Knit, Purl, Die

by Anne Canadeo

  “All right, I’ll do it. I can work out a pattern on some graph paper later. If Lucy makes a sketch.”

  “Sure, I’d love to.” She’d made the suggestion, so that made sense.

  “Then we can decide together how I should use the colors,” Maggie proposed.

  “This dark blue yarn for the background would be awesome.” Phoebe held up one of her squares. “That’s like the night sky, with the star zipping across in the gold yarn?”

  “And some purple and cream trails?” Dana added. “Or is that too much?”

  “Not at all. We want to make it special.” Maggie took the blue square from Phoebe and held it out, trying to envision a star graphic knitted into it. “Maybe I can add another accent color and wander out of our palette just a bit.”

  “Oh wait … let’s use some of Gloria’s wool, if she has the right colors …” Maggie got up from her chair and walked over to another table on the porch, where she had left the two shopping bags Jamie had brought over.

  She carried over a bag and started digging through it. “I think I found some of the plum. Oh, what’s this?” She pulled out a sheet of paper. “The pattern for the Mist Lace Scarf,” she said in a melancholy tone. She lifted her head and sighed. “The scarf that fell in the water with her. Jamie says he disposed of it, along with the clothes she had on that night. It must have been ruined in the chlorine anyway, but … it seems like a shame that her last project was lost.”

  “That is a shame. She was almost done with it, I think,” Dana recalled.

  “Does anybody want this?” Maggie asked, holding out the pattern instructions. “It’s such a beautiful stitch.”

  Dana leaned forward and took the sheet. “I’d like to try it sometime. Maybe in black for evening wear.” Her voice trailed off as she looked over the pattern, then turned it over. “Look at this. Looks like some sort of list …”

  Dana brought the sheet closer to the light. Lucy leaned over her shoulder to see it, too.

  “It’s a list of addresses,” Dana told the others. She looked up. “It looks like Gloria’s handwriting.”

  Lucy took the sheet next. She didn’t know Gloria’s handwriting, but she did recognize two addresses on the list. Both had been on the printout Suzanne had made for Jamie: the same properties that had been transferred from Mike Novak for the sum of one dollar.

  She felt her mouth grow dry. She wanted to tell her friends about this suspicious coincidence … but didn’t think this was a good time.

  Lucy swallowed hard and passed the sheet of paper to Suzanne, who waited to see it. “Yes, it’s a list of addresses. Might be properties that Gloria owned and was thinking of selling,” Lucy said lightly.

  Suzanne looked the list over quickly. “Good guess. I see the address of the condo and the commercial building on here that she wanted to put on the market.” Suzanne looked over at Maggie. “We should give this to Jamie. It might be nothing, just notes to herself. But it might be something.”

  “Yes, it might be important,” Maggie agreed. “I’ll call him and tell him I found it.”

  Maggie folded the sheet and tucked it in her pocket.

  Lucy tried to concentrate on her knitting, but squirmed in her chair. She was bursting to tell her friends the small but perhaps significant bits she’d noticed tonight, about the deed transfers and the overlap with this list.

  It might be important. It might be another signal, pointing to Mike Novak and his possible presence at the house the night Gloria died.

  Had they made that list together? Or had Gloria made it in preparation for his visit? Lucy was starting to get the feeling that all the pieces were on the table, but she still couldn’t see where things fit, or what this all added up to.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Suzanne said suddenly. “Let’s line up all the squares we’ve made so far and see how it looks. I think that would be some good positive reinforcement.”

  Spoken like a true mom, Lucy thought.

  “It will be fun to see our progress.” Dana liked the idea, too, and began rummaging through her knitting bag for her squares. “I think I brought all my squares with me.”

  “I’ve made three so far,” Lucy told her friends as she also searched through her knitting tote.

  “I’ve only made one.” Phoebe held up her contribution. “But we should put them together and see what we’ve got.”

  “All right, if that’s what you want to do. Let’s go inside and put them out on the big table,” Maggie suggested. “There’s not enough room out here.”

  They grabbed their knitting bags, then trooped inside to the table at the back of the shop. Everyone put down her squares and Maggie found the blanket pattern in her cupboard and brought it over.

  “Okay, here’s how it will go …” She moved the colored squares around like pieces on a game board, finally lining them up in a pattern. Of course, it was incomplete, but Lucy could get the idea.

  Lucy put a piece of paper in the middle with a quick sketch of a star. “That’s Gloria’s square,” she said.

  They walked around the table, appraising the arrangement from different angles. “It’s going to look good,” Dana decided. “We made nice choices with the colors.”

  “Not bad,” Suzanne agreed. “What color should we use to stitch it together?”

  “Dark blue,” Lucy suggested.

  “I like the plum,” Phoebe said.

  “Oh no … gold would be the best,” Dana overruled them.

  Maggie laughed. “Guess we’ll have a vote when we get there. But it is good to step back and get the big picture. To think outside the knitted square.”

  Yes, it was good to think outside the square, Lucy agreed.

  Their project was still missing a lot of pieces, but it was easy to visualize the complete blanket from the squares that were there.

  If only the story of Gloria’s final hours was as easy to visualize from the bits and pieces they knew so far.

  Chapter Ten

  The knitting group adjourned a few minutes before 11:00. The blanket preview was a big success and gave them all a motivating boost.

  But Lucy had no chance to share with her friends the odd items she’d noticed—the curious transactions between Mike Novak and Gloria on Suzanne’s property search list and the identical properties appearing on the handwritten list on the back of the mist lace scarf pattern.

  When she got home that night, she was too tired to send them a group e-mail, and the idea of doing that seemed a little obsessive. At least Dana would think so.

  She did think that Maggie should make a copy of the notes on the back of the pattern before giving the original to Jamie. Why she should do this, Lucy wasn’t quite sure. In case the Black Sheep knitters came across more disturbing coincidences that somehow connected to the list?

  The police would be looking into this entire situation soon, she reminded herself, if Jamie could persuade them. She recalled how stubborn and inflexible Detective Walsh had been when Maggie had been dealing with him.

  But this is different, Lucy reminded herself. Jamie was the bereaved husband of a woman who’d died under strange and shocking, if not downright suspicious, circumstances. The police ought to listen to him and take another look, if only to humor him.

  On Friday morning, Lucy had to buckle down and focus on her work. The art director for The Big Book of Things That Flap, Swoop, and Fly wanted to see the first three chapters by Monday. Never mind that it was not the schedule Lucy had been given at the start. There were unforseen reasons for the rush, beyond anyone’s control, and she couldn’t complain too much or they wouldn’t hire her again. Simple as that.

  This new deadline was going to cut into her time with Matt this weekend. Unfortunate since he was free, didn’t have Dara, and might be able to borrow a friend’s sailboat.

  Just my flipping luck …

  Lucy hit a key on her computer and opened a new file. A giant pair of webbed feet filled her oversized monitor. While the image made her smile
, all she could think was, I’d hate to knit socks for those babies, never mind Matt’s big feet.

  She still had several more blue squares to complete for the blanket and couldn’t start Matt’s promised socks for some time. She wondered if Phoebe’s friend really wanted to take part in the project or had only been trying to be polite last night. Crystal did not look like the “trying to be polite” type, that was for sure, but you never know. Would the Goth girl even finish the square she’d started?

  Lucy had seen plenty of people attracted to knitting and very excited about it at first, then lose interest and fall by the wayside. Sometimes this was because they never got the rhythm of working the needles or didn’t spend enough time knitting to reach that deep, meditative level—knitting in the zone.

  Lucy didn’t have a handle on Crystal yet. The girl was so quiet. It was hard to get a sense of her beyond her appearance. And appearances could be misleading. Take Gloria, for instance. Her larger-than-life personality had been off-putting at first, but she’d turned out to be quite a deep and thoughtful person.

  Phoebe wouldn’t be friends with a complete airhead, Lucy reasoned, so her new girlfriend must have more to her than tattoos and a skull-emblazoned wardrobe.

  But if Crystal turned out to be Gloria’s replacement in their group, which was possible if she kept knitting, that would be a pretty ironic choice by the hand of fate. Lucy couldn’t imagine two women who were more opposite, at least as they appeared on the surface.

  Lucy worked through the day and made good progress. If she worked a bit after dinner and kept up the pace tomorrow, maybe she could sneak out for a sail with Matt after all. Gloria’s sudden passing had served as a reminder that life could be frighteningly brief. Given a chance to take a sunset sail with a man she was crazy about, should she really stay home, staring at a computer screen full of webbed feet?

  On Saturday morning, Lucy woke early and took Tink for a long walk into town. The dog had been sadly neglected on Friday and they both needed the exercise. One major drawback of working on a deadline was the LBS factor—lower body spread. When she was working hard, she had little time or energy for any activity beyond dog walks. By the time a project was done, Lucy could feel—or imagined very vividly—her thighs and butt spreading out like a thick slice of melted cheese, oozing over the edges of her desk chair.

  Maybe life was too short to worry about flabby thighs, too, Lucy thought. Still, she urged the dog from a slow pace into a light jog down the last hill to Main Street.

  When she walked into the knitting shop, she found Maggie alone, sitting on the love seat in an alcove at the front of the shop. Her yarn swift was clamped to the small table in front of the couch and she was rolling a ball of yarn. The Plum Harbor Times was spread out across the table beside a cup of coffee.

  “You’re out early for a Saturday,” she greeted Lucy.

  “A big chunk of a project is suddenly due Monday. I just wanted to get some fresh air before I chain myself to my desk.”

  Lucy headed back to the storeroom and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “That sounds pretty miserable,” Maggie called after her. “It should be nice weather, too,” she added as Lucy returned to her cozy spot.

  “So I hear. Thanks for the reminder.” Lucy smiled at her. She sat down and sipped her coffee. “Did Jamie come back yet to get that list on the scarf pattern?” she asked.

  “He picked it up yesterday afternoon. He didn’t think it was anything important. But he said he was going to give it to Martin Lewis, in case it helps the inventory.”

  “Oh, that could be,” Lucy replied. “You didn’t happen to make a copy, did you?”

  Maggie shook her head no … then looked up. “Wait, I did make a copy. Dana said she wanted to try the pattern and I wasn’t sure where Gloria had found it. Did you want to try making the scarf, too?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the scarf. I meant the list.”

  “The list? Oh, I’m not sure if I copied the back of the page. I don’t think there were any pattern instructions there. What did you want with that?”

  “I don’t know. With all the speculation about what may have happened at Gloria’s the night she died, I thought it might come in handy at some point. Jamie ought to tell the police about it,” Lucy added.

  “That’s true. He said he called Detective Walsh and they spoke about our suspicions. Walsh promised to review his report and one from the corner’s office again. But Jamie felt he might have just been humoring him.”

  “I don’t think the police will do anything,” Lucy said flatly. “Look at it from their perspective. They’re overloaded with cases, violent crimes with obvious victims and obvious criminals. They were able to investigate this situation quickly, file a report, and decided that she died of natural causes. They’re not going to go out of their way to make more work for themselves, generating a murder investigation, when there are plenty of other crimes to solve with lots of obvious in-your-face evidence.”

  “Do you really think Gloria was murdered?” Maggie abruptly stopped rolling the yarn but the swift kept spinning.

  “Did I say ‘murder’?” Lucy shook her head. “Oh … I don’t know. But it could have been. Considering Gloria’s condition at the time, she could have been pushed into the pool and easily have drowned without any obvious signs of a struggle.”

  Maggie straightened out the yarn and prepared to start again. “I thought of that, too,” she admitted. “Well, I thought of it and kept pushing it out of my mind. I kept telling myself that the police examined the house and examined her, and they would have come to that conclusion if there was any foul play.”

  “Right. Just like they figured out who killed Amanda Goran so quickly.”

  Maggie glanced at her over the edge of her glasses. “No comment.”

  “They may not even know about Gloria’s relationship with Mike Novak. We didn’t tell Jamie, so he didn’t add that to his list of things worth looking into again.”

  “I know. But if they start investigating the situation again, they might discover that link on their own,” Maggie pointed out.

  “You didn’t know and you were a good friend of hers. It could remain hidden. I guess we could tell Walsh. But I hate to go around Jamie’s back.”

  “Me, too. I don’t think any of us want to do that,” Maggie insisted. “Look, we did our part. Jamie took our advice and prodded them. Let’s see what the police do. Maybe they’ll figure that angle out when they take a second look.”

  Lucy didn’t have much hope the police would make a sincere effort, but Maggie seemed to. She guessed it made sense to wait a bit before going directly to Detective Walsh and telling all that they knew.

  “There was something more I noticed last night,” Lucy confided. “Beyond the mystery visitor and the wineglasses.”

  “And Gloria’s relationship with Mike Novak,” Maggie added.

  “Well, it’s related to that,” Lucy told her. “I was looking at the real estate records Suzanne printed out for Jamie. I noticed that there were two properties listed that had been owned by Mike Novak and transferred to Gloria recently, for the sum of one dollar.”

  “Oh … that is strange.” Maggie frowned. “Thought I have heard of people transferring deeds that way. Sometimes, within a family. It makes it official, but they don’t have to pay any taxes, or something like that.”

  “Yes, the tiny sum makes it official,” Lucy knew. “But why would he be giving her these expensive properties? The dates were pretty recent, too—within the last year.”

  “Before or after she went to Florida?” Maggie asked. She had almost finished rolling the wool and the swift was spinning quickly.

  “Definitely before. The dates were last year.” Lucy remembered that much.

  “That was before she’d broken up with him,” Maggie recalled. “Maybe the property was a gift of some kind?”

  “Or repayment for a loan,” Lucy realized. “But there was something else. That list on th
e back of the pattern … I saw at least one of the properties Mike Novak transferred to her on that list, too.”

  “Oh … that is an interesting coincidence.” The skein had come to an end and the last strand flew off the swift and sent it spinning like a lawn ornament on a windy day.

  “Interesting, yes. But what does it mean?” Lucy tossed her head in frustration.

  She heard Tink give a bark. She looked over at the bay window and saw the dog up on her front paws again, looking in.

  “Does she want you for some reason?” Lucy could tell by Maggie’s tone that she was afraid Tink might have an accident on her lovely porch, ruining the ambience.

  Lucy stood up. “I don’t think so. She just had a long walk … oh, it’s those silly stuffed sheep you have in the window again. They’re driving her mad.”

  Maggie laughed. “I’ll get her one for Christmas.”

  “She’d chew it to shreds in about ten seconds. Major vet bill.”

  “You get a discount there,” Maggie said lightly. “How’s that going, by the way?”

  “It’s going great.” Lucy noticed a new issue of a knitting magazine she hadn’t seen before and picked it up from the table. A not-so-subtle diversion from the conversation.

  It was going great. She and Matt had a great time together and he was just … great. It was his relationship with his Almost Ex-Wife that struck a sour note, at least in Lucy’s thoughts. But Lucy didn’t want to get into that this morning.

  “How’s Nick Cooper?” she prodded Maggie. “I saw you talking to him at the memorial service. Phoebe told me he likes to drop in to say hello.”

  Maggie’s cheeks grew pink, Lucy thought. Or maybe that was just a trick of the light in the shop.

  “Phoebe talks too much. But he does drop in,” Maggie admitted. “He came by yesterday, in fact. With two tickets to a performance of chamber music at the library.”