Silence of the Lamb's Wool (A Yarn Retreat Mystery) (15 page)

“About the town and the people. You should talk to Maggie. I think Nicole went there a lot and everybody knows Maggie knows everything going on in town.”

“Ms. Feldstein,” Kevin St. John said. I hadn’t noticed the whine of the golf cart and was startled by his appearance and the sharpness of his tone.

“What?” I said.

By now he’d stepped out of the golf cart and was standing so close to me I could smell the peppermint on his breath. “Who okayed doing your project outside? The yoga people are doing a morning meditation.” He pointed across the walkway to a similar building. The doors and windows were shut and I could see the glow of candles and a circle of faces with closed eyes.

I took the blame and he insisted that we stop immediately. He waited while I approached Wanda. She wasn’t happy with the idea, but finally agreed that the wool could be left in the rinse water. Crystal and I moved through the group, quietly telling them we had to vacate the area. Crystal came up with an impromptu plan and told them all to go to the meeting room where the spinning wheels were set up and she’d do a demonstration of some specialty yarns they’d just gotten in at the store.

Most of the group followed Crystal like she was the Pied Piper, but I noticed that Ronny Fiore went off on her own. I was about to join the crowd when I noticed that Kevin St. John was looking down and sounded perturbed. “Shoo,” he said, waving his hands. Julius was sitting by the side of the path, ignoring the manager’s commands. “Ms. Feldstein, will you please instruct this cat to stay out of the Vista Del Mar grounds.”

I wanted to laugh. As if that was going to happen.

“Let’s finish up with the wool,” Wanda commanded when the group had reconvened in the washing area. By now the yoga group was finished with their meditation and had moved on to the beach to do their poses. Crystal’s demonstration had been a big hit. The group was inspired to try out the new yarns and had made a stop in the gift shop to buy up the supply she had brought over.

Will had set up some drying racks he must have gotten from the Vista Del Mar laundry. Wanda hadn’t come to the yarn demo and now I understood why. She had a huge plastic bag and unloaded salad spinners for each group before pushing the receipt on me. She shook her head in disapproval as she mentioned that Nicole had overlooked this step in cleaning the wool.

“I don’t think this is a mandatory step,” I said to Crystal, sounding a little defensive as Wanda had someone in each group take some fleece out of the rinse water and put it in the salad spinner, explaining it would extract the excess water. I wanted to believe what Will had said, that Nicole would have done just fine. “Now spin it, ladies,” Wanda said, turning her hand to demonstrate. Crystal agreed it wasn’t essential, but said it would certainly speed things up.

I saw that Lucinda was holding her dripping fleece, waiting her turn with the salad spinner, and I went to join her.

I could tell my friend the truth. “I feel like an idiot,” I said in a low voice. “I trusted Nicole and now I wonder how qualified she was.”

“This may sound callous, but it doesn’t really matter anymore.” She looked at Wanda checking the salad spinners to make sure they’d gotten all the fibers out before they were passed on to the next person. “I don’t think any of the retreaters even know that Wanda is a stand-in, or care. She’s a little rough around the edges, but I think she knows her stuff.”

When Lucinda got her turn with the salad spinner, I went over to the drying racks and assisted Crystal as she helped arrange the wet fleece. I looked at the amount each of them was hanging out to dry.

“I realize I’ve never done this before, but it doesn’t seem like they each cleaned enough fleece to make the yarn for a shawl.”

Crystal’s expression darkened. “I didn’t even think of that,” she said, looking as Lucinda hung out her fleece. “No, this can’t be enough for a shawl.”

Wanda was busy supervising and it took me a long time to get her away from the group. I brought up the fleece situation and she looked perturbed. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she said. “I have it under control.” She ended the conversation by walking away.

The truth was, I needed Wanda too much to take a chance on her getting annoyed at me and taking off, so I let it go. But I had my fingers crossed that she really did have things under control.

With the wool hung out, the first workshop ended and the group began to disperse. Except for Lucinda and my early birds.

I realized I’d dropped my messenger bag in the grass when we’d first been setting up. I picked it up as the lunch bell began to ring. The white sky had become filmier and bits of blue were showing through with some sun here and there. I hoped it would help the fleece to dry quickly.

“That was fun,” Bree said. “I can’t wait to tell the Ewes about it.” She turned to me. “Are you having lunch with us?” she asked.

I nodded and said I thought it was a nice time to bond with the group. I invited Crystal to join us. I wanted to make sure Wanda got lunch, but she insisted on going home. “I don’t think it would be a good idea if I was too familiar with the group,” she said. “It would undermine their view of me as an authority, like letting them see behind the curtain of the great Oz.”

Wanda grabbed my arm and pulled me farther away from the group. “After seeing how unprepared you were this morning, I thought I’d better be proactive. How many carders do you have?”

It took a moment for the word to register. “Are those the things that look like dog brushes?” I asked. Wanda nodded. I didn’t want to tell her the truth, that I didn’t have any. Instead I asked her how many she needed. I was, after all, the person in charge. So much for my plan to have lunch with the group. I sent Lucinda and the rest of them on to the dining hall.

I passed the yoga group on their way to lunch and apologized again for our noise. Their reaction surprised me. Instead of fussing the way Kevin St. John had, their leader said it was good for them to have challenges to their concentration and I had actually done them a favor.

I went looking for Will and found him back in his workshop. He knew what carders were and assured me that Nicole had a bin of them she’d planned to bring when they were needed. He told me where to find them in his wife’s shop. Problem solved. I just had to pick them up.

I stopped at my place and found Julius asleep on my pillow. I’d planned all along to bring over some cookies for the afternoon break. I wanted to bake them before my trip downtown. By the time I’d preheated the oven, I had sliced up the rolls of butter cookies and filled several baking sheets. They baked in no time and were sitting on cooling racks as I got ready to go.

When I’d come across the street, I’d glanced down toward Dane’s. The red Ford F150 wasn’t there and I figured he was on duty. But I noticed a silver car parked in front of his house. It had been parked there for days, or just about the whole time his company had been there. It didn’t take real detective skills to figure out it probably belonged to his girlfriend.

There had been no care packages of his delicious pasta since his company had come, but why not keep my end of the bargain and leave him some cookies? And if I happened to look in the window while I was leaving them, so be it.

I was really curious about Dane’s company. Who was she? What was his type? Whoever she was, she wasn’t into cars. The car had a nice dent in the front fender and definitely looked like it had seen better days.

I walked up the driveway and headed to the back door of the off-white stucco house. We always left our food offerings at the kitchen door. The top part of his door was glass and as I stood up from leaving the care package, I surveyed the kitchen. I don’t know what I expected. Did I think she was going to be hanging curtains and dusting with a feather duster? There was someone in the room. She was sitting at the table with her back to me and it looked like she was wearing his robe. All I could see was that she had wiry dark hair that hung below her shoulders and that her head seemed to be resting in her hands. Wasn’t that universal body language for being upset about something? Maybe there was trouble in paradise. For a moment I considered knocking on the door so she would turn and I could get a good look at her, but I stopped myself. What was I going to say? “I’m here to check you out”?

I ended up just leaving the cookies.

I was glad to see the sunshine as I headed to my Mini Cooper. Wanda hadn’t said anything, but I was worried about the fleece drying, even with the help of the salad spinners. Having some sun for a while would help.

I parked near the Coffee Shop and remembered Crystal’s suggestion that Maggie was like information central for the town and might know something more about what Nicole had been up to. Getting the carders wouldn’t take long. I certainly could stop for a coffee and maybe ask a few questions.

Maggie was behind the counter talking to a customer when I came in. The smell of freshly ground coffee alone was enough to give me a boost.

“Hey, Casey, are you here for one of my cappuccinos?” She handed a paper cup of coffee to the customer and got ready to take my order. As always she was smiling and friendly, dressed in a red bandanna-print top over a pair of work-quality jeans. A red scarf complemented her big hairstyle.

As long as I was there, a cappuccino seemed like a good idea. I’d never gotten to drink the coffee I’d picked up before the yarn washing. I really tried to insist on paying, but Maggie absolutely wouldn’t hear of it.

Lunchtime wasn’t a busy time at the coffee place and most of the tables were empty. There was just a couple in the corner with their backs toward me.

When Maggie had finished making the foam-covered drink, I hung around the counter instead of taking it to one of the tables.

I launched into talking about Nicole without any preamble. When I said I didn’t think she’d killed herself, Maggie looked surprised, and then seemed to let out a heavy sigh.

“That’s a relief,” she said, reminding me that the poisoned coffee had been in one of the Coffee Shop’s paper cups. The look of relief lasted only a moment before the reality of the situation sank in. “Maybe that’s not any better. Are you saying you think somebody used a cup of my coffee as a murder weapon?”

“I probably wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but yes. If she didn’t put the insecticide in the coffee, then somebody else did.”

Maggie’s eyes darted back and forth and she was obviously thinking about something.

“What?” I asked.

She shook her head and the tails of the red scarf caught the breeze and fluttered. “I was trying to remember who came in that morning. It was Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

I nodded and she suddenly looked stricken. “But the cops said the only fingerprints on the cup were Nicole’s and mine.” She looked straight at me with worry in her dark eyes. “You don’t think I killed her?”

“No way, and don’t worry, the cops aren’t going to come knocking at your door. As far as I’ve heard they are still looking at it as a suicide.” Poor Maggie seemed distraught and regretted letting the cops take her fingerprints.

“I was trying to be helpful.”

I finally admitted that I was doing my own investigation on the qt. “I’ve heard rumblings that Nicole might have been blackmailing somebody. Do you have any idea what she might have known?”

Maggie poured some hot water over a chamomile tea bag. She glanced around furtively. “You won’t tell anybody, will you? It’s not a good advertisement of my wares, but your news on top of two double espressos I had this morning has left my nerves a little frayed.” She pulled out the tea bag and snapped a cover on the drink and let out a sigh of relief. “I feel better knowing you’re on the case.” She did the thing with her eyes again and I knew she was thinking. “Nicole asked a lot of questions recently. I thought she was just curious about the history of Cadbury.” Maggie stopped to think for a moment. “Blackmail seems kind of serious, but then it was obvious she had expensive taste and while I am sure the Delacorte sisters appreciate Will’s hard work, I doubt they pay him that much.”

“The Delacorte sisters decide about raises?” I asked, surprised. “Kevin St. John gives the impression that he is practically king of Vista Del Mar. I figured he handled the employees.”

“When I said ‘sisters,’ I really meant Cora. Madeleine is like a rubber stamp for anything her sister does.” Maggie let out a sigh. “The sisters were never supposed to end up with Vista Del Mar. It was never meant to be part of the family estate, but belonged solely to Edmund. His intention was to pass it on to his children. Though it turned out he only had one son.” I was amazed at the detailed information Maggie had on Edmund’s will, but then she was known as Information Central.

“He had a son? Why isn’t he in charge of Vista Del Mar?”

Maggie’s cheerful expression dimmed. “It was a sad business. Barely a year after Edmund passed from an infection, his wife and son were killed in a car crash. The sisters were listed as next in line to inherit, but their mother, Antonia Delacorte, took over handling Vista Del Mar. She’s the one who hired Kevin St. John. She died two years ago and then the sisters took it over and inherited everything in the Delacorte estate. Kevin has a lot of autonomy, but they still own the place.”

I realized what she said was true. The sisters, or Cora, had been the one to offer my aunt a deal on the rooms. Kevin St. John hadn’t been able to change it, which was one of the reasons I thought he was so anxious to take over my retreat business. Maggie looked at the couple in the corner.

“I think everything is going to change when Cora marries him.” I followed her gaze and was surprised to see the couple at the table was Burton Fiore and his daughter. Maggie had lowered her voice. “I hope Cora hasn’t lost her head. She has no experience in the love department. Her mother screened any suitors and no one was ever good enough.”

We’d gotten far off the subject of blackmail and I brought it up again. I mentioned seeing Burton Fiore in Nicole’s shop and the episode with the envelope. Maggie glanced in his direction a few times.

“Casey, I think you might be seeing plots where there aren’t any. He could have been in there to buy a gift for his
beloved
. He probably thinks of her as an antique and so thought he should buy her one.”

I didn’t bring up the disappearing envelope again. I had begun to wonder if I’d seen it at all. Maybe it was just some kind of reflection on the glass. I did bring up Nicole’s trip to Bhutan and Maggie seemed surprised.

“How’d I miss out on that bit of news?” She considered it for a moment. “An exotic trip like that? It does sound like Nicole must have come into some money. Maybe you’re right about blackmail.” The Coffee Shop proprietor started going through any damaging information Nicole might have known.