Knot the Usual Suspects (25 page)

D
arla's radio did a Donald Duck imitation on her shoulder and she had to leave. (Or “fly,” as Mel said.) I asked her to give me a call when she had a chance. Then Ardis, Mel, and I went to find Ernestine and John, Mel wondering if she'd be able to keep herself from quacking the next time Clod came in the café.

“You could throw a roll at him and yell, ‘Duck,'” Ardis said.

“Add duck à l'orange to the menu,” said Mel.

“Or ask him if he wants quackers with his soup.” It felt good to laugh—at Clod's expense in particular—but now we had another piece and no obvious place to put it. It felt as though we were collecting odd and unrelated bits for another yarn bomb installation, with no idea what we were creating. “There're connections we're not making,” I said, “and right now quacks and ducks are at the top of the list.”

“Including the Case of the Condescending Clue,” Ardis said. “Dabbling in detective work, indeed.” She
told Mel about Clod tossing us the clue and telling us to knock ourselves out.

“Prophetic?” Mel asked. “I hope he hasn't knocked himself out of a career.”

Ernestine and John were watching Joe demonstrate the kumihimo, and I could see John's fingers itching to try it. Ernestine told us what they'd found out about the monkey's fist booth.

“I only wish it had taken more ingenuity or skill,” she said. “But there's something to be said for simply asking questions.”

“Asking the right questions takes insight and perception,” Ardis said.

“Or, as in our case, walking up to the young woman behind the table and saying, ‘Who's in charge of your booth and did you know Hugh McPhee?'” Ernestine said the young woman standing behind the table at the booth had promptly burst into tears. “But I gave her a clean hankie and held her hand, and John got her a bottle of water.”

The booth was being run by volunteers from several area pet rescue groups. Enough of their members were crafters as well as pet lovers that they thought they'd give the show a try as a way to raise awareness and money. Hugh had been a supporter of the group from Knoxville. He'd donated the monkey's fist Christmas ornaments to the effort and offered to sit at the booth for an hour. When I saw Al Rogalla there, he'd been filling in for Hugh.

“The sweet girl doesn't know who Rachel is,” Ernestine said. “She thought Rachel was probably just visiting
with Al. And here, dear, I thought I should contribute to their cause, so I bought one of Hugh's ornaments for you.”

John said he'd drop Ernestine at home. Mel, Ardis, and I looked at each other and agreed without discussion to walk. Ardis used her six feet to scan the immediate area for the twins. She declared the coast clear and we snuck out—Ardis walking with her knees bent to give her a shorter profile. Mel peeled off when we reached the café, and left us with a quack and a guffaw. I told Ardis I was going to stop at the Cat and stare at the whiteboard for a while.

“And check on Geneva?” she asked. “How's she doing?”

“Wondering why you took the bracelet off and left it off.”

Ardis rubbed her wrist.

“Will you put it back on?”

“I'll think about it. Having her in my life puts a new twist on the notion of the sandwich generation.” She tried to laugh, but it sounded worn-out. “I'm not sure I'm capable of learning how to be niece to an aunt who is both one hundred and fifty years old and twenty-two. My seventy-year-old brain can take only so much boggling, and Daddy's prancing might be more than enough to keep up with for the time being. Now, I'd best go rescue the sitter. I'll see you in the morning.”

*   *   *

Argyle and I were squinting at the whiteboard I'd scribbled all over when Geneva floated down from the study.

“Squinted eyes are cozy and inviting in a cat,” she said. “You merely look dyspeptic.”

“Thanks.”

“I believe honesty is necessary in relationships.”

“You're probably right.”

“Have you made any progress on the case? On either case?”

“Not a lot. They're connected—connected in ways that are probably right in front of our eyes, but I'm not seeing them.”

“Did you draw those ducks up there?”

“Yeah.”

“You are not much of an artist.”

“I have no illusions.”

“That's good. Why are you obsessed with ducks these days?”

I told her about the stolen-duck complaint and Clod's suspension, and ended up telling her about the fight at Handmade Blue Plum. To say she was sorry she'd missed it would not capture the scope of her disappointment.

“Careening around corners with the darling twins?” she said. “Two strapping fellows defending their honor? And I missed it? I am dragged down into the depths of despond. And all you can say is ‘we missed it, too.' That is hardly the point.”

“What
is
the point?”

“That if Ardis had not been so ardent, if she hadn't pestered me mercilessly—”

“If you hadn't given as good as you got?”

“And then she had the gall to rebuff me by taking off her bracelet and I thought it was
my
fault.” She billowed back and forth in front of the whiteboard. Argyle slunk off my lap and crouched under the table.

“Stop it.”

“And of course,” she said, “of course, once again, I am wrong and you're asking me to stop.”

“I am. I want you to stop this. Ardis doesn't deserve your rudeness. Think about it and be honest with yourself. You're taking advantage of a situation, of being a ghost. I know you have no control over that, but you do have control over how you act and how you treat other people.”

“You don't know what it's like to be me.”

“I know what it's like to be a person. I know what it's like to be angry and resentful. I know what it's like to regret things that I've done or said. And to be depressed, disappointed, and jealous. And vindictive.”

“Lost?”

“Not to the extent you have, no.” I waited a few seconds, then asked, “Are you still interested in being honest?”

She billowed some more, but listened.

“You say you're lost, and I think I get that. But you've been dead for how long? More than a hundred years, right? So get over it.”

She whirled straight at me and I sat there. It wasn't easy, but I pretended nonchalance, crossed my legs, studied my nails, tried not to run screaming from the room. Eventually she seemed to whirl herself out, and she drifted, like the ash from a leaf fire, onto the table.

“If I don't let you, Geneva, you can't hurt me.”

“Hmph.”

“Don't let what Ardis does hurt you.”

“There are all kinds of hurt,” she said. “Hurts that scar.”

“There are. You're right. Oh, hey, do you want to know how Hugh got that scar on top of his head?” I told her about the soccer riot when he was a graduate student.

“How terrifying! And fascinating. And I'm the only one who noticed the scar. But it sounds like a red herring.”

“Cases are full of them.”

“Ducks are, too, depending on where they live,” she said.

“You quack me up.”

Before going home, I snapped a picture of the whiteboard, with the notes I'd added to it, and sent the picture to the posse and to Darla. The board needed more pairs of eyes trying to decipher it. I didn't erase it; it had taken too long to get the notes and questions up there, and we would probably end up adding more. I locked the workroom door, though, and thought that was good enough, that the information was safe. And that was my mistake.

T
he notes and questions on the whiteboard prompted a string of events and conversations the next day. Darla started it, calling way too early, even for a day I needed to be up and opening the shop at nine. We met at seven, and she let me in the door at the back of the courthouse. It was the same door Shorty had rushed out of when he'd answered our 911 call. Visiting public usually reached the sheriff's department by climbing the courthouse steps, passing the row of columns, and entering the overlarge front doors.

“Come on in, quick,” Darla said. “This is definitely irregular.”

“Let's not do it if you're going to get in trouble.”

“I'll be all right. It tends to be quiet this early on a Saturday. Come on down here.”

“Down here” was a dim basement corridor. The present courthouse dated to 1912, built on the foundations of previous structures. It kept in touch with its history with whiffs of old drain and flooding problems. Darla unlocked a door halfway down the corridor that opened
into a room the size of a small bedroom. Two narrow windows high on the outside wall let in dingy light. She flipped on an overhead fluorescent that did nothing to improve the looks of the place. Metal cupboards and steel shelves lined the walls. A chipped and scratched six-foot folding table took up most of the floor space. It reminded me of the storage rooms I'd so often seen in underfunded museums.

Hugh McPhee's clothes, and the belongings he'd had with him when he died, were laid out on the table. I stopped in the doorway and seriously considered backing out of this.

“It gets me like that, too,” Darla said. “Come on in. Come on over. If there's any chance you can help, I'll be grateful and so will he, wherever he is.”

“You're a good person, Darla.” I crossed to the table and looked without touching until she told me it was all right. I still didn't touch the wool of his tartan kilt, or any of his other clothes, and the sporran only gingerly until I knew it was safe. It was a handsome piece. About nine inches wide by seven high, the face of the pouch was black fur—probably rabbit—with three tassels. The back of the pouch and the front flap were leather. The flap was embossed with a graceful Celtic knot pattern.

“Here's the book that was in it.” She showed me a slim dark green paperback that would have barely fit in the sporran.
“The Naughty Little Book of Gaelic: All the Scottish Gaelic You Need to Curse, Swear, Drink, Smoke, and Fool Around,”
she read. “The guys got a kick out of the title. Why do you suppose he was he so fascinated by a dead language?”

“It isn't dead,” I said. “It's endangered, like a lot of
living things.” I took the book from her and thumbed through it. “It's a signed copy. Maybe he knew the author. What about the paper with Ardis' name on it?”

She showed me. Just a slip, a scrap with Ardis' name and address.

“It seems to be nothing more than a note so he could look up a favorite teacher,” she said.

“Were there other names? Ardis couldn't remember if you said there were.”

“I didn't tell her, but there was another name and a phone number—Al Rogalla.”

“That must've thrilled Cole. Darla, can I ask you about his suspension?” She tipped her head and I took that as a guarded yes. “Last night you said it's a crock. Do you really believe it's a trumped-up charge?”

She tipped her head to the other side, eyes steady but slightly narrowed. Then she looked back at the table and picked up Hugh's camera. “Nothing helpful here. Tourist stuff. A few pictures of the house. Speaking of pictures, though, what about those pictures John wished he hadn't mentioned?”

I'd been working out a way to answer that without landing Joe in a pile of something. I'd decided to go with a less-is-more approach. “He managed to get a peek at pictures of Hugh's truck.”

“How?”

“You came into Mel's and told Cole you'd found it, right? He told us. It wasn't exactly a secret.” I held my breath, but we skated smoothly forward on that thin edge of truth.

“Speaking of pictures,” she said, “we didn't find any matches between the ones you took to document the
yarn bomb materials and the pieces used to strangle Hugh and Gladys. And those two strips are definitely from a single piece.”

“There were a lot of people making strips.”

“And you know how people are,” she said. “Excited about a project one day, toss it aside the next.”

“Some of the strips people made probably didn't end up at the Weaver's Cat.”

“No, they didn't,” Darla said. “They very definitely didn't.”

I looked at the dingy windows, wishing they let more sunlight in, or that I could leave through one of them. But I was there for a reason. Better get on with it. “So, what about the monkey's fist that was in the sporran?”

“Cole and Shorty thought it was a weapon, and you could sure do some damage with one if whatever you made the knot around—whatever you put in the middle—is heavy enough and you give it a good swing.” She held up a knot the size of a Ping-Pong ball, made of smooth brown cord, with a foot-long tail.

“But you don't think this one's a weapon?”

“See what you think. It feels too light, and the material isn't really something you'd use for a weapon.” She held it out and I took it in my hand.

*   *   *

I was cold. On a cold floor—I hoped it was a floor, not a slab. Surrounded by knots. And a circle of monkeys. “Not my monkeys,” I muttered. “Not my monkeys, not my circus.” Thank goodness there were no ducks. No way. No ray. No . . . Rachel.

“This is not good, not good, not good.”

That was someone else muttering. Not me. Not I. I
was all tangled up. Tangled in knots. But I did not care. Neither here nor there. It made no difference. Indifferent. In knots.

“Come on, Kath. Make sense.”

That was that other person. That made sense, because I was here and she was there. Where? Oh yeah. Right here. “Hi, Darla.”

“You scared the
spit
out of me,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“Should I get you to a doctor?” She was kneeling beside me.

“No. No, I'm . . . fine.” I sat up and looked around warily. “Is the monkey's fist—”

“I had to pry it out of your hand.”

I put my hand to my head. Didn't feel a lump.

“You didn't fall. I thought you might. As soon as I laid you down, you came out of it.”

As soon as she'd pried the monkey's fist out of my hand. “Good. Thanks.” I got to my feet. The monkey's fist was on the table. I didn't go near it. I looked at Darla. She was watching me and there was something going on with her eyebrows.

“Did I ever tell you that I grew up in a holler away out there in the county?”

I shook my head. I was glad it didn't make me dizzy.

“My folks still live out there, and my grandmother, too. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days and the old mountain ways. Stories about granny women.”

“Healers and midwives, sure.”

“Sure. But sometimes, she said, they were more . . . unusual than that. Were and are, because she says there
are still some granny women around. Not many, but she told me she had occasion to call on one once, down in Blue Plum. A weaver woman.”

I couldn't think of anything to say.

“She was real sorry to hear about your granny passing this spring, Kath, and she told me something to tell you—though not until the right time—but that I would know when it
was
the right time. She says it's a gift that passes down the female line. She also says this isn't something folks are meant to talk about, so I won't mention it again.”

“And your grandmother's always right?”

“Smartest woman I know. Grannies tend to be, don't you think? Are you really feeling okay now?”

“Yeah, I am. Kind of weirded out, but otherwise okay. And I, uh, I think you're right about the monkey's fist. It's too light to be a weapon. Sometimes they're tied around a weight—a rounded rock or a big ball bearing—but not this one. If I were you, I'd take it apart and see if Hugh used something else.”

“Like what?”

“A ring? I don't know. But take a look.”

*   *   *

When I left the courthouse, there was plenty of time to go back home for breakfast before heading to the Weaver's Cat. Instead I took a detour through the park and walked along the brick path that followed the creek. The trees were beginning to change color—some of the maples looking lit from within. Patches of ironweed bloomed deep purple on the other side of the creek. The range of vibrant colors in yarn bomb squares we'd attached to the railing on the footbridge tied the whole scene together—
grass, reeds, ironweed, trees, all of them rising toward the blue of an October sky. I stood in the middle of the bridge, looking from the clouds sailing high over me to the water flowing under me, and thought about ducks.

Ardis called as I combed through the weeds below the bridge. She was drawing on her theater skills again. “Motive is to a murderer as motivation is to an actor,” she said.

“Okay.” I'd stood on the bridge where Ernestine had when she dropped her crochet hook and scissors and determined my search area.

“Motive is missing from your picture of the whiteboard.
Why
did someone kill Hugh?”

“That's what we're working on, isn't it?”

“We have names. We have possible suspects. We're aware of relationships between these players. But we're short on motives. So here are some questions that might help us get where we need to be. Are you ready?”

“Do you want me to write this down? I'm in the park and I don't have paper—”

“No, I've written it all out,” Ardis said. “I'll bring the script when I come in. Are you ready?”

“Sure.”

“One, what did the murderer want? Two, did Hugh put an obstacle in the way that would have prevented the murderer from reaching that goal?”

“Or
did
prevent.”

“I'll add that later,” she said. “Good point. Three, was Hugh himself the obstacle? And four—this is a multipart question, with a preamble—we have to believe that Hugh's sudden appearance in town changed something. What, how, and why? Was his presence alone enough to
prompt that change? Or did he say something to someone? Did he, or did his presence, deliver a message that motivated someone to murder?”

“Wow, Ardis.”

“Exactly.”

“That's really good. Wow for you, but also wow for me—I just found Ernestine's favorite crochet hook and scissors.”

“That's wonderful. You should stop by Mel's to celebrate, and as long as you're there, bring me a large coffee and a couple of doughnuts. I think I'll need them.”

*   *   *

Mel's Saturday breakfast special was buttermilk banana pancakes with banana cream. I didn't try very hard to resist them. I sat at one of the tables in the front window. Mel brought the pancakes herself, and joined me for a cup of coffee.

“I got your picture. I studied it. Here's the question I keep coming back to.” She took a gulp of coffee. “What kind of old lady witnesses a murder in the park late at night, and then goes back out to the park two nights later?”

“That is a good question.”

“It's got a good answer, too, and it's the only one I can come up with. First of all, she was a
great
old lady.” She stopped and leaned across the table, teeth as fierce as her spiked hair. “And I stand by what I said yesterday morning about wanting to kill the person who did this. But again, don't repeat it.” She sat back and took another gulp of coffee. “So here's the answer. She was the kind of old lady who wasn't worried, because she knew the murderer had a specific reason to kill Hugh, but had no reason whatsoever to kill her.”

“Until the murderer found out she was a witness.”

“And how did
that
happen?” Mel asked.

“That's another good question. According to Aaron, she either didn't want to or couldn't go to the police, and she told him very little and no details. But she planned to tell
us
, hoping we could help. If we can trust Aaron, it sounds as though she was being careful.”

“I think we
can
trust him,” Mel said, “and here's why. She was careful enough that she felt perfectly safe going back to the park alone at night two nights after the murder. She wasn't afraid of the murderer.”

“Huh.”

“We have to wonder why she was afraid to go to the police. We have to wonder why Sheriff Haynes blanched when he saw Hugh.”

“Blanched, according to Olive, who calls Haynes ‘Lonnie,'” I said, “and who also blanched.”

“And why Cole Dunbar is suddenly ‘mishandling' cases.”

“A charge we both heard Darla call a crock, which could be loyalty to Cole, despite evidence of his doofusness,
but . . 
.”

“But.”
Mel nodded. “And here's one more thing. Gladys still did the Sunday crossword puzzle in ink. She was the old lady I want to be if I live that long. And
she
should've lived longer. Food for thought, Red. Now I have to go serve food to customers.”

It was enough food for thought that I got to the back door of the Cat and realized I'd forgotten the coffee and doughnuts for Ardis. Rather than go back down the alley, I went around the corner into Main Street to see how the yarn bombs there were doing. The signposts and
streetlight had never looked so good, and I laughed out loud when I saw a new bomb—a tasseled hat on a fire hydrant with the “Knitting is nifty” tag from one of Debbie's kits. But I turned thoughtful again when I saw Rachel pulling away from the curb in front of Mel's in her BMW Z4—a nifty piece of automotive engineering that made my thoughts switch gears back to motives. If Rachel and Hugh were married way back when, what sort of secrets did they know about each other? Secrets that could stall a successful financial career? And what happened in a brief marriage to make it fall apart so thoroughly that it seemed completely forgotten?