Dyeing Wishes (29 page)

“It’s a sorry way to go, however it happened,” Ardis said, shaking her head over Lyle’s death. “And I am so sorry you had to be the one to find him. I’m glad Joe was there.”

I nodded.

“And Lyle is somehow connected to this woman’s disappearance?”

“He has to be. Her scarf…”

“Do you think he went in the river on purpose, then? Took the coward’s way out?”

I was about to say that although I didn’t know what to think, I intended to find out, when Debbie called. Ardis answered, and her end of the conversation started out sounding positive enough.

“Hon,” she said to Debbie, “it looks like things are about to be over, maybe not in a way that’s to
everybody’s liking, but you’ve held on and handled yourself real well.”

I couldn’t hear Debbie’s end, but it played out on Ardis’ face in a way that was obviously not so positive. She filled me in after she disconnected.

“The police are working their way up the river from where the body was found,” she said, “looking for the point of entry. That’s what they’re calling it, ‘the point of entry.’ But Debbie said she overheard one of them also say they’re looking for a crime scene.”

“In case he was pushed, so of course they’re looking at Cloud Hollow.”

“Bite your tongue,” she snapped.

“
I
don’t believe Debbie…”

“Oh, hon, I’m sorry. I know you don’t.” She picked up a copy of the pattern for the argyle vest the mannequin still wore and started fanning herself with it. She fanned with such frenzy that, if she could have, she would have blown Debbie’s troubles out the door and out of sight.

“But you see how it doesn’t look good, don’t you?” I asked. “When you look at it from their point of view—starting with Will and Shannon? And Debbie was the one who wanted to have the dye workshop yesterday and then she suddenly canceled.”

“But now they’ve found Eric Lyle,” Ardis said, almost pleading, “and you
know
he had more to do with all this than Debbie, and she would have no reason to kill him. Oh my Lord, I can’t believe we’re even saying these things.”

“But you see how the police have to look at it. It doesn’t mean they’re only looking at Debbie, but that’s where Will and Shannon were found and they found Eric in the river below Cloud Hollow. And Debbie did catch Pen Ledford out there. And now they need to find Sylvia.”

Ardis moaned almost as well as Geneva.

“What else did Debbie say?” I asked. “Anything hopeful?”

“She has an appointment with a good lawyer.”

“That sounds like a punch line.”

“To an appalling joke. Kath, hon, you need to call the posse together. Things are happening too fast and you can’t wait until Friday for a meeting.”

“No. You’re right.”

“So tell me what you’re thinking. I can read the concentration in your eyes only so far and your mind not at all.”

Thank goodness for small favors. “Okay.” I bounced a pencil on the counter. Ardis reached over and took it away. I put my hands flat on the counter. “Okay. Suspects. I’m thinking about suspects.”

“The plural is good there, hon. My heart needs the emphasis somewhere other than Debbie.”

“And that’s what we’ll do. Look somewhere else. The police will be putting enough effort into sifting over Cloud Hollow—and Debbie. We’ll look at Sylvia. The police will be looking at her, too, but—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ardis said.

“No.” Because we had to do something. “So here are my questions. Is Sylvia dead? Did Eric Lyle kill her? Is that why he had her beautiful scarf in his pocket when he died? Or did she kill him? Do you think that’s a stretch?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she repeated. “That’s why we’re investigating. And the Ledford woman—she was capable of breaking into Debbie’s dye kitchen.”

“Murder is kind of a stretch from that, though.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay. Then I think we start with the information Thea dug up on Sylvia and Pen. And we find Pen Ledford and talk to her.”

“We make her talk.”

A vision of Mel and Thea holding Pen while Ardis made her talk swam through my head. Ernestine and John would stand at the ready, brandishing knitting needles. Another vision jumped in with Pen holding all of them at gunpoint. “Being very careful.”

“Of course, hon.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Whyever wouldn’t we be?”

Whyever indeed, considering what I was planning to do. “I’d like to leave that in your hands, then. I’ve got—”

“Another lead?”

“Maybe, but—”

“Ah, it’s sensitive.” She nodded.

“Can you handle the shop alone later this afternoon?”

“With my hands tied behind my back.”

“Thanks. But please don’t say things like that.”

That left convincing Geneva to go for a drive with me. She was in the study listening to the “episode” of
Still Life
I’d started for her. I paused the recording, which annoyed her, but she didn’t need much persuasion when she heard the plan.

“How would you like to come with me to find the darling hideaway cabin?” I asked.

“Can we leave immediately?”

“We’ll wait until three or four.”

“Ohhhhh…”

“Please don’t whine or moan.”

“Well, then I call shotgun.”

Her choice of words almost made me reconsider.

As we drove out of town and up the winding river road, I ignored the tiny voice of wisdom in my head telling me I should let Ardis know where I was going. I also ignored the “why” behind that decision. I told myself I was simply treating my friend the ghost to an outing. And while
we were out, and because I felt the need to be doing something, I would take the opportunity to clear up a possibility—that Will Embree had been staying in that hideaway cabin as Shannon’s guest. What that would prove, I didn’t know, except maybe that Shannon did return Will’s love. And that Debbie was right, that the color of their love ran clear and unmuddied.

Geneva floated in the passenger seat and hummed. Her tune was familiar, but I couldn’t name it. I was just happy she was droning something other than her usual dirge-like lullaby about murk gathering in a glen. And although she managed to turn most tunes into mournful ditties, this one was cheerful, almost jaunty. Then she sang a few bars.

“‘Help me, help me, help,’ he said,

“‘Or the hunter will shoot me dead.

“‘Little rabbit come inside, safely to abide.’”

It was “Little Cabin in the Woods,” an old campfire song. It was the worst kind of old campfire song, too, because it wouldn’t make any difference if I asked her to stop and hum something else. The damage was done. “Help me, help me, help” was stuck in my head.

T
he little cabin
was
in the woods, farther up the river than I’d ever been. We’d slowed at each of the few-and-far-between mailboxes, Geneva singing out the names and me trying not to sing about the hunter shooting me dead. We found the right name on a mailbox marking a gravel drive winding into the woods on the river side of the road.

“What do we do now?” Geneva whispered as I hesitated before making the turn. “Ditch the car and creep in on foot?”

“No. We drive in. If no one’s here, we get out. If someone
is
here, we act like we got lost, we turn around, and we drive out.”

I made the turn and we crept in on wheels.

“Or,” Geneva said, “if anyone’s here, we can say we’re plainclothes police and we can grill them.”

“That’s probably not a good idea.”

“But then I can be the bad cop and I’m so good at that.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re no fun…
Oh
, will you just
look
at that darling hideaway cabin!”

It was very cute—a modern log cabin, probably built from a prefab kit, with a deep front porch and a green tin roof. It was a life-size Lincoln Logs house sitting on a
rise in a clearing. What I liked best about the place was the absence of cars.

“No smoke from the chimney,” Geneva said. That was good, too.

I lowered the windows and turned off the engine, and we sat in the car for a few minutes—watching and listening. Nothing moved. Birds and a sighing breeze in the trees were all we heard.

“I’m getting bored,” Geneva whispered.

We got out of the car and listened again. Nothing happened. We left the car, circled the cabin. Heard the same birds. Didn’t see anything interesting except a burn barrel out back. The barrel was cold but there were ashes in the bottom. It was hard to tell what they’d been, but they hadn’t been beaten down by rain.

“Get a stick,” Geneva said. “Stir them up and see if there’s any human bones.”

“No!” I jumped back from the barrel.

“There’s nothing nasty about bones,” she said mildly. “We’ve all had them at one time or another. But never mind. You stay there. There probably isn’t much to see in here anyway. No, I was right. Mostly burned paper.” She looked odd, almost upended, with her head in the barrel. “There are a few words still showing.”

“Can you read any of them?”

“This is funny. I think one of them actually says ‘ash.’ They are very pale, though. Like word ghosts. You should come look.”

I did. The word she saw was on something that had been sturdier than paper. Cardboard, maybe. And the word began with a capital
A
and had an
E
after the
H
followed by the beginning slant of another letter. The rest of it was burned away to nothing. Ashe. Asheville? And what I hadn’t noticed before—there was a coil of
blackened wire in the ashes. A spiral from a notebook. Sylvia, Pen, and Joe were taking their journalism class at a community college in Asheville.

“Is it evidence?” Geneva asked. “Should we take it with us?”

“I think we’d better leave everything we find here. Let’s look at the cabin.”

Unfortunately, the cabin’s side and back windows were covered by blinds and we couldn’t see in.

“Bored again,” Geneva said.

“We’ll go up on the porch.”

I’d saved the stairs and the porch and peeking in the front windows for last, and climbing those half dozen steps made me more nervous than the skulking around back. There weren’t any inviting rockers on the porch. Leaves had blown into a drift against the cabin logs. Heavy curtains in the front windows were drawn, and the door was solid, rough pine. All of that made me even more nervous because I knew then that I was going to ask Geneva to do something that strictly speaking…pretty much almost certainly…wasn’t
really
…quite…legal.

“Geneva, would you, um, would you consider floating through a window or something and looking around inside? You know, check the fridge, the bathroom, see if it looks like anyone was living here recently?”

“You mean
break in
?”

“Well, technically you wouldn’t be
breaking
in, and you shouldn’t stay more than a few minutes, five or ten tops, so…” Who knew I could channel my inner Joe Dunbar so easily?

“But it’s against the law?” Geneva asked.

“Well…”

“Well, nothing. Stand back and watch how a bad cop does it right.” She added an extra flourish by loosening
her shoulders and shaking out her arms; then she flew through the wall of the cabin and was gone.

And I sat on the steps and wondered. I didn’t go so far as to wonder if I was crazy, but I did wonder if I knew what I was doing.

Five minutes later, Geneva was still gone and I was beginning to wonder in earnest when I heard a car. At first I didn’t think the car was coming down the drive. When I saw the sun glinting off the windshield as it approached, I decided to brazen it out—pretend I belonged or was waiting for the homeowner or…crud. The car belonged to Deputy Clod Dunbar.

My big mistake, I realized, was in not giving careful enough consideration to Geneva’s iffy connection with time. One, ten, twenty minutes, two days—I should have known they’d all be the same to her. My other mistake was in not arranging an “abandon cabin” signal in case of trouble. Of course, those mistakes were in addition to the other rather big ones I’d made in being there in the first place and asking her to go inside and snoop. But in for a penny—I went ahead and tried to brazen it out by smiling and waving and saying hi to Clod and the deputy who got out of the car with him.