"Gee, you think?"
"I don't have much information," I said. "I found her is all. I don't know her very well or anything."
He came down the stairs, the heels of his cowboy boots sounding a sharp report on each step. He'd changed out of his dress uniform, and now wore mushroom-colored slacks, a blue shirt, and a string tie from his considerable collection. This one had a copper slide, beaten into the rough outline of a leaf.
Leaning his elbow on the counter, he said, "What is it with you and murder victims?"
"Hey," I said. "It's not like I enjoy it. And come to think of it, I didn't have this problem before I met you."
"No. You met me because you have this problem."
Okay. Technically he was right.
"Are you going to sit in?" Robin asked Barr.
"If you don't mind."
She hesitated, at war with her affinity to play by the book. "Shouldn't be a problem."
"Why aren't we doing this at the station?" I asked.
"There's still a lot to do here, and we thought you might want to leave. But we need some information before sending you on your way," Barr said.
"Okay. Shoot."
"How did you find her?" Robin asked, pen poised to take down my answer.
I told them, and after that there were more questions about when I got there and how long it took before I called 911. We spent quite a bit of time on the open front door, and why I went upstairs in the first place. I explained that I thought an artist must have come in to work and left the door open. Then we moved on to Ariel herself. What did I know about her? Not much. I told them Ruth Black would probably know more. Ariel had always seemed kind of standoffish around me; my gender probably hadn't helped. Ruth seemed to get along with everyone, though.
"Did you see the yarn around her neck?" Lane asked.
"You mean the yarn she was strangled with?"
She nodded.
"Oh, I saw it all right," I said.
"Do you know if it came from here?"
"I know it did."
Lane looked the question at me.
"It was mine. The first two-ply homespun yarn I ever made, and Ruth was going to show me how to set the twist on it this week."
Barr's eyes widened a fraction, but he didn't say a word.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"What exactly are you sorry for?" Robin asked, her tone suddenly hard.
"For being upset about the stupid yarn," I said. "I really liked it, though. Even if it was kind of lumpy and thick and full of slubs, it was the first time I'd created a decent amount of actual yarn on the spinning wheel."
"Did you touch her?"
"Only on the neck, to see if she had a pulse."
Barr looked worried. Lane didn't look very happy with me, either.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, I can't possibly be a suspect," I said, exasperation leaking into my voice. "What should I have done? Assumed she was dead? What if she hadn't been?"
Robin Lane studied me for a long minute. I struggled not to look away or protest my innocence further.
"You didn't like her, did you?" she asked.
I blinked. "Well, we weren't best friends."
I saw her name on those paintings." She indicated Ariel's work.
"Yes. She was an artist." I managed to say it with a straight face.
"Did she paint here?"
I nodded. "In one of the studio spaces upstairs. I believe she did almost all of her work here."
"Was she interested in the yarn and knitting thing?" She couldn't keep her disdain for such homey activities out of her voice.
"Not that I know of."
"Where was your yarn?"
I tried to remember. "Last I saw it was right after Ruth showed me how to unwind it from the bobbin onto the niddy noddy. We tied the hank and hung it over the back of her spinning chair. You'd have to ask her whether she moved it later."
She scribbled in the notebook. "Do you know anyone who might have a motive for killing the victim?"
I stared at her for so long she stopped writing and met my eyes. "You want my opinion about who could have murdered Ariel?"
Her smile was wry. "I'm sure you have one."
"I have no idea." A little triumph in my voice, there.
Lane exhaled. "Okay, that's enough for now. You can go."
"Unless it has something to do with the way men reacted to her," I said. Gawd. I just couldn't help myself. It was embarrassing. "I'd find out who she was dating."
"We'll check into it. Thanks."
"But-"
"Go home, Sophie Mae." Barr's tone held quiet warning.
Fine. I didn't want to be here anyway.
Ruth Black was waiting for me in the parking lot, alone. She fell into step beside me as I walked toward my little Toyota pickup.
"Ariel was strangled," she said without preamble, picking up exactly where Detective Lane had rescued me.
"Yes"
"Do they know who did it?" she asked.
"I don't think so."
"Are you going to try and figure it out?" Beside me, her legs scissored along nearly twice as fast as mine, her steps short and quick like a bird's.
I stopped cold, and she drew up a few paces ahead and turned back.
"Huh uh," I said. "I'm not figuring out anything. This is a police matter, and I happen to know the police in question, and they are quite good at their job. There's no need for me to get involved."
She tipped her head to one side.
"No need at all," I repeated. My hand crept up to my recently shorn head, and I ended by rubbing my neck. The last time I'd tried to "figure it out"-and at Ruth's instigation, I might add-things had gotten a little out of hand in the danger department. "And I'm glad of it, too."
Ruth smiled. "If you say so, dear."
FIVE
As I WALKED INTO our backyard, Meghan was latching the door of the chicken pen behind her. When she saw me, she turned and held up one small, perfect blue-green egg.
"It's still warm," she said.
I took it from her, holding it gently in my palm. "Molly or Emma?"
Two of our hens were Easter egg chickens, and they laid that unusual color. They hadn't been producing long enough for us to be able to recognize who laid what.
"Molly, I think. Erin says her eggs are a little bluer, and Emma's are a little more greenish. Apparently she can tell already."
Erin was Meghan's eleven-year-old daughter. She was at math camp during the day for the next two weeks, practicing up on being a genius, but she had become the resident expert on the individual idiosyncrasies of our laying hens.
Brodie, Erin 's old Pembroke Welsh corgi, had taken to sitting outside the chicken pen, guarding them from harm whenever she was gone. Now his fox-like face swung my way, and he gave a low woof in acknowledgement of my presence. But he was on the job, and didn't leave his self-imposed post to receive his usual ear scritchin's.
"How was the funeral?" Meghan asked.
I grimaced. "Good, I guess. If you can characterize a funeral that way." I dreaded telling her about Ariel.
"I think you can." Her gaze took in my casual clothes. "When did you change?"
"I dropped by before going over to CRAG. You were with a client." Like me, Meghan worked at home. Her massage room and a tiny office were tucked into a front corner on the main floor, out of the way of our normal household traffic. She wore her warm-weather working togs: soft cotton knit shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt.
"CRAG. Of course that's where you've been." She stopped herself before adding, "Again."
"I've got some bad news," I said.
She crossed her arms. "What?"
"You know Ariel Skylark?"
"I've met her. Lots of attitude, needs to eat a burger?"
The latter statement was something, coming from Meghan who stood at just five feet and barely tipped the scale to a hundred pounds. Add dark glossy curls, a tiny turned-up nose and cupid lips, and she looked more like a wood sprite t
han a single mother, former lawyer, and currently much-in-demand massage therapist.
I chewed gently on my lower lip and nodded. "That's her." I took a breath. "She was murdered."
Her gray eyes widened, filled with a combination of kindness, concern, and bewilderment. Consternation flooded her voice. "How did you hear about it?"
I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. "You're not going to believe it."
"Not going to believe what?" Her tone was flat. She had an inkling of what was coming.
"I found her." I opened my eyes to find Meghan had closed hers, and had added the telling gesture of pinching the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. Meghan may have hated me finding dead bodies even more than I did.
I plunged on. "After the funeral reception I went over to the coop for my spinning lesson with Ruth."
Meghan dropped her hand and rolled her eyes at this further evidence of my recent obsession with fiber.
"Anyway, no one was there when I arrived. The front door was open, and I thought someone was working in the studio and had forgotten to lock it. I went inside, but no one was there. At least not downstairs. Upstairs in the studio spaces, I found Ariel. She was…" The screen my efficient brain had erected fell away, and my mind's eye filled with the image of Ariel Skylark lying on her back, lips blue, tongue slightly protruding. The tangible violence surrounding the scene. I took another deep breath and forced myself to swallow the lump in my throat. "She was strangled, Meghan. Strangled with my yarn."
Startled, she asked, "What do you mean, your yarn?"
"It was the first skein of yarn I'd completed spinning. Just a plain, off-white yarn, full of slubs and kind of weird looking, but I could have made a hat out of it, or something. I mean, I'm not saying a hat is more important than, well, you know, it's just, it was my first skein, and I'd just finished it a couple days ago, and now it's a… " Another dry swallow. "… a murder weapon."
Meghan sank down on the bench by the picnic table. "Sophie Mae?"
"Yeah?"
"Why is it that you, of all people, managed to find Ariel?"
I shrugged. "Just unlucky, I guess."
She sighed.
"What?" I asked.
"You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"
"What kind of a question is that?"
"Like what you did when Philip Heaven died."
"Ruth said something to that effect, too," I said. "I don't know why everyone thinks I'm going to wade into a murder investigation. Last time cured me of that."
My housemate didn't look convinced. "That'd be a lot easier to believe if I didn't know how much fun you have when you're poking and snooping." "
I do not!"
"Uh-huh"
"No one else was looking into those other deaths, and somebody needed to find out what really happened. But believe me, Barr and Robin are all over this case."
"Okay. Good," she said. "I have two more clients, and then I have to go pick up Erin. Let's not make a big deal about this tonight, okay?"
"Right. I don't think she ever met Ariel, so we can downplay it however much you want." I gave her the egg I'd been holding. "I'm going over to Barr's, make him dinner tonight, so I might be home late anyway."
She grinned. "I won't wait up."
Meghan went inside the house. I moved to inspect the squash vines to see if the milk solution I'd applied to the powdery mildew on the leaves had been effective. It looked like it had stopped the unsightly white fungus in its tracks.
Fun? She actually thought I had fun investigating Walter's, and then Philip's deaths? Well, okay. Maybe unraveling a puzzle was… interesting. At least it wasn't boring. And I was two for two, so I must have been pretty good at it.
Right?
***
Of course, making Barr dinner came with a not-so-hidden agenda. I was determined to find out what he'd been pussyfooting around for the last few days. His procrastination had no doubt blown the whole thing out of proportion in my mind, and it would probably turn out to be something totally, laughably boring.
At least I hoped so. What's that Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times?
I also wanted to know whether I needed to worry about the fact that my yarn had been the murder weapon. Did Robin actually consider me a suspect?
Barr lived on the edge of town in a small, two-bedroom house, with a spacious yard surrounded by a cedar picket fence. It looked like something right out of a storybook or a song. Blousy antique roses tumbled from the trellis that arched over the front walk, neglected but persistent. Their fragrance, intensified by the warm afternoon sun, curled along the light breeze. On the front porch I inhaled the sweet scent deep into my lungs as I fished in my pocket for my key.
I felt numb, spaced-out, like I'd taken too much cold medicine. The specter of Ariel sprawled on the floor of the co-op haunted the darker recesses of my mind. My subconscious kept dropping a thick veil over my recent experience, making it seem like it had happened months or years ago. Then boom!-I'd remember the whole thing in vivid detail.
My attention veered to the sound of the key chain jangling in my hand. House keys, truck keys, co-op keys, and the key to Barr's house. If this became my home, that last one would be my house key: a painfully obvious yet unsettling thought. I'd continue to rent Meghan's basement as I did now, and work there nearly every day. Barr spent less time on the job than he used to since the addition of a second detective to the force, but he was still gone a lot. Even if I moved, I'd spend almost the same amount of time with Meghan and Erin that I did now.
At least that's what I kept telling myself. But would it work out that way, really? They were my family. The thought of leaving them made my throat ache. On the other hand, Barr and I had been talking about taking this next step for months now. I was the one who continued to drag my feet.
It wasn't that I didn't love him. I did. Not a single question about it.
But I was deeply content living with my best friend and her precocious child. It's different living with females, and the three of us had been together long enough that we'd pretty much worked out the bugs. If I moved in with Barr, I could still maintain the family unit I'd built up with Meghan and Erin. Couldn't I?
In the middle of Barr's living room, I turned in a full circle, taking in the contents and their arrangement with eyes tuned to how my own belongings might fit in. My attention snagged on the coffee table. Mine, a wrought-iron-and-tile affair, graced our living room at home; it fit there, and it didn't make sense to bring it over here. It wouldn't go with anything of Barr's anyway.
I sighed. None of my stuff would look good with his. I liked metal and bright colors. He liked wood, the chunkier the better, and muted browns and greens in horrible prints. The sofa was plaid, for heaven's sake.
Oh, but that coffee table would have to go. It was made out of some huge spool, like something a monstrous cable had once been wrapped around. Someone had attempted to sand it a little, but you still couldn't set a drink on it without balancing it between the grooves of the wood grain. And it had been shellacked, slathered with a thick coat of clear goo that had dried unevenly, so long ago that the areas where it had been applied the thickest were beginning to yellow.
Gross.
I'd asked him where he got it. He said a friend had given it to him. I asked if the friend lived nearby. He said no. I asked if he loved the table. I was, of course, being facetious.
But he said yes.
Which wasn't the answer I'd been hoping for, believe me. Not even as a dirt-poor college student would I have wanted such a piece.
I wandered through the rest of the house, trying to figure out if I could squeeze into the place. Thank goodness, I didn't have much. And I could leave most of it with Meghan, so she wouldn't have to get anything new just because I bailed on her. The thought left a sour taste behind. But no matter how little I might bring, this wee house would be awfully crowded.
Meghan's house was so nice. Four bedroo
ms, three levels, right downtown, so you could walk almost anywhere you needed to go. I pushed that thought aside. Barr owned this house. He wanted me to move in with him. If I did decide to make that leap, the two of us would have to make do in this tiny space. And really, how much time would we be spending here, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time. Maybe down the line we'd get a different place, a little bigger, a little closer to town.
Gawd. What a spoiled brat I was. It was a perfectly nice house. I passed by an open window and smelled the roses again. Opening the refrigerator, I studied the contents. Not much there. If I was going to make Barr dinner, a quick trip to the grocery store was in order.
Ariel would never eat again. The thought struck me like a snake, and I sank into a kitchen chair. I wondered what she'd eaten for her last meal.
Loud knocking jolted me out of my reverie. I hesitated, then rose and walked to the door. Opened it.
The woman waiting on the step blinked when she saw me. I'm sure I blinked, too.
It was like looking into a mirror. She had green eyes. Like mine. Blonde hair, exactly my shade. Only hers was still long and worn in a braid down her back. Her features reflected mine. She was my height. My build. She was a tad thinner. And a tad younger. And she possessed the ability to make clothes look good on her. I disliked her immediately.
All this happened in a split second. I smiled. She smiled.
"Hi," she said. "Is Barr home?"
"Um, no. Not right now. Can I help you?"
"Well, could you tell him Hannah stopped by? And that I'm staying at the Horse Acres Bed and Breakfast, on the south side of town?"
"I'll tell him. Will he know who you are?" Meaning, of course, that I wanted to know.
Hannah smirked. "Oh, I think he'll know. I'm his wife, after all."
SIX
I NEVER REALLY KNEW what feeling the term "thunderstruck" referred to until that moment. But it seemed to cover the stomachswooping, knee-buckling sensation those last words engendered.
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