Silence of the Lamb's Wool (A Yarn Retreat Mystery)

by Betty Hechtman

  “Not alone alone. More like a few minutes of fresh air. You’re welcome to join me.” Before the words were out of my mouth, he said it sounded like what he needed as well. I pulled out the note and showed it to him.

  He eyed me warily. “What exactly have you been up to?”

  “I know everyone is content to think that Nicole’s death was a suicide, but let’s say I’m still not convinced. I may have been doing a little checking around.” We crossed the street and started down the pathway between the low fencing meant to keep the planted area safe from footsteps.

  “Have you been talking to your detective friend?” he asked.

  “Not friend, my former boss,” I corrected. “We’ve talked a few times.”

  Dane’s smile faded. “You know you could run stuff past me. Anytime.”

  I reminded him of his company and he let out a sigh and looked at the ground. I was expecting some kind of snappy remark, but instead all he said was “Right.”

  I couldn’t resist. “So, you’re tired of her already? What is it, she won’t leave?”

  Dane’s mouth was drawn in a straight line. “Something like that.” It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it and changed the subject back to Nicole. “This note seems kind of generic. Could it be about something else? I saw all the evidence, the coffee cup, the chocolate and vanilla muffin, the note on the phone. Even the empty bottle of insecticide. There was nothing that indicated foul play. I don’t know what Nicole got herself involved with, but it seems clear she felt bad about it. She must have felt there was no way out.” We’d reached the wide stretch of beach and watched the waves roll in. I never stopped being amazed at the color of the water as the waves broke. It was absolutely seafoam green.

  “It seems like this retreat is keeping you pretty busy. Why don’t you just concentrate on it and not worry about anything else.” Dane and I had walked to the edge of the damp sand and we began to parallel the water. It looked odd to see his dark blue uniform reflected in the water before it went back out to sea.

  I didn’t think the note was about something else and I didn’t want to just accept her death as suicide and let it go. Rather than say that, I changed the subject. “I can see why you want to take a walk after the way things have been at your place—” Before I could finish, his head snapped in my direction and his expression looked anything but pleased.

  “I was just going to say that you haven’t had your karate going all week.” His expression softened a little, but we both knew why he hadn’t been having the town kids over in his garage.

  I was still surprised by his demeanor. I was used to him being flirty and cocky, but most of all upbeat. He seemed almost depressed.

  It was only when I was back in the meeting room, setting up the coffee and tea and cookies I’d made, that something Dane had said struck me. He’d been specific about the kind of muffin they’d found. I had no doubt he was accurate because he was somewhat of an expert on the different muffins I made. He said they’d found a chocolate and vanilla muffin as part of the evidence. But here was the problem: Nicole’s incident happened on Tuesday, but I hadn’t baked the Ebony and Ivory ones, as I called them, for that day. I’d baked them for Monday. I needed to talk to Maggie.

  I backtracked and went into the Lodge, where the pay phones were full and there was a line waiting for them. Instead I went into the café. Jane was more than agreeable to let me use the phone. Of course, I got Maggie’s voice mail and left a message asking her to think about the day before Nicole died and mentioned the muffin.

  The meeting room was still empty when I returned. I sat down and waited, hoping to get a moment alone with Wanda to ask her about the salad spinners.

  I saw her coming up the path. It was hard to confuse her with anyone else. Her gait went along with her manner of speech. She didn’t walk, she marched.

  I came outside as she got near the drying racks and started checking the fleece. I called out a greeting. There was no quick segue from “Hello” to “Why did you know to buy salad spinners when someone else was supposed to be running the workshop?”

  “That little bit of sun did the trick,” she said. She pushed a pillowcase on me and told me to start collecting the wool off half the racks, but to make sure it was really dry.

  “I just want to thank you again for stepping in. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” Wanda moved at lightning speed and had her share of the drying racks empty while I was still on the top rung of my first one. She went into the room and I stopped collecting the wool and followed her inside.

  She glanced around. “Did you bring the carders?” I pointed out the plastic bin and she flipped off the top and began taking out some pairs of things that looked like large dog brushes, along with some actual dog brushes. I could tell by the Fido’s Friend brand name on the back.

  I followed her around the U shape of the tables. “There is no way we’re going to get the whole group in here at one time,” she muttered. She turned and almost tripped over me.

  “You filled the pillowcase already?” she said, taking it from my hands. When she looked inside and saw just a little bit of the fluff at the bottom, she pushed it back at me and tried to send me back outside.

  I was good at talking to people and getting information, but Wanda was in a category all her own. You didn’t have a conversation with her. She gave commands and you followed them.

  When I tried to bring up the salad spinners, she brushed it off and said we were done working with them and I ought to concentrate on how we were going to divide up the group.

  “Stand clear,” she said as she unloaded two lethal-looking devices with long metal fingers. She seemed to be considering where to put them. Crystal came in just then and looked as Wanda set them on the table.

  “You brought a pair of wool combs?” the yarn store co-owner said. “Maybe not such a good idea with such a big group.” The two women made an odd pair. Wanda with her short stout build, in the floral top and lime green slacks, and Crystal, in her jeans and multilayered bright-colored tops with an armload of jangling bangles. Crystal held one of the wool combs by its wooden handle and showed me the rows of tines. “Make sure you don’t touch the top of these. They’re sharp. Deadly sharp.”

  Surprisingly, Wanda seemed to listen. “You’re right. We wouldn’t want somebody to back into one of these. It would be like being impaled on a bunch of tiny swords,” Wanda said, eyeing the dangerous-looking tools. “Carding will have to be enough,” she said as she packed them away. Any chance of asking more about the salad spinners ended when the rest of the group arrived.

  Wanda had the group gather around her and said the next step was carding the wool. She did a little demo with two of the wooden paddles covered with short metal teeth. She might call it carding, but to me it looked like brushing the wool back and forth between the two tools. Whatever it was called, at the end of it, she rolled the white fuzz off the device and said the end result was called a rolag.

  There were only five sets of carders and some of those were the dog brushes, which were smaller but worked just as well. We quickly divided the group up. Wanda had me be one of the first to try it and I thought I was going to be helping the others, but it turned out most of my time was spent moving groups of people in and out of the room. A woman who seemed to wear nothing but purple offered to do a demonstration on how to fix common knitting mistakes for the group not carding. I helped her set up in the other meeting room and then stayed to watch it as she repeated it for each new group. I was touched by her offer of help and apologized for not being better organized.

  The woman in the cat T-shirt overheard and reassured me the most important aspect of the retreat was being away with a bunch of like-minded people with lots of time to knit.

  “Tomorrow we spin,” Wanda said when the last group had their turn carding. She scooped up all the rolags and put them in a containe
r on wheels, saying she’d drop it off in the other meeting room. I tried to follow her and called after her, asking if there was going to be enough wool to spin. She answered with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  20

  “Wanda is making me doubt my skills,” I said to Lucinda. She had stayed behind when the group dispersed and helped me with the part nobody seemed to want to do—clean up. Even Crystal had bailed. Her kids would be home from school.

  I folded up the drying racks and set them against the wall for Will to pick up. I packed up the carders and pushed the bin next to Wanda’s stuff. Then it was just cleaning the bits of fleece off the tables.

  I brought up the time I’d worked for the detective agency. It had only been a temp job, but it was my favorite and I’d been great at doing telephone interviews. My boss, Frank, always said I got people to spill all kinds of information. “People usually open up to me. But not Wanda,” I said. I repeated what she’d said when I asked about the salad spinners. “I can just imagine how she would have reacted if I’d tried to find out where she was when Nicole died.”

  “Do you think she’s a suspect?” Lucinda asked.

  “I don’t know if it counts as a motive, but the first time I met her, she presented herself as being the town expert on spinning and was angry that I had hired Nicole.” I told Lucinda what I’d heard about Wanda being upstaged all the time. “Maybe my hiring Nicole instead of her was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

  Will came in and said we could leave everything and he’d finish up. His gaze rested on a pair of covered plastic bins. “I see you found the carders.”

  I mentioned my midday trip to The Bank and how it looked like somebody had been in there again. “I didn’t do anything,” I explained. “But I thought you might want to call the cops.”

  Will took the news with a stoic expression. “I’m glad you didn’t bother the cops. I’ll have to go over there and make sure the lock is secure.”

  I made an attempt to pursue the conversation and mentioned the fallen stack of ledgers. He blinked at me a few times and then completely changed the subject and asked me how Wanda was working out. He brushed off the top of one of the tables and began to fold it down. I decided not to mention the box I’d taken.

  If I couldn’t get an answer to one thing, maybe I could find out about another. “I’m grateful to have her,” I said in my best diplomatic tone. “How well do you know her?”

  It was very obvious that he felt much more comfortable with this line of conversation. He set the folded table against the wall and began on the next one. “I knew her sister a lot better,” Will said. “We went to high school together.” He stopped what he was doing and seemed embarrassed. “She was the prom queen, the year I was the king.”

  I remembered the travel agent’s daughter talking about Will being the big heartthrob. He seemed to have no sense of his own appeal, which only made him more likable. I asked if Nicole had known Wanda. He balanced the folded table against his hip as he wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve and made a disparaging noise.

  “If you mean were they friends, the answer is no. But they each knew who the other was. Nicole did mention that Wanda came to her shop last week. I don’t know what was said, but my wife seemed very upset with her manner. I tried to explain it was just Wanda’s way to be a little overbearing, but Nicole didn’t seem to care.”

  He went on to give us a little background on Wanda, most of which totally surprised me. All the stuff with yarn was more of a hobby or side business. Her real profession was as a golf pro at one of the Pebble Beach resorts. “I know you wouldn’t think it by looking at her, but she’s won a lot of golf tournaments. They moved her down to teaching kids recently after they hired another woman golfer.” He seemed sympathetic as he explained the replacement was younger and supposedly more the image they wanted to project than Wanda was. “I don’t think she took it well.” Will said she was married and, as could be expected, her husband was on the quiet side; she also had two kids.

  Lucinda looked at the plastic bins and asked if they should be moved. I opened Wanda’s and noticed the bag of salad spinners. I guessed that she was keeping them until I paid her. When I moved the bag to look underneath, Lucinda called out for me to watch out. I understood why when I saw the light catching on the sharp metal teeth of the wool combs. I pulled my hand away quickly before letting the lid shut, shivering at the thought of what would have happened if I’d made contact.

  “How about we just leave the bins here for now,” Will said, taking out a broom. As he began to sweep, he grew thoughtful. “Maybe I could have said something more to Nicole. I knew she was having a hard time here. I just didn’t realize how hard.” He let out a sad sigh. “She wanted to see the world and work in a big-city museum. Me, I’m happy here. I figure if you can’t find what you want in your own backyard, you won’t find it anywhere.”

  He cleared up the coffee things and ate the last cookie before handing me the empty plate. He was just about finished and was going to leave. Dare I push the envelope and bring up the word blackmail? He had opened up a lot, but from my experience talking to people, I knew if you crossed a line, they clammed up and stayed that way. I decided it was better to leave it that we were all on the same side, mourning the loss of his wife.

  When Will left, I instinctively went to check my phone for messages, but then remembered about having no signal. I actually saw the point of everyone else being unplugged, but it was still a nuisance for me, since I wasn’t there to get away from it all.

  “Maybe there’s something on the message board,” Lucinda said.

  “How could I have forgotten that option?” I said, rolling my eyes. “I bet that’s what they used when Cora’s brother ran the place.” We walked together to the social hall. The Lodge was crowded with people. Lucinda noticed a group from our retreat and suggested we join them. I urged her to go on herself, reminding her that this was her vacation, but not mine.

  The message board sat near the entrance to the gift shop. I was surprised to see how covered with scraps of paper it was. There was no order to how they were organized and it was a little dizzying reading them all. In the end there was one old message for me from Wanda telling me to turn the drying wool over during lunchtime. There was nothing from Maggie.

  I went home to freshen up and get everything together for my baking later in the evening. The plan was I would bake that night for Saturday and Sunday at the Blue Door, so I wouldn’t have to go back Saturday night. I’d bake muffins for Saturday, but the town would have to go muffinless for Sunday. I always baked those fresh for the next day only.

  Before I went in, I checked the stoop outside the kitchen door. The plate I’d brought to Dane’s with the cookies was sitting there with a note on it. I felt a little flutter as I opened it. He thanked me for the cookies and promised there would be pasta packages soon. He’d drawn a smiley face next to his name, but it almost looked like a heart. I didn’t know what to make of it. The only thing I knew for sure was that I would never be the “other woman” in a relationship. He’d made his bed and now he had to lie in it.

  I distracted myself from thinking about him by checking my landline and cell phone for messages. Maggie had left one on both of them. I was hoping for some sort of information, but all she said was that she was returning my call.

  Julius was parading in front of the refrigerator.

  “No stink fish tonight,” I said. He’d finished the can in the morning and I found a can of kitty stew in the pantry. Julius rushed up to his bowl and waited until I doled some of it out, but he took one look at the little meatballs and flecks of vegetable in beige gravy and turned to me. I can’t explain how the black cat did it, but something in the shake of his head and the flick of his tail made me think he was saying, “Really? You think I’m going to eat that?”

  “When you get hungry, you’ll eat it,” I said. I cringe
d, realizing I’d just mouthed the words my mother had said to me when we had something I didn’t like for dinner. Not that my mother had made it. She didn’t cook. We had somebody who did that. I often thought that was why I had taken so to baking. It was making it clear that I was nothing like my cardiologist mother, who thought cookies came only from a bakery.

  I changed into more formal-looking black jeans with a T-shirt in the same color. I added a rust-colored suede blazer-style jacket. There wasn’t much to do with my hair beyond brush it and let it hang loose. I was beginning to learn from Lucinda that if you wanted to look your best, you needed to keep freshening your makeup. On a normal day, I wouldn’t have bothered. The great thing about baking alone at night was that I didn’t need to worry about lipstick and eye shadow.

  But this was different. I was looking forward to having dinner with the group. I realized I might not know their names, but I still felt bonded with them. And especially to the early birds and Lucinda.

  The Lodge was even busier when I came back. The business group was waiting with their suitcases to be taken to the airport. Funny, their retreat was considered work, so when Friday night came it was time to go home. It was easy to spot them because in their last move to be a homogeneous group, they were all still wearing matching polo shirts. I noticed Scott hanging with the guy he’d taught to knit. Scott waved me over and introduced me to Vinnie Pulaski.

  “He wants to be on your mailing list,” Scott said.

  Vinnie nodded. “Scott here has changed my life. Who’d have thought someday I’d be working with sticks and yarn. He says your retreats really rock. I say count me in.” Up close I got a good view of Vinnie’s brown wavy hair and a set of rather large biceps showing under his polo shirt sleeve. I took down his information, thinking he would definitely be an interesting addition to a retreat.

  The outside door opened and I was surprised to see Burton Fiore and Cora Delacorte come into the big room. The first thing I noticed was that Cora’s fiancé looked like he’d raided Kevin St. John’s closet for a dark suit, white shirt and conservative tie. Cora wore an emerald green pantsuit, but then she always dressed up. She’d gone a little heavy on the eye makeup and I could see the green shadow from across the room. In her typical Queen Elizabeth fashion, she was holding a purse on her arm.