Knit to Be Tied

by Maggie Sefton

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Maggie Sefton

  KNIT ONE, KILL TWO

  NEEDLED TO DEATH

  A DEADLY YARN

  A KILLER STITCH

  DYER CONSEQUENCES

  FLEECE NAVIDAD

  DROPPED DEAD STITCH

  SKEIN OF THE CRIME

  UNRAVELED

  CAST ON, KILL OFF

  CLOSE KNIT KILLER

  YARN OVER MURDER

  PURL UP AND DIE

  KNIT TO BE TIED

  Anthologies

  DOUBLE KNIT MURDERS

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  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2016 by Margaret Conlan Aunon.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sefton, Maggie, author.

  Title: Knit to be tied / Maggie Sefton.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2016. | Series: A knitting mystery ; 14

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016003764 (print) | LCCN 2016008747 (ebook) | ISBN 9780425282502 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698405837 ()

  Subjects: LCSH: Flynn, Kelly (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Knitters (Persons)—Fiction. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3619.E37 K63 2016 (print) | LCC PS3619.E37 (ebook) | DDC 813/ .6—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003764

  FIRST EDITION: June 2016

  Cover illustration by Chris O’Leary.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Version_1

  This fourteenth book in the Knitting Mysteries is dedicated to my mother—Benny Herndon Conn. She passed away last year in 2015 at the age of ninety-five. She was a remarkable woman in my eyes—a strong and brave woman in a time when women were often docile. My mother was a single, divorced, working mother in an “Ozzie and Harriet” world—the 1950s. She was and has always been a role model for me. I’m so glad she was my mother. I miss you, Mom.

  Contents

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Maggie Sefton

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Craft and Recipe

  Special Excerpt from Knit One, Kill Two

  Cast of Characters

  Kelly Flynn—financial accountant and part-time sleuth, refugee from East Coast corporate CPA firm

  Steve Townsend—architect and builder in Fort Connor, Colorado, and Kelly’s boyfriend

  KELLY’S FRIENDS:

  Jennifer Stroud—real estate agent, part-time waitress

  Lisa Gerrard—physical therapist

  Megan Smith—IT consultant, another corporate refugee

  Marty Harrington—lawyer, Megan’s husband

  Greg Carruthers—university instructor, Lisa’s boyfriend

  Pete Wainwright—owner of Pete’s Porch Café in the back of Kelly’s favorite knitting shop, House of Lambspun

  LAMBSPUN FAMILY AND REGULARS:

  Mimi Shafer—Lambspun shop owner and knitting expert, known to Kelly and her friends as “Mother Mimi”

  Burt Parker—retired Fort Connor police detective, Lambspun spinner-in-residence

  Hilda and Lizzie von Steuben—spinster sisters, retired school-teachers, and exquisite knitters

  Curt Stackhouse—Colorado rancher, Kelly’s mentor and advisor

  Jayleen Swinson—Alpaca rancher and Colorado cowgirl

  Connie and Rosa—Lambspun shop personnel

  One

  “That’s a good boy,” Kelly Flynn said to her Rottweiler, Carl, who bent his black head to the side, eyes closed, as she rubbed the sweet spot behind his ear. “Ooooo, yes,” Kelly crooned as Carl sank down on the concrete patio in the cottage backyard.

  Carl began his own doggie version of harmony as the wonderful ear rub continued. The better to fully experience ear rub ecstasy, Kelly figured. It was a good thing, because she also noticed that Carl’s nemesis, Brazen Squirrel, was skittering across the top of the chain-link fence surrounding the cottage’s part-shady, part-sunny backyard, which looked out onto a city golf course.

  “Don’t look now, Carl, but your pal Brazen has a friend. Or maybe a girlfriend,” Kelly teased as she spotted a brownish gray squirrel racing right behind Brazen on the fence top.

  The mere mention of his nemesis was enough to interrupt even the most ecstatic of ear rubs. Carl’s black head jerked up and swiveled to check out the backyard. Brazen had just leaped onto a dangling branch of the huge overhanging cottonwood tree that stood right at the edge of Kelly’s yard and the golf course. The second squirrel was about to launch into the air as well when Carl launched himself, racing toward the fence, barking threats to the saucy intruders. He charged into the fence with both feet just as the brownish squirrel started to jump. By this time, Carl’s head was near the top of the fence. His deep baritone bark clearly startled brownish squirrel so much that the little creature jerked in mid-jump, missing the branch, and fell to the ground.

  Carl’s angry barking intensified, but Brazen Squirrel suddenly scampered down the overhanging tree branch as he loudly scolded Carl, while safely being out of reach. Brownish squirrel beat a hasty retreat up the huge tree trunk, Kelly noticed, and didn’t turn around until he or she was safely on a higher branch.

  “Look, Carl, you scared that new squirrel to death,” Kelly said, pointing above. Brownish squirrel peeked through the leaves.

  Not the slightest bit contrite, Carl kept barking at his chief nuisance, Brazen, and Brazen chattered back angrily in return. Kelly smiled at the Dog vs. Squirrel soap opera. It had been playing out in the trees overhead for ye
ars now. Generations of Brazen and his relatives had taken part.

  Kelly looked across the golf course to the outlines of buildings in Fort Connor’s Old Town and to the mountains in the distance. The foothills, as the locals called them, were the edge of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, and the snow-crested peaks rose up behind. Usually snow-crested, that is. Since it was August, most of the snow on the peaks had melted except on the north-facing sides. There, the sunshine never penetrated enough to melt their glacier-like frozen faces.

  “Keep those squirrels in line, Carl,” Kelly advised her dog as she slid the patio screen door closed. She’d taken care of her clients’ accounts earlier in the day and returned any phone calls. She deserved a break. Besides she needed a fresh cup of coffee, eyeing the empty glass pot sitting beside the coffeemaker on her counter.

  That decided it, and Kelly grabbed her large over-the-shoulder bag on the sofa near the desk in her cottage office and headed out the front door. Years before, when Kelly had returned to her childhood home of Fort Connor, the cottage had been her home as well as her office. Her aunt Helen’s funeral had brought Kelly back to the town she grew up in. But little did Kelly know at the time that the sad occasion would actually change her life forever by introducing all the wonderful people she’d met who knew her aunt.

  Pausing at the flowerboxes lining the sidewalk to her cottage, Kelly checked the annuals growing there. Fully in bloom in late summer and brash in their dramatic colors. Bright orange daisies, sunny yellow marigolds, and fiery red salvia.

  She started across the gravel and dirt driveway that separated her beige stucco, red-tile-roofed cottage from the larger look-alike farmhouse that sat on the shaded corner of two busy Fort Connor streets. Huge cottonwood trees surrounded what once was the farmhouse for Aunt Helen and Uncle Jim’s sheep farm. Years and years ago, those two busy streets were merely country roads on the edge of a bustling northern Colorado city.

  Now, shopping centers and fast food restaurants lined the other side of one street alongside a big box store. Apartments were diagonally across the street. And trendy craft breweries dotted the other street, which led directly into the oldest part of Fort Connor’s Old Town. The commercial heart of town sat beside the Cache La Poudre River, which flowed through Old Town Fort Connor.

  The House of Lambspun knitting shop came to life when Aunt Helen had to sell her former home and move into the cottage. As a CPA, Kelly had handled her aunt’s finances from a distance after Uncle Jim’s death. Since her aunt was an avid knitter and fiber artist, Helen told Kelly she was actually happy a friend had taken over her memory-filled farmhouse and transformed it into a paradise of fibers of all kinds. Yarns for knitting, crocheting, spinning, and weaving filled the rooms. Large spools of thread for all kinds of stitchery lined the walls as well. And the memories were still there, Helen always said.

  When Kelly returned for her aunt’s funeral, she stepped inside her aunt’s favorite knitting shop for the first time—and found the friendship and warmth that she lacked in her busy corporate CPA life back East. Kelly had moved into Aunt Helen’s cottage and made it—and Lambspun—her home.

  Kelly walked between two parked cars in the driveway and looked across the patio café at the back of the Lambspun shop. Pete’s Porch Café was closed now since breakfast and lunch were over, but she noticed someone sitting at a shady table beneath the cottonwood trees beside the tall stucco wall that surrounded one side of the shop and curved around the corner of the back patio. The girl appeared to be studying, because she had a book open on the table in front of her and a notebook beside.

  A perfect place to study, Kelly concluded as she walked toward the entrance door of the Lambspun shop. A black wrought iron table and chairs sat in the shaded nook beside the shop’s covered entryway. Brick flower boxes and the garden captured the bright August afternoon sun. It was hot, summertime hot but manageable, Kelly thought as she heaved open the large wooden door to Lambspun.

  Stepping inside the slightly air-conditioned foyer, Kelly spotted shop owner Mimi Shafer arranging a display of ribbon silk scarves across the open cabinet door of an antique dry sink in the corner. She turned at the sound of the tinkling bell over the entry door and smiled.

  “Well, hello, Kelly. I saw your car outside so I knew you were inside the cottage and working on your client accounts. I figured you’d drop by here this afternoon.”

  “You know me too well, Mimi,” Kelly said, fingering a sleeveless top that hung from a ceiling display. “Or my habits at least.”

  “I simply pay attention to your schedule, Kelly,” Mimi said, continuing to drape multicolored scarves over the dry sink cabinet door.

  “Did you finish that charity project you were working on the other day?” Kelly asked as she glanced over the colorful piles of yarns and fibers that filled the foyer and spilled over into the adjacent larger room.

  “You mean the local Salvation Army project? Yes, I finished one afghan and am starting another. There’s always a need when flooding or wildfires occur and people are displaced. I want to finish them before fall when our busy season starts.” She placed the last scarf beside the others, creating a rainbow of colors. “There now. That should do it. I wanted to put out these little scarves that my teenage girls’ knitting class finished last week. They each knitted up two scarves, one for themselves and the other to put in the shop to sell for charity. All proceeds will go to the Disaster Relief Fund.”

  Kelly walked over to the dry sink, its unfinished surface a perfect background for the colorful ribbon scarves. “I remember my first ribbon scarf years ago. When I was beginning to knit. I still have it, you know. I use it as a belt for my jeans.” She fingered the scarves.

  “Goodness, that was several years ago, wasn’t it?” Mimi glanced into the larger central yarn room, filled floor to ceiling with bins of colorful yarns and fibers.

  Kelly paused and counted back. “Seven years ago, in fact.”

  Mimi turned to Kelly, her blue eyes wide. “Oh, my word, you’re right. It has been seven years since you came back to Fort Connor for Helen’s funeral. That’s hard to believe.”

  “Time flies, as they say,” Kelly said with a grin. “Sometimes when I’m walking over here from the cottage, something catches my eye. The garden patio outside the café in the summer, when everything is so green. Or just looking over at the front door of Lambspun and remembering when I opened it for the first time. That makes me think back, and it’s amazing how many things have happened since I first came to Lambspun and met everyone. All of you.”

  Mimi’s blue eyes suddenly grew moist. “Ohhhh, Kelly, that’s beautiful,” she said softly.

  “Oh, no, I’ve made Mother Mimi cry,” Kelly teased. “Forgive me for waxing poetic. I won’t do it again.”

  Mimi reached for a tissue in her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “Oh, don’t mind me. I loved it. I love happy memories. And making new memories. Like now, with Megan and Marty and little Molly.”

  “The little firecracker?” Kelly said, laughing at the image of Megan and Marty’s nine-month-old daughter with a mop of red curls. “Oh, that reminds me. Megan told me at our ball game last night that she was going to drop in today and bring Molly.”

  Mimi’s eyes lit up, no trace of tears anymore. “Wonderful! I just love that baby!”

  “She’s more a toddler than a baby now. When we were all over there at Megan and Marty’s house last Friday night, Molly came charging out into the living room. Man, can she go fast on those little legs. She’s going to be a heckuva base runner when she gets older.”

  Mimi laughed her musical little laugh. “Oh, Kelly, leave it to you to picture Molly playing ball.”

  “Believe me, she’s going to be a natural. Both her parents are athletic. Mark my words, as they say,” Kelly teased.

  The front doorbell tinkled again and retired Fort Connor police detective Burt Parker walked into the fo
yer. His friendly face spread with a grin when he saw Mimi and Kelly together. “Well, well, two of my favorite women,” he joked as he walked over and gave Mimi a kiss on the cheek.

  “Kelly just told me Megan’s dropping by today with Molly,” Mimi said, giving him a hug.

  “Oh, great. Two more of my favorite women,” Burt said with a grin. “You can’t have too many beautiful women around, I always say.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Mimi said with a familiar wave of her hand as she went to retrieve her empty box of yarns. “What did that store say? Do they have any of the special thread we need for the tatting classes?”

  Burt shook his head. “I’m afraid not. And I’ve already called the rest of the stores in Northern Colorado. It looks like I’ll be taking a trip to Denver to check out those suppliers.”

  Mimi cocked her head to the side. “You know, I think I’ll go with you. We can stop for lunch at that café we discovered the last time we went down there.”

  “I think that’s a great idea,” Kelly chimed in, uninvited. “I love to see you two break out of the routine and do something for yourselves. You deserve it.” She gave a definitive nod of her head.

  “Well, you heard that, didn’t you?” Burt said to Mimi. “I guess we have our marching orders.”

  “Why don’t you check out the list of shops and give them a call,” Mimi said as she started through the curved opening to the loom room.

  The largest weaving loom in the shop, the Mother Loom as Kelly called it, sat right in the middle of the room that led toward the front of the shop and the counter. There, Lambspun staff handled the customers and their purchases, while other staffers sat at the winding table, winding fat balls of yarn from loopy draped skeins of wool. Hanging on the walls were examples of every kind of fiber art imaginable. Exotic shawls, sweaters, scarves and mittens, sleeveless summer clothes and hats from soft-rolled edge baby hats, to collapsible cloches and floppy-brim felted hats.

  “I’ll do that,” Burt said as Mimi headed toward the front of the shop. “You have a game tonight, Kelly? Or is it Steve’s team? I can’t keep you folks straight.”