A Stitch in Crime

by Betty Hechtman

  “They must be from Izabelle’s book. The one she was making the big to-do about. Her fusion craft.” Dinah put on her creative writing teacher hat and explained the pages were typeset like the book. “It’s the last step before the book comes out.” Dinah pointed to a notation penciled in the margin. “She must have been proofreading them.”

  As we piled them on the bed, Dinah held up a page in front of me. “Look at the title: The Needle and the Hook.”

  “You think her big fusion craft was mixing knitting and crochet?” I asked.

  “It looks that way.” Dinah riffled through the pages on the bed. “It also looks like most of the book is missing.”

  We both looked toward the window. “Do you think the shadow was a woman, like maybe Adele? What if she found out the subject of Izabelle’s new craft and went bonkers?” I pictured Adele ranting about the fusion craft soiling the purity of crochet.

  “I know she had a problem with crochet versus knitting, but do you think she’d go so far as to break into a room? And what would be the point of stealing the galleys? I’m sure the publisher has another copy. Finally, I think we know Adele well enough that if it had been her, we would have recognized her shape,” Dinah said.

  By now our heartbeats had returned to normal, and all that was left was the rush from the adrenaline. I glanced around the room with a different perspective.

  “I guess it’ll be my responsibility to pack up her things.”

  Dinah gave me a sympathetic nod. “Yes, one more responsibility that goes along with the rhinestone clipboard.”

  The room was laid out about the same as mine, except there was only one twin bed against the wall. Aside from the papers it seemed orderly. Izabelle’s personal items were in several unzipped pouches by the sink. A stack of plastic bins sat against the wall. Each of them had a label for a session of her workshop. When I lifted the lid of the top one, I saw pillowcases with thread crochet trim and a lot of flowers in different sizes and yarns, along with a copy of her book. I walked over to the closet and opened the door. A faint scent of her floral cologne clung to her neatly hung clothes and the suitcase stowed below. When I turned back to the room, Dinah was sitting on the bed with a laptop computer open next to her.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Checking my e-mail. You know how upset I’ve been about not bringing my laptop. This is even better. She has one of those cards that makes it so her computer can go online anywhere.” Dinah looked up and caught my expression of disapproval. “It’s all right. I’m just going to see what I have. And I want to check a quote for the memoir workshop. So technically I’m using it for the weekend. I’m sure Izabelle wouldn’t mind.” The reflection from the screen illuminated Dinah’s face after she’d pressed the power button.

  “Hmm. It looks like Izabelle was in the middle of something and just let it go into hibernate mode.” Dinah turned the computer so I could see the screen. The body of an e-mail was in the center of the screen. It had no salutation and said Don’t do anything before you talk to me. Call me or at least answer your phone. It was signed Tom, ITA Sponsor. I sat down on the bed next to Dinah and put the computer on my lap, but I almost dropped it when my cell phone started to vibrate in my tote next to me. I hurried to get it before it started to ring. Dinah and I had kept our conversation to a whisper. Somehow, I didn’t want to make any noise.

  I answered the phone with a whispered hello.

  “Hey, babe,” Barry said. “Just calling to see how it’s going. I figured by now you’d be in your room . . . alone. Right, you are alone?”

  There was dead air. I couldn’t lie when asked a direct question, but I also didn’t want to answer. Saying nothing seemed the safest bet. Unless you’re talking to a top-flight homicide detective who knows how to squeeze information out of the most reluctant suspects. In my case it was easy. He knew me well enough to recognize that the dead air meant something was up, probably something he wouldn’t be happy about. “Okay, Molly, let’s just save us both a lot of time and cut to the chase. Where are you, and what are you doing?”

  “I was going to call you. There’s been a little incident.” I paused; what I was going to say next was going to get the reaction. “One of the presenters died.”

  “What?” Barry said. I could practically hear his blood pressure go up.

  “The doctor and the police think it was from some kind of allergic reaction.” I heard his breath come out in a gush.

  “Then it wasn’t homicide. Good.”

  I told him the doctor thought Izabelle had suddenly developed a life-threatening allergy.

  “That sounds reasonable.” He began his standard speech. “The police will investigate. Stay out of it. Leave it to the professionals la la la la.” He didn’t actually say la la la la. That was the part where I wasn’t listening anymore. Eventually he figured out something else was up, and he knew me well enough to ask me directly. Like I said, when someone asks me a specific question, I always tell the truth. Barry asked where I was. I thought he took the information that I was in Izabelle’s room rather well. But since he didn’t ask about the purse, I didn’t tell. I let him think I was being overzealous about my responsibility to handle things.

  “I understand you think it’s your task to pack up her things. But you have all weekend, and you might want to wait until you talk to her next of kin.”

  Barry seemed pleased when I said I would definitely take what he said into consideration. Then he signed off after telling me how much he missed me.

  “He just wants to protect you,” Dinah said when I flipped my phone shut. It was pointless to try and keep our conversation private. Besides, Dinah knew all my business anyway.

  “The trouble is,” I said, putting my phone away, “he makes it so I can’t discuss things with him. I can just imagine what he’d say if I told him someone was in the room when we got here and went out the window. And he’d get crazy if I told him we thought that what we’d just read on Izabelle’s computer made it sound like she was planning to do something that would cause trouble.”

  “We do?” Dinah said.

  “Sure, look at it. It sounds like some person is telling her not to do something rashly.” Dinah read it again and nodded in agreement.

  “I wonder what ITA is?” she said.

  I looked at it again, too. “I bet the A stands for anonymous. Like Alcoholics Anonymous. They always give people sponsors.”

  “And the I probably stands for independent or international,” Dinah said. “All we have to do is figure out the T.”

  For a few minutes Dinah and I thought of words beginning with T that might go with Anonymous and Independent or International. We got teetotalers, tap dancers, taskmasters, tastemakers, tattletales, techies and taxi drivers before we gave up.

  “Let’s check Izabelle’s favorite Web sites. Maybe that will give us a clue,” Dinah said, clicking on a button on the computer.

  A list came up. A number of the Web sites had to do with crochet, but one popped out at me. I told Dinah to click on it. When the opening page loaded and I read it over, I nodded toward the screen.

  “You realize what this means,” I said as we looked at the home page of peanutallergies.com. “She knew she was allergic to peanuts. It wasn’t a sudden allergic reaction.”

  “Then why would she eat a s’more laced with peanut butter?” Dinah said. I flipped through some more screens that described first aid maneuvers. I pointed at the screen.

  We both looked at the slender cylinder with the designation EpiPen. Underneath was a diagram of how to use it. Apparently you stabbed it in your thigh if you had a reaction to something and it would keep you going until you could get further help. The lime green pouch bag was still hanging on my wrist. I reeled it in and turned it upside down. A cell phone fell out along with a match of what we were looking at on the screen.

  “Hmm, one more thing that proves she was aware of her allergy and had taken precautions,” Dinah said, examining the Epi
Pen.

  I checked the cell phone; the battery was completely dead. “Then how did she die from an allergy attack?”

  CHAPTER 11

  THE WHOLE GROUP WAS ALREADY AT BREAKFAST when I came into the dining hall. Outside, the sky was an overcast white with haze in the air, but when I stopped at the registration desk, the clerk assured me it was completely normal and not the beginning of another fog emergency. The redheaded clerk had finally gone home, and this morning two women were manning the desk. They gave me a pile of phone messages. They were all from people who were on their way and wanted to make sure I knew they were coming. Now that the operations of Asilomar were back to normal, there were pots of coffee on the table and the smell of pancakes and maple syrup in the air.

  Only Commander Blaine seemed disappointed that breakfast apparently was going along without his help. I heard him comment to Dinah, who was sitting across the table, that if it had been up to him, he’d have set up the breakfast buffet style, with lots of choices for pancake toppings besides the mundane, overly sweet syrup that was the only option.

  The knitting couple, Jym and Jeen Wolf, were at the same table, wearing matching tee shirts with the saying Born to Knit. They greeted me with enthusiastic smiles and asked about the status of the retreaters. I held up the handful of messages in answer. Miss Lavender Pants and her brother and sister-in-law were next to the Wolfs. Miss Lavender Pants seemed happy that the real workshops were going to begin, and hoped there would be no more incidents like Adele’s big scene.

  Mason waved me over to the next table and pulled out a chair in anticipation. Apparently, he’d brought a wardrobe of loose-fitting pants and kimono jackets. Today’s outfit was navy blue with an olive green tee shirt underneath. Only his smile was the same.

  “Hey, Sunshine,” he said in a reassuring tone. “If you need any help, just give me a nudge.” He and Dinah were the only ones who knew Izabelle was dead. After what I’d found in Izabelle’s room, I’d gone to talk to Mason. I had tried to get Dinah to come with me—maybe more as a chaperone than anything else—but she was more interested in going to bed. After what I’d been through, I was too wired to sleep anyway.

  I had felt a little odd knocking at Mason’s door both because it was late and because the rooms didn’t have any space for socializing. But I wanted to run our experiences in Izabelle’s room past him. Since he was a criminal attorney, I wanted to hear his take on things.

  When Mason answered the door, it was obvious he’d been sleeping. I don’t know why I was surprised. There wasn’t much else to do in the small, televison-free rooms. His eyes were glazed and his hair was all tousled. The unfocused look on his face changed to a slightly surprised smile when he saw it was me.

  “What’s up, Sunshine?” I was relieved he didn’t make some smarmy remark. I knew he might be thinking it, but at least he didn’t say anything. He was clearly waiting to see what move I was going to make. He’d made it clear he was ready, willing and more than able to step into the boyfriend slot, but had left it up to me to give the okay.

  “I need some advice,” I said. Was there just a little disappointment in his eyes as his smile went down a notch?

  “C’mon in.” He stepped aside and shut the door behind me. I swallowed when I saw his room was smaller than mine and had only one single bed. “Sorry there’s no chair,” he said, pulling the covers up over the small bed. We both sat down.

  I usually felt very comfortable with Mason. There was something about the way he handled things, like coming by helicopter when I got detained on Catalina. And he was always such a good sport, like coming on this weekend and teaching tai chi. And I liked the way he’d said that there was always fun where I was. He hadn’t even minded the fog.

  Only this time what I felt had nothing to do with comfort. I tried not to look at his pajamas or what he wore as pajamas—a tee shirt and soft knit pants. I realized I’d never seen his bare feet before. Or realized how big his feet were. I tore my eyes away and glanced around the room, trying to ignore the faint smell of his cologne.

  I didn’t know where to look when I talked to him. Definitely not the same as talking to Mason in a suit. I told him about finding Izabelle and what they thought was the cause of death. I moved on to Dinah’s and my walk to the beach. When I got to the part about going in Izabelle’s room and someone being in there, and then mentioned what we had found, he sat forward a little.

  This was what I loved about Mason. He didn’t discount what I said or tell me to leave it alone or that I had murder on the brain.

  “So, I gather you aren’t so sure it was an accident?”

  “Right,” I said. “But I really don’t want it to be homicide. I mean, what a perfect crime, but I don’t want it to be a crime. I wanted this weekend to be crime-free. Mrs. Shedd can’t blame me for the fog, but it still looks bad that the one weekend she puts me in charge of is the one when there’s a fog emergency. She can’t count what happened to Izabelle as my fault, either, but someone getting sick and dying doesn’t look as bad as someone getting killed.”

  “I think I have an answer,” Mason said. “Here’s a problem for a murder scenario. S’mores aren’t like cyanide. You can’t mix them with something. You know the one about you can get a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink? Well, somebody could have handed the s’more to Izabelle, but they couldn’t have made her eat it. She must have picked up the wrong bag, or maybe it was mismarked. Feel better?”

  “Yes,” I said, sighing in relief.

  “As for the person in the room, I don’t have enough information to give you an answer. But it’s probably something stupid like someone who couldn’t wait for her book to come out and wanted to see it. So, there you are, no murder this weekend.”

  I turned toward him, ready to give him a thank-you hug, but I stopped short. Along with his other attributes, Mason had a high cuddle quotient. And it would have been all too easy to let the hug morph into curling up next to him.

  “Got to go,” I said, my voice cracking, as I jumped off the bed and made it to the doorway in two steps. I heard Mason chuckling behind me, and I bet he’d had the same smile then as he was wearing here now at breakfast.

  Mason reached for the coffee pot and poured me a cup as I glanced around the table. Sheila was sitting next to Adele. I think their sharing a room was really getting to Sheila. Her shoulders were hunched and she was crocheting in her lap. It was therapeutic crochet. I doubted she even knew what she was making or cared if her stitches were all over the place. This was about the meditative quality. Besides, she knew she could rip it out later.

  When Adele turned to hang her jacket on the back of her chair, I saw something that made me jump. “Where did you get that?” I said, pointing as she held a pouch purse with the strap hanging down.

  Adele reacted with a funny look, and I realized I might have sounded a little frantic. She set it in the middle of the table with a gesture that implied it was there for me to admire. Hers was red and the flowers were white, but the style was identical to the bag I’d found in the plants. “What do you think? I made it, Pink.” Dinah looked over from the other table, and when she saw the purse, her eyes widened. “If you want, I can help you make one,” Adele said. “The directions are in Izabelle’s book. She used some glow-in-the-dark stuff for the flowers, but I just went for the sport-weight yarn I’d used for the bag.” At the mention of Izabelle’s name, Jym asked how she was doing.

  I took a deep breath. I wasn’t looking forward to what I had to do. Everyone turned toward me, waiting for an answer, which confirmed that no one knew yet. I was still composing my thoughts when Bennett and Nora came in and went to the neighboring table, and momentarily the attention turned to them. Even if nobody exactly recognized him, he had a kind of magnetism that drew your eyes to him. His manner was gentlemanly as he pulled out a chair for his wife and gestured for her to sit. I was glad she’d decided to give the dining hall food a try after all. Bennett made a little nod of greeting to
the group, and then everyone turned back to me.

  “Well, Pink,” Adele said finally, “is Izabelle going to make it back from the hospital in time to do her workshop?”

  “Not exactly.” Did I really say that? How lame. Once I actually said she was dead, everyone would realize what a bad comment it was. Better just to be direct. I was about to say it when Sergeant French came into the dining room and glanced around until he saw our group. As he walked toward our table, he put on a somber expression. I might as well leave the job of telling the group to him. He certainly had far more experience. And, maybe, it was the coward’s way out.

  “Ms. Pink.” He acknowledged me with a nod when he stopped next to me; then he greeted the rest of our group. He turned back to me with a question in his eyes: “They don’t know, do they?” I guess it was pretty obvious. All the smiling and cheerful conversations didn’t go with having just heard someone had died.

  Sergeant French checked out the group some more. I suppose he was sizing them up, trying to figure if anybody was going to faint or anything. His head stopped moving when his gaze reached Bennett. It was obvious, from the perplexed squint of his eyes, that he was trying to place Bennett, as if maybe he had seen him on the Ten Most Wanted list.

  Nora apparently was used to people staring at her husband that way and volunteered that he was on Raf Gibraltar.

  Sergeant French studied Bennett’s face and then brightened. “That’s right. He plays the older brother. What’s his name?”

  “Buzz Gibraltar,” Nora said. “If you watch the show, you probably realize the story always turns on his assessment of the situation. Nobody understands, but he’s really the star.”

  Nora always seemed to be playing the manager, talking up her client. Did she have any life of her own? Did she want any life of her own? Or was she content to be an extension of Bennett?

  By now everybody was staring at the craggy-faced policeman in the dark uniform—and not in a good way. I had to do something. How would it look that I hadn’t told them?