Silence of the Lamb's Wool (A Yarn Retreat Mystery) (4 page)

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said to Lucinda Thornkill. “How can I put on a retreat billed as Sheep to Shawl with no sheep?” Lucinda was probably my best friend as well as my employer. She was also going to be one of the retreaters. I had made a detour in my errands to tell her my news.

I must have looked a little crazed when I walked into the Blue Door restaurant because as soon as Lucinda escorted a touristy-looking couple to a table in the window, she put her arm through mine and took me to the back room.

The Blue Door restaurant was named for the color of its front door and was a converted house. Maybe calling it a converted cottage was more accurate. I was used to being there at night, when I had the place to myself, and was always a little surprised to see customers waiting in line.

The back room must have once been a small sun porch. There was room for only four tables, all of which were currently empty. The decor was almost all white and the only spot of color was a red cushion on a bench at the table where Lucinda gestured for me to sit. The tablecloth caught on my knee as I slid in, causing it to scrunch up. I glanced around for Lucinda’s husband, Tag, knowing it was just the kind of thing to throw him into a tizzy. Tag was a little OCD and anything out of order threw him for a loop.

Before I could do anything, Lucinda had leaned over and quickly smoothed out the tablecloth, then she chuckled. “Oh no, Tag fanaticism is rubbing off on me.” She cast an eye on the menu lying on the table next to us. “I really should change that.”

I knew the “that” she was referring to was the story on the back of the menu. It was written in fairy-tale fashion and told how Lucinda and Tag had been high school sweethearts, but their lives had gone in different directions. Then years later when she was divorced and he was a widower they had reconnected, gotten married and lived their dream of opening a restaurant. The trouble was the real story wasn’t quite so happily ever after. Both of them had changed during all those years apart. The biggest problem was Tag’s need to have everything just so. Lucinda wasn’t messy; she was just more relaxed.

“There has to be some kind of solution,” she said, getting back to my problem, “but you can’t do it on an empty stomach.” She signaled to one of the waitresses and asked her to bring me today’s special. I didn’t even ask what it was because everything looked delicious.

Lucinda was right. After eating the polenta circles sautéed in butter and covered with melted mozzarella and a drizzle of tomato basil sauce along with the chopped vegetable salad, things didn’t seem quite so terrible.

“I don’t know why Kevin St. John waited until the last minute to tell me,” I said as I pushed my empty plate away. Before Lucinda could speak, I answered myself. “Of course—he was trying to trip me up, make me look bad so I’d give up the retreat business and let him take it over.”

In all my rumblings about the sudden no-sheep-shearing policy, I’d forgotten about all the other news. I mentioned that Cora Delacorte had brought in her fiancé. When I described Burton Fiore, Lucinda knew who he was right away.

“That explains it,” Lucinda said before describing the scene when he and Cora had eaten at the Blue Door a few nights earlier. “I thought he’d dropped something when I saw him on his knees,” she said. “And then when Cora shrieked and grabbed her chest, I was afraid she was having some kind of attack.”

“Who is he?”

“Tag probably knows more of the details about who he is than I do.” She waved her husband to the table.

Tag didn’t like being pulled away from his restaurant duty and probably didn’t like that Lucinda was sitting with me even though the place was still mostly empty.

Tag’s answer came out in a burst as he cruised by the table without stopping. “Lives in Monterey and works in real estate and has a daughter.”

“I wonder how they met,” I said. By then Tag was back in the main room.

“I can answer that. It’s really all your fault,” my friend teased. “They met right here a couple of months ago. They were at separate tables. He was dining alone, and she was with Madeleine. Burton ordered a piece of your banana cream pie. Then Cora ordered a piece, but Burton had gotten the last slice. He played the gallant gentleman and offered her his, but she refused and the next thing I knew he’d moved over to her table and they were sharing it. I don’t know what happened to Madeleine. I guess she must have felt like a third wheel and left.”

I mentioned seeing the sisters and how formally dressed they were in their Chanel-like suits.

“Chanel-like?” Lucinda said with a twinkle in her eyes. “How about those suits are the real thing. I agree it’s a bit overdressed for a trip to Vista Del Mar, but I think it’s their everyday wear.”

Lucinda knew about anything with a designer label. Everything she owned had one. But she knew how to dress so that she looked good but not overdone. She’d recently cut her hair and was wearing it short now, which only showed off her dangle earrings and great makeup job. She had on a sunny yellow shift-style dress with a white shrug. The daisy pin was the perfect accessory. It was like she’d brought some sunshine inside.

The banana cream pie story was swirling in my brain. I didn’t have a good feeling about Cora’s fiancé and wished it had been tomato soup that had brought them together instead of something I’d baked. I hated to think I’d played any part in their matchup.

I left the Blue Door with no solution to the no-show sheep, but amidst kudos for my baking. A woman by the door was eating a piece of the apple pie I’d baked the night before and her companion was having the from-scratch vanilla pudding with the chocolate walnut shortbread cookies I’d made as well. When Tag mentioned I’d made all of it, they showered me with compliments. Hmm . . . and that was all without any certificate from a fancy French cooking school.

As I came down the short flight of stairs onto the street, the noonday sun bathed me with warmth. There was still a sharp edge of damp and cool to the air, but having the sun out changed everything. The tall trees that grew down the center strip between the lanes of traffic on Grand Street now cast shadows. The strong light brightened up the whole street and even the yellow Victorian house across the street that had been turned into a bed-and-breakfast seemed a brighter shade.

Downtown Cadbury was a mixture of styles. Many of the storefronts were built in a Victorian style with bright-colored paint, bay windows and things like fish-scale patterns on the sides of the buildings. Others, like the post office, had a Spanish look, with white stucco walls and a red tiled roof. The unifying factor was that the buildings were all old. Some of them had plaques showing they were built in the late 1800s and gave their history.

As I looked up and down the street at the cars parked on an angle, I noticed a Cadbury PD blue-and-white was one of them. Even from this angle I recognized my neighbor Dane Mangano as the officer standing at the front of the cruiser talking to a sullen-looking teen. The kid was all bad posture and an I-don’t-care attitude.

Cadbury wasn’t exactly a crime capital and I knew Dane spent a lot of his time being proactive to keep things from happening. It was a small town with a bunch of bored kids, which was a recipe for trouble.

I could tell by the upward movement of Dane’s chin he was giving the kid some kind of pep talk. He pulled out a card and wrote something on the back before handing it to the boy. The teen looked at it for a moment before shoving it into his pocket. He kept looking away and it was obvious he wanted to leave. Dane touched him on the shoulder in a supportive move and must have told the kid he could go, because the teen suddenly pulled away.

Dane looked up as I headed down the street. His eyes lit with recognition and his angular face softened into a smile. All the jogging and martial arts he did served him well, and the midnight blue uniform fit him like a glove. In other words, he was definitely hot. “Are you a social worker or a cop?” I said, gesturing toward the receding figure of the teen. I knew that he had turned his garage into a workout studio and gave karate lessons to the local kids and let them hang out there.

“You caught me,” he said. His eyes held my gaze a little too long and his smile turned into a teasing grin. “I’m always looking for a new recruit. I’d rather get them when there aren’t any handcuffs involved.”

Dane had told me that he’d been a bad-boy teenager and gotten into plenty of trouble. He was trying to save the youth of Cadbury from going down the same road. Not only did he give them a place to hang out where they could use up all their excess energy in a positive way, he fed them as well. I should be grateful that he cooked for them, because he always left a dish of whatever pasta he’d made at my door. Just thinking of his spaghetti sauce with the tomato-garlicky taste made my mouth water.

We made a little small talk, which was really mostly him flirting. There was no denying I was attracted to him. It wasn’t just his looks, either. Despite all the teasing, he had character. He took the whole concept of protecting and serving seriously.

“You know,” he said, resting his hands on the assortment of tools on his belt, “we could try delivering our care packages in person. Even eat them together. My main course and your dessert.” He stepped a little closer and had entered my bubble of space. His eyes moved over my face. “I promise to show you a good time.”

I felt a little breathless and took a step back. I think he was completely aware of the effect he had on me and it amused him, along with my usual answer.

“Maybe someday,” I said, with an over-the-top bat of my eyelashes. Flirting wasn’t my strong suit, so I tried to make it look like a joke, figuring it would come out that way anyway.

“Promises, promises,” he said with a laugh. Just then his radio squawked something about a problem at the aquarium and he said he was responding. “Duty calls,” he said. “Somebody jumped in the tank with the sea otters.”

He rushed to his car, flipped on his lights and siren, and backed out in one move before doing a U-turn and roaring away.

The cars on the street responded to the flashing lights and siren, and froze. When the blue-and-white was out of sight, traffic resumed.

I suppose I could have told Dane about my problem with the sheep shearing, but it seemed out of his realm of problem solving, so I’d kept it to myself. I continued down to the corner and turned on a side street that sloped down toward the water. Cadbury Yarn was located in a former house halfway down the block. It was really more of a bungalow, with a nice front porch complete with a wicker rocker and a rainbow wind sock.

Inside a number of customers were milling around the main room, which had a wall of cubbies filled with yarn organized by color. There were displays of tools and books for all different kinds of yarn craft as well. I looked toward a room behind, which must have been a dining room when it was a house. A number of women were gathered around the long oval table working on their projects.

The deal was if someone bought yarn there, they were welcome to hang out and work on their projects. And Gwen Selwyn or Crystal Smith, the mother-daughter owners, would help them if they had a problem. I knew all about it because they had nursed me through several projects.

I was glad to see the place was busy, as I knew it was a struggle to make enough to keep them all going. Gwen was old-school Cadbury. She had short brown hair with streaks of gray she did nothing to hide. Her clothes were comfortable. Mostly she wore loose-fitting slacks in neutral colors paired with a cotton shirt. Since it was always chilly, she wore something on top that she’d made, like the chunky toast brown sweater she had on today.

Crystal went the opposite way. Maybe her fashion sense came from being the former wife of a rock god. She wore skinny jeans with interesting tops, her earrings never matched and she wore heavy makeup that somehow never looked overdone. Her hair was black and so curly, the ringlets looked like tiny Slinkys.

Crystal was free so I told her I was there to pick up the drop spindles and patterns for my retreaters. After a moment her mother joined us and I mentioned the yarn and related items for the gift shop.

“Thanks for the reminder, but believe me we’ll remember to bring it over. And we’ll check it a day or so later and add as needed. These events are a real boost to our sales,” Gwen said as her daughter went into the back and brought out a shopping bag with the spindles.

I told them the news about Kevin St. John’s ixnaying the sheep shearing. “What am I going to do? That’s the beginning of the whole event.”

“You could just make spinning the yarn the main event. Just change the name to Spinning to Shawl,” Gwen suggested. “There’s still time, we could get in roving.” She went to a basket and took out a slender plastic bag filled with natural-colored fibers. When she removed the fiber, it came out as one long piece. She explained it was wool that had been washed, combed and carded.

“But that takes all the fun out of it,” Crystal said. She suggested taking the group to the farm to watch the shearing and get the fleeces, but then realized I’d need to rent a bus and that it would cut way into my profit, which wasn’t that big to begin with.