Last Wool and Testament: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery (16 page)

“Homer?”

“You know him?”

She smiled. “Ivy got a kick out of him. He’s been in a time or two looking for Ruth when she gets lost in here.”

“She’s letting me stay in the caretaker’s cottage out at the Homeplace until things are straightened out.”

“That’s real nice of her…Wait, isn’t that where that guy was mur—”

“Yeah.” I interrupted her, not needing to hear that word again.

“Are you okay with that?”

“As long as I don’t think about it.”

“Well, you’re a braver woman than I am. You know what you should do? Stop by Mel’s and get some of her potato soup—comfort food, you know? That’s what Ivy would tell you. And maybe get one of Mel’s killer brownies, too.” She stopped, mouth open. “Eew, I can’t believe I said that. Anyway, treat yourself to something decadent and then get a good night’s sleep. If you can.”

Ardis was in the front room when I trailed down the stairs shortly after Nicki left. She was listening patiently to a woman who was trying to decide between brightly hued, hand-painted yarn and undyed natural brown wool. When the woman phoned her neighbor for her opinion, Ardis stepped away. I thanked her for the time alone and told her not to worry, which didn’t ease the pinched lines around her eyes. I tried to save her a few more pinches by not filling in the details of where I was staying. She’d find out soon enough from Nicki. We didn’t mention the offer she’d made for the business. I told her I’d be back in the morning, but didn’t give her an opening for hugs. My resolve not to cry was reaching its limit.

I checked my phone. No missed calls. No messages. No getting into the house tonight. I thought about driving to one of the hotels out on the highway instead of going back to the cottage. A sterile room, an anonymous bed—they were powerfully tempting. But even though I’d spent the day not putting words to the questions slinking between my more rational thoughts, I didn’t think the answers included the words “sterility” and “anonymity.” Despite my weird evening and weirder guests, imaginary or not, the cottage was warm and welcoming. Besides,
all my stuff was there and by then I didn’t have the energy to pack it up and move. And, really, how likely was it for the place to be burgled two nights in a row?

Visiting hours were over when I got back to the Homeplace. The gate was locked. And it was starting to rain. As I fumbled the lock open it started to pour. By the time I swung the gate wide enough to inch the car past, I was drenched. I drove through, slithered back out into the torrent to close and relock the gate, sloshed one more time into the equally drenched driver’s seat, and made a note to buy a wetsuit and swim fins in case another deluge like that came through while I remained exiled at the blinkety-blank cottage.

It wasn’t until I squelched into the kitchen and stood watching muddy rivulets from my ruined shoes run across the floor that I remembered I hadn’t stopped at Mel’s to pick up supper. A sound escaped me, something between a strangled mew and a pitiful oath.

That potato soup Nicki recommended would have gone a long way toward warming me and smoothing over being half-drowned. The killer brownie, too, even with its creepy connotations and despite the fact that I’d pretty much eaten nothing but sugary baked goods since arriving in Blue Plum. So, there was no supper. And I’d skipped lunch. I dropped my wet purse on the table. The purse, at least, didn’t splash in a puddle of its own. That wasn’t consolation enough.

Of course, I wouldn’t have gotten any wetter slogging back to the car, repeating the rigmarole with the gate, and driving back to Mel’s. Or just to the Quickie Mart. Going back out wasn’t appealing, though. I could order pizza and change into dry clothes while I waited for it to show up. Except pizza could come only as far as the locked gate and I’d have to swim out to meet it. There was another option: I could stand there and cry.

It wasn’t the rational choice, but crying was the only immediately gratifying one, so I went with that. But I didn’t just stand there. I threw myself into a chair at the kitchen table and cried like a great big baby, making a thorough job of it because that’s what Granny taught me to do.

If you’re going to do a thing, Kath, even if it’s awkward or a mistake, do it up right and get the job done properly.

So I did. I buried my sopping head in my sopping sleeves and wept. I mourned for Granny, my job, the house, the shop, the cat—basically the whole foundation of my life and my sanity. I cried until I ran out of tears and sat there snuffling and thinking how stupid it was to run out of them when I needed them most. And that’s when I heard the voice.

“Why such a weepy weed tonight?” It was tentative, soft.

I snuffled to myself a few more times, hoping I wouldn’t hear it again.

“You should change out of those wet things or you’ll catch your death.” That suggestion was followed by a sigh.

I sat still, telling myself that I’d sunk so far into misery and was hearing things from so deep inside my myself that I didn’t recognize my own inner voice.

“I think you’ll have to agree I know what I’m talking about,” the voice said. “About death.”

No, I was pretty sure that wasn’t me. Even in the murkiest depths of my mind, my inner voice was more likely to have a Midwestern twang. This voice had a mountain lilt. So, if the voice wasn’t
in
my mind, then I was obviously
out
of my mind. That thought brought a fresh bout of tears. It was pathetic and I knew it, but I couldn’t help it and didn’t care, and I melted into another puddle of grief for my lost mind.

“Go ahead and cry, then. I’ll wait. Lord knows, I have time to wait.” Another sigh. “I do wonder why you don’t have a television, though.”

The non sequitur stopped me. I held my breath, listened more carefully, and heard a muttered “Even a rerun of
Bonanza
would do.”

If the voice existed, it was sitting opposite me. I snuffed a last snuffle and picked my head up enough to squint across the table.

It, she, looked back.

“Last night, when you acted like a scared rabbit,” she said, “you ran upstairs and grabbed your things and that pretty coverlet. It wasn’t until you threw the coverlet around your shoulders that you started acting sensible. Why don’t you try that again?”

I didn’t answer.

“At least get out of those wet things. Get into something warm and dry. But why not wrap yourself in the coverlet and see what happens?”

It was a reasonable enough suggestion. But I didn’t move except to blink hard several times. As last night, though, nothing changed. She was still there, sitting across from me, watery, gray, and slightly out of focus.

“Um…”

“Yes?” she asked.

“Um…”

“You’re repeating yourself. You should learn to be more articulate.”

I cleared my throat. “Last night, that was you sitting here crying?”

“Yes. I do that a lot.” She blew out another sigh. “Depression is my lot in death. I suffer from it dreadfully. Apparently you’re a kindred spirit.”

“No! No, I’m not. Not ordinarily.” I sat up straight to prove it. Prove it to what or to whom, I wasn’t sure, but
I squared my shoulders and wiped a string of wet hair off my forehead in an effort to look less downtrodden and a believable bit livelier.

“Oh, too bad. I thought you were.” She slumped dejectedly in her chair.

“You looked like a worried wet rabbit,” I said. She turned her bleak eyes on me and I tripped over my tongue to explain. “Last night. You were crying and hunched over.”

“Don’t make fun.”

“I’m not. But you said I acted like a scared rabbit and I thought…”

“You’d get back at me? What kind of friend is that? You’re not very nice.” She covered her face with her hands and started to cry.

“What? No, I didn’t. I am.”

“You did and you’re not.” She was boohooing loudly now.

“Oh for Pete’s sake.”

“And now you’re shouting and swearing at me. I hate you. I’m leaving.” And she did. First she blew her nose on her sleeve and then, poof, she was gone.

Great. Fine. Now, on top of everything else, I had a silly, depressed ghost on my hands.

No. I was not ready to believe that. I jumped up, knocking my chair over, and for lack of a more original place to direct my words, shouted at the ceiling.

“You don’t exist! If I wasn’t having such a rotten couple of days I wouldn’t hear you! If I’d had a nice hot bowl of potato soup for supper I wouldn’t see you, either! You’re just a figment of my starvation!” I might as well have added “so there” and stuck out my tongue. I was so incredibly mature.

Sighing better than any figment, I righted the chair. Slung my purse over my shoulder. Turned to leave the room. And heard a voice the size of an olive twig.

“If you take the casserole you brought with you yesterday out of the freezer and put it in a slow oven, it will be warm by the time you shower and change and come back downstairs.”

Chapter 16

A
fter showering, pulling on my sweats, and going back downstairs, I discovered I loved tuna casserole. Ruth’s version of it, anyway. She added a hint of curry to her mushroom-laden sauce and that did wonders to warm and fill my empty spaces. After my long, strange day, I felt poetic about her casserole and thought I might even ask her for the recipe.

I set the table for two, although as I laid out two forks, two plates, two glasses of water, I wondered how I would explain it to my professional, no-nonsense colleagues. There was no sign of the ghost and I tried hard to convince myself my private jury was still out. But on the off-chance that she did exist somewhere other than in the fog between my ears, setting a place for her seemed like the friendly thing to do. Maybe this had been her house, her kitchen. Maybe there was such a thing as ghost etiquette.

She didn’t poof—materialize—in the chair across from me when I sat down. That was okay. If her absence meant she didn’t exist, then sitting across from an untouched plate of noodles and tuna only made me feel foolish and that was a healthy step up from feeling unhinged. As I raised my glass of water in a toast to that progress, someone knocked on the kitchen door.

The rain had tapered off, but it was still coming down steadily. It was full dark and the site was closed. Who on
earth? For a nanosecond the thought crossed my mind that it might not be someone on earth. Another quick bite of Ruth’s casserole took care of that nonsense. In fact, it was probably Ruth stopping by on her way home. As a dedicated employee of a nonprofit, she undoubtedly worked more hours than the site was open to the public.

The knock came again. Definitely not parlor-game, séance-type rapping. I flipped on the outside light and started to turn the knob, but then caution kicked in. I twitched aside the curtain covering the lower half of the door window and looked to see who’d come calling.

Joe Dunbar.

And of course he knew someone was home because I’d just flipped on the flipping light. But did he know
who
was home? I put my eye to the slit between the curtain and the doorframe again. A dark mass blocked my view. He’d stepped closer to the door and was tall enough to see over the curtain. I looked up and met his blue eyes looking down. I jumped. He smiled.

“Hi,” he called. “We met at the Cat this morning. Ten Dunbar.”

“I thought you said your name was Joe.” Did he really think I didn’t recognize him as Joe Pantry Guy from the night before? Then again, did I know for an absolute fact that he was? I hadn’t seen Pantry Guy and had only heard either of them speak a few dozen words at most. I took a step back to see this Dunbar’s face better. He had on a worn-looking broad-brimmed hat. He and the hat looked comfortable together out there getting wet.

“Well, yes, it is Joe,” he called through the door. “Strictly speaking it’s Ten, though, and I thought…” He stopped and scratched an eyebrow.

“Thought what?”

He smiled again. “Thought maybe we’d get off on a better foot than last night if I more formally introduced myself.”

“More formally than you breaking in?” I
knew
it was him.

“Well, now, again, strictly speaking, I didn’t break in. Say, do you mind if I come in?”

“Why would I possibly think that was a good idea?”

“Because I can explain what I was doing here last night.”

“Or you can do that from where you’re standing. I can hear you well enough through the door.”

“It’s really raining out here. And I’m sorry I scared you last night.”

“I think I scared you more by calling the cops. Maybe I should call them again,” I said.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.”

A thought occurred to me. “Are you afraid of your brother?”

“No…” This time he looked down and scrubbed both his eyebrows. “I’m not afraid of him,” he said, looking back at me. “I just don’t like complicating his life.”

That was an interesting way to put it.

“So what do you think?” he asked. “May I come in?”

“I don’t know.” He was better dressed for standing in the rain than I’d been. He had on a waterproof jacket in addition to the hat. Ardis had said he was a fisherman. Maybe he had on waders, too, keeping his feet and his long legs dry. But talking through the door was getting tedious. “You broke in here. Maybe you killed Emmett Cobb. Won’t you be complicating
my
life if I let you in?”

“Well, see, like I said, technically speaking, I didn’t break in. And I didn’t much like Emmett, but I didn’t kill him. And I really can explain everything, but I’d rather not stand out here shouting it.”

“Explaining ‘everything’ is too vague. Give me one good reason to let you in.”

“I have information about your grandmother. I think I know something you need to know.”

He’d said the single thing guaranteed to get him in past my better judgment. “Hold on. I’ll be right back.” I grabbed my phone from my purse and ran to the parlor for my favorite weapon, the poker. Then, armed and curious, I opened the door, hoping I wasn’t crazy for doing it.

Joe, or Ten, or He-Who-Seemed-to-Lead-a-Fairly-Complicated-Life-of-His-Own, stepped inside. He looked at the poker and raised his arms until they were shoulder height, showing me his empty hands, fingers spread.