Lace and Lies

by Nancy Warren

  “Years?” This was almost as good as the crazed random maniac theory. “You mean whoever killed her wasn’t related to the TV show or my shop in any way?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’ve never thought of knitting as a vicious activity before.”

  “It isn’t,” Rafe said, lifting Nyx off his lap. He stood up and began to pace. “No, I don’t think the viciousness was directed at the hobby of knitting itself. It was directed at you, here, at this shop, or at Enid Selfe and her connection with this shop.”

  “But we’ve already been through all that. If it wasn’t Hester, and I don’t think it was, then who would be that angry?”

  “You’ve done something that’s brought out some deep-seated rage in somebody. Possibly someone rather unstable.”

  “But what? The only thing remotely different is—” I think it hit us at the same time, and we stared at each other. At the very same moment, we said, “The television show.”

  Could that be it? Could someone be so enraged with the production company or Teddy Lamont or somebody associated with Larch Wools that they would want to destroy one of the knitters? It seemed a little far-fetched, but so was finding a middle-aged woman with knitting needles sticking out of her chest. And yet, it had happened. To me.

  “Okay, so, if someone wanted to hurt the production company, maybe stop filming, I can see why they would kill someone in my shop. It’s definitely interrupted the filming. But why Enid? Why not kill the producer or a cameraman?” I gulped. “Or Teddy?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “The killer knew Enid would come to Cardinal Woolsey’s late at night if Teddy asked her. I think we have to start there. Whoever killed her was someone she knew.”

  “It could’ve been someone she’d met at the book signing. She was certainly making the rounds.” And he would know, since she’d been hitting on him.

  “If someone wanted to derail the TV show they should have left Enid Selfe alive. She was making Teddy crazy with her questions and criticism.”

  Rafe paused to look at me. “Do you think Teddy Lamont did this?”

  “No. But I can’t think of anyone who would’ve done this. Teddy certainly had a motive in that she was ruining the show and doing her best to make him look like a shoddy knitter and a bad teacher.”

  “Do we know where Teddy was last night? Does he have an alibi?”

  “Rafe, it was after midnight. Everyone except you and my other undead friends is usually asleep at that time. No one can have a decent alibi. They’ll all say they were sleeping in bed, and for most of them, that will be true.”

  “That’s a good point. Well, wouldn’t Douglas have noticed if Teddy wasn’t there?”

  “He could be a deep sleeper. He might not have noticed. Or he could be in on it. Maybe one of them lured the woman here and distracted her while the other one clubbed her over the head.” In fact, if Teddy had anything to do with it, I was pretty sure that would’ve been how it went down. Teddy didn’t look like the murdering type to me, but Douglas? I thought that Douglas was to Teddy the way Rafe was to me. He could be civilized and mild-mannered, but anybody who hurt the person he loved was going to pay. Douglas, I suspected, could be ruthless.

  Rafe seemed to ponder this theory for a minute and then asked, “But how would they have gotten in?”

  Oh, he was not going to like what I had to tell him next. I cringed as I said, “I gave Teddy a key.”

  I didn’t have to wait long for his blast of angry words. “You gave a virtual stranger a key to your shop? Which connects to your home?” His voice rose a little, and it continued to rise as he finished his thought. “Where you live alone?” By the time he got to alone, the word seemed to echo around the flat like a squash ball bouncing off the walls of an enclosed court.

  “He’s not a stranger. I carry his magazines. I’ve seen him on YouTube. He’s nice.”

  Rafe let out a slow breath. “You’d better tell me who else had keys.”

  “Molly. Becks. The cameraman because he had to set up early. Molly assured me they are all bonded, and she personally vouched for them.”

  When he raised his brows, I said, “Molly is the producer, and Becks—her real name is Rebecca—is her assistant. It just made sense since they were going to be in and out of here all the time. I think Molly might’ve had a key cut for the lighting and props guys.” At his horrified expression, I said, “I’m not here all the time. It was much easier since they were coming at the crack of dawn and leaving whenever they felt like it just to give them a key rather than me having to keep running downstairs to let them in.”

  “Anybody else?”

  I tried to think. “No, I think that’s it.”

  “You didn’t give out keys to all the participants in the knitting show? I’m sure they all seemed nice.”

  “Okay, you don’t have to be sarcastic. I did not give out keys to the participants because I knew I’d be there at the same time so I could let them in.”

  He shook his head. “Still, how hard would it be for somebody to pocket one of those keys and have another one made? There are so many floating around, you’d never know.”

  I felt kind of grumpy. “You should put Alice and Charlie on the list too. We have each other’s keys in case one of us needs to use the other’s space. Which turned out to be a good thing today, when I had to move the whole enterprise over to Frogg’s.” The Miss Watts next door also had my key, but if Rafe didn’t remember that, I wasn’t going to tell him. Harrington Street was a friendly place, and most of the retailers had been here a long time. We knew each other; we trusted each other. I didn’t want to start being the kind of person who thought one of the most popular knitting gurus in the world might be a murderer. At least, not until it was proven.

  I could tell Rafe was holding himself back from blasting me for my over-trusting nature, but it was an effort. He paced a bit quicker and, when he had himself under control, asked me for the printout of all the students, and he asked for a crew list as well. I printed out two fresh copies, one for each of us.

  He said, “Theodore could be a big help here. Maybe he can check into the backgrounds of some of the people on these lists. I’ll focus on Teddy and Douglas, since you can’t seem to accept the possibility that they could be brutal murderers.”

  “And me?” I asked him sweetly. “What am I allowed to use my pretty little head for?”

  “You will keep your eyes and ears open. And, as much as you can in casual conversation, find out more about each of the people in the class.”

  I nodded. “So we’re looking at two possibilities then. One, that some person or persons had it in for the production company, Teddy Lamont or Cardinal Woolsey’s. And two, that person or persons had a real hate on specifically for Enid Selfe.”

  He said, “Except, of course, there’s the possibility that both are true. Somebody wanted to stop the production or cause either Teddy or Cardinal Woolsey’s trouble, and perhaps they chose Enid Selfe because they also had it in for Enid.

  “And Lucy,” he said, his pale eyes boring into mine, “do not forget that whoever did that terrible thing is capable of killing again.”

  “I know. I will keep my eyes and ears open, and if I hear anything else downstairs, I’ll call the police.”

  He made a sound that I swear was more of the growl of a wild animal than a human sound. “You won’t be anywhere near the shop until this murder’s solved. You’re coming home with me.”

  Seriously, I did appreciate that Rafe hadn’t got used to the fact that men couldn’t treat women the way they did when he originally came into manhood during Queen Elizabeth’s time. And I mean the first Queen Elizabeth. But he could still shock me with his high-handedness.

  I put my hands on my hips and stared up at him. It’s always hard to stare down someone who is taller than you are. “I am not going to your house. I can go to Violet’s place.”

  “Violet is a silly witch who can’t even con
trol a love potion. She lives alone and has no self-defense skills or military training. She can’t keep you safe.”

  “Well, that’s where I’m going.” Probably.

  “Lucy, you can come to my home willingly, or I can throw you over my shoulder and carry you. The choice is yours.”

  Chapter 12

  I decided to ignore his barbarian suggestion and bent my attention, instead, to the list of knitting student bios. “I hate to think one of them did it.” I’d come to like this odd collection of knitters.

  Rafe said, “You’ve now spent a full day of knitting with these people and the better part of a very stressful day, when they were all interviewed by police and treated like murder suspects. People reveal a lot about themselves when they are under stress. And you’re very observant. What did you notice?”

  It was nice of him to say that I was observant, but I was also under stress. Sure, it was bad to be interviewed by the police about a murder, but it was a hair more stressful when you were the one who found the dead person. However, I knew he was right, and I tried to focus.

  Since we were both looking at the paper, we naturally went in the order that the students were listed. Enid was the first one. Even looking at her picture, grainy as it was from my photocopier, I felt the awful sadness that her life had been cut off so abruptly. She’d had plans. She’d wanted to get married again. She was knitting lace for her daughter to wear at Oxford.

  She hadn’t even enjoyed her last day on earth. She’d been so filled with irritation at Teddy that his knitting didn’t come up to her standards that I felt even worse for her.

  “Enid Selfe. I only know what’s in this bio and what she told us during class. She lived in Stow-on-the-Wold. Her bio says she’s a homemaker. I know she was married three times and on the lookout for number four.” I thought of the way she’d been batting her eyes at Rafe and resting her well-manicured hand on the chest that held his cold heart. “You probably know more about her than I do.”

  I could see him focusing on her photograph, almost as though trying to bring her face into focus. “I’ve met so many people in the course of my existence. I simply cannot keep track of them all. She reminded me that we’d met at an event for Friends of the Bodleian.”

  While I understood that he had a point about the number of people he’d met in his long existence, it hadn’t been that long ago. “Enid Selfe was the one hitting on you at the book signing. You must’ve smelled her with your sensitive nose because she’d doused herself with perfume and freshened up her makeup before wandering over to talk to you.”

  His nostrils quivered. “I do remember that smell. Why do women insist on drenching themselves with scent? Back in my day, there was logic behind the practice. We used perfumes to cover up the smells of the sewers and the odor of unwashed humanity. But today, people shower every five minutes. The last thing they need is to add artificial scent.”

  “I never wear perfume.”

  He looked at me in a rather disturbing way that made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. “I had noticed.”

  His nostrils quivered again, and I knew that even now he could smell me. Awareness quivered down my spine and made me hold my gaze firmly to the papers in front of me. “You said she was a Friend of the Bodleian?”

  “She was. One of her former husbands was something to do with the government. He had an interest in old manuscripts. She used to come with him. But then I didn’t see them anymore. There was some sort of scandal, I believe.”

  At the word scandal, my ears perked up. “Scandal? What sort of scandal? The kind that leads to murder?”

  “Some sordid affair. He ran off with someone else, I think.” He looked up at my ceiling and half-closed his eyes. “No. She was the one who ran off with someone else. That’s right.”

  Well, she’d certainly wanted to run off with Rafe the other night. “Do you think she ran off with someone she met at the book launch?” I shook my head. “Knowing Enid, she’d have wanted to see bank balances first.”

  He looked at me. “You really didn’t like that woman, did you?”

  “No one liked that woman. But I’m not just being catty.” I looked over at Nyx. “No offense, Nyx. But I think she really did collect rich men. Or maybe all men. I don’t know.”

  What else did I know about Enid? I thought back to the general conversation we’d exchanged over our knitting. It wasn’t very consequential, not the kind of thing I really paid that much attention to. If I’d known she was going to be murdered, I’d have listened more closely. “I got the impression that money and status are very important to her. She dropped the name of the designer who decorated their home in Stow-on-the-Wold. Teddy knew the guy and looked impressed.”

  “How bourgeois.”

  “I know her daughters went to some fancy, expensive school. She made a big deal about how she had to throw her weight around at that school and make sure the girls got the proper instruction, and she was determined that they go to one of the top universities.”

  “And did they?”

  “I don’t think they’ve finished whatever you call high school over here. But she was convinced the eldest was coming here, to Oxford.”

  “What subject will she read?”

  “I don’t think Enid cared what they studied so long as they went to the right schools so she could drop into conversation, ‘My daughter was at Oxford’ or ‘Of course my youngest is at Cambridge.’”

  “So she’s a snob. Not something that usually gets one killed. At least not in this country.”

  “I got the feeling that the only thing she cared about, apart from herself, was her daughters. She mentioned having to separate the older from an undesirable relationship.”

  “No doubt the girl was flirting with the dancing master or the under-gardener.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “If this were the 1800s.”

  “Well, whatever today’s version is.” He looked incredibly wise. “People don’t change very much, you know.”

  I sighed. “Probably just someone who wasn’t rich or titled at least.”

  Rafe glanced at his watch. “You should pack a bag. We need to get on our way.”

  Were we back to this? “Rafe, I am not sleeping at your house tonight.”

  “Nonsense. Of course you are. I’ve asked William to prepare dinner out on the terrace. He’s gone to a lot of trouble for you, Lucy. And he gets very cross if he has to hold a meal.”

  I wanted to stamp my feet in frustration. He’d really taken advantage of me this time. He knew I liked William and I really liked his cooking. But I could play hardball too. “Fine. I’ll come and eat William’s no doubt delicious dinner, but I’m taking my own car, and I’m coming back here afterward.”

  He strode forward to me in two strides and grasped my shoulders. “Lucy. You know that if you return here, I will spend the entire night prowling around. With the heightened police security and nervous residents of Harrington Street, I’ll attract attention. Is that what you want?”

  He did not play fair. “You just said there will be heightened police security. You don’t need to prowl around.”

  His eyes were steady on my face and oh-so-serious. “May I remind you that there is a deranged murderer on the loose and about thirty-five keys to your shop door floating around? Do you really think that anything would keep me away?” He held my shoulders even tighter. “I have to protect you. I must.”

  I suppose it was that almost desperate-sounding appeal in his voice. As though there had been women in the past that he hadn’t been able to save. It annoyed me to give in, but I did at last. “Fine,” I said, letting him know how cross I was. “But I’m only staying tonight.”

  Instead of arguing with me further, he simply said, “Thank you,” and I felt how much he cared. I knew it was concern and affection driving him, but we were going to talk about this controlling behavior very soon.

  Nyx yawned and stretched. I said, “Is she invited too?”

  “You d
on’t even have to ask.”

  It didn’t take me long to pack. I pulled out an overnight bag and threw in a couple of summer dresses, two cardigans, some loungewear and underwear. I kept a toiletry bag in my bathroom for the odd time when I traveled. “Do you have a hair dryer?” I yelled from the bathroom.

  “Of course,” he said, sounding offended that I would even ask. I rolled my eyes at myself in the mirror in the bathroom. No doubt this was going to be like staying in a seven-star hotel, which perversely annoyed me even more. If I was sleeping on the couch so he could look after me, that would be one thing, but to stay in an elegant manor house, no doubt in a luxurious guest bedroom, seemed less like escaping danger than a retreat at the spa. Not that I had any objection to a retreat at the spa. I just didn’t want Rafe to be providing it.

  I liked to choose my own spas.

  I didn’t really like driving, even though I did have the beautiful new car that Rafe and the other vampires had given me for my twenty-sixth birthday, so it wasn’t very difficult for Rafe to persuade me that I should drive with him. He said we could continue talking about all the other students while we were driving. Also, he claimed that he had business in Oxford the next morning so was going to be driving back anyway. It might even have been true.

  Once we were purring along in the black Tesla, he said, “Ryan’s next, I think.”

  I looked at the bios, though I had to maneuver around my cat. Nyx wasn’t the type to travel in a crate. She was sitting on my lap. Her tail twitched back and forth so I felt as though I were being dusted.

  “That’s right. Ryan is in his thirties. His grandmother taught him to knit. I think he said she’s Jamaican. Which gives him a connection with Annabel, who’s also Jamaican.”

  Rafe glanced over at me. “Ryan’s Jamaican? He looked Caucasian to me.”

  “Right. You’re right. He was adopted by a mixed-race couple. I think he said his mother’s Jamaican and his father’s Irish.” I nearly jumped up and down on the seat. “Oh, oh, and when we were talking, Enid asked him when his birthday was. It turned out she gave up a baby for adoption who would have been about the same age as Ryan.”