Yarn to Go

by Betty Hechtman

  Melissa sat down and turned to her daughter. “You don’t have to bother Kris if you have trouble with your cables. I can help you.” Sissy rolled her eyes so far up in her head, I thought they were going to disappear.

  Olivia had really taken off with the cashmere yarn, and the sparkly purple shawl was coming along nicely. I couldn’t believe how fast they all knitted. I seemed to be moving at a snail’s pace.

  Lucinda went up to Kris after Melissa had finished. My friend seemed to be having trouble figuring out whether she was supposed to start a row with a knit or a purl stitch.

  I was surprised when Scott joined the two women. “I think I can help,” he said. He demonstrated on his work. His yarn was so big and the stitches so obvious it was easy to see the bumps and smooth spots. Lucinda got it right away, and he seemed pleased.

  “I wish I could teach my own daughter how to knit,” he said, and his shoulders slumped. “But if I did, well, then everybody would know.”

  “What’s so bad about that?” Melissa said. Scott hung his head.

  “I know what Kris said about sailors knitting, but I don’t think my wife would buy that. And you don’t understand. I’m a regional manager of the Sandwich King chain. If the people under me knew, they’d . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t think they’d respect me. They’d think I was some kind of goofball. And as for my boss. Ha,” he said. “If he knew, I could just kiss that promotion good-bye.” He looked at all of us. “C’mon, you have to see what I mean.” He picked up his needles and started a row. “I look weird, right?”

  I was surprised when Olivia was the one to speak. “Not weird. Just surprising. I don’t get why it’s anybody’s business that you knit. Your wife, well, yes, but why do the people under you and your boss have to know about it?”

  “You’re saying that because you think it really is weird that I knit,” he said. “Edie thought it was weird that I wouldn’t tell anybody. Every time I went to her house, she worked on me to be up front about it. The thing about Edie is that sometimes she pushed things too hard.”

  Melissa joined in. “It’s not the usual thing men do. You could look at it as being special. What do you think, Bree? What if your boys wanted to learn how to knit?” All eyes turned to her. She’d been looking at the table, staring at her work. When she looked up, tears were rolling down her cheeks. “My boys,” she said in a warbly voice. “I called and they didn’t want to talk to me. They were in a hurry to go out on some adventure my husband cooked up for them.” She stopped. “If they don’t need me, then who am I?” She did her best to swallow back her tears. “Sure I’d teach them to knit if they even remember who I am when I come home.”

  It was a relief that when the workshop ended, they could all go to their rooms and have a little free time before lunch. Lucinda hung back and we found a bench on the boardwalk that gave us some privacy.

  “Tell me everything,” she said.

  I did an information dump on her, and by the end her mouth was hanging open. Of all the things she could have commented on, she brought up Dane.

  “I knew he liked you,” she said with a devilish smile.

  “He likes everybody. I’m not interested in being one of a crowd. I can only imagine what kind of stuff goes on in his studio.” I turned the subject back to Edie’s murder. I asked Lucinda if she remembered Edie asking for two keys, and then I told her why I was asking.

  “To be honest, I don’t remember. And even if she did, it’s not that hard to get behind the counter in the Lodge. Anybody could have slipped back there and hung up the key.”

  “Gee, thanks, just when I thought I had something to show that Kevin St. John killed Edie.”

  “Don’t you just wish,” Lucinda said. “What about Edie’s husband?”

  “I don’t know what the story is about him. I’m not sure if he’s the grieving husband or he’s just trying to make it look that way.” As I said that, I took out my cell phone and called the Lighthouse Inn. “I have a hunch.”

  I used what I’d learned from working for Frank. The first thing to do was make friends with the person you wanted the information from. It was easy with the woman who answered for the Inn because she was bored and happy to talk to somebody. I fudged a little bit and said that I worked at the Blue Door and that I was in charge of reservations and thought I’d made a mistake. “We have a reservation for a Lou Spaghazzi. He gave the Inn as a contact number. The trouble is I’m new and I got things mixed up and I can’t tell if it was really an old reservation for Thursday night or if it’s for tonight.”

  I got a little nervous when she offered to ring his room. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather he didn’t know I was so inefficient. If he said something to my boss, it could be my job,” I said in a confidential manner. “You know how it is. You make one little mistake and you’re out the door. In this case, the blue one,” I said, trying to make a joke.

  Lucinda was watching it all incredulously.

  She was very sympathetic and asked me what she could do to help. “Could you tell me when he checked in?” I said, trying to sound casual. “If he didn’t check in until Friday, he wouldn’t have had a reservation for dinner on Thursday, now would he?”

  “That’s nothing. Hang on,” she said. A moment later, she came back on the line. “The reservation must be for tonight because I see he checked in on Friday,” she said. She stopped abruptly, and I heard her saying, “Hmm,” as she seemed to be checking something. “This is kind of odd. Someone checked in on Thursday for one night and listed the same license plate number.” I asked her what the name was. “Lance Sloan,” she answered. “Maybe whoever checked them in got the plate number wrong.” She said, “Hmm,” again and then mentioned that Lance had paid cash.

  “Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” I said. When I clicked off the phone, Lucinda acted mock-indignant.

  “I had no idea I was such a tough boss,” she said with a laugh in her tone. Her smile changed to openmouthed stunned when I repeated the conversation. “Lance Sloan,” I said, with a knowing nod. “People tend to keep the same initials when they give fake names. It’s obvious he checked in for one night as Lance and then after he’d gotten the call from Lieutenant Borgnine checked in as himself so it would look like he just got there,” I said. “Well, it’s official. Lou Spaghazzi is a suspect. As for motive, he seemed crazed that Edie was meeting someone up here.”

  “But she kind of was,” Lucinda said. “There was the guy I saw her having dinner with and the man Melissa saw her with when she met Joan.”

  I remembered the picture on her cell phone from the first night and told Lucinda about the man in the baseball cap with the sunset in the background. “What if Edie’s husband saw that photo and got suspicious? He could have followed her up here and seen her talking to the guy and gone into a jealous rage,” Lucinda said.

  “Who would have thought that Edie was juggling men and managed to stir up so many people,” I said. “She seemed like such an ordinary woman.”

  “Looks can deceive,” Lucinda replied.

  In the distance the lunch bell began to ring. Lucinda stood up. “It’s such a treat to let somebody else worry about getting all the food out. Are you coming?”

  I shook my head. “I need to take care of some stuff at my place. Will you oversee lunch for me?”

  Of course, Lucinda said yes. You can take the woman out of the restaurant, but you can’t take the restaurant out of the woman.

  I had gotten halfway across the grounds when I crossed paths with Kris. She looked upset about something as she stopped me.

  “I’m not sure what to do with this information,” she said. “Edie told me that if Scott didn’t come clean to his wife by the end of the weekend, she was going to do it for him. I know she meant it in the best of ways, but if he found out, well . . .” She let her voice trail off as I got her drift. “Do you think I should tell Lieutena
nt Borgnine?”

  19

  AS LUNCH WAS ENDING, I WAS STANDING OUTSIDE the Lodge with the doors of the white Vista Del Mar van open, waiting for my crew. Though I didn’t quite get what a yarn tasting was, I was glad we were all getting out of Vista Del Mar for a while.

  The something I had to do while they were eating was to change. I’d dressed in such a hurry in the morning, I hardly looked appropriate to accompany the group on the yarn tasting. I was beginning to understand that as the person in charge, I was supposed to dress like it. I replaced the jeans, T-shirt and fleece jacket with a pair of gray slacks and a black turtleneck. I redid my hair so that it hung smoothly to my shoulders and added a burnt orange cowl I found at my aunt’s.

  While I was waiting, Lou Spaghazzi went by. He seemed to note the change in my appearance and that I seemed surprised to see him back there. “I’m keeping my eyes on things,” he said, gazing around the grounds. “I don’t get why Edie wanted to come to this place. The accommodations are about as fancy as a prison cell. With all the dark wood and gloomy weather, this place seems creepy. Like anything could happen here.” He stopped to use a toothpick to get something out of his teeth. “I didn’t realize that woman Joan was your aunt. Too bad about her accident. I heard some other woman who came to these retreats tripped over the cliff by the water. That’s three people dead all within the last six months. It makes you wonder.”

  The information I’d just gotten certainly did make me wonder about him, and I almost called him Lance to see how he would react, but he was too quick for me and had gone up the path before I could put my thoughts together.

  I heard a burst of conversation as Melissa and Sissy arrived with Lucinda. My friend gave me an appraising look and then a thumbs-up. The rest of the group trickled in, including Scott, and everyone climbed in the Vista Del Mar van and we headed for town. I thought back on what Lou had said. To me, Vista Del Mar had always seemed just a little moody, but looking out at it now, I could see his point. There was definitely something slightly sinister about the dark buildings, the grounds left wild and untamed and the waves crashing into the rocky shore.

  The van left us off in downtown Cadbury. Being Saturday afternoon, the area was busy with locals and tourists who came from all over. Who could blame them? The Monterey Peninsula was definitely one of the most beautiful spots in the world. And Cadbury by the Sea was a genuinely appealing small town. The main street was called Grand Avenue and lived up to its name. It was wide with a strip of park down the center dividing the two lanes of traffic. It wasn’t a beach town, but rather a seaside town, and the water was visible from everywhere. Gulls flew overhead, and now that the clouds had cleared, the light had a special iridescence from the sun mixing with all the salt spray in the air.

  I looked at the row of stores in front of me. They were appealing without being cloyingly cute. No “Ye Olde” anything here. It was a tourist destination, but the locals pretended not to notice.

  Lucinda stood next to me and looked up the street toward her restaurant. The former house looked inviting with its white siding and blue trim. Window boxes hung at every window with perfectly color-coordinated pansies, thanks to Tag and his fanaticism.

  It had only been two nights since I’d done my usual baking, but I missed it. When I went to work, the rest of Cadbury was usually in bed. I liked looking out over the quiet streets as I pulled out the ingredients for the restaurant’s desserts. And I capped off the evening with all the batches of muffins. It was my own little world of wonderful smells and delicious outcomes.

  Lucinda was looking at the converted house with other things on her mind. “Do you think I should stop in and maybe check on things?” she said. She had scrunched up her face in concern. I grabbed her arm and shook my head.

  I led the group around the corner to a side street that sloped down toward the water. The houses were small here. The colorful authentic Victorians were mostly on the other side of Grand Avenue. With their pastel colors, turrets and fish-scale siding they were a treat for the eyes. I was particularly fond of a large one painted buttercup yellow that was a bed-and-breakfast. The Delacorte sisters lived in one of the grandest Victorians at the very top of the slope the town was built on. I’d never been inside, but it was painted a lavender gray and had a lovely private porch on the third level that was supposed to have a view over the top of town down to the water. I’d heard you could sometimes see whales from there as they stopped to feed in Monterey Bay.

  Cadbury Yarn was in a converted bungalow. It had an inviting porch with a wicker rocker, along with a rainbow-colored wind sock that blew in the constant breeze. A happy-sounding bell tinkled as the door opened and we filed inside.

  All my aunt had said on the schedule was “yarn tasting,” and I still didn’t know what that meant. I’d only been in the store once, to confirm they had everything ready for the retreat. All I did know was that Gwen and Crystal, the mother-daughter team that owned the yarn store, would handle it and I could just be an observer.

  Gwen grabbed Kris in a hug and was effusive about the sweater the master teacher was wearing, but she also seemed to be asking something about a shawl and why she wasn’t wearing it. Kris ended the topic with a wave of her hand toward an empty spot off to the side of the room.

  “That would be perfect for the kiosk,” Kris said before thanking Gwen for being the first store in the area to carry Retreat in a Box.

  “It’s such a lovely idea,” Gwen said. “People come in all the time wanting to make something but with no idea what.”

  The rest of the group moved from the entranceway into what was probably once the living room of the house. I caught up with them as Crystal was talking to them. I wondered how she got along with her mother since they worked together. They certainly weren’t a matched set. Gwen was old-school Cadbury. Plain, sensible clothes and shoes, minimal jewelry and no makeup. On the other hand, the woman standing before me was wearing jeans with layers of different-colored shirts on top, and two scarves wound around her neck. I laughed when I noticed the unmatched earrings. Why not? One ear had a small hoop and the other a large one. When I looked down at her feet, I saw that she was wearing mismatched colorful socks, too. Her eyes were outlined in black, and her lips were a glossy pink. And she had the hair I’d always wished for. Hers was a puff of short black curls, that looked like tiny Slinkys.

  I’d only seen her a few times, but I immediately liked her. Lucinda had filled me in on her story. Crystal had run off with a musician named Ricx Smith. They’d gotten married and moved up to San Francisco. The marriage had lasted long enough for her to have two kids before he took off on some personal journey to find himself, with the help of a young blond. Crystal had moved back to Cadbury and in with her mother and had to deal with endless I-told-you-sos, because of course, her mother, Gwen, had seen the writing on the wall as far as Ricx was concerned from day one.

  Ricx? I was guessing that his real name was Rick and the k was changed into an x to make him sound more like a rock god.

  “I was just explaining the yarn tasting,” Crystal said, addressing me. “You know how you can taste wine before you buy it? This works the same.” She had held up a skein of pretty blue and purple yarn as she spoke. “You can’t tell by looking at this what it will look like when you knit with it. Will the colors be stripes or more of a heathery tone or will it be downright awful looking? And what will the yarn be like to work with?” She pulled off a length of it and held up a pair of knitting needles. “So you try it out and find out.”

  She took the group past the cubbies filled with yarn arranged by color to a room at the back, no doubt once a dining room. A long wood table was surrounded by captain’s chairs.

  She gestured with her arm—the way Vanna White pointed out letters on Wheel of Fortune—to the baskets of yarn available to try and pointed out the selection of needles in old mason jars on the table. “Let the tasting begin,” she said, h
olding up her shears.

  I was the only one who held back. The rest were like kids in a candy store.

  Scott found a dark blue yarn flecked with bits of white and silver. “I bet my wife would love a scarf made out of this.”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Crystal said, giving her mother a sidelong glance. “I told you these specialty yarns would be a hit.” I listened and nodded to myself with understanding, imagining what it would be like if my mother and I had a business together. Crystal undid some of the skein to show him how the yarn changed textures and thicknesses. “If my mother had her way, the whole store would just be plain yarns,” Crystal said as she snipped off a long piece for him.

  The rest of the group found yarns that pleased them, and Crystal and Gwen cut off lengths for them to try. I was just relieved not to be concerned with everyone’s well-being for a few moments. I hung back, never thinking of trying any of the yarn myself. I had enough on my plate with the kit Kris had given me.

  Then I caught a glimpse of one of the yarns in the basket and couldn’t resist the urge to pick it up. “Dr. Blue’s Wild Ride,” I said, admiring the unusual yarn I’d first noticed when they’d brought it to the Vista Del Mar gift shop.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Crystal said. “You want to try some?” My first impulse was to say no, but I couldn’t seem to put the yarn down. I’d always thought of yarn as being one color, but this kept changing as the strand went on. First it was a fuzzy blue, then it was mixed with some strands of purple metallic and farther up there were sparkles.

  “I wouldn’t know how to try it,” I said, explaining my novice standing.

  “I’ll show you,” Crystal said. She cut off a strand and grabbed a pair of plastic needles out of the jar on the table. Her fingers were almost too quick to follow as she cast on some stitches and began to knit. “You could just do all garter stitch,” she said as she zoomed through a row. After a few rows, she handed it to me. “Here, you give it a go,” she said. I have to admit that it was pretty cool when I saw how the changing yarn looked when knitted.