She was just about to give up when a hooded figure came into view. The form moved across her field of vision in an instant, then quickly merged into the shadows.
Lucy jumped back and smothered a scream. There
was
somebody in there. Now she really did need to call the police. If only she could get one more look, maybe see their face? Or what they were doing? She couldn’t even say if it was a man or a woman.
Maybe there was another window in the back and she could get a better look. Then I’ll call the police, she promised herself.
Lucy took a breath. She looked back toward the street and saw her friends, still waiting on the sidewalk. They motioned for her to come back, but she shook her head. She just wanted one good look at whoever was in there. That shouldn’t be too hard.
She tiptoed farther down the alley, her footsteps crunching on patches of old frosty snow. Could someone inside hear her, she wondered? She tried to walk even more softly as she came to the end of the building, but it was almost impossible. Her sneakers kept slipping and sliding on the frosty surface.
At the end of the building, she took a deep breath, readied herself, then peered around the corner, taking hold of a drainpipe for balance. She didn’t realize until it was too late that she’d leaned too far. The drainpipe bent under her weight and her feet flew out from under her.
She shrieked, landing facedown in a snowy patch in the backyard.
Seconds later, she heard the back door fly open. She lifted her snow-covered face just in time to see a figure run out of the building. Head lowered and hands stuffed in the front pocket of a black sweatshirt, the culprit dashed through the small snowy yard and disappeared into a clump of bushes, crossing into the property of a house behind the shop.
“Lucy…are you all right?” Suzanne called.
Before she could answer, her friends were beside her. Lucy looked up and spit out some dirty snow. “I’m…okay. What an idiot I am.”
“Here, let me help.” Dana took her arm and hoisted her up.
“What happened? Did you see anything?” Suzanne asked.
Lucy nodded. “Someone was in there. I saw them for just a second, so I came back here to get a better look. They must have heard me and they ran out of the house.” She pointed to the opening in the bushes where the intruder had escaped. “They ran right through the bushes. I didn’t even get to see their face.”
“Wow…that’s creepy,” Suzanne said.
Dana leaned closer. “What did they look like? Was it a man or woman?”
“I’m not sure,” Lucy said honestly. “It all happened so fast.”
“We need to tell the police.” Dana’s tone was firm. “It probably has nothing to do with Amanda’s murder, but they need to know. Everyone in town knows the shop is deserted, so this guy broke in and was looking for something left to steal.”
“Probably,” Lucy agreed, though something in her gut told her otherwise.
“You didn’t do anything that awful,” Dana pointed out. “You just looked through the window. But the police need to know the building isn’t secure. It’s still a crime scene.”
“Detective Reyes seemed nice. You ought to call her,” Suzanne suggested.
Detective Reyes had seemed approachable, Lucy thought. But maybe that was just because she was a woman, and compared to Detective Walsh, it wouldn’t take much to make a good impression.
“I hate to get involved,” Lucy admitted. “And if I call up Walsh and tell him we’ve been snooping in windows at the crime scene, it draws his attention back to Maggie. And she’s freaked out enough about having been interrogated yesterday.”
Maybe that was not a good reason to avoid telling the police, but Lucy didn’t want to be the cause of more angst for her best friend.
Dana seemed to understand. “All right. I hear you. Let’s leave the detectives out of this for now. We can go down to the village police station and tell them, like responsible citizens doing our civic duty. It’s their job to pass it on to the county detectives if they think it’s important enough. The village cops will need to come out here anyway and check the shop again.”
“Good idea,” Suzanne said. She looked at Lucy. “What do you think? We can all go in together.”
Lucy nodded. “Okay. I’m in. Let’s just get out of here. I’m getting the creeps.”
“Me, too,” Suzanne agreed. “And all this tension makes me hungry. And the police station is practically next door to the Schooner. How convenient.” She glanced at Dana, who just sighed.
“I’ll follow you in my own car,” Dana said simply.
Sounded to Lucy like Suzanne was going to get her preferred breakfast after all.
The Plum Harbor village police station was in the same building as the Village Hall. Lucy had never been inside before. It was a modest operation, she thought. The three women practically filled the anteroom in front of a counter and heavy glass window. The fluorescent lighting reminded Lucy of a gas station bathroom, for some odd reason, and the walls were covered with inky photos of wanted criminals and descriptions of their crimes, which made for some unsettling reading as she waited to speak to the officer at the desk.
Flanked by Suzanne and Dana, she stepped up and explained to a burly officer behind the window why she had come. First, how she’d come out of a yoga class at an exercise studio on Hobson Street, right across from the Knitting Nest, and thought she saw someone inside the shop. So she went around back and by the time she got there, the person was running out the back door of the building.
Lucy knew she had simplified the story a bit. But she wanted to keep this report short and sweet.
The police officer took down her information, then asked Dana and Suzanne if they had anything to add.
“You should have called right away,” he told them. “We might have had a car in the area.”
“We did think of that, Officer,” Lucy replied. “But it would have been too late. I mean, this guy was really moving.”
He glanced at her but didn’t reply. Finally, he handed Lucy a form and asked her to sign at the bottom, then gave her a copy.
“That’s it?” she asked him. Wasn’t he going to give her a summons or something for crossing the yellow tape?
“That’s it,” he said gruffly. “Just stay out of crime scenes, Ms. Binger. If you see something that doesn’t look right, you call the police and let us handle it.”
“I will,” Lucy promised, backing away from the window. “I mean, not that I plan on doing anything stupid like that again…. It was really none of my business.”
Suzanne took Lucy’s arm and yanked her along. “Thank you, Officer. You’ve been very helpful.”
A short time later, seated in a rear booth of the Schooner, Lucy found the comforting smells of unhealthy breakfast foods a balm to her soul. Edie was not around, she noticed, but their attentive waitress quickly served mugs of incredibly good coffee, then took their orders.
“Well, that wasn’t too bad. At least I didn’t get a ticket for crossing the yellow tape,” Lucy said.
“He let you off easy. But you’ll probably get a follow-up call from Walsh or Reyes,” Dana warned her.
“I figured that,” Lucy said.
“Who do you think was in there?” Suzanne asked. “Just some kid, messing around?”
“I didn’t realize we had so many delinquent teenagers around here. There suddenly seems to be swarms of them, the main suspects in every situation. Is that possible?” Lucy asked her friends.
“Well…unfortunately, it is,” Dana replied. She had a stepson, named Tyler, who was in his first year of college and a son with Jack, named Dylan, who was a freshman at Plum Harbor High, so she had some firsthand knowledge to offer.
“There is a bad element in the high school,” she added. “The school board formed a task force last spring to get control of the situation. But I get your point. It does seem an easy answer, the last few days, doesn’t it?”
Lucy didn’t reply. She’d only seen the darting figure for a few seconds, but that quick glimpse had chilled her to the bone. She just had this feeling the Knitting Nest intruder was not some random teenager, looking for pawnable leftovers.
“If it wasn’t a kid just scrounging around, who could it be?” Suzanne said.
“I don’t know,” Lucy said honestly. “But there’s a lot we don’t even know about Amanda. I was talking to Wanda, the yoga teacher, and she told me that Amanda was going into Boston a few times a month. Wanda thinks Amanda must have had a secret relationship going on.”
“A secret relationship…with a man, you mean?” Suzanne’s mouth hung open. She hardly noticed the waitress slip her order under her nose.
Dana looked surprised, as well. “Before she and Peter broke up?” she asked Lucy.
“Wanda told me she’d been looking in on Amanda’s dogs whenever Amanda went into the city and it sounds like that arrangement was going on for a while. When did the Gorans spilt up?”
“In January, I think,” Dana replied. “About two months ago.”
“Sounds like Amanda had a little somethin’ on the side.” Suzanne thoughtfully savored a bite of her breakfast sandwich. “No wonder she was looking so good.”
“It would explain the makeover and the attitude change,” Lucy agreed. She’d thought the same thing when Wanda told her.
Dana shook her head, looking confused. “From what Jack heard, there was no mention of an affair in their separation papers. Of course, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t having one. Or Peter wasn’t having one, for that matter.”
Dana had ordered a virtuous-looking bowl of oatmeal, though she had to settle for raisins instead of dried cranberries. The Schooner wasn’t into trendy toppings. She blew on a spoonful and took a bite.
“Well, if it’s true, it would explain a lot of things,” Suzanne said.
Lucy nodded, her fork poised with a bite of superthin pancakes—the Schooner’s specialty, which was hard to resist especially after the morning’s stressful adventure.
If Amanda was having an affair during her marriage, it would explain the changes they’d all seen in her that fateful night, Lucy reflected. But it raised more questions than it answered.
After breakfast the three friends went their separate ways. Suzanne ran back home to shower, change, and show a house and Dana was meeting her husband at their health club to play tennis. Lucy decided a brisk walk home from town would burn off at least one pancake and work out a few kinks from the yoga poses.
Maggie’s house was not usually on her way, but on impulse she turned down Straight Path Lane. Maggie lived on one of the prettiest streets in town, in a neat pearl gray cape with dark blue shutters and a fuchsia pink door.
As Lucy walked up the path to the front door, her friend’s face appeared briefly at the living room window. The front door swung open before she had the chance to knock.
“Hey, there…how was the yoga class? Did I miss anything?” Maggie shut the door and followed Lucy into the living room.
“You did miss something. But it didn’t have anything to do with yoga.”
They walked into the living room and Lucy quickly related her snooping adventure. Maggie sat in the middle of the living room couch, her expression growing more and more surprised.
“Lucy, you shouldn’t have gone back there. That was dangerous. And dumb.”
Lucy winced. “Yes, we’re all in agreement on that one. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Did you call the police or the detectives?” Maggie asked.
“Well, by the time we talked it over, we figured the culprit was long gone. So we drove into town and I reported it in person at the village station.”
“Oh…” Maggie seemed surprised. “Whose idea was that?”
“Dana thought it was the right thing to do. I guess word will reach the county detectives sooner or later. I just felt weird calling them directly.”
She glanced at Maggie and sensed that Maggie understood the reasons for her hesitation. “You mean because of the way they questioned me?”
Lucy sighed. “A little,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to get all involved.”
Maggie stared at her a moment. “Seems like none of us do, and yet, here we are, tangled up in Amanda Goran’s murder investigation. I guess we were more connected to her than we realized.”
“Maybe,” Lucy agreed. The news of Amanda’s death had been a greater shock than she could have ever guessed. And the event had stirred a curiosity in her that she’d never expected.
“I was talking to the yoga teacher after our class and it seems she and Amanda were friendly. She thought Amanda was having an affair with someone, meeting them in Boston a few times a month. Even before her separation from Peter,” Lucy told Maggie in a rush.
“Whoa there…an affair? Amanda?”
“Yeah, pretty wild stuff, right?” Lucy replied.
“I’ll say.” Maggie shook her head. “You never know about someone, do you?”
“That’s what I was thinking. We thought we knew Amanda, but we didn’t really.”
Maggie didn’t answer for a moment, lost in her own thoughts. Then she suddenly looked up at Lucy.
“I was making some tea. Want some?” she offered, changing the subject.
“No thanks, I’m good.” Lucy knew she’d surpassed the legal limit of caffeine for the day, sipping from the Schooner’s bottomless cup.
Maggie disappeared into the kitchen and Lucy slipped off her jacket and took a seat in one of the overstuffed armchairs near the fireplace. She had to lift her butt to yank out some of Maggie’s knitting, stuck under a cushion. She placed it on the coffee table, which was covered with pattern books and at least two other projects in progress: UFOs—unfinished objects, according to the official knitters’ terminology.
Maggie’s house was decorated in an eclectic mix of furniture, pulled together with colorful pillows and interesting fabric patterns and area rugs. Nothing really matched but somehow it all blended together in a warm, interesting style. Everywhere you turned, there was something eye-catching to look at. It was the kind of decorating that could never be duplicated: it was just so…Maggie.
The bay window in the living room was filled with plants and the top of the dark wood upright piano, covered with photographs, many of Maggie and her husband, Bill, looking tan and windblown on vacation, or like a couple from a magazine advertisement, dressed for a formal occasion. There was an abundance of family shots, most featuring their daughter, Julie, who was away at college in Vermont now. Lucy knew Maggie secretly missed Julie something fierce, but she wasn’t at all the smothering type.