Death of a Crafty Knitter (6 page)

The narrow road barely had enough room for one vehicle, let alone two, so I slammed on my brakes, expecting the other vehicle to do the same.

The other vehicle didn't stop, though. Either the driver didn't see me, or they did, and
wanted
to have a head-on collision. My car was equipped with the finest in safety features, but I didn't want to test my air bags that day, so I hastily cranked the wheel to the right, took my foot off the brake pedal, and hit the gas. My car graciously obeyed my command and sailed off the road and down the slope into a ravine.

A horrific crunching came from below, as trees whizzed by left and right. I hit the brakes, but I was sledding, not rolling, so it made no difference. I used the steering wheel and the magic power of curse words to nudge the car left, narrowly avoiding impact with a tree. The vehicle eventually came to a halt in fluffy snow, deep enough to cover the headlights.

Behind me, the road was clear. The driver didn't even have the decency to stop and check on me, let alone take responsibility for the accident.

After letting out a few unladylike epithets, I put the car in reverse and attempted to get back onto the road. My car tried to obey, bless her precision-crafted engine, but the slippery snow and the steep incline were too much. I would need a tow truck, unless I could figure out another route.

I shut off the engine and stepped out to survey the situation. My tire tracks down the edge of the ravine showed me how lucky I'd been to squeeze between the many trees without hitting any, except…

I walked along the tire tracks and scooped up something familiar. It was my passenger-side mirror. I had hit a tree after all, clipping it with my mirror.

"Could be worse," I said to myself as I tossed the loose mirror into my trunk.

I slammed the trunk shut, which startled the birds in the tree branches above me. They took flight with alarmed squawks, shaking loose snow down on me. The snow fell down the back of my jacket, inside my shirt, and down my pants. I let out another unladylike epithet and did the snow-in-my-pants dance as I tried to shake it out of my pant legs with a minimum of melting. A total of maybe three individual snowflakes made it out, while the rest turned to water.

"Could be worse," I repeated, tempting fate further as I looked around.

Through the trees, I could see Voula's house up ahead, beckoning me with its bright eye-windows. Since I could call a tow truck just as easily from a warm house as from a snowy ditch, I made my way up the snowy bank and then on to the house.

As I stepped onto the creaky porch, I shuddered. It wasn't just the melted snow in my clothes giving me a creepy, shivery feeling. The wide, covered veranda, which should have felt welcoming, was anything but. Instead of seasonal Christmas lights or cheery wreaths, it was still decorated for Halloween, with creepy stuffed ravens—the kind with the shiny eyes that seem to be watching you.

"Nice touch, witch lady," I muttered under my breath as I rang the doorbell.

A full minute passed, and nobody seemed to be coming to the door, not even after I rang it a few more times.

Somewhere nearby, a dog barked, and then whimpered.

I turned around and called out, "Hello? Voula, are you out walking your dog? It's me. Stormy Day. I'm here for our noon appointment."

"What?" answered a female voice, also outside.

"I'm on the porch!" I yelled back.

A moment later, a woman emerged from the woods near the side of the house. She wasn't Voula, though. She was a tall, willowy young woman with long, poker-straight hair as black as the stuffed ravens staring at us from the porch. The girl was walking a brown and white Corgi who looked eager to be my new friend.

"We're allowed to cut through here," the raven-haired girl said defensively. "It's city land all around, and we're just passing through, so it's not like we're trespassing."

"I'm just here for an appointment," I said. "Do you know if the lady who lives here is around? There's no answer."

"Are you a witch, too?"

"No." I looked over her clothes, noting that every single item she wore was black, including the studded choker around her neck. "Why? Are you a witch?"

She cracked a grin, seemingly against her will, then quickly shut it off again.

"Whatever." She rolled her eyes, then turned to leave, and tugged the leash for her dog to follow. The Corgi, who was wearing a matching studded choker, gave me a happy, tongue-lolling parting look, as if to say,
She's not so bad, really, and she spoils me rotten.

I could tell by the minimal clearance between the Corgi's belly and the snow line that the Corgi did, indeed, have a charmed and treat-filled life.

Alone again, I returned to Voula's door and rang the doorbell again, then knocked on the door. The lock must have been unlatched, because the door creaked open under my knuckles.

"Hello?" I stepped inside the psychic's ominous house, my ears straining to hear a response.

There was only the ticking of a clock.

I stamped the snow off my boots on the entryway mat, then proceeded into the house slowly. A kitchen lay to the left, and I checked there first.

It was a modest kitchen, probably original to the date of the home's construction about forty years ago. The room smelled of coffee, and the half-empty carafe was still warm, but not hot. Two mugs, both with lipstick imprints, sat in the sink.

I left the kitchen and passed through a dining room, which held a table but not much else. The lack of decoration told me this wasn't the room where Voula did her readings. A woman wouldn't put so much effort into her appearance and then meet clients in a boring room with cardboard filing boxes stacked in the corner.

The dining room led to a living room, which was a shocking vision in red. The claustrophobic room held reproduction-antique furniture, upholstered in crushed red velvet. The walls were a deep burgundy, and even the rug was predominantly red. Seeing all that red made me shiver, while a combination of melted snow and nervous sweat trickled down my back.

Were the walls actually closing in on me, or was it just the effect of all the red? I'd expected grander rooms from the look of the house on the outside.

"Hello?" I called out again.

The only answer was the ticking of a grandfather clock standing in the corner. At the instant I looked at the face of the clock, the minute hand clicked into place at the topmost position and the clock began to gong.

GONG!

It kept gonging, presumably counting to twelve. I'd been early for the appointment, but now Voula was late.

GONG!

The sound was so unpleasantly loud that it drove me up the stairs to the home's upper level.

At five gongs, I opened the washroom door and found the room empty.

At eight gongs, I found Voula's bedroom, with a queen-sized bed, but no Voula.

At eleven gongs, I reached for the door handle of the only room I hadn't checked.

I turned the handle and pushed the door open a crack.

"Hello? Am I interrupting?"

No answer.

Something on the dark wood floor caught my eye—a knitted doll, about six inches tall. The doll wore dark clothing, and had black button eyes and a tiny pink mouth.

GONG!

The clock downstairs let out its twelfth gong, and I relaxed, glad to be done with that noise. Antique clocks were beautiful, but why people would want such a noisy thing in their home mystified me.

I stepped into the room, which smelled pleasantly of smoky incense, and scanned from left to right. This room had sucked up the whole decorating budget, with tapestries on the walls, comfortable chairs, and warm glowing lamps dotting the perimeter. Surely this was where Voula would be reading my fortune today, if she decided to show up.

My eyes went back to the curious little doll on the floor, next to a pile of dark clothes. I knelt down to examine the doll.

The back of my neck tickled, and I heard a static buzz in my head, telling me something was wrong.

I froze, barely able to move my eyes. The dark shape on the floor to the right of the doll was a pile of clothes, but it was also something else.

From beneath a fringed, dark purple shawl extended a pale hand, tipped in pointed, black-lacquered nails.

My first thought was,
That's an unusual place for Voula to take a nap.

And then I saw the pool of blood surrounding her body.

I stood quickly and took a step back, followed by more stumbling steps, until I bumped into the room's pedestal table. The table rattled, and something fell from its surface with a clunk.

I wheeled around to see what had fallen. A pistol lay gleaming on the floor, pointing right at me.

My hand flew to my mouth as I choked back a scream. Either Voula was very devious in setting up a terrifying prank just for my benefit, or the woman had been shot.

I ran to the woman's side, to see if she was still alive and there was anything I could do for her. She wasn't yet room temperature, but she was already gone.

As I held her cooling fingers in one hand, and the knitted doll in the other, I thought angrily of the vehicle that had driven me off the road moments ago.

I should have held my ground and let the vehicle smash into me.

I shouldn't have let Voula's killer get away.

Chapter 7

Downstairs in the
dead woman's kitchen, I used her vintage wall-mounted phone to call the police. With the heavy headset cradled to my ear using my shoulder, I used one hand to hold my cell phone while I scrolled through my contacts.

I wanted to call Jessica, to hear her soothing voice, but I didn't want to upset her. Besides, right about then she would be jumping into a near-freezing lake, with her phone tucked into her waiting clothes.

My finger paused over the contact for Logan Sanderson. Did I need a lawyer? His friendly face and smirking blue eyes came to mind. No, I didn't need a lawyer. Needing wasn't the same as wanting.

I pressed the option for my father, Finnegan Day. As a retired police officer, he was the best choice.

When he answered, I said, "Dad, hang on and listen. I'm just on the other line with 9-1-1 dispatch."

He made a concerned noise, but listened. A woman with a Southern accent had answered my 9-1-1 call. I gave all the pertinent details to the dispatcher, the words tumbling from my mouth.

"Ma'am, did you say voodoo doll?" she asked. "Are there any human beings involved in this emergency?"

I groaned and started over. After repeating everything a second time, this time with most of the words in the right order, I finally got the information through.

"The authorities are on their way," the woman said. "What did you say your name was?"

I spelled out my name, finished the call, and hung up the heavy receiver with a clunk. I switched my cell phone to my other ear and asked my father if he'd gotten everything.

"Did you secure the premises?" he asked. "Are you absolutely sure you're alone in the house?"

"I didn't check all the closets, but I'm pretty sure it's just me and the voodoo lady. I wandered around looking for her for a bit, and then she was… well, in the last room I checked. Dead."

"Secure the premises now," he said sternly. "I'll hold the line. Better to be prepared, though. You said the gun was in the room? I'd say grab it for protection, but you've got no training in handling a weapon, so there's no sense in you supplying it to your attacker."

"Maybe I should wait outside."

"But the attacker could be outside, and you don't have access to your car. You can secure the house, but you can't secure the whole outdoors."

I couldn't argue with his logic, so I retraced my original steps through the house. I started at the front door and locked it, then moved on to a thorough inspection of possible hiding places. There were no closets on the lower floor. I checked behind the tall grandfather clock in the red living room, then walked up the stairs again. My body felt numb, almost weightless, like the air around me was water.

I checked the bathroom, and then the bedroom, including the closet and the underside of Voula's bed.

"That's weird," I said into the phone.

"Don't say
weird
. That tells me nothing. What do you see?"

"Just that there's hardly anything in her closet except for more of the same dresses, and nothing underneath her bed, not even dust bunnies."

"So, she's a neat freak, and not sentimental. That's not weird, Stormy, it's a personality profile. Keep going and tell me what else you see, and what you smell."

I stopped in the hallway. Why did he have to mention smell? Now I was painfully aware of the smell coming from the room with the body. It wasn't just smoky incense, but the coppery scent of blood, and it stopped me at the doorway.

"It stinks," I said, and I described the smell, and then the appearance of the room. The sky was still overcast, but the two large windows made the room feel bright and airy. It would have been a nice place to visit a friend for coffee, except for the dead body on the floor.

At least the gun was still there, right where it had landed when I'd backed into the table. Barring any strange coincidence, that gun had to be the murder weapon, and it was accounted for. This room didn't have a closet, and I could see under the leggy furniture from the doorway, so I didn't need to enter the room.