Dyeing Wishes (16 page)

“Of course you have, hon. You look right at home in it. Your grandmother did, too, and you favor her when you pull your hair back in a braid like that.”

“Ardis is right,” I said. “The kitchen suits you.”

It did. It was a cheerful time capsule I wouldn’t have expected to find in a house of that era. I knew people who took such kitchens and dragged them back to a pseudo-authentic, antique country look or pulled them forward and primped them into something sleek and contemporary. But sometime around the middle of the last century, when Debbie’s family discovered yellow countertops, aquamarine cupboards, and peach chiffon linoleum, they’d latched onto them and hadn’t let go. The
anachronisms of the room made me smile. It was a modern kitchen wrapped in a 1950s color scheme inside an antebellum farmhouse.

“And now that I’ve admired your kitchen, may I also admire your bathroom?” I asked.

“Down the hall on your left. Sometimes the door sticks.” I thought I heard her add, “And watch your head,” but the sweet tea had a louder voice than Debbie’s and I didn’t stop to ask.

I found the door in a dark-paneled wall, both of them painted in some bygone decade with a beautiful example of faux walnut grain. The bathroom was tucked in the space under the stairs, so the head warning had been real. After watching mine and after washing my hands, I found out the sticking door was real, too. It took some wrestling and a shoulder butt before it popped open, and I was breathing hard but proud of myself for not quite panicking when it finally did. I felt like a character in a children’s book tumbling back into real life after visiting some other world.

The sounds of Ardis talking and laughing in the kitchen and Debbie softly joining in were welcome and calming. They were the sounds of our small breach healing. Rather than interrupt, I stayed for a few minutes in the hall.

As I listened to the riffle of their voices, I ran my finger over the ripples of the faux grain, imagining the craftsman creating that illusion with gliding strokes of color. The panels on the opposite wall were equally beautiful, and I wondered what other architectural details and treasures the house held. The voices continued murmuring in the kitchen, so I stepped farther down the hall and peeked into a darkened doorway.

And saw nothing, of course, because darkened doorways usually lead to darkened rooms. But as I turned to
go, a point of light flashed and caught the corner of my eye. I turned back to the room, not sure where to focus, and saw the light again. But not in the room. Out a window opposite the doorway. Through another window in the dye studio. Someone with a tiny flashlight was sneaking around. My heart forgot all about not panicking.

I
flew into the kitchen and caught Ardis on the tail end of a story about mothballs and squirrels. She looked up when I skidded in, grabbed the edge of the table, and leaned toward them, eyes no doubt goggling.

“Somebody’s in the dye studio,” I whispered, almost breathless. Too breathless maybe. They looked more worried about me than about what I was trying to tell them. Why was I whispering, anyway? The prowler couldn’t hear me.

“Sorry, hon,” Ardis said, “I heard a few consonants in there, but the rest of it sort of disappeared. Take a breath and say it again.”

“Somebody’s in the dye studio. I saw a flashlight.”

That was all Debbie needed. She forgot all about being withdrawn or hesitant, scraped her chair back, and called Bill to her side. He was instantly alert but didn’t bark.

“I’ll call 911,” I said.

“Go ahead,” she said, “but I’m not waiting.”

“What are you going to do?” Ardis said. “You can’t think you’re going out there.” She got up and was able to take up enough room that Debbie couldn’t squeeze past.

“I’m going to find out who’s out there in my studio and what they think they’re after.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That might be Eric Lyle.” Ardis
put her hands on her hips to make herself even more of a barricade.

I didn’t hear the rest of their argument because the 911 dispatcher was asking me to repeat myself. I covered my other ear and squinted, as though that would improve reception or help the dispatcher process what I was saying. I told her again what was happening and she asked me to repeat it one more time, slowly, assuring me she was only following procedure so that she was clear on the exact conditions of my emergency and could relay details accurately as the situation unfolded. I closed my eyes entirely and had some unfriendly thoughts she didn’t deserve.

“Listen,” I finally said, “it’s just a few things you have to be clear on. Intruder? Yes. Gun? Very likely. Murder? Here, a few days ago. Situation? Very dangerous. Got that? You can repeat it all you want, but I have to go.” Then I hung up. I felt bad about being short with her and for saying there might be a gun when I knew no such thing, but if that brought a good guy out here faster, one who
did
have a gun, then I wasn’t going to beat myself up over it. And then I saw there really was a gun. Debbie was standing by the back door with one.

“A rifle?” I squeaked. “Where’d that come from? How’d you get around Ardis? Ardis? What’s going on?”

“She got down and crawled under the table,” Ardis said. “Good move, Debbie. Now, please tell Bill he can stand down.” Bill held Ardis in the corner with a firm eye and a low noise in his throat.

“He’s fine where he is,” Debbie said calmly. “This isn’t a rifle, Kath; it’s a shotgun. It belonged to my husband. Don’t worry. I know how to use it and I always keep it safely locked away until I need it. Like now. I’m taking it outside with me and it’s going to help me find out who’s in my studio without my permission.”

“That’s stupid.” As if blurting that to someone holding a gun was particularly bright. All she needed to do was point the thing at me and I would let her go anywhere she wanted.

In fact, all she did was vaguely wave it at me and I didn’t challenge her. She told Bill to stay, leaving Ardis cornered and unhappy. But she didn’t tell me to stay and, although I had to keep myself from screaming as though I were charging into the jaws of a forlorn hope, I followed her out the door and into the night.

“If it is Eric Lyle, what do you think he’s looking for?” I whispered in Debbie’s ear. A mistake. She was so intent on sneaking quickly and quietly across the darkened farmyard to the studio that she hadn’t noticed me following her. And she was more keyed up than her calm voice had suggested.

“Ee-eee-eee,” she started to say. Only part of it escaped, though, before she clapped her hand over her mouth. She turned to me with big eyes. “Are you crazy? Don’t ever sneak up on someone holding a gun.”

“Good idea,” I whispered. “Why don’t we go back to the house before we surprise whoever’s in there, who might
also
have a gun and be a cold-blooded killer. We can wait for the cops. Maybe it’ll be Deputy Dunbar who comes.”

Her only answer to that was for her eyes to go from big and alarmed to slitty and cynically dismissive. We stood on the studio’s porch, an extension of the concrete slab, our backs flat against the wall between a window and the door. I tried to hear movements inside but the place was too well insulated. I heard more rustlings and twig snaps in the dark night surrounding us than coming from the building. Debbie turned and started toward the door. Before she inched too far, I put a hand on her shoulder. Another mistake.

“For cripes’ sake,” she whispered fiercely. “What?”

“Shouldn’t we have a plan before you jump in there with your gun blazing?”

“I’m not going to shoot anyone.”

“What if he shoots you?”

“Tch.” She turned away and started moving before I could ask my other pressing question—what if he shot me?

She continued to inch, which told me she wasn’t entirely sure about barging into the studio. I continued listening for sounds coming from inside, trying to tell myself I wasn’t rooted to that spot with the bone-rattling fear that bullets might start flying past my ears or through them.

Too bad I was so logical and convincing. In no time at all I had myself believing I was doing something much more important than standing there shaking. I believed I was using skills honed to an expert level during my previous experience of finding someone sneaking around where he didn’t belong—namely, sneaking around in the cottage where I’d stayed after Granny died. Said expertise then led me to conclude that any movements currently transpiring in the dye studio couldn’t be heard because they were as stealthy and lowdown as they came. And that’s when I realized I had a pretty good idea of who was inside and I peeled my back from the wall and sprinted after Debbie.

“Now what?” She was really having trouble keeping her reactions to a whisper at that point.

I looked past her. The door was very slightly ajar. Good.

“Where’s the light switch?” I whispered in her ear.

She put her hand on the doorframe and mimed reaching inside at that height.

“Okay. Good. I’m ready.” I bounced on my toes,
feeling the fizz of the righteous vigilante in my blood. “Let’s do it. Let’s throw the door open, flip on the light, and just plain surprise the hell out of him. Come on. Before the cops get here and steal our thunder. We’ll do it on three.”

Debbie gaped, obviously not so into this scenario as she’d let on. I stepped around her.

“One, two, and the heck with three.” I slammed the door open and flipped on the lights, expecting to surprise Joe Dunbar, our friendly neighborhood burglar-of-all-trades, with whom I was really annoyed because I thought he’d given up this pastime.

He was surprised, all right, only it wasn’t Joe and it wasn’t a he. It was the younger of the two journalism students from Asheville. The one with the camera. Pen. And she was going to make one crackerjack photojournalist someday. She had guts and good instincts and she didn’t scream or freeze when Debbie came in after me with the shotgun pointed straight at her. She snapped a picture.

“H
ands up,” Debbie snapped at Pen, “camera down.”

Those commands did make Pen freeze. Maybe in confusion. I decided to help her out.

“Put the camera on the table, Pen. Then put your hands in the air.”

Pen, standing to our right at the far end of a solid work island, had a look of “really?” with a touch of the sardonic to it on her face. She followed through quickly, though, when Debbie diagrammed the instructions with brisk precision, aiming the shotgun at the camera, the table, her hands, the ceiling, and back at the middle of her chest. I let Debbie keep Pen’s attention and moved forward to lean an elbow on the island at the opposite end from Pen, going for a serious, in control, just-a-bit-menacing look.

I was torn, though, because Debbie’s studio was calling to me. The labels on jars and boxes wanted reading; the bundles of dried dyestuff hanging from hooks and nails wanted pinching and squeezing. There were cupboards to open and shelves to explore. Kettles, tubs, dippers, and stirring rods waited, ready for vibrant colors to engulf them. I smelled chemicals, plants, and wool. I’d always loved rummaging through Granny’s dye kitchen, and a circuit of Debbie’s whole studio wouldn’t take long. The space was only about fifteen feet by twelve.
But I couldn’t ignore the confronter and the confrontee before me.

Debbie was looking down the length of her shotgun at Pen. No doubt she was seeing a tabula rasa with a bull’s-eye on it. She hadn’t met Pen and Sylvia the morning they’d inveigled their way into the shop and my good graces. She and the cat had been snoozing in the comfy chair.

“You know her, Kath?” Debbie asked, nodding her chin at Pen without taking her eyes from her.

Pen turned a hopeful smile my way. If she hadn’t been dressed in head-to-toe black, with her long hair tucked under a black knit cap, I might have smiled back. As it was, I wondered if she were taking Special Ops 101 in addition to her journalism class, and I was almost surprised she didn’t have shoe polish smeared on her face to complete the look.

“Nope,” I said. “Can’t say that I do.”

“Yes, you do,” Pen said. “You called me by name.”

“You came in the shop once. That hardly counts as knowing you.”

“So who are you?” Debbie stepped closer.

“I’m Pen. Pen Ledford. Penelope.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Research.”

“I bet,” Debbie said. “What kind of research? Into what? And what makes you think you can break in here and sneak around to do it?”

“Oh, well, see, it’s for my final project. I’m filling in local color. Interviewing folks, taking pictures, poking around here and there. That kind of thing.” She kept her hands raised but waved them to show how much of “that kind of thing” she was accomplishing. “You’ve got a nice setup here, by the way. Some of your equipment’s pretty interesting. Sharp knives, pruning shears. I like the
poisonous chemicals, too. And that huge marble mortar. Or is that the pestle? I never can keep those two straight. Which is the one that looks like it could be used as a bludgeon?”

“What are you talking about?” Debbie asked.

“For my class project I’m writing about that murder-suicide thing, and I thought if I could soak up some atmosphere by coming out here I’d have a chance of getting a real scoop, you know? And I’ve got a pass here somewhere, if you want to see it.”