Spin a Wicked Web: A Home Crafting Mystery

by Cricket McRae

  She nodded. "I just-"

  "You cut your hair."

  Silence.

  "You can't force someone to love you."

  "I know."

  "But you can do a pretty good job of making them dislike you. A lot."

  Her head snapped up, eyes searching for Barr's. "Do you hate me now?"

  A pause, and then he said, "You've got to stop this nonsense. Go back to the ranch. It's where you belong."

  "Yeah." She grimaced, and looked between us.

  "So go home," I said, "and leave us alone."

  She blinked. "I'm sorry."

  "Good," I said. "'Bye"

  So I wasn't as easygoing as Barr. Sue me.

  And she left this time. Really and truly left.

  "What were you thinking?" I couldn't keep the frustration out of my voice as I asked Ruth the question. My spinning wheel whirred, the spokes a blur, and the natural wool roving I was spinning accumulated on the spool at a rapid rate.

   

  "I never should have lied," Ruth said, her voice sheepish beside me. She was also spinning, but her wheel turned slowly.

  I didn't look up, afraid I'd lose my rhythm and foul up my yarn. "What did the police say? Are you in trouble?"

  "Probably less than I ought to be. It doesn't hurt that I'm a feeble little old lady."

  I laughed.

  "I have to go to court and testify," she said.

  "Against Chris and Irene?"

  "Yes." The word was clipped.

  I stopped spinning and looked at her. "You don't want to."

  "Of course I don't want to, but it's the right thing to do." She calmly fed a soy-silk blend into her wheel. "People can't go around killing people."

  I couldn't have put it better myself.

  "Well, I have to testify, too," I said. "Chris didn't only protect Irene by lying for her and tricking you into doing the same. She also confessed to tampering with my brakes. They're going to try her for attempted murder."

  Ruth's wheel slowed to a stop, and she looked up with a shocked expression. "Chris made you have that wreck? Why would she do that?"

  I shrugged. "She thought I suspected Irene, and if Irene went down, so would she. Which is, of course, exactly what happened."

  "Did you?"

  "What? Suspect Irene?"

  She nodded.

  "Not at that point. But sometimes guilt can make you a little paranoid, you know?"

   

  Ruth started spinning again. A few minutes later I heard her murmur, "Maybe I won't mind testifying against them so much after all."

  People had indeed gone around killing people. Irene had killed Ariel, and it certainly looked like Ariel had killed Scott Popper. Barr had talked to Dusty and Zak, and they'd pinpointed the last time Officer Popper's car had been serviced: the day before his accident. And sure enough, Ariel had been hanging out with Zak that day. They'd even recalled a period when they'd been slammed with work, and she'd had full run of the shop.

  Next they figured out what tools she might have used, and Barr had them all fingerprinted. They found two of her prints. But the clincher was that her prints were also found on the rack-andpinion steering mechanism of Scott's patrol car. They couldn't wring a confession from her now, obviously, and if she hadn't died Ariel probably would have gotten away with the murder. As for her parents' car wreck, we'd never know about that.

  And Hannah? Cassie called to assure us that she'd returned to the ranch. Last we'd heard, she was making a play for Barr's younger brother, Randall. If she managed to hook him she wouldn't even have to change her name.

  "You've got to be kidding;" I said. It was a week later, and I'd thought things were getting back to normal.

   

  "Not even a little bit. Go ahead, turn around." Barr, grinning like an idiot, produced a silk scarf from his pocket.

  We were standing in the entryway of the house. Meghan leaned in the doorway to the living room, arms folded.

  "Do you know what this is all about?" I asked her.

  "Yep."

  "And you're not about to tell me," I said.

  "Nope"

  I looked at Barr again. Still grinning. Well, if it was going to make him that happy. I turned. "Don't tie it too tight."

  "Afraid he'll mess up your hair?" Meghan asked.

  "Shut up."

  He finished tying the blindfold, and put his hands on my shoulders. "Out front."

  What on earth?

  I stumbled on the front step, but Barr caught me. Carefully he led me down the sidewalk, then we paused and he opened the gate. The sun was warm, the silk was soft against my face, and chickadees called to one another up and down our street. I heard Meghan's steps behind me.

  "You didn't buy me a pony, did you? Because I've always wanted a pony, ever since I was a little girl."

  "In a manner of speaking," Barr said.

  "What? Tell me you didn't go get me a horse or some such nonsense, Barr Ambrose, because I don't know how to ride a horse, and I don't have time for a horse, and I don't even know if I like-"

  Barr grabbed my hands before I could rip the blindfold off.

  "Will you relax? Geez, sometimes you make it awful hard to be nice to you."

   

  Chastened, I dropped my arms.

  "Now come down here," he said.

  I did what I was told.

  More footsteps behind, and Erin's breathless voice. "Has it happened yet?"

  "Not yet," Meghan said.

  God, even the eleven-year-old was in on it.

  "Okay. I'm going to take the blindfold off now. Hold still," Barr said.

  The fabric slid away, and I squinted into the sunlight. We were standing on the sidewalk in front of the house.

  In front of a Land Rover.

  And not just any Land Rover. It was dark green, an older model, maybe from the nineteen eighties, in perfect gleaming condition. How had he known?

  "Oh, my God," I breathed. "It's wonderful."

  Meghan laughed.

  "Will you take me for a ride?" I asked.

  "For Pete's sake, Sophie Mae," Barr said. "It's not mine. It's yours.

  I whirled to look up at him.

  He smiled. "Look inside."

  Bewildered and a little giddy, I walked to the side and peered in the window. In the back seat sat a fully assembled Ashford spinning wheel, like Ruth's. He'd stained it golden pecan, and the wood glowed where the sunlight struck the edge of the drive wheel. Piled around it were bags of wool, puffs of fiber, long snakes of roving, a stack of delicate rolled batts. A handkerchief of silk fiber hung from the rearview window.

   

  I turned and blinked. "You did all this for me?"

  There was that grin again. He nodded. "You like it?"

  "I love it. Oh, but Barr, it's too much. Way too much."

  "In case you haven't heard, I'm a millionaire. That means I get to buy you pretty things if I want to. Ruth helped me pick everything out."

  Meghan had that grin on her face now, too. And so did Erin.

  "I ... I don't-" My voice broke. My vision grew watery.

  He took a step toward me. "Oh, hey. Don't get all girly on me, now. Don't cry. You hear me?"

  I sniffed. Nodded. "Thank you. It's all just perfect."

  "That's better. You're welcome. There's just one more thing." He held out a small velvet box.

  "The key?" I asked, and opened the box.

  A big fat diamond glinted up at me.

  Speechless, I watched as the man I loved sank to one knee on the sidewalk. Erin started to say something, but Meghan shushed her.

  "Sophie Mae Reynolds, will you marry me?" Barr asked.

  I felt my eyes go wide. Next to Meghan, Erin started jumping up and down.

  Wow. Oh, wow.

  THE END

   

  b N 0 0 w V V x 0 0 a

  CRICKET MCRAE has always enjoyed the kind of practical home crafts that were once necessary to eve
ryday life. Her first Home Crafting Mystery, Lye in Wait, focuses on soap making; the second in the series, Heaven Preserve Us, features canning.