by Molly Macrae
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“We’ll have to make phone calls, too,” she said. “Umpteen.”
“I can wait.” He poured himself a cup of coffee, ate one muffin in two bites, and took another.
This was different. Clod with no place else he needed to be? No one else he needed to annoy? I looked at Joe. He shrugged.
Mel shrugged, too. “Sorry I can’t help with the paperwork,” she said. She got up and stacked some of the dirty dishes on her arm. “You want any breakfast to go with your coffee and muffins, Cole?”
“Eighteen Wheeler would be great.”
Joe took notes as each of us thought back and recalled the who, where, and when of people disappearing and reappearing from our teams. On paper it was a more complicated choreography than we’d thought.
Clod glanced at it. “Don’t forget to make your phone calls,” he said. “Can I get anyone another coffee?”
He was thanking the waitress who brought his Eighteen Wheeler when Darla, crisp and serious in her khaki and brown, came in through the back door. She had her usual smile and wave for us, but they were subdued.
“Message from Shorty,” she said to Clod. She nodded toward the door and he got up. They went as far as the vestibule and stopped there to confer.
“Did you notice his radio’s been silent?” I asked.
“Did you notice he isn’t wearing it?” Joe asked. “What do you suppose that means?”
“The better to sneak up on us, my dear,” said Thea. “All that static and lawman babble spoil a good surprise. I hate to leave this fabulous party, but I need to open the library. I’m doing Little Red Riding Hood at story time this morning, with a wolf puppet guaranteed to scare small children. See you for Fast and Furious.” She wrapped two muffins in a napkin, put them in her purse, and left.
Joe was still watching Darla and Clod. “I wonder if she’s telling him what I was going to tell you.” He took another envelope out of a jacket pocket and handed it to me. “Different pictures,” he said. “Put it away; here he comes.”
“News?” Ardis asked as Clod sat back down. For the veteran repertory actress she was, I thought she overplayed the bonhomie in her greeting. From the suspicious look he gave her, he thought so, too.
“Where’s Thea?”
“Time waits for no librarian,” Ardis said. “We need to be going, too. And Handmade opens at noon, doesn’t it, Ten?”
“It does. Can I give you a lift home, Ernestine?” He started to get up.
“Hold up,” Clod said. “I want to lay some facts out for you. I know you aren’t going to stay away from this investigation. It’s a given that you’re all nosy and stubborn. Please believe me when I say that isn’t an entirely bad thing. But I want to try to impress on you—again—that this isn’t a game.”
“Don’t look just at me,” I said.
“I’m talking about all of you.”
“What facts did you want to lay out?” Joe asked.
“Best they can tell, a piece of the same strip of crochet found with Ms. Weems was used to kill McPhee.”
“Do you think it was one of us?” Ardis asked. She circled her finger around the table. “One of us?”
“One of your inner cabal?” Clod asked. “Probably not. But someone who knew what you were going to do? We have to consider the possibility.”
“Is anyone else in danger?” Ernestine asked.
“With the additional death of Ms. Weems, we have to consider that possibility, too. And with that in mind, Sheriff Haynes suggested that Handmade Blue Plum be canceled.”
Joe gave a minimal shake of his head.
“Ten’s right,” Clod said. “The craft show will go on. One other thing, and then you can leave me to eat my breakfast in peace. Deputy Dye just informed me that they’ve found McPhee’s truck. There’s some hope that it will yield information that will further the investigation.”
“What year is it?” Ernestine asked. “His truck, I mean. I know what year this is.”
“Older model. I don’t know specifics. Why?”
“No special reason.” She smiled at Clod, picked up the pencil Joe had put down, and doodled half a dozen shapes that looked like coat hangers.
“Are we free to go now, Coleridge?” Ardis asked.
“Did you finish the list I asked you for? All your cross-referencing and phone consultations?”
“As far as we were able,” Ardis said. “Kath or I will drop it by the department later.” She and I got up and pushed in our chairs.
“Or I can stop by the shop and save you a trip,” he said. We watched him pour syrup on his pancakes, bacon, and eggs. “Yeah,” he said, “why don’t I do that? I’ll stop by later.”
Joe helped Ernestine on with her coat and took her arm. Before walking away, he asked the question that had puzzled him earlier. “Where’s your radio, Cole?”
“In my desk, Ten. And there’s another fact I should’ve laid out.” He held up a finger and put a fork loaded with pancake, egg, and syrup in his mouth. We waited while he chewed and swallowed. “I am on what’s called administrative—well, we’re all friends here, so let’s skip the formal designation. The plain fact is, I am suspended.”
Chapter 25
Ardis wanted to sit right back down and hear all about Clod’s suspension. Joe and I convinced her to let him finish his breakfast in peace, quiet, and whatever dignity someone who pours syrup on eggs is due.
“There is no way on this earth I will ever believe that he did something illegal,” she said after we’d opened the shop for the day.
“Hard to imagine,” I agreed.
“Impossible.”
“You can ask him when he comes by to pick up the list.”
“Lord love a duck.” She dropped onto the stool behind the counter. “You don’t suppose this means he’ll have so much time on his hands that he’ll spend some of it here, do you? I’m not sure I could bear to teach that man to knit or crochet.”
“How about macramé? Say, Ardis, why would Gladys Weems have called Cole a quack?” I told her about seeing Clod and Gladys at the courthouse Tuesday morning.
“Maybe it has something to do with the suspension. I tell you what—if he parks himself in here, I’ll pester him about the suspension until he thinks a swarm of nattering knitters is after him. It’ll drive him mad.”
That thought put her in a good enough mood that she agreed to call Wanda, Tammie, John, and the teenagers to finish the list and timeline that Clod wanted. I warned her Tammie might be snarky, and went to say good morning to Geneva. She hadn’t been in the kitchen when we arrived. Argyle had, and we’d exchanged greetings before he got down to the business of first breakfast. As I passed through the kitchen again, he let me know he was interested in second breakfast. I scooped him up and carried him to the study, reminding him there was more to life than crunchy fishy things. Geneva sat in the window seat, looking out the dormer at the limited view it gave of Blue Plum.
“Drawing,” she said when Argyle and I sat down next to her.
Our conversations often began that way. Her sense of time was slippery and not always sequential. I’d gotten used to the ebb and flow of her memories, though, and had developed a theory, after reading up on ghosts in a couple of “authoritative” books. Some ghosts are caught in loops, destined to repeat the same actions for eternity. Geneva seemed to get caught in smaller loops, more like eddies, that took her around again to an earlier conversation.
“I miss drawing more than turning the pages of a book,” she said. “I miss holding a book and the feeling of opening a book’s covers for the first time or for the dozenth time, but you solved the problem of missing stories for me with recorded books. I don’t think even you can solve the problem of no longer being able to hold a pencil in my own hand.”
“Have you noticed that you’re using mor
e contractions lately?”
“I like to keep abreast of fashion.”
“I admire you for that. Do you remember telling me that you saw the bagpiper walking with someone the night he died? Do you remember any more about the other person?”
She swayed in thought for a moment. “I think it must have been a man. Their gaits were well matched. But it wasn’t your burglar beau.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call him that. Why do you say it wasn’t Joe?”
“He lopes. His brother marches.”
“Are you saying it was Cole Dunbar?”
“I would not want to hang a man for the way he walks down the street. He isn’t the only one who marches like a lawman. Or a bagpiper.”
* * *
With Handmade Blue Plum not opening until noon, folks who’d arrived for the craft and art sale had several hours to wander in and out of downtown shops. I kept busy waiting on customers while Ardis made her phone calls, and enjoyed overhearing delighted comments about giant chicken feet, striped signposts, and Groucho Marx at the courthouse. I was also glad Abby and Debbie were coming in to help for the afternoon. When I’d left the museum world to run the Weaver’s Cat, I didn’t know how satisfying it could be to exchange skeins of yarn, hanks of floss, and lengths of fabric for money in the till. But retail sales wasn’t for sissies or anyone who’d be more comfortable in a desk job.
Aaron Carlin came in midway through the morning. He showed no interest in browsing while he waited for his “client” to arrive, but he looked more relaxed than he had the day before. He seemed happy making small talk about the weather and between customers, courteously stepping aside whenever someone approached the counter. He’d seen the moray eel when he stopped to pay his electric bill and wondered what it meant.
“Whimsy,” said a woman buying a circular needle set. “Something we can all use more of. Keep calm and spread whimsy. I think I’ll embroider that on a pillow.”
“A pillow shaped like a moray,” Aaron suggested.
“You made her day and mine,” I said as she went upstairs to pick out moray-colored floss. “How are the, uh . . .” I didn’t want to say “Spiveys” and spook him. He caught my drift, though.
“The twin horrors that are my dilemma?”
“Are you safe saying that in public?”
“If I say it real quiet-like, and when I know where they are. They told Angie they’re obligated at the craft show for the entire weekend.”
I rang up several more customers. Aaron went to look out the front window. Ardis finished her calls and joined me behind the counter. Argyle and Geneva came downstairs—he on his little cat feet, she like a localized fog. Ardis didn’t seem to notice her and I wondered if she’d forgotten to put her braided bracelet back on, or if she’d decided not to.
“What time is his ‘client’ due?” Ardis asked.
By then, Aaron was pacing to and from the window at the front of the room, stopping to scan the sidewalk left and right before coming back toward the counter.
“She’s probably even more skittish since last night,” I said quietly to Ardis.
“We ought to say something to him,” she said. “That pacing is beginning to alarm the customers.” She still hadn’t warmed up to him enough to approach him outright, though. Instead she circled him, much the way her great-great-aunt sometimes circled her.
Geneva, the great-great-aunt in question, floated over and asked what was going on. I took out my phone and filled her in.
“His client was afraid to go to the police?” she asked. “Then don’t you see what has happened? The witness won’t be coming. She was killed last night.”
“His client told him she might or might not have useful information. That doesn’t mean she was a witness. It doesn’t mean she was—”
“‘Might or might not’ is a word game for someone with a secret. His client was afraid. She was being careful. She was a witness and she was going to tell you what she saw.”
“But . . . surely Aaron’s heard about Gladys,” I whispered. But maybe not. Aaron Carlin didn’t live the most on-the-grid life. I motioned Ardis over and told her what we feared.
“I’ll cover the counter,” she said. “You go break the bad news.”
Geneva came with me, and she’d been right. We stood at the front window, the morning sun streaming into a puddle around Argyle, and after I told him about finding Gladys, Aaron put a hand on his heart and bowed his head. I asked if I could do anything for him; did he want a place to sit down, a glass of water . . . ? He waved all that away.
“Gladys didn’t tell you what she saw in the park that night?” I asked.
She hadn’t. And he didn’t know if she’d told anyone else that she “might or might not” have seen anything. And of course we didn’t know, for a fact, that she’d witnessed the murder. Aaron was certain, though, that she’d been there and seen something.
“She’s gone,” he said. “Proof enough.”
There was a lull in business, and Ardis joined us.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. “And I have a couple of questions for you. I attach no judgment to either of them.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose.
“Why wouldn’t she go to the police?” she asked.
His eyes shifted left, then returned to center, but he said nothing.
“What kind of ‘client’ was she?”
“Business.” That time his eyes gazed steadily back at Ardis.
“Did that business have anything to do with why she was in the park so late at night?” Geneva asked.
“Good question,” I said.
Ardis knew what had happened and covered for me with a quick “Thank you, Kath,” and then she looked around the room. Geneva was floating right next to me, though. If she’d had discernible eyebrows, I was sure they’d be raised. I repeated Geneva’s question for the ghostless and got Aaron’s eye shift to the left and back to center again. Wanting to put him back at ease, I asked a throwaway question.
“Any idea why Gladys would call a deputy a quack, or what the word ‘quack’ would have to do with her last night?” Ardis and Geneva both gave me looks. Aaron did them one better. He flinched and his eyes went wide. He pulled himself together, but the “no” he mustered was hardly credible, and he looked antsy to be on his way.
“Thanks for coming by, Aaron. I think you were a good friend to Gladys, and I don’t mean to worry you, but do you think this puts you in danger? Do you think you should go to the police?”
Those questions got him moving toward the door.
“If you hear anything else,” I called after him, “will you let us know?”
He turned at the door, touched his finger to his nose, and left.
“Do you think he was mocking me?” Ardis asked.
“Why?”
“Because I do that—put my finger to my nose—and I’ve never seen anyone else do that in real life. He’s a shady character from a shady family and he involved Gladys in some kind of shady business, and you see where that got her. I find his use of my gesture shady and highly objectionable. I’m not sure he was even using it right. And do you see what else he’s gone and done?” She was ranting—quietly, because she was, first and foremost, a slave to good customer relations—and she didn’t wait for anyone else to answer her question. “He’s dropped a piece of the puzzle in our laps. A piece that’s so important I now feel obligated to turn it over to Cole. I find that highly objectionable, too.”
She noticed a customer waiting at the counter, took one deep breath and a few seconds to ease her blood pressure, and went to see how she could help.
“Aaron always puts her in a bad mood,” I murmured to Geneva.
“The murder of her favorite student might have something to do with it, too.”
“You’re
right, Geneva. That’s very perceptive of you.”
“Also losing the ability to see and hear her favorite great-great-aunt. I believe I was a steadying influence on her. What on earth has happened? Because I’m sure the problem is something here on her end, not on the plane where I dwell.”
“That’s—”
“Also perceptive. I know. I will go stay close to her so she can at least feel my presence and take comfort.”
She floated across the room and over the counter to hover shoulder-to-shoulder with Ardis. Ardis shivered and took a knitted shawl from under the counter. They made quite a picture, aunt and niece, and I hoped I’d be able to convince Ardis to put her bracelet back on. Thinking of pictures reminded me of the envelope Joe had slipped to me at Mel’s.
I told Ardis I’d be back, and went to find out what pictures Joe hadn’t wanted Clod to see.
Chapter 26
Joe had been busy with his camera. The second set of pictures—the ones he’d slipped to me at the café when Darla arrived with a message for Clod—were of Hugh’s truck, inside and out. I told Ardis and Geneva how I got them.
“The burglar beau, at your service,” Geneva said. “Very handy.”
I ignored her while Ardis looked through the pictures a second time.
“Don’t you wonder what the deputies think they’ll learn from the truck?” she asked. “Though, you know, it wouldn’t have hurt Hugh to run a vacuum cleaner around the interior once in a while. That’s something I didn’t expect to learn about him. But was he truly a slob, or just casual? Don’t you wish the posse could sneak over there and go through it from hood to back bumper? The photographs are good—the sleeping bag, the case I assume is for the bagpipes, the selection of CDs. I wonder why he didn’t own an iPod.”
“Ardis.”
“What?”
“How do you think Joe got these pictures? He was in the truck. He was in it and he opened and closed the glove compartment and that case and he crawled around under the cap and moved things around to get these pictures.”
