Knot the Usual Suspects (10 page)

“Ready to begin the case of the—what are we going to call this one?”

“Not until you tell us where you went jackrabbiting off to,” Thea said. “We hadn't covered the schedule of operations yet.”

“She wasn't a jackrabbit,” Mel said. “More like the proverbial bat. Where'd you go?”

“To the rescue,” I said. “I went to intercept Shirley and Mercy.” That had the expected effect, including a muttered “Spivey” from Ernestine—more of a spit than a whisper. Ardis patted Ernestine's shoulder, then turned to me, eyes snapping.

“What did those twin plagues want? Are you sure they're gone?” She looked ready to launch herself down the stairs in a repeat of my performance.

“Debbie got rid of them,” I said. “We're Spivey free, and the air quality downstairs has almost returned to normal.”

“How did you know they were here?” Thea asked, echoing Debbie's question.

“Duh,” Mel said. “Debbie has Kath's Batphone on speed dial.”

Geneva hung upside down and made flapping motions behind Ardis. The others, thank goodness, thought I was laughing at Mel's joke.

“What
did
they want?” Ardis asked again. “I find it highly suspicious that they showed up today. This afternoon. At the exact time we're having our final strategy meeting. Highly,
highly
suspicious.”

“They were up to something, but I don't know what. They told Debbie I was expecting them. She handled it, though. She told them I wasn't here and they left.”

“And
that's
suspicious, too,” Ardis said. “Since when do they give in so easily? That's part of the pervasive Spivey problem. They don't know when to quit.”

“Perseverance isn't all bad,” I said.

“Pigheaded poltroonery is,” said Ardis. Behind her, Geneva had been shaking a finger at phantom Spiveys, then pounding a fist into her hand. When Ardis planted her fists on her hips, Geneva did, too, with a clear “nyah, nyah” wiggle to her hips. It was also clear that she and I needed to have a chat about manners and mocking.

“Anyway, they're gone now,” I said.

“Although not permanently,” Ernestine murmured, “and more's the pity. Oh my goodness, did I say that out loud? I am so sorry.” She tried to fix a contrite frown in place, but a smile got the better of her.

“Nothing to be sorry about, Ernestine,” Ardis said. “You're right, too. They might come back. Slip in the back door, like as not, like a pair of noxious and obnoxious eels. Then they'll eel their way straight up the stairs.”

“We'll hear the bleat of electronic sheep, if they do,” Mel said. “Baa-aa-aa. I love it.”

“Boo-oo-oo,” Geneva said in her own version of a bleat. “You'll hear
me
if the darling twins return.” She circled Ardis' head once and then swooped out the door. Ardis turned a moment of wide-eyed surprise into a
show of concern. Thanks to her lifetime membership in the Blue Plum Repertory Theater, she was masterful and convincing.

“On to the reason we've called this meeting,” she said, “the tragic death of Hugh McPhee. I think we should call this the case of the—”

“One more interruption, please, before we set sail in a new direction,” John said. “About the timetable for tomorrow night.”

“We've already been over it,” Thea said.

“Yes, but this is about the timing of events.”

“John, we covered it,” Thea said. “We'll pass timetables out tomorrow night, not before.”

“I'm sure Kath agrees with that. Don't you, Kath?” Ardis asked. “Especially after your near miss with Shirley and Mercy. From this point forward, we need to be extra cautious. No chat in public and the timetable stays under lock and key so that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I hope we emphasized that strongly enough with the kiddos, considering the way they text every thought and heartbeat these days. But everyone here is clear on the importance of secrecy—am I right?”

“Clear,” Ernestine said, raising her hand.

She looked so solemn and earnest that my hand went up, too. So did Mel's and Thea's.

“John?” Ardis prompted.

“Military time,” he said with crisp enunciation. He'd set his knitting aside, something he rarely did during discussions, and his eyes were the color of a winter sea. “It is easy. It is precise. That is all I was trying to say.”

“All righty,” Thea said, drawing the words out as though she hoped enlightenment would strike before she got to
the end. It didn't. She tried raising her eyebrows at him and waiting another few seconds before giving in. “What, John? That's all you're saying about what?”

“Ah. Sorry. I thought you were following me.” John hitched forward, his hands ready to illustrate. Drawn in, we all leaned forward, too. “I suggest we use military time, tomorrow night, for the timetable and for any telephone and text communications between our teams of operatives. You know that I don't usually pull rank—”

“I don't think you've ever pulled rank,” Ardis said. “It's not like you.”

“But as a former naval officer, one who is experienced in campaigns, covert and otherwise, I know what I'm talking about,” John said. “While secrecy is important, precision is key.” He looked at each of us in turn, then sat back and took up his knitting.

“Thank you, John,” Ardis said. “That's very helpful.

“Not really,” Thea said. “That isn't going to fly. Or sail, either. We're knitters, John, not Navy SEALs. We're going out at night. Everyone knows it'll be dark. If I tell people to be here at ten minutes of ten, no one's going to be confused and show up in the morning.”

“Point taken,” said John. “I only wanted to be heard and to help.”

“It was a good suggestion,” Ernestine said.

“And much appreciated,” said Mel. “You can talk about bells and zero hundred hours and avasting at the café any time you want.” She watched him knitting and we all listened to the clicking of his needles, as crisp and precise as the advice he'd offered. “And bring Ambrose,” Mel said, still watching him. Ambrose was his brother.

“You're kind, Mel.” John acknowledged her with a
quick smile. “And delusional if you think that will be a pleasant experience for anyone.” As a young man, John had followed his whim to a life at sea. As an old man, he'd answered a need and come home to look after his even older brother. I'd never met Ambrose, and although I'd heard enough to make me curious about him, I trusted the general, quiet consensus of the group. Mel had summed it up best and bluntly with
John's a saint; Ambrose ain't.

“John, if you need to back out of tomorrow night, everyone will understand,” Ardis said. “There is no dishonor in the burden you've undertaken.”

“I will be here,” John said. “At ten minutes of ten.” His needles flashed as something flashed across his face. “And so will Ambrose.”

S
ilence met John's announcement of the impending Ambrose. It wasn't necessarily an uncomfortable silence, and no one appeared to be stunned, so I decided it was the silence of mental gears shifting. My own shifted first one direction, then another as I wondered how Ambrose would add to or gum up our work. Maybe he wasn't as bad as I'd been led to imagine. Or were we all afraid we'd hurt John's feelings if we told him that he shouldn't or couldn't come if it meant bringing Ambrose along?

Ardis didn't give me any help in deciding which of those options was more likely. She smiled and said, “That's fine, then, John. We'll see you both tomorrow night.” But the warmth of her smile and the kind tone of her words might have been her stellar repertory skills coming into play.

“We'll be here,” John said, no longer looking anyone in the eye. “Ten minutes of ten.”

“Precisely,” Ardis said. “And now let's move on to the new case at hand. I have to tell you, this case sorely grieves me. I don't even want to give it a name.”

“We don't need a name for it,” Mel said. “We don't even need to get involved—”

“Yes, we do,” Ardis and I said in unison.

“Just checking,” Mel said. “I'm all for it, but we need to be realistic, too. These cases create stresses. Unevenly shared amongst us. But that's the nature of working on something like this. And the nature of stress.” She looked sideways at me. “Are
you
up for this, Red? You never talked much about what happened with the last case.”

And I probably wouldn't. Geneva and I had talked about it, and I'd told Ardis some of what had occurred, but as for the rest of the posse and the rest of the story . . . They'd been there, but they couldn't see Geneva. They hadn't seen what I had. Joe was amazingly understanding about my silence. He'd asked a few times, more as a way of letting me know that he would listen, and he hadn't pressed. He didn't seem to resent being kept outside that strange patch of my life. And he had quietly run interference for me, deflecting questions from the rest of the posse, and from his brother, in the weeks afterward.

“I'm fine, Mel. Thank you for asking. The stress is something we should all consider. But speaking for myself, I say we go ahead.”

“Good. He deserves it,” she said.

“You knew him?” I asked.

“Knew of more than knew. He was the kind of guy in high school who left a lasting impression.”

“A good one?”

“Oh yeah.”

‘We'll need to know more about that.”

“And that's bygone Hugh,” Thea said. “We need to know about recent Hugh, too.”

“The man left a generous tip for his lunch,” Mel said. “That's about the most up-to-date you'll get.”

“Except for the bagpipes,” Ernestine said. “He was quite good. I was enjoying his concert last night.”

“You were?” Thea asked.

“I jumped right out of bed when I heard them.” Ernestine laughed at the memory. “I couldn't help myself. I threw my bathrobe on over my nightgown and went to sit on the front steps—a sight to behold, I don't doubt, except I didn't turn the porch light on so maybe no one saw me. But that's what the sound of pipes does to me. Caution to the winds!” She threw her hands up. “Oh dear.” She looked at the stitches she'd lost in her fling. “But that's the way it is with me. There's no telling what I might do when I hear the pipes calling.” Ernestine, round as well as wrinkled, looked about as unrestrained as a grandmother mole, but she obviously had hidden passions. “I'd like to have a piper at my funeral,” she said, settling back down.

“Hugh was piping at his own funeral,” Mel said.

“Is that when it happened? When the pipes stopped?” Ernestine bowed her head. “I put myself back to bed feeling cheated. I feel terrible.”

“You didn't know, and there wasn't anything you could have done at that point.” I thought about her sitting on her steps in the dark. If it hadn't been dark, if her eyesight were better . . . I'd stood on her front steps one day, in the summer, and admired the view of the creek running through the park behind the courthouse. “You couldn't have done anything at that point, Ernestine, but now . . .”

Her head came up.

“Think back over last night,” I said. “Take your time, though. See if you remember noticing anything else while you were sitting on your steps.”

“Start with waking up,” John said. “Imagine yourself waking up and getting up.”

“Even better,” I said. “Thanks, John. Ernestine, he's right. Start with waking up. Think about what you heard. Think about throwing on your robe, walking through the house, going out onto the porch. What did you see from your steps before you sat down? What did you hear? Or smell? Were there any other sounds besides the bagpipes? And when the piping stopped, it must have seemed quiet all of a sudden. Was it?”

Ernestine, knitting in her lap and eyes closed, moved her head as though trying to bring a sound or the memory of one into better focus. She ended up shaking her head. “I don't even remember what tune he was playing.”

“Don't sweat it,” Thea said.

“I'll try it again when I'm home. Tonight. I'll lie down on my bed and go through all the motions. And if a vehicle backfires, then all the better. That might help jog something loose.”

“Pesky things, those backfires,” Ardis said. “When did you hear it last night?”

“After the pipes quit and I realized how chilly it was. I pulled my bathrobe closer around me, and I pulled myself up with the railing to go back inside. Then I wondered if I'd been a ninny and locked myself out, but the doorknob turned, and as I went inside, I heard a backfire. I thought the piper must be on his way home to bed, too. And that he ought to take his car to my grandson at Ledford's for a tune-up.”

“I can't think when I last heard a backfire,” John said. “Modern engines and all.”

“Plenty of older vehicles around,” said Mel.

I could think of one in particular—a monstrosity of fuel inefficiency and pollution belonging to a handyman named Aaron Carlin. I liked Aaron; hated his green pickup. He didn't live in Blue Plum, but he and Mercy Spivey's daughter were a bit of an item a few months earlier. And he might have other business in town.

“Do you ever go hunting with your grandsons, Ernestine?” Thea asked.

“You don't need to pussyfoot around, dear. If you're asking whether I know the difference between a backfire and a gunshot, I suppose I could be fooled. But do we know if he was shot?”

The others looked at Ardis. Then all of them looked at me.

“Huh. Well, I guess that's a good enough place to start the official case file.” I slipped the elastic off the leather journal with a satisfying snap and turned to the first blank page. But I didn't put pen to notebook yet. I had a question for Ardis. “Do you think if we'd asked Cole how Hugh died, he would have told us?”

“There's no telling, but I'm surprised at us for
not
asking him.”

“Shock,” Ernestine said. “You couldn't be expected to think straight.”

“You're too kind, Ernestine.” Ardis wasn't being kind to herself. She beat the arm of her chair twice with her fist; it might have been her breast. “No. I made Cole tell me when and where Hugh died. How he died should have followed.”

“But we were distracted,” I said. “He told us about your name on that paper in Hugh's sporran.”

“Whoa. Stop. Hold it,” Thea said. “What paper in Hugh's what? This reminds me of some of the worst questions we get at the library. You two are treating information like flotsam and jetsam.” She smiled at John. “I threw in some nautical jargon for your sake, to show no hard feelings over your martial arts time zones or whatever. You should be threatening to keelhaul someone over this lack of precision. We're sliding into the investigation sideways.”

“She's got a point,” Mel said, “overexcited though she be. Arrrrrdis, you start from the beginning with the facts. Kath, you write them down. Then let's figure out a preliminary round of questions we need to answer, and let's finish up so we can get out of here. Not that I don't love your company.
But.
”

“Fish to fry and cakes to bake?”

“Falafel,” Mel countered. “And black rice pudding with coconut milk.”

“Ooh.” I clicked my pen and smoothed the page. “Ardis already made a start on questions this afternoon.”

“And when were you going to tell us that?” Thea asked.

“Right now. I just did. You haven't missed out on anything. I haven't read through them yet myself. Let's get the facts down. Are you ready, Ardis?”

The facts didn't take much ink. Fact: Hugh had arrived in Blue Plum. Fact: He'd played his bagpipes on the lawn at the courthouse. Fact: He was presumed to be the midnight bagpiper. (We wrestled over whether we could call that a fact and decided that, although we didn't know for a fact that Hugh was the midnight piper, we did know
for a fact that someone had piped, and we knew that Cole Dunbar presumed the piper was Hugh.) Fact: Hugh was found dead, partially obscured by reeds along the creek, in the park behind the courthouse. Fact: A piece of paper was found in a book in his sporran. Fact: Cole Dunbar wondered why Hugh was in town for Handmade Blue Plum. Fact: Ernestine heard a presumed backfire after the bagpipes went silent. (Ernestine made me go back and add the word “presumed” before the word “backfire.”)

“Our facts aren't much to go on,” Ardis said.

“Since when have we let that stop us?” I turned the page with a flourish, hoping it would have a bolstering psychological effect for her.

“And it probably isn't all we know. I'm proof of that,” said Ernestine. “I'll go home as soon as we're through here, and I'll try my best to bring back any other visual or auditory clues from last night that are stuck up here in my little gray cells.” She tapped her forehead. “In my case, though, the cells are old as well as being little and gray, so we'll see how well that works.”

“I might be able to dredge something up,” Mel said. “Chopping onions usually does it. It's amazing how onions and a sharp knife free the mind.”

“The library has old yearbooks,” Thea said. “I'll troll through those.”

“And we all need to talk to customers and library patrons,” I said. “Casually, though, and we'll see what people know or remember about him.”

“Customers, patrons, and casual go without saying, don't they?” Thea asked. “As part of our usual bag of operating tricks?”

“I'm just keeping to this afternoon's theme of being precise,” I said, “which moves us nicely into what we should do next—come up with specific questions. What do we need to know about Hugh McPhee to help us figure this out?”

“Read what you've got, Ardis,” Mel said. “It'll prompt other questions, and there's no point in duplicating your efforts.”

I put her notebook on the table and gave it a shove toward her. Ardis stared at it but didn't reach for it.

“That's okay. I can do it.” She watched me pull the notebook back across the table; then she looked at her lap. I opened the notebook and leafed through it to find the questions—found the “dabbling” page—found several pages of close writing past the “dabbling” page—none of it in the form of a list, not a question mark in sight. I started reading it—to myself, thank goodness. Ardis hadn't written questions about Hugh's death. She'd started an almost stream-of-consciousness story about a child, a class, a teacher . . . There were three or four unreadable splotches where her ink had blurred.

“Waiting, waiting, waiting,” Mel said.

I tucked Ardis' notebook beside me in the chair and picked up my pen.

“Kath?” Mel asked. “Time is ticking.”

I watched Ardis for some kind of reaction. “That was a different assignment, Mel. A personal one. Let's go ahead and brainstorm the questions.”

“We know so little,” Ardis said to her hands in her lap. “The unknowns are almost too much.”

“Then we'd better get started,” said John. “Top of the list is how did he die? After that, here are my
preliminary questions.
Was
he here for Handmade Blue Plum? If so, why? In what capacity? As a craftsman? Who's in charge of Handmade who can tell us?

“They asked Joe to step in and oversee booth setup,” I said. “If he doesn't know anything about Hugh, he'll know who to ask.”

“And who did he still know in Blue Plum?” John asked.

“He recognized Cole as a Dunbar,” I said after I'd gotten John's questions down. “And he remembered that the brothers have unusual names, but he didn't remember what they were. He didn't know Cole was a deputy.”

“There might be a lot of people in town he knew once or knew in passing,” John said. “But who did he know better than that? Who did he keep in touch with? What about family?”

“It was never a close family,” Ardis said. “Olive Weems is a cousin, but she's never had news to pass on. The grandfather outlived Hugh's parents and Olive's, but of course he's been gone for decades. Anyone else I might have stopped in the grocery to ask about Hugh, over the years, and what he was up to . . .” She shook her head. “You know how people come and people go. Hugh asked about a few names, yesterday, when we had lunch.”

John turned to her. “That's very good information. Who?”

She shook her head. “You'd think I'd remember. I talked my fool head off and I can't tell you who he asked about and who I threw at him thinking he might be interested.”

“Was he interested?” I asked.

“Was he interested, or was he being polite?” Ardis
pressed her lips into an annoyed line. “I don't know. I wasn't polite enough myself to notice. And the names he asked about? Gone.”