in town, too. I saw his truck Friday morning when I went out to see Aaron. Hugh must've walked to town with his pipes that night. It isn't much of a hike.”

*   *   *

Rachel came into the Weaver's Cat a few days later to thank me. Darla had asked permission to open the
monkey's fist from Hugh's sporran. Inside was Rachel's wedding ring. She said that when she'd left him, she threw the ring at him. Later she'd regretted that, because she'd liked the ring, if not him, but he'd never returned it.

“There was never really enough between us,” she said. “That's the way I saw it, anyway. I loved this town more than I loved him. So I stayed and he went, and I've never been sorry. But I think he was. That tune he played on the courthouse lawn that afternoon was “Mairi's Wedding.” He played it at our wedding. And the tune he played at midnight is played at funerals. I think it was his farewell to Blue Plum. He'd sold the house and had nothing else to tie him here.”

She said she had a couple of confessions to make, too.

“My feelings for Hugh weren't so completely indifferent after all. Being out there that night, and being so near where he died, was too much for me. I pretended I'd twisted my ankle. I should have been honest.”

And because she was friendly—and had always been friendly—with Olive, she'd spilled the yarn bomb beans to her several weeks earlier, and recruited her to crochet a few strips for the cause. When she saw Olive on Tuesday afternoon, she'd told her about Hugh selling the house.

“She acted as though the yarn bombing was an affront to Handmade Blue Plum,” I said.

“Distancing herself from it,” Rachel guessed, “so people wouldn't know she'd made strips, too.”

*   *   *

Shirley and Mercy Spivey also came into the shop one morning. They rarely bought anything when they came in, but this time they piled the counter high with skeins of pink baby yarn.

“You'll never guess,” Shirley said. “We're going to be grandmothers!”

“I'm going to be a grandmother,” said Mercy with a glare. But then a remarkable thing happened—she threw her arms around Shirley and said, “
We
. You're right.
We're
going to be grandmothers. Angie's having a baby.”

And they both burst into tears.

But they pulled themselves back together, and after they paid for the yarn, I asked them, again, where they'd gotten the information they'd passed on to me about Hugh's movements on that Tuesday.

“Olive,” Mercy said. “We were duped.”

“Duped by a disgraceful excuse for a cousin,” said Shirley.

“
Why
did she give you that information?” Ardis asked.

“We aren't sure,” said Shirley. “But we think she wanted our help to frame Al Rogalla.”

“And we want you to know, Kath,” Mercy said, “that we will never act toward a cousin the way Olive did.”

“I believe you.”

*   *   *

Ardis started wearing her braided bracelet again a few days after Olive's arrest. She didn't announce it, but I noticed and then Geneva did. They were wary of each other, but each was obviously on her best behavior.

They were both absorbed in the pieces of stories people brought to us. Geneva usually lay curled around the ceiling fan, chin propped in her hands. When the twins came in, she floated down to the counter and nestled in their pile of pink wool. Ardis had to pretend a sneeze to cover her urge to laugh. When the twins left, Geneva wafted over to the mannequin and perched on its shoulder.

“This talk of disgraceful cousins made me think of a question,” she said. “Is it easier to be friends than relatives?”

Ardis looked at me.

“Be my guest,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Here's what I think. I'd say being relatives is unavoidable. Those are knots that are tied the moment you're born. Being relatives is an accident, and not always a happy one. Liking your relatives and actually being friends with them is hard.”

“Olive and Hugh were relatives,” Geneva said, “but not friends.”

“And she felt she had no choice. But here we are, only aware that we're relatives by the strangest of circumstances.” Ardis touched her braided bracelet. “But also by choice.”

“What do you choose?” Geneva asked.

“Relatives,” Ardis said, “
and
friends.”

Ingredients

C
AKE

1 cup white sugar

¾ cup brown sugar

1¾ cups butter, softened

6 eggs

2 cups powdered sugar

2¼ cups unbleached white flour

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa

2 teaspoons vanilla

1½ cups chopped, crystallized ginger

G
LAZE

¾ cup powdered sugar

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

4–6 tablespoons milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt or tube pan.

2. In a large bowl, cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Gradually add the 2 cups of powdered sugar, blending well. Stir in flour and remaining cake ingredients. Pour batter into prepared pan. Spread evenly.

3. Bake at 350ºF. for 45 to 50 minutes or until top is set
and edges are beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool in pan on a wire rack for 1½ hours. Turn out onto serving plate and cool completely.

4. Combine glaze ingredients in small bowl, adding enough milk for desired drizzling consistency. Spoon over top of cake, allowing some to run down sides. Store tightly covered.