Knot Guilty (9 page)

More yarn lovers surged into the marketplace of the yarn show. Since ours was almost the first booth everyone saw as they came in, and we had something of a circus atmosphere with the flashing lights and men in sexy costumes, the crowd flowed directly to us. Adele had returned and was making the best of being without her special hook as she took over the crochet lessons. She made sure there were two people in addition to herself and Eduardo giving lessons at any one time. Dinah and I resumed the granny pin making, and the line grew so thick, I could barely see across to the Knit Style booth. When I did catch a glimpse, Thea Scott and her helpers had nowhere near the crowd we did.

“We need to make more kits for the pins,” Dinah said. The small packets with lengths of thread and beads we'd made up were almost gone. I let her continue to oversee the operation, while I got out the box of supplies.

“Where are the scissors?” I asked, holding an orb of turquoise thread. Dinah looked up and then shrugged.

“Here, use this.” She took something from around her neck and hung it around mine. The pendant hung low on the long cord. I was mystified until she showed me that the round metal piece had a cutting edge hidden in the design.

“This is fantastic.” I pulled a length of thread and made a clean cut as I pulled it over the hidden blade.

I heard a voice over the loudspeaker saying there was an important announcement. Actually, the voice, which I was pretty sure was Delvin's, had to repeat that in increasingly louder tones a few times before the din died down. All the action in our booth came to an abrupt stop as everyone turned in the direction the sound was coming from.

I stepped out of our booth to the long walkway that went across the front of the room. I could just get a view of K.D.'s interestingly dressed assistant on the end of the catwalk. People had begun to gather around the stage, and I saw Kimberly Wang Diaz move in close with her cameraman. Apparently this crowd was more interested in yarn shopping than gazing at their cell phones, because it was immediately clear that they hadn't read the tweet about K.D.

“I am very sorry to have to announce the passing of our beloved K.D. Kirby,” he said. There was an instant gasp through the crowd then a titter of conversations. Delvin started to speak again and everyone fell silent. “I know this is a shock to all of us, but I also know that the best way we can honor her memory is by making the Tenth Annual Southern California Knit Style Show the best ever.”

“What happened?” someone from the crowd shouted out. “You said she had an accident.”

“All that is immaterial. We should just focus on her legacy.” He gestured around the marketplace. “I want to reassure you all that everything will go on as scheduled. As K.D.'s assistant, I was in the middle of all the planning.” He glanced up nervously, as Lacey had joined him on the stage. It was a little eerie, because she looked so much like her mother with the same self-important walk that was all shoulders.

She stopped next to Delvin, and he put his hand over the microphone as they spoke. Lacey stepped up to the microphone and introduced herself. “I will be taking my mother's place with Delvin Whittingham's assistance. I know that is what my mother would want me to do.”

Delvin wrangled the microphone back. “What a valiant offer at a time like this,” he said. He put his arm around Lacey in a supportive manner. “But I can't let you do it in your fragile state. K.D. had it in writing that if something happened to her, I was to step into her place.” Lacey looked like she wanted to say something, but he kept the microphone out of her reach. There was a surge of sympathetic comments and then a round of applause.

“You'd think she'd be a little more stunned,” CeeCee said, coming up next to me. Since CeeCee's function seemed to be taking in the entries in the crochet competition and hanging around the administrative table, I hadn't spent much time with our celebrity Hooker.

“I'm so sorry,” I said to her, thinking she had a relationship with the magazine mogul. CeeCee seemed surprised at my comment, and I explained I thought they were friends. It was CeeCee who'd gotten us involved with the show because of her relationship with K.D.

“I don't know that she had any
friends
,” the actress said. “Or that friendship meant much to her, even in her younger days. Rumor has it she stole her sorority sister's boyfriend and married him. Even then all she cared about was getting what she wanted all the time. It seems so odd for someone who was involved with yarn. As a rule we are such a friendly bunch.” Delvin was continuing to speak, but the crowd's attention had dissolved into a bunch of smaller conversations. “And as for my relationship with her,” CeeCee remarked, “K.D. couldn't see me for dust until I was in the Anthony movie. I think the whole reason she even added any crochet to the show was because she saw how successful the movie was and that it had inspired people to pick up the hook. You saw how she was in her yarn shop, trying to get me to join the celebrity circle who met there. It was nothing personal.”

“Do you know anything about an announcement she was going to make?” I asked, and CeeCee shook her head.

“I heard that you were the one who found her,” my fellow Hooker said. When I seemed surprised she knew, she mentioned Kimberly Wang Diaz trying to get a comment from her. It wasn't a surprise, really. There wasn't a better draw than getting a celebrity to talk on camera about a news event.

“How terrible for you, dear,” CeeCee said, patting my hand when I'd repeated my story once again. “I'm sure you're right about it being murder. That was just the method the killer used in
Mad Day at Murray's
.” CeeCee fluttered her eyes at the memory. “I played the victim. It was the beginning of my career, and I was just glad to get any screen time, even if most of it was me slumped against the tub.” She let out a small chuckle. “In my case, the weapon was a toaster. It was so long ago, they didn't even have those handheld hair dryers.”

CeeCee continued on for a few moments, reliving her role. She'd been fully clothed beneath the mound of bubbles, and apparently they'd had to do the scene a bunch of times and the floor had gotten quite slippery from the toaster being repeatedly thrown in the tub. I laughed at the image and said it sounded more like the setup for a slapstick comedy than a serious mystery.

“I wanted to take a look at the booth,” CeeCee said when she'd finally finished her trip down memory lane. We walked back together, and the actress did a rendition of her musical-sounding laugh when she saw Adele's golden crochet hooks.

“K.D. must have had a fit about that.”

“That's an understatement,” I said. “She insisted we remove the hooks and that.” I pointed at the banner.

“And yet they're still here,” she said. Adele was deeply involved with showing a young woman how to hold her hook and had no idea we were talking about her.

“Adele put them back,” I said, rolling my eyes. And in the back of my mind I thought of something. Hadn't Adele said she was going to talk to K.D. about the crochet additions?

CeeCee made a tour of the booth and did a double take when she saw Elise's husband dressed up like Anthony. “He's not exactly Hugh Jackman's double,” she said to me with a smile. Not that it seemed to matter. As we stood there a dewy-eyed woman went up to him and asked him to do a little crochet for her.

I hadn't thought about that, but thankfully Elise had, and her husband pulled out a hook and the crochet strip he'd been holding before and began to do a row of treble crochet. The woman seemed almost weak-kneed as she watched him. There seemed to be some magic appeal to vampires, even an imitation one with funny hair that looked like a hat. The woman got all gushy when he handed her the little swatch. Logan seemed very comfortable with the whole scenario, and it made me wonder what went on at Elise's house.

“Things are a mess, dear,” CeeCee said. “K.D. was supposed to be the judge of the knitting competition.”

“That woman had her finger in every pot,” I said, going over how she ran the magazines, had the yarn store, and made all the decisions about the yarn show. “Didn't she ever hear of delegating some responsibilities?”

“Delvin Whittingham is stepping in to do the judging, though Ruby Cline came by and volunteered.” It was the first time CeeCee had met her, and she seemed quite taken with the yarn company owner. “I wish I could stay here. This looks like much more fun,” CeeCee said before she reluctantly went back to the contest area, since contest entries were still being brought in.

By then, Delvin and Lacey had long finished their statement, and as promised, things went on as planned. There seemed to be a running commentary announcing knitting demos, door prizes and assorted other details.

Business continued to boom for us. I acted as the mainstay in the booth, and as the evening wore on I needed a break.

“How can I ever thank you?” I said to Dinah when she offered to take over.

“You've been here all day. I just came this evening. Besides, this is fun. Now go on and check out the place.” Dinah gave me a friendly nudge toward the aisle.

Even though it was getting toward closing, there were still lots of people wandering through the temporary shops. There was so much to look at. Not only were there all kinds of specialty yarns, there were spinning wheels and supplies, special designer patterns, beads and buttons, knitting needles in all different materials and wonderful accessories like shawl pins and fancy stitch holders. I was just looking and did a complete tour without stopping. I was glad to see that our booth definitely had the most action.

I walked through the last aisle to the front and was about to return to the Shedd & Royal super booth when I noticed a woman holding up a long white vest and realized I was next to the booth of the woman who had insisted we were in her space. I struggled trying to remember her name. I remembered that it reminded me of water. Right, it was Rain. Something seemed off, and then I realized she was in a new spot. I stepped into the small enclosure at the front of the aisle. Rain looked up immediately, ready to offer assistance.

“Molly, isn't it?” she said with a friendly smile. “Just to let you know, I give a discount to fellow vendors.”

“Good to know,” I said, glancing around her space, curious to see how it compared with the arrangement of ours. She had made the most of the small area. The four dress forms wearing knitted items were placed around the perimeter. The racks of finished items were in the front, and a table covered with a cloth that went to the ground had some wire shelves holding more of her stock at the back against the curtained divider.

I took a moment to look through what she had and quickly ascertained that there were only six different designs, but she had made them up in a variety of colors. I complimented her on how much she'd managed to get into her booth.

She thanked me and modeled the gray-toned jacket she was wearing, explaining that to save space she acted as one of the models. She kept glancing toward a woman who had taken a long white vest off of one of the dress forms and was holding it up against herself and suggested she was welcome to try it on, gesturing toward the full-length mirror toward the back of the space. Two other women were admiring an exquisite jacket in shades of reds, pinks and orange. It took me a moment to realize it was the same design as the one Rain was wearing. She modeled the style for the two women and invited them to try the one they were holding.

“It's a fine line between being helpful and too pushy,” Rain said in a soft voice. She let out a sigh. “It's hard to keep going like it's business as usual. It's such a shock about K.D.”

I remembered that Rain had mentioned being at all the shows from the very beginning. “You must have known her pretty well.”

“We were what I'd call business friends. I'd helped her out when she first started the show and needed vendors. She appreciated my loyalty. That's why I knew there was some mistake when you were in my spot.”

As Rain said that, I realized why I'd been surprised to see her booth in the front. When I'd seen her setup before, it had been in yarn show Siberia.

The women were all trying on the knitted pieces and taking turns in front of the full-length mirror.

“It looks like you worked it out. This spot is much better than the one in the back.”

She kept her eyes on her customers while she talked to me. “Do you know what happened to K.D.? One minute Delvin was saying she'd had an accident and then he said she'd died. I haven't been able to talk to him to find anything out.”

When I said I'd been the one to find her, Rain's eyes widened. “How terrible. What happened?”

“Did you know about her ritual of the bath and champagne?” I asked, and she nodded. “None of it is official, but it seems like someone threw a hair dryer in the tub while she was in it.”