Crewel and Unusual

by Molly Macrae

  “Not if you’re standing in front of it. It’s a storeroom. I’ve got keys. We all do.”

  Did I know that? Blame it on being rattled.

  He nodded for me to move aside.

  “But don’t touch it,” I said. “Don’t touch the door or the knob if you can help it.”

  “It’s kind of fussy. It helps to pull up on the knob while you turn the key.”

  “I’ll do it. Ardis and I already touched it.”

  Joe handed me the keys. He was right about the fussy lock. I was rattled and it rattled, but with a bit of jiggling, and after applying John’s crisp Anglo-Saxon, the key slid into place and I opened the door into a narrow, deep, dark closet.

  Geneva crouched there, on the floor, rocking and singing, next to Belinda. Belinda lay on the floor, facedown, silent and unmoving, a pair of scissors sticking out of her back.

  TWELVE

  My first thought should have been to check for a pulse. Or to tell Joe to call 911. To scream? No, that wouldn’t help anyone at all. All I wanted to do was the impossible—hug a ghost who mourned for a soul she’d never known.

  Geneva looked around when the light from the hall spilled into the narrow space. She didn’t stop rocking and singing, and she continued as I knelt and reached for the side of Belinda’s neck. No pulse. Skin cool but not cold. Had I seen anyone near the door or leaving the area when I followed the fruit flies? I couldn’t remember.

  I held out my hand to Geneva and asked quietly, “Did you see anyone?”

  “Don’t touch anything else,” Joe said. He blocked some of the light while also blocking the view of anyone passing. “But to answer your question, no, I didn’t see anyone. Or, I saw plenty of people, but no one who looked like they’d . . . I called 911. I’d better call Sierra, too. You should come out, Kath. We’ll close the door. Keep folks from . . .”

  It was so easy to trail off. Easy to lose the thread. Don’t touch anything, Joe had said. But I had to. For Belinda’s sake, if it would help find who did this to her. I brushed my fingertips across the fabric of her blouse, afraid of what I would feel. A whisper. Like a secret. Like something hidden away in a box in a corner. I had no clue at all how that could help. I looked at Geneva, one of my secrets, and whispered, “Come out with me,” and she did.

  Sierra arrived before we’d pulled the door shut.

  “That was fast,” Joe said.

  Geneva shivered beside me.

  “I was on the back stairs when you called,” Sierra said. “You might be surprised what I don’t consider an emergency on a day like this. So what is it?”

  I let Joe tell her. She didn’t seem to believe him at first. That made sense, really, because who would think . . . Those trailing threads again. I looked at Geneva. She huddled next to me against the wall, but she was beginning to come around. I waited until she looked at me. Then I used some of Argyle’s universal cat sign language—I gave her the slow blink of comfort and connection.

  Sierra insisted on seeing for herself, first putting her head around the door, and then, keeping a hand on the doorframe, stepping inside. She spent more time looking than I’d wanted to, maybe letting her eyes get used to the dark, maybe taking that long to process the tragedy. When she finally backed away from the door, the cherry red of her hair stood out more dramatically against her pale cheeks. Like me, she didn’t scream, but she did stammer.

  “We should, we can’t just, we, um, can we, can we work around this?”

  “Work around how?” Joe asked. He sounded slightly strained, as though he’d had to keep a less strained what the hell from slipping out.

  “I mean, look, we close the door. We lock it. That preserves the, the scene, and we wait until we close tonight—no. No.” She worried that away with small shakes of her head, wrapping her arms around herself. “No. Wrong idea. Wrongwrongwrong. But the opening, can we at least, is there some way we can salvage it?”

  “Let’s see what the deputies tell us,” Joe said.

  “Close off this area?” Sierra asked. “With a screen or something?”

  “The restrooms and emergency exit are back here,” I said. “Talk to the deputies.”

  “But the door,” Sierra said.

  “Don’t touch the—” I didn’t bother to finish that.

  Sierra didn’t listen, anyway. She grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door the last few inches shut. It probably didn’t matter. If there had been any useful prints, my hand and Ardis’s had probably already made them hopeless.

  Rogalla was the first official to respond. He looked from Joe to Sierra. “Where?”

  “It isn’t a fire,” Sierra said.

  Joe nodded to the door.

  Sierra hadn’t moved from in front of it and didn’t then. “Shouldn’t we wait for the real—”

  “I’m real enough,” Rogalla said.

  “You’re wearing running shorts.”

  “He’s an EMT,” I said. “He’s trained. Come on over here. We should think about closing—”

  “We can’t,” Sierra said. “We can’t close.”

  “Come on over here and let me finish.” I took a few steps back, and she followed. So did Geneva. I saw Rogalla slip into the storage room. “I meant the hallway. Like you said, Sierra, we should close it off, at least for now. You don’t want little kids coming along here and seeing this. There are all kinds of problems with people walking by.”

  Joe had already moved to the corner in the hall. I couldn’t hear his words, but presumably he was turning people back. Then I heard two burps of radio static, and as Rogalla backed out of the storage room and closed the door, Clod arrived. On Clod’s heels another radio burped static, this one attached to Deputy Shorty Munroe. Clod’s jeans and T-shirt looked happier now that they were doing something official. Shorty’s uniform and eyes looked equally tired. Shorty seemed to share Clod’s opinion of Rogalla—tolerant in professional matters and like members of opposing teams in everything else. For the time being, they cooperated. Clod and Rogalla went into the storage room. Shorty stood with us.

  “You probably want us to get out of your way,” Sierra said.

  “No ma’am,” Shorty said. “For now, we’d like you to stay right here.” He must have had a first name other than Shorty, but I’d never heard it. The nickname hadn’t taken any imagination; he wasn’t much taller than me, and he looked more like my idea of an accountant than Rogalla did. I always expected to see a pencil behind his ear. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that looked as though he’d picked them up in Floyd’s antique shop or borrowed them from Ebenezer Scrooge’s overworked clerk. Where Clod’s eyes always looked alert but pained, Shorty’s, though tired, looked ready to laugh. His voice was pure Willie Nelson.

  Clod looked up and down the hallway when he and Rogalla came out of the storage room. He called to Joe, still at the bend in the hallway. “You all right there?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Has anyone cleared the restrooms?” Clod asked.

  “I’ll go,” Sierra said.

  “Shorty will. More than one stall in each?”

  Sierra held up three fingers.

  Shorty took off down the hall.

  “I’m sure, now, you really would like us to get out of your way,” Sierra said.

  “Not just yet,” Clod said. “Who found the body?”

  Geneva looked at me and raised her hand. I raised mine, too. “Solemn solidarity,” she whispered. It was good to have her acting more normally again.

  “Cat got your tongue, Ms. Rutledge?” Clod asked.

  “What? No. I opened the door.”

  “Why?” Sierra asked. “How?”

  “We’ll get to that, Ms. Estep, but thank you,” Clod said. “Did you go in, Ms. Rutledge?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll need to talk to you. Did anyone else besides you and Rogalla touch the door or go inside?”

  While I hesitated, waiting for Sierra to say she had, Shorty emerged from the men’s room, knocked on the wome
n’s, and then went in. Sierra crossed her arms and looked on the verge of a pout, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Did Joe?” Clod prompted.

  “He was with me,” I said. “But I’m the one who opened the door and went in. As far as I know, Ardis, Rogalla, Sierra, and I are the only ones.” I hoped the way I slipped Sierra’s name into that short list sounded natural and not like finger pointing.

  Geneva squashed that hope by repeatedly pointing both index fingers at Sierra, as though directing traffic straight at her.

  Clod flattened it further. “Any reason you didn’t offer that information, Ms. Estep?”

  “Because it was obvious.” Sierra barely kept the derisive duh in her voice in check. “Of course I went in. I’m the director. When Joe told me what happened, I was obliged to verify that report. I had a legitimate reason to go in. A legal reason, even. I’m responsible for the building and what happens—”

  Shorty came out of the women’s room, and Clod cut Sierra off with a terse, “Thank you.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Estep,” Clod said. “We’ll take all of that into consideration. We’ll want to speak with you further, and we will try to cause as little disruption as possible.”

  Instead of rejoining us, Shorty stationed himself at the back door. He and Clod exchanged nods that must have meant something to them. Then Shorty replanted his feet and hooked his thumbs in his belt—probably meant to show he couldn’t be budged. Considering his general pencil-pusher vibe, it was kind of adorable, but I would never say so to anyone who might repeat it to him.

  “Out of respect for the deceased, please do not pass along any information before an official statement is made,” Clod said. “That includes phone calls and text messages.”

  “You can’t confiscate our phones, can you?” Sierra asked.

  “We’ll trust your good sense,” Clod said. “A statement will be released as soon as possible. Now, if you’ll please wait here, I’ll be back momentarily.”

  Rogalla started after him but stopped at a look from Clod.

  “What are they going to do?” Sierra asked.

  “Procedure,” Rogalla said. “Protocol. Logistics.”

  “I meant specifically. And what are they talking about?”

  “I’m not a lip reader,” Rogalla said.

  “I always want to know what they’re talking about at a time like this, too,” I said, trying to sound reassuring, like an old hand. An old murder hand. A chill ran down my spine. “For now, though, we wait. That’s the way this works.”

  “But I’m the director,” Sierra said. “I should be part of that conversation.”

  “You will be soon enough,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sierra asked.

  “Just that—”

  “That I just heard my cue.” Geneva said, and she darted down the hall to make the deputy duo a weird trio.

  “Just what?” Sierra demanded.

  “They’re trying to decide the best way to handle this!” Geneva shouted over Clod’s shoulder. “They have a building full of potential witnesses. Should they shut everything down now? Let everyone go? Make everyone stay? Big decision! Maybe take some heat? Ramifications! What’s a lawman to do?”

  She sounded like a newsie trying to sell papers by reading out the headlines. I was sorely tempted to show off my “lip reading” skills by repeating her, but a nanosecond’s thought convinced me there were too many ways that could backfire. “I just meant that situations like this can get confusing really fast,” I told Sierra.

  “They’re wondering if the murderer is still in the building!” Geneva yelled at the top of her lungs. “Deputy Munroe says that he hopes so. He wants to solve this thing fast and tie the perp up with a bow. That rhymes. I should take up shouted-word poetry. Is that a thing? Now Deputy Dunbar is complaining. He says any trail the perp left is being trampled. He’s probably talking about her.” She pointed at Sierra. “We should call her the treacherous trampler.”

  Clod probably meant everyone in the building, not just Sierra. She paced back and forth, looking neurotic and a lot younger and less polished than she had when she’d greeted Ardis and me at the front door earlier. Clod and Shorty were blocking her access to the back stairs, but at this point even the Empire State Building might not have enough stairs to relieve the stress from this wretched ending to her promising grand opening.

  Geneva suddenly whooped. “Deputy Dunbar just said they have a building full of meddlers, too. He looked straight at you when he said that. Such a card, our Deputy Dunbar.”

  My next sore temptation was to shout, Thanks a lot, Clod! I refrained, although he might have wondered why I gave him a nasty look when he returned from talking with Shorty.

  “You need me to stick around?” Rogalla asked.

  “You’re dismissed,” Clod said. “We have it covered and it’s pretty obvious we don’t need an expert in CPR at this point. Or possums.”

  They stared at each other, as though each dared the other to put ’em up. They’d actually come to blows a month or so earlier, hence Clod’s anger management sessions. Clod looked away first, and Rogalla made a tough-guy exit past Joe. He had the good grace not to sneer, and Clod gave him the grace of a thirty-second head start so it didn’t look as though he was following him. Then Clod went over to have a word with Joe. Geneva and I didn’t give Clod the grace of even two seconds; we followed right behind.

  “Closing?” Joe asked.

  “Have to,” Clod said.

  That’s when I realized Sierra hadn’t come with us. I glanced back and saw her fiddling with her phone. If I were Clod, would I tell her to put it away? If I were Geneva, would I go read texts over Sierra’s shoulder? I was glad I didn’t have to make either decision.

  “Has anyone spoken to Russell?” Joe asked.

  “Who?” I asked.

  Clod gave me an ahem sort of look. “Who’s Russell?”

  “Belinda’s husband,” Joe said. “Ex. He’s in Belle’s. Her shop.”

  “You didn’t think to tell me that sooner?” Clod asked.

  “Did you want me to interrupt your discussion with Shorty? Maybe I should have gotten in between you and Rogalla?”

  “Smart-ass.”

  “When he said ‘as little disruption possible,’ I believed him,” Sierra said an hour later.

  It felt like two or three. At Clod’s request, more deputies had descended on the Vault to respectfully take names and contact information from visitors and merchants before shooing them out the door. Ardis, Joe, Sierra, and I had been asked to stay. Geneva stayed, too, although she wasn’t hanging around in the gallery with us or the deputy standing solidly in front of Belinda’s shop.

  “I pictured little to no disruption,” Sierra said as she passed us, and then the deputy, on another lap around the gallery. “Minimal disruption. I call this catastrophic disruption.”

  “She certainly keeps disrupting any chance we have of quiet or calm while we’re waiting,” Ardis said under her breath.

  “She’s just worried and blowing off steam,” I said. “Maybe scared, too. Any idea where Geneva is?”

  “Lord love a dead duck,” Ardis whispered. She glanced around, not very subtly, and then shrugged.

  “Whispering isn’t cool,” Sierra called from across the gallery. “It makes the people who know that you’re whispering paranoid.”

  “Sorry, hon,” Ardis said. “I’m an angst mutterer. Give me something to be anxious about and I’ll jump at the least little peep and then mutter ’til the ducks come home to roost, which isn’t something ducks do, so there’s my problem in an eggshell. I tell you what, though, let me do the worrying and the muttering for all of us. I’m a certified expert. Or maybe certifiable. But that way you can sit down and try to relax.”

  “Not unless I can sit in my office,” Sierra said on her way past again. “And it won’t be to relax. I can’t relax in the middle of a nightmare. They
had the whole building to choose from, and they couldn’t talk to Dusty or Rusty or whoever he is somewhere else?”

  “It’s Russell,” I said.

  “But why my office? And where’d he come from, anyway? And why don’t they haul him off to their office?”

  “I think you’re right,” Ardis whispered to me. Then she called to a scowling Sierra as she marched past the enamel shop, “I’m just telling Kath she’s right. If walking in circles helps you blow off steam, then march on, hon, march on.” In a quick aside to me she whispered, “How many laps has she done? I’m not sure it’s working.”

  I wasn’t sure, either. I felt sorry for Sierra and her ruined event, but she had to know her office provided more privacy than the open plan of the shops and gallery. Ardis, Joe, and I sat in the chairs intended for people who’d wanted to take a load off while they enjoyed the music in the gallery. The musicians had packed up and left, along with Mel and the refreshments. Early in our wait, Shorty and the other deputy had been in and out of Belinda’s shop. Then Shorty disappeared down the back stairs and we continued to wait.

  Ardis sat bolt upright, making her folding chair look even less comfortable than it was. I tried to look calm, but sitting on the edge of my chair probably gave me away. Joe accomplished both sitting and relaxing beautifully, his legs stretched out and his hands knitted behind his head. He might have been thinking about fishing, a go-to topic for him, but I chose to believe the furrows between his eyebrows meant he was asking himself some of the same questions that kept me from relaxing. Not all of my questions, though. He didn’t have Geneva to worry about.

  She hadn’t floated off with Clod when he’d asked Russell to accompany him to Sierra’s office. She’d stayed quietly near me, growing hazier as we waited, even though she’d enjoyed eavesdropping on Clod and Shorty earlier. Her quiet could mean she was thinking things over. As she said, thoughts of death and dying came naturally to her. But she was a mercurial soul, infatuated with the make-believe world of TV detectives, and she had trouble turning off her excitement over real-life deputies. She might have been floating in a melancholy funk somewhere nearby, but if I were given a guess, I’d say Clod had a nosy ghost hanging over his shoulder while he interviewed Russell.