Dead Men Don't Crochet

by Betty Hechtman

  We took the only vacant table, next to some guy with blond hair that looked like yellow cottage cheese, who was writing a screenplay on his computer. I was going to have to tell Mrs. Shedd she ought to put up signs with time limits for the tables.

  Dinah took a long drag on her coffee and sighed with pleasure. “At last I can think again.”

  “Good. Because I have to figure out how to proceed.”

  Dinah drank more of her coffee and pointed at the window. The Cottage Shoppe was down the street, and Kevin had just stepped outside to put up the “Open” sign. “Why not start there? That’s where it all happened.”

  It was a good point, and since this was the first time the store had been open since the murder, it seemed like a good time to have a look around.

  “Maybe we can also find out who the bald guy is and what he was so mad about,” I said. Dinah nodded in agreement as she drained her coffee.

  As we walked down the street toward the store, I noticed that it appeared to be the same quaint place it had always been. The only hint that anything had gone on was the scrap of yellow police tape stuck on the door handle. The banners about the Hearston Estate offerings were still on the windows, and the bell tinkled when we came in the door.

  It was pretty dead inside. Then Kevin Brooks came down the stairs. His face brightened when he saw us, and he immediately came over.

  “May I help you find something?” His voice sounded a little too anxious. He seemed to study our faces, and then he smiled with recognition. “You were here the other day, weren’t you? The day that Drew—” He swallowed hard. I could understand how that would be a hard sentence to finish.

  I told him I was sorry about his brother; Dinah did the same.

  “Thank you, ladies. I wasn’t sure about opening again as soon as the police finished, but I think Drew would want me to. It is important to keep going, don’t you think?”

  Personally, I thought it was a little fast. I couldn’t imagine having gone back to work a few days after Charlie died, but then who knew how close Kevin and Drew were. Hadn’t Mrs. Shedd mentioned something about overhearing the brothers arguing?

  Kevin invited us to look around at our leisure and mentioned there was complimentary coffee, tea and soup in the dining room. I just hoped he’d had the good sense not to be serving the tomato bisque again.

  “Dorothy will be glad to help you with anything,” he said, gesturing toward the clerk half hidden in the living room. I knew her slightly. She was one of the regulars from Romance Night at the bookstore, and as I recalled she preferred paranormals, particularly anything with a vampire. She was past typical retirement age and appeared overdressed by current standards—a mark of her generation.

  Dinah and I walked into the room. Dorothy didn’t seem quite to know what to do with herself and was sitting in one of the rockers, rocking at a frantic pace. It made me tense to watch her. But at the mention of her name, she stopped short and jumped up. The chair continued on its own with a loud thwack-thwack. I grabbed it, bringing it to an abrupt stop. The tension level was high enough already.

  “I’m sorry to have startled you. It’s no wonder you’re feeling jumpy—after what happened.” I touched her shoulder in a sympathetic gesture as Dinah gave me a go-for-it nod and wandered off. “I was here. I saw him.” I pointed at the ceiling to indicate upstairs.

  She shook her head with dismay. “Thank heavens I missed that sight. Trina—she’s our other salesperson—is the one who found him. She’s been having nightmares about giant bowls of soup and says she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to come back to work. Frankly, I can’t believe Mr. Kevin reopened already. They’ve barely had the funeral. He said something about life has to go on.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Drew will be missed,” I said in a somber tone, curious how she would react. I added the Mr. after hearing her refer to Kevin that way. Personally, I thought it sounded kind of pretentious.

  She looked around, then stepped right next to me. “I know they say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but he was not a nice person.” She again checked to make sure no one would overhear her before continuing. “As soon as they took over the place, he crowned himself boss. All he cared about was money, money and more money—for himself. Not like his aunt. Don’t get me wrong, she did okay, but she did it in a fair way.”

  I wanted to ask for details and maybe segue into the bald man, but Dorothy didn’t stop long enough to breathe, let alone for me to interject something. All the talking was obviously some kind of vent for her tension.

  “Cut everybody’s salary, he did,” she said with a grunt of disgust. “It wasn’t so much a problem for me. My Henry left me very comfortable. I do this more to keep busy, but Trina counts on the money, and she was devastated.” Dorothy shook her head in dismay. “You know what he said to her when she complained? He said if she didn’t like it, there were plenty of fast-food places looking for another burger flipper.”

  Dorothy had begun to walk as she talked. She stopped at a basket full of sachets and started nervously running her hands through them. “I was going to quit on principle. I have my pride. But Mr. Kevin apologized and reinstated my salary.”

  I wondered if he was doing the same for the other cuts his brother had made. I’d have to be sure to tell Sheila. Dinah had gone off to the Kids’ Korner and as she came toward me, I noticed she was carrying a cloth doll and a wooden truck. No matter what she’d said about Ashley-Angela and E. Conner, apparently they had gotten to her. When she rejoined us, Dinah just hung back and listened, while Dorothy went back to complaining about Mr. Drew. She seemed very upset that he had installed an alarm on the back door to prevent shoplifters from escaping.

  “Shoplifters?” she said, putting her hands on the hip portion of her mint green pants outfit. “This is not a shoplifter kind of business.” She pointed to a card that proclaimed no refunds or exchanges and all sales were final. “Shoplifters want to bring the stuff back and get cash. Not going to happen here.” She let out a big sigh. “Well, at least we won’t have to listen to them fighting anymore.”

  “Fighting?” I said, finally getting to say something.

  She said the two brothers argued loudly and continually.

  “For someone so worried about business, Mr. Drew certainly should have known to keep his voice down. More than once I saw a customer walk out. Maybe they thought nobody could hear them, but this is a small place and sound travels.”

  Now that she had brought up customers it seemed like my chance to steer the conversation toward the bald man. “I suppose you’re familiar with most of the customers and sellers,” I said when she finally took a breath. She opened her mouth to say something, but the bell on the entrance jangled and some customers came in.

  Dorothy seemed to have lost her train of thought and walked toward them. “Look around,” she said to Dinah and me with a dismissive wave.

  For a moment we stood there. “Do you think she’ll come back?” I asked Dinah. We watched as more people came in the door, and then we both shook our heads.

  “You can pay over here,” Kevin said as he stepped behind the counter in the converted closet under the stairway that served as a cashier station. Even more people had arrived.

  Kevin rang Dinah up and put the toys in a bag. We stepped away to make room for the new customers, but I wasn’t ready to leave.

  We moved back into the living room and pretended to be looking around. Maybe not totally pretending. There were a lot of interesting things to look at. I stopped by a dark wood library table. It was for sale along with the items on top of it, which included some of Sheila’s scarves. On the floor next to it was a large basket with an appealing arrangement of art supplies somebody was selling. There was a sketch pad and two books on drawing, some colored pencils and pens, along with a wooden hand and a wooden figure of a person to use as models.

  Dinah nudged me and asked if I’d gotten any good information. I told her about the salary cuts and how the saleswo
man whose screaming had gotten us all upstairs had been devastated by the pay cut and Drew’s treatment of her. “I think that puts Trina on the suspect list. Maybe she hit Drew with the paperweight, and when his face hit the soup she just waited until the soup had done it’s deadly work and then began to scream. And there’s Dorothy, too. She claimed not to be upset, but maybe she just said that. She could have gone up there earlier and smashed him on the head.”

  I watched Dorothy picking up a brass lamp to check the price. No question, even though she was well into her sixties, she had the strength to swing a paperweight with some force. More people came in the shop, and the buzz of conversation got louder. I recognized some of the regular customers from the bookstore. Dorothy was being pulled in all directions by the crowd.

  “Can you believe all these people,” Dinah said. “You’d think they were giving something away.”

  “Are those the paperweights?” a woman asked, pointing to a group of objects on the mantelpiece. She was wearing casual pants and high heels, a look I never understood. Someone else was apparently interested in them, too, and pushed next to her, asking the same question. It took a moment for it to make sense. Then I realized they were talking about the paperweights that had been on Drew’s desk. Ugh. There was some discussion about which of the ones on display had been the one.

  “None of these,” Kevin said. “The police have the one that hit my brother. It’s evidence, you know.”

  The woman in the heels said she really wanted to buy one since they were a part of history. I rolled my eyes to myself. I had this thing about people and their desire for a part of history. Or what they thought was a piece of history, anyway. A paperweight from the desk of a dead guy didn’t qualify in my book, even if he was murdered.

  She picked up a brass bust of Teddy Roosevelt and a tall glass piece with a green jellyfish suspended inside. I remembered seeing them on the desk. Someone asked Kevin what the one looked like.

  “It was a globe inlaid with semiprecious stones on a silverplate base. It was quite heavy for its size,” he said. Then he looked uncomfortable with what he’d said. The mention of it stirred my memory, and I shuddered as I recalled seeing the globe lying on its side. I realized the red I’d seen on it wasn’t pieces of ruby.

  Meanwhile, I heard rumors starting to circulate among the growing group of shoppers. Someone mentioned that one of Sheila’s scarves had been on Drew’s desk, too. Suddenly there was a run on those. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not for Sheila. She might make some money, but it only brought more attention to the fact that one of her scarves had been in the room when Drew died.

  Dinah and I slipped into the dining room to get away from the crowd. Apparently they hadn’t put it together yet that the free samples of soup were prepared by the same person who had made the soup Drew drowned in. Dinah and I took some soup samples and sat down at one of the small bistro tables. Kevin had made a nice cream of asparagus with a touch of curry. From our table, we could see that Kevin had joined Dorothy in dealing with the crowd.

  Everyone seemed occupied, which gave me an idea. I pointed upstairs. “What do you think? There may never be another chance like this. I’d like to see Drew’s office. Maybe the white lacy stuff is still hanging on the drawer.”

  “We have to be stealth,” Dinah said with a twinkle in her eye. She crumpled her soup cup and got up.

  “Wait a second,” I said, sitting back down again. I’d worn no-show white socks with my slip-ons, but somehow the socks had slipped down and were in a bunch right at my arch. I pulled off both socks, stuck them in the pocket of my khaki slacks and put the shoes back on. I could practically feel a blister forming as we threaded through the crowd toward the stairs.

  My heartbeat picked up as I checked to make sure no one was looking in our direction. A rush of adrenalin surged through me as I started up the stairs with Dinah right behind me. We moved quickly, and when we were out of sight, I let my breath out. We’d made it.

  It seemed eerily quiet after all the racket downstairs.

  The first time I’d been up here, I hadn’t paid much attention to the hall. Now I noticed that the second floor went over only the front half of the building. There were two open doorways and one closed one, which I guessed led to a bathroom from the ancient days when this was a house.

  I was curious to see what Drew’s office looked like now that the crime scene investigators and detectives had finished with it. The desk was cleaned of tomato bisque residue, and the paperweights had been moved downstairs. The CSIs must have taken the bowl and the rest of the soup. I wondered how they handled keeping a bowl of soup as evidence.

  I didn’t see Sheila’s scarf. Did that mean they’d taken that as evidence also, or was it just so soup soaked it had gotten trashed? This time I noticed there was a desk lamp, a three-tiered paper holder and a telephone. I supposed last time I’d been in the office they had all been on the floor. Someone had tried to clean the carpet, but residue of the red still showed in the beige pile. There were some shelves in the back with books about antique and collectible prices. I noticed a printer on the bottom shelf with a USB cord to nowhere. I guessed Drew must have brought in a laptop.

  What I didn’t see was anything hanging off a desk drawer.

  “Maybe whatever it was is in the drawer now,” Dinah whispered.

  I hesitated. So far all we’d done was look at what was readily seeable; opening drawers seemed to be crossing a line. What was that saying—in for a penny, in for a pound? It seemed silly to sneak up here and not check out everything. Besides, if I was careful, no one would know. I took out one of the no-show socks and used it as a hand cover so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints.

  “Clever move,” Dinah whispered.

  The drawers were mostly empty. One had a bunch of blank labels and some postcards. I looked at one. It was lime green and announced that a new shipment of goodies had arrived and encouraged the recipient to make sure and come in. Another had some pencils and pens, stamps and a copy of The Greed Machine. We’d had a signing for it. The author had bragged that he knew how to grow money, which basically amounted to diverting it from other people’s pockets into his. I had a feeling it must have been Drew’s personal bible.

  I stood back and looked around again.

  “I think we’ve covered it here,” I said softly. I walked out and headed for the other bedroom/office. “I wonder what Mr. Kevin has,” I said, slipping inside. His office was slightly smaller and the furnishings were plainer. The desk was antique, but plain wood rather than the inlaid squares of Drew’s desktop. There was a bookcase with a few books. All appeared to be cookbooks, and the one that seemed the most handled was on restaurant design. There were some restaurant equipment catalogs and also a binder. I flipped open the binder and saw it held a collection of recipes, including one for the tomato bisque soup.

  Dinah sat down on the love seat while I continued to looked around. I took out one of my no-show socks again and used it to open the desk drawers. There was a phone book, some pens and pencils and two packages of fruity mint gum, which I thought sounded like an upset stomach waiting to happen.

  I was sliding the drawer shut when I heard noise on the stairs. Voices that were growing louder. I turned toward Dinah. She’d heard them, too. I think we must have had matching panic faces. Operating on instinct, she slid behind the love seat and I crawled under the desk, grateful that it had a modesty shield across the opening, so no one could see me from the other side.

  This was the problem with snooping around. You could get caught. I squeezed under the desk as far as possible, but I still had a view of the feet and pants’ bottoms of the two people who came in the office. Two legs had faded jeans and not the kind thrown in vats of bleach or washed with rocks to look that way. These appeared authentically paled by countless washings. The feet were in work boots that looked as though they’d seen their share of action. The other legs wore dark olive green dress trousers, and the shoes were loafers with t
assels, or as I called them, men’s party shoes. I also noticed something white and balled up under the desk. In my panic I must have dropped my no-show sock. I silently snatched it and put it in my pocket.

  “So, here are the plans and costs,” the jeans-and-boot person said. He was shifting his weight and had a deep voice. “We’d be enlarging the kitchen and dining room by adding onto the side and back. We’d take out the storage room and use the space for another downstairs bathroom.”

  I listened with interest. I’d already figured out the other feet belonged to Kevin. It was kind of a no-brainer since it was his office and I recognized the olive green trousers from before. So, Drew was barely out of the picture and Kevin already was getting estimates from a contractor. One more sign Kevin wasn’t exactly inconsolable over the loss of his brother. Kevin asked some questions about how long it would take to put on the addition and said he needed to be able to stay open during the remodel.

  I was so busy listening I almost forgot where I was and started to shifted around to a more comfortable—no strike that, less uncomfortable position. My legs were beginning to hurt from being jammed under my chin. I started to stretch them out, but quickly realized they’d stick out past the end of the desk and probably be in plain sight. Forcing myself not to groan, I wrenched them back. Didn’t they want to take their discussion downstairs where they could actually see the areas Kevin wanted changed? I thought longingly. Then I could get up and stretch and we could make our escape.

  No such luck. Instead Kevin sat down at his desk, though thankfully he didn’t pull his chair in or stick his legs underneath. I had squeezed sideways now so as to take up less space. I peeked under the bottom of the modesty shield and noticed something was moving. I was so contorted by now I could have auditioned for the Cirque du Soleil, but I saw that Dinah had come out from behind the love seat and was crawling against the wall toward the door. Mr. Work Boots was standing in front of the desk and must have been blocking Kevin’s view of her because they just kept talking like nothing was going on. Work Boots was saying he needed a check to get started, and judging by the drawer opening, Kevin was going to give it to him. I watched Dinah’s feet disappear out the door.