Silence of the Lamb's Wool (A Yarn Retreat Mystery) (14 page)

“And that would explain how Nicole had the money for the trip to Bhutan,” I said.

“So maybe this Fiore guy gets tired of paying her or she ups the ante and he figures out a way to make that his final payment,” Frank said. “Why don’t you go down the street and tell that story to your cop friend,” Frank said. When I didn’t say anything, Frank continued, “What’s up, Feldstein, are you on the outs with him? It’s a fine line doing the flirting thing and then not letting it go anywhere. Maybe in the old days, but nowadays, I think they stop falling for it if no nookie follows.”

“Forget about him and nookie. It’s irrelevant,” I said. “There’s a major thing missing. Like any sort of proof. I never saw what was in the envelope.”

“Feldstein, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” There was a lot of background noise coming from his end. When I heard squeaking followed by footsteps, I figured he’d gotten up from his chair. “If you want my advice, I’d find out what she was blackmailing him about.” I heard a door open and Frank said hello to somebody. Before I could thank him, Frank said he had to go. I heard a woman’s voice in the background. Did she call him honey? Oh my God, Frank had a date.

I needed to get off the phone anyway. I was anxious to get going on the baking. Staying at the Blue Door till all hours and then distributing muffins around town while the town slept was much less appealing when I had to be back at Vista Del Mar early in the morning.

The restaurant was still open when I got there. Tag was doing the host thing and walking around the tables and checking on the last of the diners. I cringed when I noticed him rearrange the knife one of the patrons had set down on his plate. Lucinda would have had a fit if she’d seen it.

The chef looked up as I came into the kitchen with my bag of supplies for the muffins. He was pretty much done with cooking and was just cleaning up. He acknowledged me with a nod and reminded me that the kitchen was still his. We were both a bit territorial about the spot and I’m afraid we each viewed the other as an invader.

There was no way I could get started, so I sat at one of the empty tables and looked out at the street. I was trying to appear patient, but I was really antsy to get started. A couple was lingering over their dessert. Tag came over and sat down with me.

“Too bad you didn’t bring Lucinda with you,” he said with a hangdog expression. “I know she loves these yarn outings, but I hate it when she’s gone.” As he was saying it, he was absently rearranging the condiments in the center of the table so that they were in perfect alignment. “What was she doing when you left?” he said wistfully.

I thought it was sweet that he missed her so much already and she’d been gone only a few hours. He listened intently as I described her going off to find some knitters to hang out with.

Tag glanced toward the diners to see if they’d finished so he could collect the check and close the restaurant. I remembered that he’d seemed to know Burton Fiore. Why not see what I could find out about him?

Rather than building up to it, I just asked him directly what he knew about Cora’s fiancé.

“What exactly do you want to know?” Tag asked with a perplexed expression. I forgot who I was dealing with. Tag didn’t do well with anything that wasn’t specific.

“How about how you met him?” I said. I was hoping for something short, but instead Tag went into a monologue about how that was hard to define. He’d known who Burton Fiore was when he’d proposed to Cora, but never really talked to him. Their first conversation had been when Tag was picking up his cleaning at Cadbury Cleaners and there’d been a line and Burton was in front of him. They made some small talk first. “Since I’d witnessed his proposal at the restaurant, I offered him congratulations. Then I pointed out the similarities in our situations.”

It seemed Tag was going to leave it at that and I urged him to continue. “Burton seemed surprised by my comment and then he began to ask me questions.” Again Tag stopped.

“And?” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice.

“I was trying to remember his exact wording. It was something like ‘It seems to have worked out for you. It’s amazing what a woman will agree to in the name of love, isn’t it?’ After that he said something about wanting to get it in writing. I was going to ask him to explain exactly what he meant, but he just picked up his cleaning and left. I hate it when people are vague like that.” My boss looked at me. “Why do you want to know about him?”

I made the mistake of bringing up the idea that Nicole Welton might have been blackmailing Burton. Tag’s expression turned serious. “You’re not investigating again. Please don’t get Lucinda involved. She gets caught up in the excitement and then I seem dull in comparison.”

I tried to be as noncommittal as possible, but Tag saw right through it and shook his head with disapproval. Luckily, the couple finally finished and left after paying their check.

The cook and Tag left and I had the place to myself and my thoughts.

“This is it,” I muttered under my breath as I crossed over to Vista Del Mar the next morning. I checked the sky for today’s version of cloudy. The clouds were spread thin and, instead of the opaque white, were tinged with gold. For the moment anyway. By the time I was walking up the driveway of Vista Del Mar, the warm color was already gone as the cloud layer thickened. So strange, all those cloudy skies and yet so little rain.

“Good morning,” I said to Jane as I walked into the café. I asked for an Americano, hoping it would get my eyes to open a little wider. By the time I’d finished baking and dropped off muffins everywhere, I was left with only a short time to sleep. I could almost hear my mother’s voice telling me that I had taken on too much and wasn’t that a surefire way for me to end up dropping everything.

“There you are,” Wanda Krug said as she marched into the café. The diminutive stand-in for Nicole seemed bristling with concern. “It’s lucky we’re meeting early. Not to speak ill of the dead, but I think Nicole left a lot of loose ends hanging.” She looked at me with reproach. “You put way too much faith in her.” She turned to Jane and ordered a black coffee and then added in that drill sergeant tone that she wanted it double cupped. I don’t think it was the request as much as the manner, but Jane froze for a second before pulling out a second cup.

Wanda had an intimidating manner and Jane’s hand shook as she handed over the drink. Wanda seemed like one of those people who always appeared middle-aged, even though I had the feeling that she was just a couple years older than me. Her clothing choice of a loose-fitting floral top over medium blue pants only enhanced the illusion.

“We can take our coffees with us,” Wanda said, moving toward the door. Jane ran out from behind the counter to put one of the plugs in, but Wanda waved her off. I, however, accepted one and appreciated that I made it all the way to the meeting room without scalding myself with hot coffee.

As soon as we went inside the small building, Wanda started clucking her tongue. “This is it? Where are all the supplies?”

I looked around the room and saw that a long table was set up and the fleeces were stacked on it, with a sheet between each one. Someone had pulled the chairs from around the table and left them askew. I explained the tote bag with the drop spindles and the spinning wheels, and asked what else we needed. I knew I should be grateful that she’d stepped in, but she certainly wasn’t easy to be around. She’d already turned the tables and was acting like I was working for her and not doing a good job, either.

Wanda turned to me with her hand on her hip. “Didn’t Nicole explain the process? I would have thought she would have given you a list of what was needed.”

I explained that Nicole had said she would take care of everything. I wanted to kick myself for not having had her demonstrate the wool-to-yarn thing. Wanda didn’t seem to notice my upset and just made a lot of
tsk-tsk
sounds as she glanced around the room.

“I heard that you don’t think it was suicide,” Wanda said when she turned back to me. “What’s your reasoning?” she asked curtly. I didn’t really want to discuss it with her, since it was obvious by her tone she was ready to poke holes in my theory.

“Why don’t you just tell me what we need for the first workshop and I’ll see what I can do,” I said, skipping over her question completely.

Wanda didn’t seem to know how to handle having her question ignored. She sputtered for a moment and then acted like it was her idea. “It’s really better if we don’t get off track. First we’ll have them wash the wool,” she said. “We need buckets and hot water and some kind of soap. And we’ll need something to dry the wool on.”

“That sounds like something Will could help with,” I said. We walked outside and headed to his workshop on the edge of the grounds. Wanda kept trying to get ahead of me, but I made sure we walked together.

The small building looked like it was one of the original buildings, which made it over one hundred years old. Like the others, it had weathered wood shingles and mullion windows. The front had a double wood door which was open and I could see that Will was doing something at his workbench. He must have heard us walking, well, more likely Wanda grumbling, and looked up.

Wanda pushed ahead of me and started to speak, but I stopped her. Drill sergeant voice or not, she wasn’t in charge, I was. I stepped in front of her and put my hands on my hips, further blocking her. As the thought of being the one in charge went through my mind, I imagined my mother and everyone who’d ever known me hearing it. They would all be shocked. I was a little shocked that I was holding my own.

As I told Will that we needed a lot of big pails, something that would act like a drying rack and a lot of hot water, I looked around the interior of the shed. The shelves behind him held industrial-size containers and there was a supply of smaller empty bottles similar to the one I’d seen near Nicole. I thought of something, but it was touchy how to bring it up. I could feel that Wanda was getting ready to move in, so I launched into it directly and asked Will if he’d known that Nicole was going to be at Vista Del Mar the morning of her death.

He seemed to hesitate. “She seemed wrapped up in what she was doing and didn’t always tell me her plans. There’s no way I would have seen her. I was stuck under a sink in the dining hall from after they shut down for breakfast until I heard about her,” he said. It sounded like he was offering an alibi. I glanced back at the shelves.

Will picked up on what I was looking at and swallowed hard. “After what happened, the ingredients for the insecticide and any I’ve made up are being kept in a locked cabinet.” I nodded and said it seemed like a good idea. It was a terrible thought, but it occurred to me it was like shutting the barn door after the chickens ran out.

Will greeted Wanda, but his voice sounded strained and I guessed he knew how the short spinner felt about his late wife.

He brushed his scruffy sand-colored hair behind his ears. “I’m sorry. I forgot all about it. I got the stuff together for Nicole last week.” Will said he’d bring the supplies to the meeting room.

No matter how fast I walked on the way back, Wanda got to the small building that housed our meeting room first. She barred my way as I tried to go inside.

“Didn’t Nicole tell you this is an outdoor project?” Wanda said.

I thought back to what Nicole had said when we’d discussed what meeting rooms I should reserve. She’d just said the first encounter with the fleece would be messy. I remembered messy projects from my stint as a teacher and had chosen a room with a tile floor. Never again was I going to assume anything.

Will and another man arrived carrying a stack of big white plastic pails. Wanda directed them to set them up in the open space in front of the small building. Like the rest of the grounds of Vista Del Mar, the small area had been left to grow wild and was covered with dry golden grass and a few green plants. I dropped my messenger bag carryall on the ground and helped arrange the pails in two rows. Will took out an unmarked plastic bottle and explained it was a special wool wash he’d mixed up for Nicole.

Wanda stepped in and moved the pails so there was more space between them. I heard Wanda muttering under her breath that it was lucky for me that she’d taken over.

Will heard her and his whole demeanor changed. His friendly features were contorted in anger. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop trying to bury Nicole. She would have done just fine.”

Wanda acknowledged his comment with a dismissive huff and went inside to get the fleeces. This was not the mood I’d envisioned for the retreat. I could practically hear my mother bringing up her offer of cooking school in Paris. For a moment the thought of bailing sounded appealing. We hadn’t even started and already I was wishing it was over and I could say good-bye to Wanda Krug.

“Hey, Casey,” a woman’s voice said behind me. I turned and was surprised to see Crystal Smith. She seemed to be from another fashion planet than Wanda. Crystal’s favorite thing was to mix and not match things that came in pairs. Today she had on one hoop earring and one shaped like a heart, along with an assortment of studs going up her outer ear. I saw the tops of her socks and one was spring green and the other was hot pink with spring green stripes. I suppose you could say they at least blended. One way or another she pulled off the look and made it seem fun. It was hard to believe she and Wanda were about the same age.

“I just dropped off another supply of yarn in the gift shop,” she said before commenting on how much yarn they’d sold there. “I can’t thank you enough for putting on these retreats. It really helps our business.”

Crystal left it at that, but I knew what she meant. She and her two kids had moved back in with her mother when her rock god husband moved on to younger pastures. The yarn store was supporting all of them now, which had to be hard.

“I came to offer my services,” she said. “I went through the wool process at last year’s Monterey Wool Festival.”

I thanked her profusely, feeling like I’d just been thrown a life preserver. I mentioned my concern about dealing with Wanda.

“She was hurt that you didn’t ask her to handle the retreat to start with. She comes across a little harsh, but you have to understand she’s always been upstaged by people. She has a younger sister who was the prom queen. Need I say more? I think she felt upstaged by Nicole, with her studio and her fancy degree. And then you hired her.” She stopped talking abruptly as Wanda returned. After what Crystal had just said, I wondered how Wanda would take the yarn store owner’s offer of help. To my surprise and relief, she seemed happy with it and noted that the retreaters were beginning to show up.

I had realized early on that I would never be able to keep their names straight. Instead I’d given them my own monikers as they’d registered. The woman I called the Ginger had joined Olivia, Bree and Scott, who were gathered around one of the empty pails. The other names were all connected to some kind of identifying feature. There was the woman who wore T-shirts with cat pictures, another whose big dangle earrings caught my eye, and a pair of women who stuck together like glue and I’d started thinking of as the Siamese Twins. You get the picture.

The one name I had straight was Ronny Fiore. She seemed to have toned down her clothes to almost casual, but she didn’t seem to be mixing with the others. Whatever reason she had for signing up for the retreat, it certainly wasn’t because she wanted to learn how to handle wool, or make new friends.

Wanda took center stage and gave them an overview of the wool washing. In her typical style she announced the water needed to be the right temperature and ordered that they absolutely could not agitate the wool or it might felt. The wool needed to be washed twice and then rinsed twice and had to be dried before the next step. She ordered them to form small groups around each of the pails, since she made a point that there wasn’t enough for them each to have their own.

Now I understood Wanda’s concern. Nicole had never given me any idea how long any of this was going to take. We only had until Sunday and they were supposed to be knitting their shawls by then.

Wanda instructed Crystal and me to hand out a handful of fleece to each person.

Will had rigged a hose from the restroom in the small building and was going around filling the buckets. As he finished filling each one with hot water, Wanda stuck a thermometer in it and then added a squirt of Will’s special soap. She turned to the group around the pail and snapped, “Put your fleece in now.” The women jumped as if a buzzer had gone off and dropped their wool into the water.

“Why exactly are we washing the fleece?” the woman in the cat T-shirt said. She seemed to be taking notes. Wanda stopped what she was doing and in a most cordial tone explained it was to get the dirt and lanolin out of the wool and told everyone to move the fleece to the next wash.

Crystal hung near me, waiting to jump in when needed, but Wanda seemed to have it under control. She already had Will filling buckets with rinse water. When he’d finished, she turned to us.

“You two can help with this,” Wanda said and instructed us to help the groups move their fleece to the rinse water and on to a second one. It was a messy job and I was grateful we were outside. I was surprised at the murky beige of the wash water.

While Crystal and I worked next to each other fishing wet wool out of the pails, she turned to me. “I told you she’d be okay.”

I shrugged in surprise. “I shouldn’t say this, but I think Wanda is more qualified than Nicole. I guess I was wowed by her studio and all those spinning wheels.” As long as I’d started to talk about Nicole, I brought up what had been sticking in my mind. “Did you ever hear anything about Nicole possibly blackmailing somebody?”

Crystal’s head shot up and she put her finger to her lip. I hadn’t realized it, but with all the background noise, I’d spoken a little loudly. I whispered an “I’m sorry” and then repeated the question in a softer voice.

“I heard she was asking a lot of questions.”

“About what?” I asked