Yarn Over Murder

by Maggie Sefton

  Kelly clicked off and shoved her phone into her pocket. She needed something to take her mind off those images of Andrea Holt falling to her death and the very real sight of a Lambspun friend sinking into a deep depression.

  Once again she shoved her laptop into her shoulder bag, grabbed her iced coffee, and headed back into the knitting shop. Maybe she would take a few minutes to choose a yarn to use for that sweater project Mimi suggested. That would totally divert her thoughts. Nothing like luscious fibers and colors to distract a person.

  Mimi stood at the knitting table in the main room, paging through one of the binders that held patterns.

  “Ahh, perfect timing,” Kelly said as she walked into the room and dumped her things on the table. No one else was at the table. “I thought you could help me start that sweater pattern you suggested the other day. You said it was easy.”

  Mimi sent her a warm smile. “It certainly is, Kelly, and it would be a perfect choice for you to make for the evacuees clothing project.”

  “I hope so. You know I’ve stayed away from sweaters ever since I tried one a couple of years ago and one side wound up longer than the other.” Kelly made a face. “I figured they were beyond my skill level.”

  “Pshaw,” Mimi said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You’ve definitely become a more skillful knitter over the years. I’m sure this will turn out perfectly.”

  Kelly deliberately made a shocked expression. “Mimi! You know you cannot have my name and the word ‘skillful’ or ‘perfect’ in the same sentence. They cancel each other out.”

  Mimi laughed lightly. “Silly. You come into the workroom and take a look at some of these yarns while I make a copy of this pattern.” Mimi had already removed the sweater pattern from the binder.

  Kelly dutifully followed her into the adjacent workroom; three sides of this room were also lined with yarn bins. But knitted children’s clothing also dangled from the shelves and ceiling, precious little dresses and baby sweaters with hoods, tiny baby hats and larger children’s stocking caps. Some had crocheted flowers attached. Adorable, all of them, Kelly thought.

  But how in the world did they manage to work on those teeny tiny needles they use for the smallest garments? Size one and two needles. Kelly was always amazed at how easily some knitters worked with those tiny needles. Kelly couldn’t even hold them without dropping them. Particularly the shiny metal ones. They slid right off her fingers. The smallest size Kelly had comfortably worked with were size four needles, which she would use to make children’s hats.

  Mimi came out of her office where she’d disappeared while Kelly was admiring the delicate work all around her. “Here we go. Now, let’s find a yarn that would work.” She walked toward another bank of shelves in the room, the bins brimming over with both bold primary and subdued colors. “The pattern gauge suggests using a yarn that will give ten stitches per four inches, so let’s take a look.”

  Kelly watched Mimi pick up one skein of yarn after another and read on the label if the gauge would yield what they needed, then she would either hand it to Kelly or replace it into a bin again.

  “Thanks again for helping me with this, Mimi,” Kelly said, holding up a bright royal blue yarn. She checked the label. Lamb’s Pride. One hundred percent wool. Then she read the label on a skein of shamrock green yarn. It felt softer, actually. And the label had confirmed it was alpaca wool. Oh, yes. Soft, soft. To-die-for soft was alpaca wool.

  “Okay, here’s a yellow to go with those. So, does any one yarn strike your fancy? I figure we can make this pattern in the small size so a child could wear it. And kids love primary colors.”

  Kelly compared the yarns in her hands and held up the shamrock green alpaca wool. “Can’t resist the alpaca, plus it’s a great rich green.”

  “Okay, shamrock green alpaca it is. Good choice, Kelly,” Mimi said, and replaced the rest of the yarns in their proper bins. “Now, let’s return to the table and get this started. Oh, do you have the right size needles? This pattern says to use number nine.”

  “Let me check my bag. I deliberately tossed several needles into my bag last night before I forgot about it. I knew I was going to start this sweater sometime. Hate to keep buying needles when I’ve got so many at home.”

  “All right, let’s take a look,” Mimi said, beckoning Kelly back to the main room. “You check your bag while I go wind this skein into a ball for you up front.”

  Kelly dug into her shoulder bag, fingers scrambling around the bottom, until she felt the needles. Pulling out a handful, she checked the ends for the size markings, and found the number nine needles.

  Okay, I have the tools, now let’s take a look at this pattern.

  Eight

  Thursday, June 14

  “Hey, there, Cassie. Looks like you’re on magazine detail this morning,” Kelly said as she walked into Lambspun’s main room.

  Cassie stood beside the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that lined two walls of the knitting shop’s gathering place. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Hi, Kelly. Rosa is needed up front with Mimi, so I’m finishing the magazines for her.”

  Kelly set her bag and coffee mug on the table. “Is Connie in today?”

  “No, she has the day off. Mimi thought she needed to take it easy after this last weekend.” Cassie picked up another magazine from the long library table then looked over at Kelly. “Maybe Connie is catching a cold or flu or something. She sure doesn’t act like she feels good.”

  Kelly settled into a chair at the table and sipped her coffee, wondering how best to approach the subject of Connie’s abrupt change in behavior. Mimi had told Kelly that she, Burt, Jennifer, and Pete had not told Cassie the details of what happened last Saturday when Connie confronted her straying husband and Andrea Holt. All Cassie knew was that Connie had gone to Jayleen’s ranch in Bellevue Canyon to help. That was technically true. The fact that Connie’s presence proved more of a hindrance than a help was something else again.

  “Maybe she is catching a cold,” Kelly offered. “Or, maybe she’s still tired after last weekend. Steve and I felt wiped out. We woke up exhausted Monday morning.”

  “Yeah, maybe so.” Cassie slipped another magazine into its holder. “Connie’s usually so cheerful and funny. But she’s acting really weird. She doesn’t smile or make jokes anymore. And she barely talks. I mean, she talks to the customers when they bring stuff up to the counter, but then she just sits at the winding table and winds yarn. She’s gone through two whole bags of that lambspun alpaca wool already.”

  “Boy, that’s impressive,” Kelly said lightly, trying to deflect Cassie’s obvious concern. “I know Mimi’s been trying to work her way through those large bags. Since Connie’s being so efficient, that means you’ll have piles of new yarn skeins to find places for. Frankly, I don’t see any available space, do you?”

  Cassie glanced around at the full yarn bins. “Nope. I guess I’ll have to start taking more yarns down to the basement for storage.”

  Kelly reached into her bag and withdrew the beginnings of her new knitting project. She figured that was guaranteed to catch Cassie’s attention. “Hey, I finally decided which yarn and sweater pattern to use for my evacuee project. I settled on the shamrock green wool from those bins in the other room. You know, the alpaca yarns. They’re all such pretty colors. I’ve only got a few rows started.”

  Cassie’s eyes lit up and she leaned over the table, fingers reaching out. “Oh, that is so pretty. I love greens. Let me touch.”

  Kelly shoved the knitting needles containing ten rows of stitches and the fat ball of yarn closer to Cassie’s wiggling fingertips.

  “Ooh, so soft. I love alpaca. And their coats are just as soft, Jayleen says, before they’re shorn. Hers had already been shorn when I saw them.”

  “She’s right about their coats being soft. I love to pat them. Of course, they also pick up sticke
rs and other stuff in those long coats, too. That’s why their blankets have to be cleaned of trash and stuff before they go to the Wool Market to be sold.”

  Cassie looked at her in surprise. “Blankets?”

  Kelly smiled. “That’s what their coats are called after they’re shorn from the animals. It’s really fascinating to watch. I’ve seen it done several times at Jayleen’s and at other ranches. I always try to get up to her place when she’s shearing my alpacas.”

  “Oh, yeah. I remember Jayleen telling me you’ve got alpacas at her ranch, too. How many do you have?”

  “Only six now. She took them to Curt’s ranch last Saturday. I used to have more, but I sold them to breeders. I always take Jayleen’s advice.” Kelly retrieved her knitting needles and yarn and checked the beginning rows before she picked up her stitches where she left off. “But I kept the ones with the prettiest coats.”

  “What colors?”

  “Ohh, let’s see, there’s a blue gray that’s my favorite, a soft caramel brown, a lighter gray, a warm chocolate brown, a creamy beige, and a black.” She smiled at Cassie. “That’s just about the entire spectrum of alpaca colors.”

  Ignoring the small stack of magazines, Cassie continued to lean over the table, clearly intrigued by the subject. “What’s it like when they shear them? I mean, how do they do it? Alpacas are kind of skittish. Those big eyes stare at you if a loud noise goes off. I remember last weekend when Eric and I were taking care of them, some firecrackers went off close by the livestock stalls, and the animals really got spooked. They clustered together and looked scared. Eric said to keep stroking them and talking to them. It calmed them down. That’s why they cluster together like that.”

  “You’re right, Cassie. Since the animals are so skittish, ranchers have to handle them carefully. And they have to separate them from the others to shear them.” Kelly slipped the left knitting needle into the left side of the last stitch on the right needle, wrapped the yarn around the tip of the left needle, then slid the stitch off onto the right needle. Slip, wrap, slide. Slip, wrap, slide.

  “Boy, I bet they don’t like that.”

  “You’re right, so you have to be careful not to frighten them. Handlers get them to lie down on the ground and restrain them, secure their legs so they don’t try to get up or kick. So it takes two people to restrain each one while they’re being shorn. Thank goodness the shearing doesn’t take long. You’d be surprised how fast those shearers work.”

  Cassie frowned. “Does it hurt?”

  Kelly started another row of shamrock green. “Jayleen told me that shearing doesn’t hurt because the razor only cuts off the long blanket of fleece and doesn’t cut into the skin. It leaves a nubbly short coat so it can start growing again.” She slid another stitch from the left needle to the right one. “The shearer tries to cut off the blanket in one piece on each side. Apparently, it’s more valuable like that. So, they can start at the back of the alpaca, beneath their tail, then move in a really smooth motion to finish off at their neck and shoulders. Or, they can do it the other way around. Whatever the shearer chooses. The fleece beneath their necks and lower around their legs isn’t as long, so they shear that separately and put it in a separate pile. That way the complete blankets can be shown and sold separately at places like the Wool Mart. The whole blankets get top dollar. The other pieces of fleece are sold separately for less.”

  “Wow,” Cassie said, clearly fascinated by Kelly’s explanation. “I’d love to see it being done. Jayleen said they do it in the spring. Is it April or May?”

  “I’ll bet you will be able to watch Jayleen’s shearings next spring. She usually does them in May. So they had all been shorn by the time you got up here to Fort Connor.” Kelly looked up from her needles and smiled “You know, you’ve only been here in Fort Connor for three weeks, Cassie. But it feels longer, don’t you think?”

  Cassie stared out into the room. “Yeah, it does.”

  Kelly chose her next words carefully, wanting to tread lightly on a delicate subject: Cassie’s staying with Pete and Jennifer and her grandfather’s health.

  “How’s your grandpa Ben doing? You and Pete were down there last week, I think. He’s still in pretty serious condition from everything I hear.”

  “Yeah, he is,” Cassie said quietly, tracing an invisible pattern on the table. “Pete just talked to the doctor yesterday. Grandpa is doing the same. Stable, the doctor says. He’s still in the hospital.”

  “I’m not surprised. He had five blocked arteries, so that was serious surgery. Grandpa Ben will probably be in the hospital for several more weeks, I bet.”

  “Yeah, Pete says the same thing. Then he said Grandpa would probably be moved to some other kind of medical place where there’d be lots of nurses around.”

  “That sounds exactly like what Lisa told Steve and me. She said your grandpa had to become stable for a good time before he could be shifted to another facility like a nursing home. A skilled nursing facility, she called it.” Kelly wrapped the yarn around the needle, readying another stitch. More stitches appearing on the row, more rows accumulating. “Lisa’s had a lot of experience with recuperating patients. She’s even worked with patients in the hospitals doing their therapy. So she knows a lot about what’s involved in serious medical conditions like heart attacks.”

  Kelly deliberately didn’t add that Lisa informed them that she didn’t think Grandpa Ben would ever leave a nursing home, judging from his condition.

  Cassie kept tracing an invisible pattern on the table, a slight frown on her face. “How long do people have to stay in those nursing facilities? How long does it take them to get better?”

  Uh-oh, Kelly thought. She didn’t want to tread on ground that properly belonged to Pete and Jennifer, but she had to give Cassie some sort of answer. So she decided to approach it gradually.

  “Well, it depends entirely on the patient, Lisa says,” Kelly answered truthfully. “Patients who are in good physical shape before their heart attacks can recuperate really well because they’d been exercising regularly and keeping their weight in check. Patients that were not in good physical shape before the attack, well . . . that’s another story. Some can recuperate slowly with a lot of work, but it takes quite a while. Other people have a harder time recuperating.”

  Kelly paused, hoping smart Cassie would catch the drift of what she said and draw her own conclusions. Cassie knew what kind of shape her grandfather was in.

  Cassie looked up and caught Kelly’s gaze. Kelly could almost see Cassie making the connections. “Pete kind of said the same thing. We’ll have to wait and see. But he said it looked like Grandpa Ben wouldn’t be going back home for a long time. And maybe never.”

  Kelly exhaled an inner sigh of relief. Whew. Thank goodness Pete had already covered this ground. “That makes sense, Cassie. I’m sure that’s why he registered you for school here in Fort Connor. Pete and Jennifer wanted to make sure you know you have a home here with them while your grandfather is recovering.” Kelly grinned. “And we’re all really glad they did because we love having you here with us, Cassie. I can speak for the whole gang. And Mimi and Burt. And Jayleen and Curt.”

  “I am, too,” Cassie said, her smile returning. Then, to Kelly’s surprise, she came over and wrapped her arms around Kelly’s neck in a big hug.

  Kelly dropped her knitting and gave Cassie a big hug in return.

  • • •

  Kelly popped a cherry tomato into her mouth as she mixed the rest of the salad ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Hearing her cell phone’s jangle, she saw Steve’s name on the screen.

  “Hey, how long before you get here? I don’t want to grill those steaks until you’re back.”

  “I’m passing Longmont now. Have you been listening to the news? Wildfire just exploded on the south side of Poudre Canyon. Those wind gusts again. Radio news guy said flames were hundred
s of feet in the air.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “It’s burning through a stand of beetle-killed lodgepole pines. That’s why it exploded. Those dead trees light up like torches.”

  “Good Lord! When is it going to stop?”

  “No time soon. It’s only been six days. Turn on the news. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” He clicked off.

  Kelly did as Steve suggested and turned on the television to the news channel and watched some of the scenes Steve described come to life on the screen.

  Nine

  Friday afternoon, June 15

  “Well, I don’t have to ask if you enjoyed the grilled cheese or not,” Julie teased as she removed Kelly’s empty lunch plate from the café table. “It looks like you licked the plate clean. We won’t have to wash it.”

  “Tell Eduardo that cheese combination he uses ought to be against the law. It is irresistible.” Kelly held out her empty mug for Julie to refill with her pitcher of iced coffee. “Spinach salad was delish, too. That’s a new dressing, isn’t it?”

  “You can blame Eduardo for that as well. He calls it Colorado Cilantro. Too yummy. I had some yesterday.”

  Kelly rose from the table. Time to return to the quiet of the shop and her spreadsheets. “Tell Eduardo that new dressing is definitely a winner. He’d better make a gallon of it, because I predict it will be popular.”

  “Will do, Kelly. I’ll leave a carafe of iced coffee on the counter for you when we leave.”

  “You’re a doll, Julie,” Kelly said as she walked toward the hallway leading back into the knitting shop.

  Her cell phone rang in her pants pocket. Jayleen’s name flashed on the screen. At last! She’d been dying to hear how things were going at Curt’s ranch. Kelly stepped back into the café alcove to talk. “Jayleen! It’s so good to hear from you. What’s happening there?”