by Ann Yost
Sonya’s smile, for once, didn’t reach her eyes.
“Don’t we all,” I said, hastily. “Everyone can use a thorough housecleaning and a fresh start. Let me try.”
I knew perfectly well it was just a superstition, a parlor game for a cold, snowy New Year’s Eve, but still, I hoped I’d get something encouraging. Something like a heart or an XO for kisses and hugs. Heck, I’d settle for the shape of a telephone. It seemed to take my metal blob a long time to morph and settle. I wondered if it was because my life was moving in slow motion but figured it was more likely that the ice had melted and the hot water was cooling.
And then a shadow picture emerged that was so clear, so unmistakable, that we all gasped in shock.
“A skull-and-crossbones,” Elli said. Her voice shook.
“Hey,” I said, bracingly. “It probably means I’m going to be kidnapped by pirates.”
“You know what I think?” Sonya said, half-kidding, “I think it means you’ve found your calling. You’re destined to investigate another murder.”
There was no time to contemplate her words because finally, at long last, well after midnight, my phone rang. I just stared at it, aware of an immense fatigue. Was this it then? Was I about to learn—or seal—my marital fate? I sucked in a deep breath and answered, using the traditional greeting.
“Onnellista Uutta Vuotta!” Happy New Year!
There was a pause and then a deep, masculine voice. The wrong voice.
“Hei, Squirt. I hope your year is starting out better than mine.”
“For a moment I was so disappointed I couldn’t breathe. Then I forced out some words. “Lars. What’s up? Where are you?”
“Jail.”
I closed my eyes. After three years of abstinence, he’d been drinking.
“I’ll come and get you. What’s the bail?”
“This isn’t a DUI, Hatti. I’m here for the duration.”
I didn’t understand. “Duration of what?”
“Until Clump finds enough evidence to formally arrest me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple enough.” I pictured his loose-limbed shrug. “When I got home tonight, I found a girl in my bed. A dead girl.”
“What? How? Who?”
He answered on the last of my questions.
“She is—or was—a waitress at the Black Fly in Chassell. Her name’s Cricket Koski.”
Cricket Koski. The woman my sister had nicknamed the insect.
Three years earlier Lars had indulged in a one-night stand with her, the confession of which led to his divorce. I sent up a prayer of thanks that Sofi had gone home early tonight and wasn’t here for this call.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, meaning it. “How did she get there?”
“Beats me. The thing is, I need to find out and I can’t do it from Frog Creek’s finest accommodation. I need your help, Squirt.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Thanks, Hatti. Come by in the morning. Early. Before Clump gets in. Okay?”
I disconnected.
“You were right,” I said to Sonya Stillwater. “There’s been another murder.” I paused, then told them what Lars had told me.
“Holy wha,” Elli said. She and Sonya looked at each other, nodded and then back at me.
“All right, Sherlock,” Sonya said. “Just tell us how we can help.”
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Page Ahead for an Excerpt From:
A Double-Pointed Murder
A Double-Pointed Murder
The Bait & Stitch Cozy Mystery Series, Book 3
The girl with the hole in her chest was no Jane Doe. She was not only known to me, she was a relation.
If you count adultery as one of the ties that bind.
Cricket Koski, a barmaid from the Black Fly Roadhouse down in Chassell, had been the catalyst in my sister’s divorce three years earlier, a breach that was only now beginning to heal. I shook my head. I was pretty sure, like ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure, that the reconciliation between my sister Sofi and her ex, Lars, would not survive the discovery of the ‘Insect’ in Lars’s bed. The fact that Cricket was dead would not make much difference to my sister.
I should probably point out that I’m not a cop or even a private detective, but I’ve had a year of law school, and even more importantly, I’m available. Up here on the remote witch’s finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula, that’s a big deal. So when Lars called me from his jail cell, of course I came.
The barmaid was about my age (twenty-eight) and, as far as I knew, had lived as innocuous a life as my own. Although, in my own defense, my professional life had experienced a slight uptick recently when I took over the operation of Pops’s bait shop and added knitting supplies. My personal life was, of course, a more dismal story. But the point was, that I could think of no reason for anyone wanting to turn Cricket Koski into a shish kebab. Anyone other than my sister.
“Weird wound.”
I jumped. I’d completely forgotten my presence at the Frog Creek morgue at zero-dark-hundred was thanks to Waino Aho, the sheriff’s deputy with whom I’d experienced my first kiss fifteen years earlier during Vacation Bible School at St. Heikki’s. I gazed up at the handsome, if vacant, Nordic features then back at the perfect shape of the aperture underneath the victim’s perky left breast. The surrounding skin was smooth and the wound was bloodless.
“A wormhole,” Waino said.
I knew he wasn’t referring to the hypothetical, topological feature that would be (if it exists) a shortcut through time and space. When Waino said “wormhole” he was referring to the orifice in a piece of fruit created by a burrowing maggot.
“A nail-gun coulda did it.”
“Maybe. Or a skewer.”
His eyes widened. “A what?”
“One of those long, metal things people roast marshmallows on.”
“I use a birch stick.”
I nodded. A stick of birch is used to fashion a vihta, a whisk used to bring the blood to the surface in a sauna.
“Something long and thin,” I said, following my own train of thought. The truth slammed into me with the force of a felled tree. Triumph at my extraordinary deductive powers caused my voice to shake. “A tool with a long shaft, tapered at the end, and made out of the same carbon fiber composite used in stealth fighter jets and formula one racing cars.”
Waino stared at me, uncomprehendingly, as I paused for dramatic effect.
“A knitting needle,” I said. “A size-five, double-pointed knitting needle like the ones we use on mittens and socks.”
His blue eyes met mine and my childhood buddy’s sudden mental leap made my heart plummet.
“If she was kilt with a knittin’ needle, Hatti,” he said, “your sister musta did it, then.”
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A DOUBLE-POINTED MURDER
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Also by Ann Yost
A Pattern For Murder
A Yarn Over Murder
A Double Pointed Murder
A Fair Isle Murder
About the Author
Ann Yost comes from Ann Arbor, Michigan and a writing family whose single greatest accomplishment is excellent spelling.
After six years at the University of Michigan she completed her degree in English literature and spent ten years working as a reporter, copy editor and humor columnist for three daily newspapers. Her most notable story at the Ypsilanti Press involved the tarring and feathering of a high school principal.
When she moved with her Associated Press reporter husband to the Washington D.C. area, she did freelance work for the Washington Post, including first-person humor stories on substitute teaching and little league umpiring.
She did feature writing for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation on building community in low-income neighborhoods and after-school programs throughout the country.
While her three children were in high school, Ann began to write romantic suspense novels. Later, she turned to the Finnish-American community in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula for her Hatti Lehtinen mystery series.
She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and her enterprising mini-goldendoodle, Toby.
www.annyost.com
