A Yarn Over Murder

by Ann Yost

  There was still no sign of the Makis or anyone else when I re-emerged from the chapel, but I knew folks would start to arrive soon. I strode down the corridor through the darkened kitchen and into the greenhouse. Sleet and hail and the occasional roll of thunder made a cacophony of noises that did nothing for my nerves, but the windowed conservatory was brighter than the rest of the gloomy house, and the scents of loam and fertilizer and earth were somehow reassuring. The greenhouse, I thought, not for the first time, with its aura of new life was the perfect antidote to death.

  I knew now what Pauline had suspected all along, what she’d tried to convey to me without using words. I’d finally figured it out and had come back for the proof. I crossed my fingers, hoping I’d be able to just stroll in and grab it without interference

  My breath was coming hard and fast, my heart beating crazily in my chest as I made my way past the rows of plants and flowers toward the workbench.

  “Looking for something, Hatti?”

  Pauline stepped into the narrow aisle, blocking my view of the work table. I hadn’t heard her come in and figured she’d been in here all the time, a deduction that only made sense. It was, after all, her answer to the crack in the teacup.

  “Hello,” I said, immediately aware that something wasn’t right. “Why aren’t you dressed for the funeral?” She had on a plain shirt, loose sweatpants and gardening gloves.

  There was an unfamiliar glint in her normally kind eyes and I wondered if she had been drinking.

  “Haven’t you heard? The funeral’s been postponed because of weather. Everybody else knows it, even Betty Ann Pritula. You should turn on your radio, Hatti.”

  There was something in her voice that matched the weird glitter in her eye and, with a shock, it came to me; malice.

  A shiver wriggled its way down my spine.

  “Where’s Arvo, then?”

  “Out on a stranded motorist call. It’s just you and me, Hatti. And all these lovely plants.” She swept her arm to include them but did not take her eyes off me. “May I ask why you’re snooping around my greenhouse?”

  “I’m not snooping,” I said, beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. “I came back here to check on something.”

  “Mmm? And what was that? Evidence? You think you’ve solved the mystery? I thought you would. People underestimate you, Hatti. I know I did.”

  I finally got it. Too late, of course. I wanted to say she’d estimated me exactly right but it wasn’t a moment for humor. The someone who had loved too much was Pauline.

  “You killed Liisa and Jalmer,” I said. “You wired a sticky bomb under the fender of Jace’s truck and then you set off the bomb with a cellphone. You could have killed five people, Pauline. It was the baby, wasn’t it? When you found out Liisa was pregnant you knew she’d get married and get out of town and you’d never see her again and you just couldn’t bear it.”

  The woman before me, a woman I’d known all my life, started to laugh.

  “I take back what I said about underestimating you, Hatti. You’ve got it exactly backwards. Liisa might have left town, but she’d never ever have left my life. I overheard her talking to Arvo one night. She’d planned to get rid of the baby but when she saw how heartbroken he was, she relented. That girl and her child had made a mockery of my life. I couldn’t allow her to go on.”

  My mind scrambled with what she was saying.

  “This is about Arvo, isn’t it? Arvo invited Liisa here. The love he’d saved up for his own children went to Liisa and then her baby. He told me you felt the same way.”

  “Did he? But then men are stupid creatures. They see what they want to see. And when life disappoints, they cling to the concept of duty. I have spent twenty-five years knowing that he married me for my family’s money. I thought it would change when we had a family but that little miracle was denied us.”

  “You’re saying Arvo doesn’t love you?” I was aghast. “You know that isn’t true. He’s always talking about you, about what will make you happy.”

  “Duty,” she said. “And duty is cold comfort. You will find out if you reconcile with your husband. Marriage, without love, is anguish.”

  I was shaken to the core.

  “You can’t account for why one person is drawn to another. This might have happened with a child of your own. The bond he or she had with Arvo might have been closer than the one with you.”

  “We’ll never know now, will we?”

  I stared at her tall, gaunt form and thought of all the hot dishes she’d brought to church potlucks and smorgasbords, and all the charity work she’d done in the local thrift store. I thought about her passion for lace knitting.

  “Oh, Pauline,” I said. “What about the shawls?”

  “Not your problem, anymore, Henrikki.” I realized she’d slowly closed the distance between us.

  I might have been slow to figure out the motive and the killer in this case but now that I was alone in the greenhouse—her turf—with a killer, I was well aware that she intended to kill me, too. Panic exploded inside me and I tried to control my breathing. There was a chance, a slight chance, that either Jace would get my message and come to find me or Arvo would get back from his rescue mission. In any case, my best bet was to keep Pauline talking.

  “You’ve told me why,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Will you tell me how?”

  “Are you telling me you don’t know? I thought you were here to pick up the evidence.”

  “I’ve got a theory,” I said, stalling. “I think you ground up the poisonous leaves of the Monkshood and mixed them into the jar of Vicks Vaporub that you used to soothe Liisa’s cough and sore throat.”

  “You came up with that by yourself?” She sounded surprised, as if a sluggish student had suddenly come up with a perceptive answer.

  “Not really. You showed me the monkshood and it reminded me of an incident in a Father Cadfael mystery.”

  “Ah,” she said. “A murder solution with footnotes.”

  “How did you know Liisa was planning to meet Reid Night Wind in the sauna?”

  “Foolish question,” she said, disappointment evident in her voice. “This is my home, remember? I know about everything that goes on here.”

  “The baby?”

  “I have installed listening devices in most of the rooms so I overheard it the night Liisa told Arvo while they were in the embalming room. But I’d known before that.”

  “Was Arvo the father?”

  She made a derisive sound.

  “No. It wasn’t like that between them. He actually loved her like a daughter.”

  Maybe that was even harder to accept than a mistress. I wondered.

  “Do you know who the father was?”

  “Of course I know. That idiot who’s going to marry the Hakala girl. It happened after the homecoming dance in the backseat of his rattletrap.”

  “If you knew, why didn’t you stop it?”

  “Why should I? I misjudged my husband. I thought he’d be disgusted with her feet of clay but he just became besotted with the idea of becoming a grandfather.”

  A thought occurred to me.

  “Was Liisa dead when you left for the smorgasbord?”

  “In a coma. She was dead by the time I came back for the jam. That’s when I carried her down to the sauna. I figured the Night Wind boy would panic when he found her and he’d leave a trail of evidence right back to himself.”

  “So why’d you hit her with a sauna rock?”

  “Justice. She had delivered the death blow to my marriage.”

  “Justice,” I repeated. “And closure?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And you kept the pink suitcase as what, a trophy?” She shook her head.

  “A reminder that all of this happened because a man could not see beneath the surface glitter.”

  My eyes flickered to the jar of Vicks on the work table. Unfortunately, Pauline and I both had the same thought and we moved toward it at the s
ame time. She was closer but I am younger and we got there together. I snatched the jar and dumped it in my pocket. Pauline opened the cupboard and grabbed another jar of Vicks. This one was open and, with one swift motion, she dipped her fingers into it. Her gloved fingers.

  Geez Almighty Louise.

  “What,” I asked, my voice hoarse, “will Arvo think if you kill me?”

  She was so close I could inhale her breath. It smelled like raw fury.

  She grinned and her long, narrow face suddenly reminded me of a vicious jack o’ lantern.

  “It will hurt him and he will find out, once again, how I’ve felt all these years.”

  She started to move toward me and I fought down a surge of panic. I kept contact with her eyes and slid my right hand into the pocket of the fur jacket. I curled my fingers around my weapon and slid it out of the pocket, ripping the ancient lining. Luckily, the timing was perfect. Just as Pauline lunged for my face with the Vicks, I aimed at her eyes with my canister of artificial snow.

  She shrieked and scrubbed her own face, heedless of the tainted ointment on her hands. She’d collapsed on the floor when, a moment later, thunder exploded overhead and, in what can only be described as a suitably Biblical touch, a plague of frogs, in the form of splintered glass, rained down upon us.

  I ignored the intrusion and wrenched off my jacket, trying to get close enough to Pauline Maki to wipe the poison off her face.

  And then three things happened almost simultaneously. I became aware of Arvo on his knees next to me, holding Pauline’s hand. Sheriff Clump lurched through the door and hollered at Elwood, “Cut her, deputy!”

  And a pair of strong arms airlifted me and a hand pressed me against a leather-covered shoulder and I could hear Jace Night Wind’s voice in my ear.

  “Geez Louise. Geez Almighty Louise, Umlaut.”

  Thirty-Five

  “Tell me again how Aunt Hatti flocked Mrs. Maki,” Charlie begged my husband.

  My niece sat cross-legged on the floor next to Reid Night Wind, who was rubbing Larry’s tummy. Reid seemed to be amused rather than annoyed by Charlie’s hero worship and Larry, upside down, his stubby legs in the air, was ecstatic with the whole business.

  Jace was next to me on the love-seat in mom’s parlor. He looked somewhat the worse for wear, as added to the blisters and burns from the explosion were scrapes and abrasions from his free-fall through the glass ceiling of Pauline’s greenhouse. Sonya had made him a makeshift sling to ease the pressure on his dislocated shoulder.

  He’d staged the rescue for me which, in the end, hadn’t been necessary, but still I cherished the moment.

  Miss Irene chose to celebrate the occasion with a Psalm.

  “The pastures are clothed with flocks, the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.”

  “Your aunt was very brave,” Reid said, with a wink at his big brother. “In a mano-a-mano war of controlled substances, she picked the right weapon.”

  “Shouldn’t it be womano-a-womano,” Sonya asked, playfully. “And the best womano won.”

  “Hatti took an unnecessary risk,” Jace said. “She should have waited for backup before going into the lion’s den to confront a killer.”

  “I didn’t know she was the killer,” I said, simply. “I thought it was Arvo. I hadn’t figured it out even though the clues were there. It was never about money, except for Pauline’s conviction that Arvo had married her for her family’s fortune. She had spent twenty-five years trying to earn his love by being the perfect helpmate. They’d developed a rhythm, a comfort level with one another and she told herself she was satisfied with that.”

  “And then disaster struck, in the form of a lovely young girl who gave Arvo what Pauline hadn’t been able to give him: a chance to be a father.”

  “I don’t get it,” Reid said. “Arvo Maki wasn’t interested in Liisa romantically. There was still room for Pauline in that family picture.” I nodded.

  “Theoretically. But, for whatever reason, Liisa didn’t warm to her. Pauline felt excluded. The coming baby, with its promise of another generation for Arvo to love, was the final straw.”

  “So she was behind all of it,” Elli said. “The attack on Pops, the sticky bombs on the vehicles, the aconite poisoning in the Vicks.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “She told me all of it. I should have hit the record button on my phone but I never even thought of it.”

  “But Arvo did,” Sonya said, somberly. “He must have suspected Pauline from the first and, even though he wouldn’t turn her in, he rigged up a recording device in the greenhouse so that if anyone,” she looked at me,—“got into a confrontation with her, there would be a record.”

  “The recording may not hold up in court,” Jace said, “but it, along with Hatti’s statement, was enough to get her arrested without bail.”

  “Poor Arvo,” Charlie said.

  “I guess,” Sofi said, “but it all goes back to him. He was an excellent husband all except for the most important thing. He just couldn’t love her.”

  “Jace,” Charlie said, as if she’d known him for years instead of hours, “tell us again how Hatti saved herself with the artificial snow. And then tell us how you dropped through the roof.”

  “A bumbling batman,” he said, with a rueful smile. “Too little, too late. Hatti had saved herself. She didn’t really need me at all.”

  I wanted to tell him that I had needed him, that I’d always needed him, but things were still unresolved between us.

  “In the end,” I said, “Jace saved Pauline by wiping the Vicks off her face.”

  “I’ll tell you the whole story,” Reid said, turning to the girl next to him. Charlie’s eyes lit up and her face turned bright pink. “Jace and I were in Frog Creek. The sheriff had decided to release me for the moment due to lack of evidence and we got in Hatti’s Jeep. The snow was falling hard and fast and there must have been ice underneath because we cruised into a snowbank. Jace got out his phone, listened to the message from Hatti, and first thing he did was to call 911.”

  Everyone in the room leaned forward as if with baited breath, even though we’d already heard the story several times.

  “The 911 call was forwarded to Red Jacket’s Mobile One. The call was answered and we gave our location and twenty minutes later, Arvo Maki showed up in his hearse. We both wondered if it was a trap. After all, we still thought Maki was the murderer. But then I remembered Liisa telling me about how the hearse was the heaviest vehicle in town and therefore the safest in snow. She said he got called out on a daily basis during the winter months but that he never complained. So we got in. He paused and smiled at Charlie, whose face grew even redder.

  “Arvo told us that the service for Liisa Pelonen and her father had been postponed until tomorrow because of the weather and Jace said something about Hatti having missed the memo because she’d left a message that she was heading over to the funeral home this afternoon.”

  “What did Arvo say to that?” Charlie asked.

  “He said, Holy Wha! And all the color drained out of his face and then he pumped the gas.”

  I noticed Reid had embellished the story since the previous telling by incorporating a description of Arvo’s complexion.

  “We were on Tamarack Street when Arvo told us he was afraid Hatti was in trouble. It seems he has known all along that his wife killed Liisa.”

  “Poor man,” Sonya said. “He must have been torn between the desire to do the right thing and his sense of loyalty to his wife.”

  I was aware of the tension in Jace’s upper arm and along his thigh, the points where our bodies touched.

  “Tell us what happened when you got back to the funeral home,” Elli said, although, she, too, had already heard the story.

  “We cased the joint,” Reid said to Charlie, twirling a fake mustache. She giggled. “We discovered they were in the greenhouse and we split up. Maki took the door from the kitchen, I took the one near the sau
na and Jace, well, he took the roof.”

  “Why the roof?” Sonya asked.

  “We didn’t know what kind of weapon Mrs. Maki had and we figured we had the best chance of saving Hatti if we converged from all angles.” He grinned at me. “Little did we know she was armed with her trusty canister of snow.”

  “Believe me, the help was needed,” I said. “I’d surprised Pauline and stopped her for a minute but she would have recovered and come after me again. There was no way she could let it go, not after what she’d told me.”

  “Poor Pauline,” Aunt Ianthe said. “She’d wanted a child for so many years and then, when she finally got one, it all backfired on her.”

  I hated to publicly disagree with my aunt but I’d thought a lot about what had happened.

  “You know, I think it was Arvo who longed for a child. Pauline wanted one because she thought it would make him happy and, more than that, that it would make him love her.”

  Aunt Ianthe nodded but repeated her first remark.

  “Poor Pauline.”

  “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself,” Miss Irene said, quoting First Corinthians thirteen.

  “Quite right, Irene,” Aunt Ianthe said. “Quite right.”

  On those words, the front door opened and Pops and Mom entered the parlor.

  “You all came over to welcome us,” Pops said, with a big smile and lots of hugs.

  “No, Carl,” Aunt Ianthe said, giving her nephew a kiss on the cheek. “We are here because of our heroine, Henrikki.”

  Pops’s blue eyes rested on me and I felt the comfort and warmth that had supported me all my life.

  “Well, then, Hatti-girl,” he said. “I think you have a story to tell us, eh?”

  When I’d finished and my parents had had a chance to react to the story, the room was silent for a moment. Miss Irene filled in the blank.

  “And that is not the only news,” she said. “We are knitting heirloom lace.”