Last Wool and Testament: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery (25 page)

“How do you know she hadn’t finished it, then, if you never got a good look at it? It looked like she had six inches or so, from what I remember. Maybe it was a table runner.”

“The cartoon,” Ardis said. “Ivy always worked from one. It was there, Kath? How big?”

“Full width of the loom. Same in height.”

“Forty-eight inches, then, and what you saw woven was just the beginning,” Ardis told Clod. “When it was finished, it would have been the same size as the painted canvas. The tapestry would have been a woven version of the painting.”

“So, who’d want just a scrap of it?”

“They’re probably both in a Dumpster,” I said. I didn’t believe it, but I knew he would.

“Petty vandalism.” He nodded his head, satisfied to fall back on something he understood. “Anyway, the laptop isn’t missing. It’s on the desk there,” he said, pointing out the obvious.

But not the memory cards for the cameras. The thumb drive Granny used to back up the laptop’s files was missing, too. I didn’t bother to tell him.

“Weird couple of break-ins,” he said, continuing to nod. “They don’t add up. Weird.” He eyed the cones of wool and cotton and silk on the shelves surrounding us as though daring them to do anything to top his quota of weirdness. He reached up and tapped a raddle hanging
from a hook in the ceiling and set it swinging. “All in all, though, I’d say you got off pretty easy. Considering what could have happened. Could’ve been a huge mess in here. Books in piles, upholstery slashed, stuff ruined in various nasty ways.” For a minute, he looked as though he smelled one of those nasty ways. “And the whole weirdness of it kind of fits, too. You know?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, don’t get me wrong—no one likes a burglary, but a couple of minor break-ins? Where you haven’t got much more going on than a busted window and a piece of some unfinished arts and crafts project missing? You see what I mean, don’t you? There’s usually some point to it all, even if it’s a stupid one or a vicious one. But what was the point here? It’s weird. And that fits with your grandmother’s nickname. Crazy Ivy.”

That was when I punched him.

Chapter 25

“S
orry, sorry.” There I was apologizing again. “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.”

“I’ll just run to get more ice for her hand,” Ardis said. “Back in half a tick.”

Apparently I broke Clod’s nose. Ernestine told us when she called from Dr. Keene’s office. She’d arrived with Homer, whom I’d called while Clod was doubled over and incoherent, and she insisted on driving Clod to Dr. Keene’s herself. Either he was a great big baby or a broken nose hurts more than I realized, because he’d sat in the passenger seat of his patrol car with a wad of paper towels pressed to his face and handed her the keys. I was surprised she could see over the steering wheel, much less see the trees well enough not to hit one or two backing down the driveway.

After they left, on Clod’s muffled and mumbled instructions to Homer, we’d made a quick tour of the rest of the house. The residual adrenaline coursing through me, and especially through my sore hand, did wonders for my powers of concentration. Granny hadn’t owned or worn much jewelry; none of it was missing. The contents of the closet and chest of drawers looked rumpled; so did Granny, most days. Homer used the bath mat to blot the puddle of rain below the broken window. The spare room—my room when I stayed—was just that, spare,
except for more books. Ardis let us go into the basement on our own.

Homer gave me another jolt of adrenaline by almost tripping on one of the uneven steps on the way down. He caught himself, though, blaming his own inattention, and admired the shelves of canned peaches and beets when he reached the bottom safely. I offered him a jar of each but he politely declined. I didn’t tell him what was missing from the corner near the utility sink.

Now he sat in one of Granny’s comfy chairs in the living room, looking at me. I sat in the chair facing him, cradling my hand and looking at the pattern in the rug on the floor, picturing Ernestine loose on the streets of Blue Plum in a patrol car. I wondered if she’d be tempted to turn on the siren. I wondered if she had a valid driver’s license. Crowding my head with those thoughts was preferable to thinking about what kind of trouble I was in for biffing a sheriff’s deputy on the nose. And “biff,” as a word, was far preferable to the stark, cold, and legally more accurate term “assault.”

“I was provoked.” He hadn’t asked, but something about his eyes and his beaky nose compelled me to explain my action against Clod.

“And possibly out of your mind.” Unfortunately, it didn’t sound as though he was suggesting that as a defensible excuse.

“I was provoked.”

“You should have your hand looked at.”

I looked at it, slowly spread the fingers, curled them in, spread them. What an amazing little weapon.

“I meant you should have Dr. Keene look at it.”

“It’s okay. A little sore.” It really was only a little sore, which surprised me, considering the damage I’d done. I’d hit Clod from the side, though, with more of a glancing smack than a full frontal fist-slam into anything
solid like a cheekbone or his stupid, mulish jaw. But who knew a nose would break so easily? Or with such a sickening, wet crunch? “I was provoked.” The words sounded wobblier each time I said them.

“He’s an irritating man,” Ardis said, bustling back into the room. She handed me a bag of frozen peas. “There was only the one tray of cubes. The peas are more like an ice pack, anyway. Homer, I want you to know that I was about to kick Cole Dunbar, myself, if Kath hadn’t saved me the trouble of crossing the room to get at him. He was being deliberately rude. He is an irritating man. And I want to testify to that in open court.”

“Deputy Dunbar won’t be pressing charges,” Homer said, getting up and brushing at the cat fur that left the chair with him.

“Why ever not? She popped him a good one.” Ardis demonstrated on an imaginary deputy with a right and a left and another right and some quick footwork between jabs.

“Good Lord, how many times did you hit him?” Homer looked up from his battle with Maggie’s fur.

I held up one finger.

“I think we’re all right, then. Ms. Buchanan, your civic-mindedness is admirable and duly noted and Kath is lucky to have such a good friend. Do you hear that, Kath? You are lucky.” He waited until I nodded. “You’re also lucky that Cole Dunbar has anger-management issues of his own. I’ve had the opportunity to smooth things over for him on one or two occasions and I feel confident he’ll see this as an opportunity to reciprocate the favor.” He swiped a few more times at the fur on his dark trousers but recognized it for the lost cause it was and gave up. Maggie had never been so clingy in real life.

“Granny has a lint brush here somewhere,” I said. Anger-management issues? Me?

“That would be useful, but only if it’s no bother.”

“She keeps it in her bureau, although I don’t remember seeing it.”

“I’ll look,” Ardis said. “You hold on to your bag of peas.”

“Try the top drawer, right-hand side.” I looked at my right hand again, opening and closing the fingers.

“One more thing, Kath,” Homer said.

“I don’t think I have anger-management issues.” I made my hand into a hard fist, winced, and put it back on the bag of defrosting peas, then looked up at Homer.

“Perhaps not,” he said mildly. He might even have looked bemused, if it’s possible for a hawk or an eagle to look bemused. “Nonetheless, I think you should avoid further contact with Deputy Dunbar, if possible. Agreed?”

“Definitely.” That might have come out fraught with more issues than I expected. I put the fingers of my nonaching left hand to my lips for a moment and recomposed myself before speaking again. “Thank you for coming, Homer. I’m sorry to be taking up so much of your time. That’s twice you’ve had to fly to my rescue this morning.”

“So far. No, now it’s my turn to apologize. That was a poor joke at your expense. I’m happy to come to your rescue. That’s what a good lawyer does. And the good client pays the good lawyer for his time, so it all works out. But even apart from the fee, I’m happy to do it. You add an unquantifiable level of
je ne sais quoi
to my day.”

“If you’re so short of entertainment, maybe I should be charging you.” He didn’t take me up on the offer, so I took a chance on further entertaining him with one of my blackmail questions. “Homer, if there’s proof that Emmett got hold of the house illegally, does it revert to Granny’s estate?”

“If there’s proof, yes, a good chance. You agreed to
leave this exploration to me, but have you found something?”

“More like a lack of something. Odd things missing from the house.”

He looked at me, his head tipped a fraction to one side, as though he were sizing up that piece of information and wondering whether to swallow it. “You didn’t tell me there was anything missing when we walked through the bedrooms and basement.”

“No.” I went ahead and told him about the missing memory cards and thumb drive. Told him about the tapestry and cartoon, the possibly missing notebooks. Didn’t give him a laugh by telling him there wasn’t any cat food in the house.

“You told Dunbar?”

“He doesn’t think it amounts to much. But, he doesn’t think Granny amounted to much, either.”

“And therein lies the problem between you two. I think I might take a swing at a policeman who maligned my grandmother, too. Did Dunbar explain to you how hard it is to trace small items? In fact, I’m sure he did, though perhaps not so delicately. He probably also pointed out that, without knowing Ivy’s habits exactly, you can’t be sure they’re missing. She might have a special place she keeps them and you’ll find them tomorrow or next month. And, then, I hesitate to belittle your concerns by using the word ‘inconsequential,’ but do you know what might be on the devices that would make them worth taking?”

“No.”

“It’s a shame about the unfinished tapestry and the—the cartoon, is it? I understand their personal value. Do you know why anyone would find either worth stealing?”

“No.”

“You’re guessing there’s proof of something on or in
one of these items—is that right? But it certainly wasn’t Emmett who took the tapestry. You said you saw it here yesterday.”

“I kind of wondered if Max was taking over where Emmett left off.”

“If that’s your worry, then you’re safe. Max is gone.”

“But if there’s someone else?”

“Well, again, not to belittle your ideas, but you do see that you’re getting further and further fetched, as it were, don’t you?”

No, I didn’t. But Homer obviously did and if that was his attitude toward something that might prove important, then I definitely wasn’t telling him what was missing from the corner near the utility sink in the basement.

“Far-fetched or not, though, Kath, you need to leave this with me for two very good reasons. One, my judgment is not infallible. Two, someone murdered Emmett Cobb. That unknown person is dangerous. Now, may I assume that, even in the heat of your moment of glory with Deputy Dunbar, you remembered the agreement about zipped lips from our earlier conversation?”

“Yes. Of course. I hit him, but…”

“Kath, you broke his nose.”

“Yeah. I did.” I swallowed. “But I’m not totally hopeless. I didn’t say anything about blackmail.”

Ardis returned, just then, from her hunt for the lint brush. “Blackmail?” She looked from my face to Homer’s, then zeroed back in on mine. “I couldn’t find the brush, but blackmail is much more interesting. So, tell me, who, what, when, where, why, and how?”

Oops.

Chapter 26

I
f someone put together an illustrated encyclopedia of facial expressions, Ardis could be the model for “agog.” Homer’s version of “there is nothing to discuss” was a winner, too. “Oops,” though, was all mine.

We left the house together, Homer politely stonewalling Ardis and Ardis angling for a chink in his masonry. I tuned them both out, reluctantly turning the lock button on the inside doorknob and pulling the door shut behind us.

The keys were still AWOL, either with Max or with his effects. I thought about waiting around the corner until the coast was clear and then climbing back in through the broken window. Maybe no one else would see a twice-burglarized house as a place of safety. But I could see myself scrambling through the window, seeking the shelter of my bolt-hole. I would burrow into my bed in the spare room, pull Granny-made quilts over me like so many deep leaves, and fall asleep until danger slunk past.

I wasn’t so deep into that daydream, though, that I didn’t appreciate the pattern of my recent emotions. Shout or cry; arm myself or run away; punch the nearest nose or crawl into a hole. Vulnerable yins engulfed me, pulling me under in one direction. Violent yangs caught me in their jaws and dragged me in another. “Balanced”
wouldn’t be the best word to describe my mental state, but something in my wild mood swings stirred my creative juices.

Instead of burrowing or hiding, I should re-channel my emotions and design the weaving pattern I so clearly saw. It would be a variation of Tennessee Trouble, where the geometrics represented wings and hidey-holes intertwined with fireplace pokers and running chain saws. I’d call it Fight or Flight and use it in a border around my own version of a Blue Plum tapestry. In Granny’s honor.

Homer interrupted my design plans with a dose of practicality. “Aaron Carlin will be around to board up the window.” I hadn’t even noticed him pull his phone out. “Did Ernestine give you his number?”

“Yes.”

“Hold up there,” Ardis said. “Do you know him, Kath?” She didn’t give me a chance to say I’d almost met his wrench. “Because I do, as who doesn’t who ever reads the paper? He’s one of the Smokin’ Smoky Carlins from down by Newport—am I right? Wonderful, upstanding citizens, all of them.” She turned to me. “They like to set fires in the national forest.”

“He was acquitted, Ms. Buchanan,” Homer said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Found innocent of all charges. What’s more, I believe he actually was innocent, and that isn’t always the case.”