by Mary Kruger
Bemused, and more than a little confused, Ari knelt to stock yarn in the floor bins. It was a soothing, almost mindless activity, leaving her mind free to wander. Ruth Taylor, murderer, she thought with a little smile. There was a picture in her mind of the short, plump woman swinging a cane above her head, looking as ludicrous and deadly as a cream puff. Or even more absurd, her grandson’s hockey stick.
Ari rocked back on her heels, lips parted, eyes staring. The vague thoughts and memories she’d struggled with suddenly came into focus. A hockey stick. Someone who had access to a key. Even the choice of yarn as a murder weapon. “Good God,” she said, her voice resounding in the stillness of the shop, and scrambled to her feet.
Stumbling into her office, she grabbed for the telephone and sent it crashing to the floor in her haste. She was swearing more than she ever had as she hauled it up from the floor and punched in the numbers, her fingers so clumsy that at first she reached a stranger’s answering machine. Finally, she got through to the police station.
“Bouchard,” a harried voice said on the other end.
“Paul. Is Josh there?”
“No. He’s in Boston. Listen, Ari—”
“Boston! Did they get her?”
“Things are moving,” he said cautiously.
“Are they going to arrest her? Who is she?” she asked, wondering if her deduction would be proved true so easily.
A squeaking noise over the line told her he’d leaned back in his chair. “Can’t tell you that, Ari.”
“But—”
“I’ve got to go, Ari. There’s a fire in North Freeport they think is arson.”
“Arson! Paul, what’s happening to this town?”
“Yeah, it’s bad. Listen, I’ll have Josh call you when he comes in,” he said, and hung up the phone.
Ari stared at the buzzing receiver in her hand. She knew who the murderer was. If he’d waited just a few moments she would have told him all that she knew, the who, why, and how of Edith’s murder. Now she had no one to tell.
Incensed, she slammed back in her chair and punched in some numbers on the phone. “Josh Pierce,” a hushed voice said a moment later, on his cell phone.
“Josh, it’s Ari. I think—”
“I can’t talk,” he said, sounding tense.
“But—”
“Things are happening. I’ll call you back.”
Again Ari stared at the receiver as the dial tone buzzed at her, and then put it down. Here she was with such important news, and she couldn’t reach anyone. Oh, there were other people she could call, the chief of police or the D.A. They didn’t know she’d been investigating, though, and if they found out, Josh would be in trouble. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure she wanted to call anyone. This case had been hers and Josh’s from the beginning. She felt proprietary about it.
Ari frowned as she crossed her arms over her chest. Her case, she thought, and wondered for the first time exactly why she’d gotten involved in it. Oh, she’d had good and noble reasons, and for a time she’d convinced herself of them. Now, though, now she wondered. Ari the wild, she thought, remembering her younger days. No longer crazy after all these years. But that wildness apparently still was in her. Why else would she have stood against a murderer as she had? Why else was she still doing it, after all that had happened?
To hell with it. Before she could stop herself, she reached for the phone and punched in a familiar number. “Di?” she said. “Want to help me catch a murderer?”
eighteen
“I’M BORED,” DIANE COMPLAINED from the back room of Ariadne’s Web.
“So am I.” Ari was sitting at the sales counter. Outside the rain still poured down, which meant that business had continued slow. “I don’t think she’s coming.”
“Your phone call was awfully vague. Telling her about that website.”
“Yes, but as if I’d just discovered it,” Ari said, “when she made it hard to find. That’s the lure. I wish I hadn’t had to leave it on the answering machine.”
“I know. We won’t know when she’s coming. Or if. Anyway, it’s a pretty small reason.”
“Small things seem to have gotten to her before.”
“Not this time, I don’t think. Ari, what if she’s waiting for you outside? She’s been pretty impulsive about attacking people if she thinks she’s threatened.”
“I know.” Ari sighed. “So I’ll call the police again.”
“It’s about time.”
“You think I’m nuts for not calling them sooner, don’t you?”
“I think it’s a hell of a time for you to find your inner teenager again. This is like Lucy and Ethel playing detective. I can hear Joe now.” Her voice took on a thick accent. “Diane, you’ve got some splainin’ to do.”
“How come you get to be Lucy?”
“I can’t be a Mertz. I’m a good Portuguese girl.”
“Ricardo’s Cuban.”
“Hispanic. Closer than Mertz.” She paused. “What is that, anyway? German?”
“I guess.”
“Closer to Norwegian.”
“Bite your tongue.”
“I’m tired,” Diane whined. “I have to go to the bathroom. Joe’s expecting me to call.”
“Honey, I’m home,” Ari said in a creditable attempt at the same thick accent.
“I wish he was.”
“Well, if this works he will be.”
“If.”
“Oh, heck, I guess you’re right.” Ari stretched. “Let’s call it a day….” Her voice trailed off as the door to the shop opened. “Showtime.”
“What?” Susan Silveira said from the door, where she was furling her umbrella.
“Susan?” Ari said, confused. “What are you doing here?”
“I got your phone call. You sounded upset.”
“Yes, but it’s okay. It’s something Kaitlyn could help me with, but it’s not that important.”
Susan came farther into the shop. “I know about websites, too. Are you sure it’s something I can’t help you with?”
Ari sighed. All the trouble she’d taken to set up this trap, and the wrong person had walked into it. “I’m sure. It’s just something I found when I was looking at other people’s work.” Ari didn’t move from behind the counter. “Someone’s been stealing my patterns.”
“Imagine that.” Susan moved into the center of the room. For the first time, Ari noticed the stick she was holding, hidden behind the folds of her umbrella. It was long and thin and rounded, with a crook at the end. It almost resembled a cane, but it wasn’t.
“Why do you have Kaitlyn’s field hockey stick with you?” she asked, puzzled, and then suddenly she knew what it meant. It had taken her a long time to realize why the idea of hockey made her so uneasy, that the equipment for field hockey gave Kaitlyn a perfect weapon. Kaitlyn, she’d thought, with her skill at designing websites, had probably been the one selling Ari’s patterns online. Kaitlyn had known that Ari would be looking at knitting sites online and had attacked her to keep her from finding out anything. Kaitlyn had had access to keys, and to the yarn. Kaitlyn had found out that Edith was downloading those patterns, and had been threatened as a result. It was Kaitlyn who had lured Edith here, to her death, or so Ari had thought. “Susan? What are you doing?”
“Oh, get off it, Ari.” Susan’s smile was chilling. “You know why I’m here. No, don’t go for that phone.”
Ari stayed still. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she said, so steadily she surprised herself. “They’re close to figuring this out.”
“Not as long as they’ve got your friend Joe in jail.”
“And the other attacks?”
Susan prowled around the counter. “Isn’t it awful how Freeport’s going to the dogs? Muggings, in this town.”
“They know the weapon’s the same,” Ari said, though of course there was no conclusive proof of that.
“So? How can they prove it?” Susan said in a weird echo of Ari’s thoughts.
“Why not? You already figured out that Kaitlyn stole your patterns. I told her to hide that website. If you found it, you didn’t do it this morning. Now, get out from behind that counter.”
“And let you hit me? I don’t think so.”
“It’s a long stick,” Susan said, and smashed it down on the sales counter.
That got Ari up. She sprinted for the center counter, barely dodging the stick as it slashed down again. “Jeez, Susan!”
“You knew what you were doing.” Susan stalked her on the other side of the counter, stick held high. She was an athlete, Ari remembered, an avid golfer. “You knew I’d come.”
“I thought Kaitlyn would come. Susan, anyone looking in will see you!”
“No one will look in on a day like today, and if they do they’ll think I’m a customer.”
“Get real. Someone has probably seen you with that hockey stick.” Ari dodged around the corner of the counter as Susan moved toward her again.
“The police would be here by now.”
Had Diane called 911 yet? Ari wondered. Because this had been a really, really dumb idea. “Look, don’t do this, Susan. Don’t make things worse than they already are.”
“Why not? You know too much.”
Again Ari dodged around the counter, and her eyes lit on something. Diane’s yarn. This time it was honey tan, rather than the purple heather, but maybe…“No, really. Why did you do all this? I think I know, but—”
“Okay, Miss Smarty-pants Detective. Just what do you know? And talk fast. I’m meeting someone later to look at a house.”
The casualness of that was chilling. The significance suddenly glared out at her. “You were Edith’s real estate agent.”
“So?”
“She had a key to the shop. Did you have one, too?”
“Of course I did. I showed this building, after all.”
Ari sucked in her breath. “You had one the last time, too, didn’t you?”
Susan smiled. “Bill was kind enough to give me one. He didn’t know I had a copy made, of course.”
When Ari saw her landlord, she was going to kill him. “You came in here ahead of time and got the yarn, didn’t you?” she said, circling to the end of the counter, near the back room. “But why did you kill Edith, Susan?”
“Don’t you know?” Susan’s face darkened. “I was her agent, but she fired me.”
“What?”
“Do you realize how much I would have made in commission on that Drift Road development? And she just cut me out. She wanted to sell it on her own and save my fee. My God, and she had all the money in the world.”
Ari wasn’t quite sure why Susan was telling her all this, when her reason for coming here was obvious. The longer Ari could keep her talking, though, the better. “It’s about money, then?”
“Of course it’s about money. Do you know how broke we are? No, of course you don’t. Kaitlyn had to leave RISD—do you know what that meant to me?”
“I can guess.”
“No, you can’t. You’ve had all the opportunities in the world and you wasted them, while my Kaitlyn, with all her talent, is getting nowhere. So she was selling your patterns. She needed the money, and then Edith spoiled that, too.”
“That argument in the library,” Ari said, suddenly figuring it out. “Edith found the site, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Stand still!”
Ari dodged around the counter, just as Susan brought the stick down again. So far she’d been lucky not to get hit, but that couldn’t last. “And she was going to tell.”
“She was going to expose Kaitlyn. I couldn’t let that happen.” Susan lowered the stick slightly. “You’re a mother. You understand that I had to protect her.”
Ari shivered compulsively. “By killing Edith? Surely there had to be another way—”
“What? Confessing? Letting Kaitlyn get into trouble? Oh, no. Not my little girl.”
“But to kill her? Susan, why here?”
“I told her you had some new designs you hadn’t published yet, and I could get them for her, if she came to the shop.” Her smile was malicious. “Getting at you was a side benefit.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t let Kaitlyn design anything for this precious shop of yours.”
My good God. Susan was crazy. Certifiable. “But she has.”
“Not then. What are you doing with that yarn?” Susan demanded.
“I’m nervous.” Ari stole a quick glance down at the yarn, now loose in her fingers, and then jumped as Susan raised the stick higher. “Susan, stop it!”
“You know too much. You have to go.”
“Susan, you’ll be found out.”
“I haven’t been, so far.”
“Where did you get the window stop?” Ari asked, to keep her talking, to buy time.
“The window stop? Oh. For the garrote, you mean. The landlord in the house we moved into did some work and left junk behind.”
“And you left the rest of the wood at the Camachos’.”
“I wasn’t going to—what was that?”
“What?” Ari said, though she’d heard it, too, a tiny gasp from the back room. Until this moment Diane hadn’t known the significance of the window stop.
“I heard something. Are we alone in here?” she demanded.
“Don’t you think I’d’ve called for help by now?” Ari shot back.
Susan eyed her distrustfully. “Will you stop moving?”
“Don’t be stupid. I don’t intend to be a target for you.” She shook her head. “Kaitlyn’s in trouble, too.”
“Not if I can help it!” Susan swung the stick down viciously, apparently done with talking. It slammed into the counter and she danced back, her hand involuntarily going to her shoulder. So she was hurt. Good, Ari thought.
Susan was an athlete, though, and could deal with pain. Before Ari could get out of range, the stick came crashing down again, perilously close to her own shoulder. “I’m going to get you, no matter what you do.”
“What threat was Sarah Mailloux to you?” Ari asked, still working with the yarn, unwinding it from the skein and looping it in her fingers. It might be stupid of her, but she had to get Susan to admit to that crime, and then scream for Diane to call 911. “What threat was she to you?”
“She knew where Edith got the patterns. She mentioned it when we played golf together.”
“So what?”
“She would have figured it out. Just like you, when you started looking at the Internet.”
“You were there when I said I was going to look for designs online. Is that why you attacked me?”
“Kaitlyn was afraid you’d find the site.”
“My God, Susan, does Kaitlyn know about this?”
“No! She has no idea.”
Uneasily, Ari wondered if that were true. Kaitlyn had to at least suspect her mother’s actions. Kaitlyn, she remembered suddenly, hadn’t wanted to play field hockey the other day. Had she realized that her stick had been used as a weapon? “You attacked me for nothing. I didn’t find anything.”
“You would have, sooner or later.”
“Did you mean to kill me?”
“I don’t think so.” Susan pondered that. “Maybe. I really wanted to throw you off for a while.”
She had. “You didn’t.”
She shrugged. “It was worth a shot. Damn it, stop moving.”
“Susan, killing me won’t help Kaitlyn.”
“It’ll protect her from being found out.”
“The police already know! They’ve got her on mail fraud.”
“What?” For the first time, Susan looked uncertain. “What are you talking about?”
“They know about the post office box in Boston.”
“And that’s your fault, too!” Susan cried, and with that abandoned her careful stalking
. She raced forward, stick held high.
Ari barely reacted in time, sprinting away. “Call 911!” she yelled, hoping she hadn’t left it too late, hoping her idea would work. The yarn she held was a fragile weapon against a hockey stick, but it was all she had. Hoping against hope, she tossed the tangled loops onto the floor.
Susan’s face contorted in anger. “There is someone else here!”
“Yes,” Ari gasped as Susan rushed her, and, with a prayer that her plan would succeed, that her timing was right, yanked on the end of the yarn she held with all her might, just as Susan stepped into the loops. Susan’s arms windmilled for balance as she stumbled forward, her other foot tangling in the yarn. With the reflexes of an athlete, though, she recovered. Shit, Ari thought, and pulled on the loops again. This time Susan lurched forward. Ari’s foot shot out, hard, and caught Susan on the ankle. It was enough. Susan fell heavily, her stick clattering to the floor.
As quickly as that, it was over. Ari sprinted toward the door, gulping in great breaths of air. On the floor, Susan, cursing the air blue, struggled to get up. “Diane? Di?” Ari called.
“Jeez, Ari!” Diane ran out from the back room. “You cut that close, didn’t you?”
“Did you get it?”
“Yeah, it’s all on tape. Every word.” Something gleamed in her eyes. “My yarn?”
“Appropriate. Don’t get up, Susan. We both played sports,” she warned, and turned at the sound of car doors slamming outside. “Thank God. The cavalry’s here.”
“God knows what they’ll think of this.” Diane looked down at Susan, who was sitting with her head in her hands. “Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do.”
