A Stoneybrook Mystery Collection

by Eryn Scott

  She waved a dismissive hand at him just as their food showed up. “I’m fine. What’s she going to do? Stab me with knitting needles?”

  Hadley and Suzanne laughed as they all tucked into their dinners, but Hadley didn’t miss the worried glance that passed between Luke and Paul.

  11

  The next day during her lunch break, Hadley grabbed a granola bar then headed to Main Street Skeins to talk with Louise. As if she needed confirmation about what they’d discussed yesterday in regards to what kind of car Louise drove, her silver Infinity sat parked in the spot just in front of the shop.

  Hadley took a deep breath, stepping under the red-and-white striped awning and then pushed open the door. A few people milled around—two locals and a couple she didn’t recognize. But the people inside were quickly forgotten as she took in the shelves upon shelves of woolen rainbows. Scents of washed and dyed wool, fibrous dust, and floral perfume hung in the air. The faint clicking of needles threaded itself through the whispered conversation of the customers—or maybe they weren’t whispered, but the wool just seemed to deaden the noise.

  Hadley reached fingers down to the basket nearest the door as if by instinct, and sank them through the strands of a downy, soft wool of the most vibrant color blue she could imagine.

  “Hadley, honey. What can I do for you?” Louise asked from behind the wooden desk that served as the register.

  Paul and Hadley’s father had made that desk for Edith. It had been years before Hadley and Paul were born, of course, but they’d heard the story many times. The rich mahogany had been a stubborn wood, very difficult to work with, but by the time it was stained, the desk was an absolute masterpiece.

  Extracting her fingers from the blue yarn, Hadley walked forward. “I wanted to pick up a skein or two of that pretty variegated wool my mom’s always making socks out of. I think it’s about time I tried my hand at knitting in the round.” Hadley shot a smile at Louise who cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “Hmm … you knitting in the round?” Louise set the project she’d been working on down on the desk in front of her. “From what I remember, dear, you could barely knit in the straight. Have you been practicing?”

  Clearing her throat, Hadley ignored the heat racing up her neck and into her cheeks. “Uh, yeah. Mom’s been working with me a little.”

  Louise’s face stayed tight and untrusting for a moment before relaxing into a smile. “Okay, it’s your funeral, though. Socks are a difficult project to start with.”

  Talking about funerals, when Edith’s would be set soon, made Hadley’s knees feel a little wobbly, but she followed Louise all the same as she walked over to one of the colorful walls of yarn.

  “So what’s going to happen to the place now that Edith’s passed?” Hadley asked, keeping her voice low as to not disturb the other customers. Even though she already knew Louise had gotten the place in the will, she was testing her to see if she would hide the fact.

  “Well, she’s actually left it to me.” Louise beamed, stopping to look back at Hadley who blinked in surprise.

  “Oh? Wow, that’s great.” Hadley internally sighed, not sure if she’d been hoping for the woman to outright lie to her, but it sure would’ve made things a little clearer.

  Louise nodded. “It really is …” Her gaze flitted across Hadley’s concerned features, and she schooled hers into a scowl. “I mean, it’s a silver lining in an otherwise terrible situation. For Edith, though, I’ll keep it going. I’ll even take over as the head of the knitting club. It’ll be just like she never left us.” Louise giggled. “I might even have to leave some of her infamous notes around town to keep everyone on their toes.”

  Hadley cleared her throat. There Louise went again, saying callous things about Edith. Her mention of notes brought to mind the one Hadley had encountered in Edith’s kitchen the morning she discovered the woman dead in her home. Had Edith been in more than just a tiff with someone? Was there a suspect they hadn’t thought of last night? She made a mental note to investigate that further. At the moment, she needed to focus on this suspect.

  Louise selected a beautiful purple, pink, and orange mixture that reminded Hadley of a mountain sunset.

  "Oh," she said, the word almost a gasp as she took in the variegated strands of wool.

  "You'll be best off using one skein per sock since this is a worsted weight, which means it's a little thicker than sport weight, dear."

  Hadley felt like she was making her first batch of jam all over again, green and unsure.

  "And you'll need a good, small pair of circular needles." Louise shoved the two skeins of yarn at Hadley before walking toward a wall full of different needle packs. She picked two off their racks and held them forward. "A lot of people love bamboo because it's so light, but I prefer the metal because it makes for smoother transitions with your stitches."

  She showed Hadley packets of the thinnest needles she'd ever seen. Attached to the end of each needle was a plastic chord, just a touch smaller in diameter than the needles themselves. It was so long it coiled in length a few times before meeting up with the other needle. Hadley read the package: Size 0, 26 inches.

  "Oh. I'm just making feet socks, not Christmas stockings or anything. I don't need anything that long."

  Louise chuckled and shook her head. “If you want to knit in the round, Magic Loop is the best way. You want a long loop so it's easier to deal with and you don't feel confined. With this technique, you won’t be using the whole length all at once."

  Hadley felt her forehead scrunch together in question. Her brain officially hurt. Why hadn't she said she wanted to make a scarf for her mother?

  Seeing her confusion, Louise placed a hand on Hadley's. "Why don't you come to our knitting group tomorrow? We meet here. There will be enough of us to teach you."

  Gulping, Hadley said, "Uh, sure. Okay. That would be great."

  “I’ll write up a nice easy pattern for you too, and bring it Thursday. It’s the one I started with and still use when I make socks to this day. Toe up is the way to go.”

  Hadley wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Louise bundled up a few more things she deemed essentials and then rang Hadley’s items up.

  Finally regaining her mental balance after the whirlwind of yarn buying, Hadley remembered why she'd come in here in the first place.

  "Sure is weird with Edith gone." Hadley shook her head and looked at Louise.

  The woman sucked in a slow breath. "That it is."

  "I wish I had gotten to see her one last time." Hadley handed over her card as Louise totaled up her order. "I suppose everyone who loses someone feels the same, though. When did you last see her?"

  Focused on Louise's face, how it seemed to immediately lose all color, Hadley almost missed when Louise handed her card back to her. Once the card was free from her grip, Louise wrung her hands together, looking down at them like a nervous little girl.

  “That’s the worst part,” Louise said, finally looking up from her hands. “The last time I saw her, we had a fight.”

  “And when was that?” Hadley resisted leaning closer.

  Louise’s face pinched. “I know it seems like I hated the woman. She was tough—yes. Nit-picky as all get out—absolutely. But she also cared more than she let on. I’ve been working here for ten years and we’d developed a sort of comfortable routine together.”

  Hadley wanted to snort at the fake sentiment. She’d seen Edith yelling at Louise about how she was unpacking yarn just last week. Nothing about that situation seemed at all comfortable. She did have to admit that Louise seemed emotional about the woman now. Was it possible it was out of regret?

  The act happening in front of her distracted Hadley enough that she almost didn’t catch the fact that Louise had completely avoided her question. Knowing a pointed, “Where were you on the morning of …” question would sound too accusatory, Hadley tried to gently lead the conversation back toward the fight.

  “What was your fight about?”<
br />
  Louise grimaced. “I’m so embarrassed now. It’s …” She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose. “It was about Ansel, actually.”

  Hadley put a hand on the table for balance, her bewilderment rocking her back a bit. “What?” The cat?

  “I know.” Louise dabbed the tissue under her nose. “I wanted her to let me watch him. I didn’t understand why she would only let you be the one to house-sit for her.”

  Hadley couldn’t speak. She opened her mouth a few times in failed attempts, but it just clamped shut all over again once she realized she didn’t know what to say.

  Finally, after a deep breath, Hadley asked, “You got in a fight about a cat?”

  “I love that cat, way more than she ever did.” At that moment, Louise’s fingers curled into a fist around Hadley’s receipt. “I hear you’ve been keeping him. He wasn’t mentioned in the will, so she mustn’t have updated the thing since she got him. But if you don’t want him, I’d love to take him for you.”

  Grabbing her receipt and her bag in one quick swoop, Hadley sputtered, “Uh, no thanks, I’ve got him. He’s with me.” And then she all but ran out of the knitting shop.

  It wasn’t until she was a block down Main Street that she realized she was squeezing the paper bag with her purchases way too tight and might be damaging the knitting accouterments she just dropped a good sixty dollars on.

  Loosening her grip, she continued on toward the jam kitchen, replaying everything that had just happened, in her mind. If Louise had been the one to kill Edith and had wanted Ansel so badly, why wouldn’t she have just taken him that morning?

  Being in possession of the dead woman’s cat would certainly be a damning piece of evidence against her, I guess, Hadley mused as she approached her building. Louise would’ve had to leave Ansel there and hope she could gain ownership after the fact.

  Hadley shook the thought out of her mind as her hand closed around the jam kitchen’s door handle. That wasn’t going to happen. She had Ansel, and she was going to keep taking care of him until the police told her differently.

  Thinking of the police made her thoughts shift to Paul, and with that, frustration overtook her again. Ugh. She hadn’t gotten Louise’s alibi for that morning. Paul had sent her for one thing, and Hadley had managed to leave without it.

  As she booted up her computer and began pulling up orders to fill, Hadley had to wonder if Louise had just forgotten to answer her question about when she’d last seen Edith, or if she’d brought Ansel up on purpose because she knew it would fluster and distract Hadley.

  At least she already had an excuse to go back the next day for the knitting club. She could ask the question again then. Hadley eyed her bag of knitting supplies sitting on her desk. In the meantime, she was going to have to practice her knit stitch. Right now, that sounded like a fate worse than death.

  12

  Paul stopped by for lunch the following day, bringing sandwiches for them to eat while they chatted about the case. Though, eat seemed like a tame word to describe how he inhaled his sandwich.

  Hadley wrinkled her nose, flicking a finger near his face. “You eat like a wild animal. What, were you raised in the woods?”

  He smiled and nodded, then wiped a napkin over his beard to get rid of the mess. “I was, actually. You were there.” He patted his stomach. “That was good. I was starting to see double.”

  To be fair, if her brother didn’t eat every hour, he turned hangry.

  Hadley took a sensibly sized bite of her own sandwich and leaned back in her desk chair. “How’d it go talking to Dirk yesterday?” she asked.

  Paul eyed her for a second. “How’d it go talking to Louise?”

  “I asked first.” Hadley avoided his gaze as she crossed one leg over the other.

  “Yeah, but you also have the Hadley’s-hiding-something lip pinch going on.” He pointed to the corners of her mouth.

  “Nothing bad; I promise.” She put down her remaining sandwich half and held up three fingers.

  “Scouts honor?” he asked.

  Hadley shook her head. “Hunger Games. May the odds be ever in your favor because I’m not telling.”

  Paul chuckled and then sighed. “Come on, we’re twins. You can’t keep things from me. Spill.”

  Crossing her arms, Hadley said, “Okay. It’s just embarrassing for me because I’m such a bad interrogator. I got flustered, and she managed to slip out of answering the one question we needed her to answer about where she was that morning.”

  Narrowing his eyes, Paul asked, “How’d she do that?”

  “Mentioned taking Ansel away from me,” Hadley mumbled, looking down.

  “You’re getting attached to that little cat, aren’t you?”

  Hadley’s mouth tugged up into a reluctant smile. Just that morning he’d jumped right onto her shoulders while she’d been applying her makeup and had settled there like a purring scarf while she finished getting ready.

  Paul shrugged. “Don’t worry about her. I won’t let her take him from you.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t worry either. I’m going to knitting club tonight, so I’ll get her alibi then for sure.” Hadley squared her shoulders, determined not to let the older woman avoid her questions next time.

  At that moment, the back door swung open and Suzanne entered. Her gaze traveled immediately to the extra sandwich sitting on the table. Her fingers wrapped around it, and she had it open and in her mouth within thirty seconds.

  Paul’s eyebrows rose. “How do you know that wasn’t my sandwich?” He crossed his arms over his chest and sat back.

  Suze froze in the middle of a large bite. A piece of lettuce hung out from the corner of her mouth. Her wide eyes narrowed as they moved across Paul’s face. After a second, she chewed the bite and swallowed.

  “You ate yours already. Wanna know how I detected that information?” she asked, holding up her pointer finger and continuing before Paul even had a chance to answer. “You’ve been here for at least fifteen minutes longer than I have. I know this because I am at least that late everywhere I go. Not to mention, there’s no way a sandwich would’ve lasted even two minutes in front of you uneaten. Which means that this sandwich was for me.”

  Paul smirked.

  “And secondly.” Suze held up a second finger. “You have crumbs in your beard.” She flicked her two extended fingers at his facial hair and then went back to devouring her own meal.

  Paul’s cheeks turned red. He swiped self-consciously at his facial hair before Suze winked at him and added, “Just kidding with you. But I made you look, right?”

  Hadley chuckled. “He also knows better than to get me food without getting something for Suzanne.”

  “True. Last time I tried that, I ended up with a Suze on the other end of my sandwich.” Paul shook his head then turned to her. “Hopefully those detective skills are proof that you got more information from your suspect than Had did from hers.”

  Mouth full, Suze’s brown eyes focused on Hadley’s in question.

  Hadley’s shoulders slumped forward as she relayed the little information she’d learned from her visit with Louise. “I left with sixty dollars’ worth of knitting paraphernalia and zero answers.” She sighed.

  Suze mumbled, “Mummer, orree ad” through a mouthful of bread.

  “You learned some good information, though,” Paul commented. “We know she wanted the cat but didn’t get him, and that she didn’t know Edith was leaving her the knitting shop.”

  Hadley dipped her head in concession. “Yeah. She seemed genuinely surprised about that, and she went all sappy on me about Edith, though she still managed to work in a dig about her late boss. I don’t know. I guess Louise might not be the sure-thing suspect I thought she was.”

  Swallowing a rather large bite, Suze smiled. “Which only makes my suspect pull ahead in the race.”

  “Race?” Paul asked, incredulous.

  “Yeah, like a race to jail.” Suze shrugged. “Anyway, I may or may not
have crashed Hazel’s party the other night after I got back from our dinner at Seven Stones.”

  “No way.” Hadley gasped.

  “Uh huh. Just let myself in like I used to when I was little.”

  Suzanne lived in her late grandma’s house, right next door to Hazel Smith. When Suze’s grandma had passed away a few years ago, she’d left the small house to Suze, who’d lived there since.

  “So? What happened? What’d you find out?” Paul asked.

  Lowering the sandwich away from her mouth, Suze leaned forward. “I’d bet all my money that Robert is our killer. Our good ol’ buddy, Roberto has sure changed during his time in the icebox.”

  “Is that what they call prison these days?” Hadley asked Paul, who shook his head.

  “I’m serious, though,” Suze continued. “Robert—skinny, number-crunching, accounting-club-president Robert must’ve spent his whole six months doing push-ups or pull-ups … while doing all the crunches. He is ripped and has a definite chip on those sculpted shoulders of his.”

  Paul cleared his throat, and Hadley noticed he was clenching his jaw a little.

  “Sorry, but the guy looked hot.” Suze waved a hand to fan her face.

  During high school, Hadley and Tyler had been together, so she’d been off-limits for other guys. Suze, however, had been the object of many boys’ affections—with her bouncy brown curls and her large doe eyes—including Robert Smith. And even though he was two years older than they were, the guy had been too quiet and awkward to even spit out a full sentence whenever he tried to talk with Suzanne, let alone ask her on a date.

  “Prison was good to him.” Suze finished with a wink.

  “You cannot be serious.” Paul stood, causing his stool to scrape loudly against the tile floor of Hadley’s jam kitchen. “You just told us you think he could’ve murdered Edith.”

  Suze shrugged. “I didn’t say I was going to date him.”

  “So the only reason you think he might be the murderer is because he’s strong and angry?” Hadley asked as Paul seemed to calm down, returning to his seat.