by Mary Kruger
“I thought we could eat at the bandstand,” he said, turning right outside the shop and heading toward the waterfront. “If you’d like.”
“That’s fine. It’s a beautiful day.” The sky was richly blue and the sun was warm, but there was just enough of an autumn tang in the air to make her suspect she’d need her sweater by the water. “I don’t quite understand why you wanted to meet me this way.”
“I just want some background information. Remember, I’m new here.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Taylor tell you enough yesterday?” she said dryly.
He gave her a quick look. “So you heard about that.”
“It’s a small town, Detective.”
“Call me Josh,” he interrupted her.
Ari blinked. First the invitation for lunch, and now this. Surely he wouldn’t treat a suspect in such a way, would he? “Okay. I’m Ari. People in small towns are nosy,” she went on.
“True. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
“Something like that. I’ll bet they even know what kind of sandwiches are in there,” she said, indicating the cooler.
“I doubt that.”
“They’re not from Marty’s?”
“Nope.”
“You made them?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Then you cook,” she said inanely. “Your wife must appreciate that.”
He gave her an amused look. “Subtle.”
“I didn’t mean…” she began, flustered, and then gave it up. “Well, yes, I suppose I did.”
“You wouldn’t make a good detective.”
Ari looked sharply up at him. He couldn’t know her ideas about him, unformed though they were, could he? “So are you married?”
He didn’t exactly smile, but the corners of his mouth drew in and his eyes looked amused. “No. Not divorced, either,” he went on, before she could ask.
“You never married?”
“Nope.” He sounded cheerful. “Never met anyone I cared enough about.”
Oh, crumb, she thought. Just what she needed, a man who couldn’t commit to anyone. Not that that mattered, she told herself hastily.
“The thing is,” he went on, as they skirted the bandstand to its opening facing the harbor, “a cop’s life is hard on his family. We see too many things we don’t want touching them.” He set the cooler on the bandstand’s floor as they sat on the sun-baked concrete steps. “Then after a while we only talk to other cops, because they’re the only ones who understand.”
“So let’s not give the wife a chance,” she said.
“Unfair,” he said as he opened the cooler. “Would you want to know about your husband’s work if he was a cop?”
“Ex,” she reminded him. “I never wanted to know about his work. He’s a tax attorney.”
“Can’t say I blame you.” He reached into the cooler, bringing out paper cups and cans of soda. “I’d’ve brought wine at another time—”
“Wine!”
“But as I said, this isn’t social.”
“Soda’s fine. No, I’ll drink from the can.” She popped the top of the Diet Coke and took a long swallow. As she’d expected, it was cool by the water. The light cotton yarn of the sweater was perfect for such a day.
Josh was studying her. “Did you make that sweater?”
“Of course.” She bloused it out over her hips and adjusted the collar of her white Oxford shirt neatly inside the cabled neckline. “I make all my own sweaters.”
He unwrapped a sandwich, placed it on a paper plate, and handed it to her. “Design them, too?”
She looked at him with eyebrows raised. “Of course,” she said again. “This design is one of the first I ever did.”
“How did you get into it?”
She frowned a little. “Why are you interested?” she asked, taking the bag of potato chips he handed her.
“This case.” He took some chips himself. “I’ve got a feeling it’s tied up with knitting somehow.”
Ari laughed. “You sound like Diane, with her puns.”
“Have you and she been friends long?”
“Since freshman year in high school. This is good,” she said in surprise, looking at her sandwich. The bread was seven-grain, and the filling was made up of chunks of light and dark chicken, mixed with walnuts and something familiar, which she couldn’t quite identify. “Is there bacon in this?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“It’s good. And here Ruth Taylor said you had ham and cheese from Marty’s.”
“Ham and—no.” He grinned. “Prosciutto and Swiss, with white-wine Dijon.”
“You do like food.”
“Mrs. Taylor likes to talk.”
“Yes.” Ari grew serious. She hadn’t spoken to Ruth herself. Laura had had that dubious pleasure. Still, she knew that Ruth and Josh had talked about more than Marty’s selection of sandwiches.
“I heard something interesting about you,” he said, looking off toward the harbor, where a fishing boat was heading out to sea.
“Oh?”
“Is it true you have a juvenile record?”
Ari blinked. “What?”
“Something about destruction of school property.”
She burst out laughing. “Not quite.”
He was looking at her. “What was it, then?”
Ari nonchalantly took a bite of her sandwich before answering. “I got up to some pranks in high school.”
“Nothing more?”
“No.”
“Then, the charges against you?”
“Technically accurate. It was our senior dare, you see.”
“Your what?”
“Senior dare. The sort of silly thing you do when school’s almost out and you can’t wait to graduate.” Her smile grew. “It landed us in court, but it was worth it.”
“But you have a record,” he pointed out.
“Not really. Do you know that the school mascot is a Viking? Because there are so many Norwegians who live in the area.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Senior year, we decided to do something special for homecoming. We made a statue of a Viking. Well, not a statue, really, just a flat piece of wood painted and shaped like one. We raised the money for the materials with car washes and bake sales, and our class adviser managed to get the woodworking teacher at the vocational school to take it on as a project for his students.”
“And?”
“It came out great. Twenty feet high, and so fierce-looking you’d swear it was real. It was a big hit. The school took it out for every football game.”
He frowned a little. “I haven’t seen it.”
“No, it got put away after what happened.”
“Which was?”
“I’m getting to it. A few weeks before school ended, some of us who hung out together started talking. One thing led to another, and before long we had a dare.” She grinned at him. “My group dared the other one to steal the Viking.”
He stared at her. “My God. How much did it weigh?”
“I don’t know, but a few strong guys got together and it came down.”
“How did you get away with it?”
“Oh, we didn’t. One of the guys lived on a farm and sort of borrowed a flatbed truck for it, but can you imagine going around in a town of this size with a twenty-foot Viking on a truck? The guys got caught right away.”
“What about you?”
“Diane and I T.P.’d the principal’s car.”
He was startled into laughter. “You got arrested because you toilet-papered someone’s car?”
“Yes. Oh, ordinarily Mr. Morris wouldn’t have prosecuted for something like that, but he was so mad about the Viking that he called the police. Anyway,” she went on, “afterwards, I was charged with the theft, too.”
“Because your group made the dare?”
“Well, that, too.” She smiled down at the ground. “It was my idea.”
He let out a laugh, and then grew serio
us. “You got a record because of it.”
“Well, no. We could’ve argued that the Viking belonged to the senior class, because we paid for it, but it was such a silly thing that the case was continued without finding. The record was wiped clean when I turned twenty-one.” She grinned at him. “So that’s my life of crime. Masterminding the stealing of a Viking. Not exactly the background of a dangerous criminal, is it?”
Josh looked suspiciously at a seagull that was standing nearby and eyeing their food. “No.”
“Don’t encourage it,” Ari advised him, following his gaze. “Gulls are scavengers.”
“I know. There’s something else.”
Something in his voice made Ari look up. “What?”
“Is it true Edith Perry was going to buy your building?”
She sighed. “I wondered when you’d ask me that. Yes, she was.”
“What would that have done to your business?”
“It depends on how much she would have raised the rent. I might have had to move, and I don’t know where I’d find another shop that size for the price.” She put down her sandwich. “I have a motive. That puts me in trouble.”
“Yes, except for one thing.”
“What?”
“Your alibi stood up. You’re in the clear, since this morning. Provisionally, anyway. It’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I talked with some of your neighbors.”
Instantly she understood. “Ronnie Dean.”
“Yep. She confirmed what you told us.”
“I should have guessed. I swear that woman knows what’s going on in my head sometimes.”
“On the day Edith Perry died, Mrs. Dean saw you open your door at five A.M. to get your newspaper. She said you were in your robe and your hair needed combing.”
Ari’s hand flew to her head. “I hadn’t taken my shower yet.”
“You remember that day?”
“Of course I do. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. Besides, it’s what I do every day. Nearly every day,” she amended. “Sundays, I sleep in if I can.”
“Morning person?”
“No, not really.” Frowning, she took the last bite of her sandwich. “When did Edith die?”
“The best estimate is somewhere between five and eight A.M.”
“Then I’m not totally out of it, am I?”
“The D.A. could throw doubt on it,” he agreed.
“And you?”
“No.” He stacked her empty paper plate with his. “I don’t think you did it, although your neighbor can’t swear you weren’t out at the wrong time. The right time, depending on how you look at it.”
“You don’t know Ronnie,” she said dryly. “If there’s something to see in that neighborhood, she sees it. She sits by her window with the lights out and watches everything. I don’t know when she sleeps.”
“Hmm. It might not stand up in court.”
“Do you think it will come to that?”
“It might. You did have a motive, and the opportunity.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she protested.
“Mmm-hmm.”
Ari looked at him suspiciously. There it was again, that subtle indication in his manner that perhaps meant that he didn’t suspect her. “What did you mean when you said you think Edith’s death is connected with knitting?”
He shrugged. “Because of where it happened. Why in your shop? Why in that way?”
“Laura thinks the killer might have been after me as well as Edith.”
It was his turn to regard her. “Is there anyone who dislikes you that much?”
“No, not that I know of. Those who don’t like me tend to be backstabbers. I mean, they act behind my back.”
“Did she come into your shop often?”
“Edith? Once in a while. She liked to knit, but she usually didn’t buy anything from me.”
“Why not?”
“She thought I charged too much. Well, I have to,” she said defensively. “My stock is expensive, and I sell original designs. Plus, I have to pay my bills.”
“You seem to be doing well enough,” he commented.
“Oh, a lot of that’s curiosity. It’ll die out—oops.”
“So you’re not doing a good business?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked suspiciously.
“Maybe nothing. You never know what’s going to be important in a case.”
“Well, I didn’t kill Edith to bring customers in. Generally I do well enough without having to do something like that. Knitting’s popular right now. A lot of young people are into it, and so are some celebrities.”
“Mostly women?”
“Yes, though there are men involved, too. Why? Are you thinking a man did it?”
“You never know,” he said vaguely.
So he wasn’t going to give information away, she thought, unless she kept prying. “I keep thinking of a woman doing it.”
“Why?” he asked, interested.
“Because of my clientele. What bothers me about that, though, is the way she was killed. Do women usually choose weapons like that?”
He looked at her. “What made you think of that?”
“It took strength. Was Edith hit on the head first?”
That seemed to throw him off balance, if the look on his face were any indicator. “Why do you ask?”
“Edith would have struggled when she felt the yarn around her neck. The killer would have had to be strong. Were any fibers found under her fingernails?”
He sighed. “You read too many mysteries.”
“Well?”
“No,” he said reluctantly.
“Then she didn’t struggle. It makes sense that she was knocked out first.”
“You’re forgetting something,” he said, neither denying nor confirming her suspicion. “How did the perp—the killer—”
“I know what ‘perp’ means.”
“Yeah, of course you do. So how did he, or she, get into your shop?”
“I don’t know. I’m working on that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I’ve just been doing some thinking.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “You haven’t been asking anyone questions, have you?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
The social aspect of the day, what there had been of it, was gone. Josh was a policeman again. She’d do well to remember that he probably always was, Ari thought. “It’s my business that’s been affected, and my life.”
“Yes. Your life. Maybe in ways you don’t know.”
“Are you saying I’m in danger?”
“If you ask the wrong person something, you might be.”
She looked out at the harbor. “There’s a way we could prevent that.”
The suspicion on his face deepened. “‘We’?”
“Yes.” She smiled brightly at him. “If we team up.”
five
JOSH BURST OUT LAUGHING. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m not,” Ari said, a little surprised by his reaction. “I think it’s a good idea.”
“No,” he said, still grinning.
“You’re already asking me for information,” she argued. “Why not share what we know?”
“Because you’re a civilian.” His voice was patient, but humor still lurked in his eyes.
“You need me, Detective.”
“How?”
“I know this town. You don’t.”
“I know it well enough to know that people will think we’re seeing each other.”
That left her gaping. “Heaven forbid!”
“Yeah. It is a ridiculous idea.”
“It’s not that,” she protested.
“Yeah, it is, but that’s beside the point,” he said after a moment. “I can’t let you get involved in an investigation.”
&
nbsp; “I’m already involved.”
“It’s dangerous. It’s unethical.” Josh pulled at his ear, his habit when he was either deep in thought or perplexed. She certainly had him at a loss now. “I’d be under investigation myself if I permitted it.”
“I don’t want that, but I have no choice.” She turned toward him. “I think I was a target.”
He wasn’t about to tell her that he was beginning to think so, too. “All the more reason for you to stay out of it.”
“I’m still a suspect,” she said urgently. “My life’s been affected in every way. I’ve got to keep at it, whether I do so officially or not.”
He pulled at his ear again. “Jeez, Ari.”
“I don’t see how you can stop me.”
“I could put you into protective custody.” Of all the things he’d thought might come out of this lunch, this was the very last he’d expected.
She stared at him. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
“Under what pretext?” she demanded. “Can you show there’s a threat to me?”
“Look, Ari. You just said there might be.”
“Don’t use my logic against me!”
That made him laugh. “Look, you have to see it won’t work. This isn’t one of your mystery stories. I won’t put you into custody—”
“Good, because I have an ex who’s an attorney.”
“A tax attorney,” he shot back.
“He serves the purpose,” she answered just as sharply, and for a moment there was silence.
Josh passed his hand over his hair, his anger under control again. Funny. He seldom lost his temper. “Look,” he said finally. “I really can’t let you get involved in this.”
“You need me.” She leaned forward urgently. “You really don’t know the town the way I do, and you don’t know a knitting knobby from a bobbin.”
“What?”
“You said yourself knitting’s involved in this. And it’s almost certain that I know the person who killed Edith.”
“What happens if you say the wrong thing to that person? She’s killed once already. If you get in her way, she might do it again. A threat,” he added.
