Dyeing Wishes (9 page)

As I approached them, Angela gave me a halfhearted smile and then broke eye contact. She looked profoundly unhappy, but I couldn’t tell if her unhappiness stemmed from being in the shop or being dragged there by her mother and aunt. She looked cowed and uncomfortable, like a teenager under duress to attend and perform. From the way she pulled at the cuffs of her blouse and tugged her skirt, she wasn’t in her normal comfort zone of dress, either. She was tugging on a herringbone pencil skirt.

“Maybe the two of you are twins, too,” Geneva said in my ear, “separated at birth.”

My herringbone pencil skirt was no longer my favorite.

“Hers is not as tight across the beam as yours,” Geneva said, continuing to study Angela. “Although hers required more yardage in the first place. She also has a tiny runner in her left stocking.”

The Spiveys
et fille
stopped in front of Debbie.

“What’s wrong with her?” the twin in the lemon yellow jacket asked. She pointed at Debbie but looked at me. Debbie and the cat continued sleeping soundly.

“Just a little bit of exhaustion,” I said.

“You’re either exhausted or you’re not,” the lemon yellow twin said. “It’s like being pregnant. You can’t be just a little bit. She isn’t pregnant, is she? That can account for a lot of exhaustion, let me tell you.”

Angela had started inching back from between the twins, but she stopped and gave the yellow twin a scathing look. “Ma, her husband died three years ago. Of course she’s not pregnant. Be decent.”

Talk about being decent, it was only then that I remembered that poor Angela had been widowed a few months earlier. I’d never met her husband, either, but that shouldn’t stop me from offering my condolences. Even though I’d had a bone to pick with him before he died. Before he was killed.

My goodness, what a lot of sad and unpleasant things had happened in this town recently. I dropped into the chair next to Debbie’s, wondering if I’d made the right decision in packing up my apartment in central Illinois, where the only real disruptions in the flat cornfield of my life had been the occasional blizzard or tornado.

“And now what’s wrong with you?” Shirley asked me.

“She must be exhausted, too,” Mercy said. “Let the
poor thing rest. Angie, sweetheart, why don’t you show Kath what a go-getter you are? Be an angel and go see what you can do for those customers waiting so patiently at the counter.”

I was back up out of the chair like a shot and racing to beat Angie to the customers. I should never have let those khakis and pastel polyester blazers fool me. Soon after Angie’s husband died, the twins had mentioned that she would need a job. They’d been testing the waters then, and I hadn’t bitten. Now they were angling more seriously and that’s why all three of them were here.

But I didn’t zip past Angie on the way to the counter because she wasn’t headed there to demonstrate her customer service skills. When I tagged the counter first, the camel bells on the door behind me jingled. I turned around just in time to catch a glimpse of Angie’s unhappy, herringbone-clad beam disappearing down the street. Mercy squawked and started after her, but Shirley held her back with a grip on her shoulders. She also whispered something in Mercy’s ear. That could have looked sisterly and consoling. It didn’t. It looked sneaky and suspicious.

“Your shop is even more exciting than we’d heard,” said the older of the two women at the counter. Her good humor came through with the warmth of her voice and showed in the creases at the corners of her eyes. She was probably in her mid-fifties but must have gone silver years earlier. Her thick hair was cut even with her jawline and she wore it tucked behind her ears, a pair of sunglasses acting as a headband. She made business casual look more chic and trustworthy than the Spiveys did. Also more expensive. No poor little polyesters had given their lives to put the clothes on her back.

“And we had no idea Blue Plum was so photogenic,” the younger woman said, patting a large, compartmented
bag slung over her shoulder. She was tall and sleek, even in cargo pants and Dr. Martens boots, and her dark hair was long and sleek to match. She looked as though she’d be equally at ease dressed for a tango with a rose clenched between her smiling teeth. The age difference between the two women might make them mother and daughter, but there was nothing about their features or coloring to suggest they were.

“There’s great small-town atmosphere here,” the younger woman said.

“You think?” I couldn’t help asking.

While both nice, normal, very-pleasant-to-have-in-the-shop women confirmed that opinion with comparisons to other small towns they knew and loved and couldn’t pass by, I watched Geneva following the twins and mimicking their movements. They examined the Icelandic wool, stroking and squeezing the various shades although it was unlikely they planned to buy any of it. Mercy held a couple of the skeins under her nose and sniffed them as though testing the bouquet. Geneva pretended to sneeze. I opened my mouth to remind Geneva to behave herself but caught myself and returned my attention to the paying customers.

“Your scarf is beautiful,” I said to the older woman. “Raw silk?”

She had the scarf wrapped around her shoulders in one of those twists that look so artistic and effortless and thrown together for the occasion and that would take me half an hour to figure out. It was a lovely thing, wide and loosely woven, in a range of shimmery blues and greens. Granny would have loved it and the way she wore it.

“It’s silk and something else I’ve forgotten. Don’t tell my sister. She wove it and she’s told me what the other stuff is too many times already.”

“I promise I’ll only tell her she’s very talented. Is she local?”

“No, I’m pretty sure you’re safe.” The woman laughed. “She lives in Minnesota. I know she’d love your shop, though.”

“Thanks. Did you find what you were looking for upstairs?”

“I just needed a quick fix,” the photographer said. “I don’t really have time for needlepoint these days.” She patted her camera case again.

“But I was wondering if you could make a couple of recommendations,” the scarf woman said.

“Sure. As you can see, we have a wide variety of yarns, threads, needles, and notions. Pretty much, if it’s related to fiber or needlework, we’ve got it, and we also do special orders when we can. Or if you need help with a pattern or a particular project, we do that, too.”

I smiled some more. They exchanged looks.

“Well, now we feel bad,” the photographer said. “All your wonderful wares and services and what we’re really hoping is that you can tell us the best place to eat lunch.”

“And can you give us directions to a B and B, if there is one?” the scarf woman said. “We’re on a tight schedule today but maybe we can make it back in the morning to do some shopping. You can help me find something for my sister’s birthday.”

“Oh. Sure, of course.” I nodded away my disappointment. The local yarn shop wasn’t the most obvious place to seek dining and lodging information, but I knew there were travelers and whims of all kinds. “Lunch is easy,” I said. “Nobody can beat Mel’s on Main. Mel has everything from vegan to a daily meat and two veg, plus the best homemade bread and pastries. Go left out our door
and it’s toward the end of the block. Your nose won’t let you get lost.”

“Perfect. I think we saw that on the way in. And a B and B?”

“I’m not as up on places to stay. I know there’s a motel out on the four-lane, but ask at Mel’s. Someone there will know about B and Bs.”

“Sounds good,” the scarf woman said. She started to say something else, but the photographer slipped in ahead of her.

“Pictures are okay, aren’t they? Sorry, Sylvia.” She touched the other woman’s arm. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but the light looks perfect out there right now.” She turned back to me. “If I want to get pictures of the front of the shop, of any of the shops, that’s not a problem, is it?”

“If we don’t see tourists taking pictures we don’t know how to act.”

“And the same goes for freelance journalists taking pictures?”

“Um, sure. As far as I know.”

“Super. I’ll meet you outside, Sylvia. I want to catch the courthouse with that blue, blue sky.” She turned with an “Oh, hi, sorry,” as she dodged the twins.

Mercy followed her to the door and watched her angle across the street. Shirley kept her eyes on the woman named Sylvia, who was still standing at the counter. Geneva draped herself around one of the ceiling fans, which I’d forgotten to turn on with the lights.

“Are you both journalists?” I asked.

“More like trying to be,” Sylvia said, sounding apologetic. “Hi, I’m Sylvia Furches.” She held out her hand and I shook it. “I hope you don’t think we were trying to mislead you.”

I hadn’t until she brought it up. “I’m Kath Rutledge.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kath. And that was Pen Ledford. We’re taking a class at the community college in Asheville. We have a final project we need to do, and when Pen heard about the, well, about the trouble here yesterday, she was keen to take a run over the mountains to see what we can dig up. I think she has ‘scoop’ on the brain. She’s full of energy and ideas.” She smiled and wiggled her fingers near her ears to illustrate all that energy percolating out of Pen. Then she folded her hands and leaned closer. “Did the murders happen in Blue Plum?”

“Near here,” I said, wishing not for the first time that lies would roll off my tongue convincingly. Settling for being nonspecific would do in a pinch, though. Sylvia and Pen could find out more, easily enough, without my being their source.

“It was shocking news, wasn’t it?” Sylvia said. She sounded genuinely distressed but kept her voice low and serious. Maybe she’d learned to erase signs of titillation in her journalism class. “I remember reading about the situation, the paper protests, several years ago. Embree was his name, wasn’t it? Pen is more up on the details than I am.

I didn’t bother to answer. Of course she knew his name was Embree.

“And then what happened yesterday. Terrible.” She shook her head. “It was at some kind of farm, wasn’t it?”

I nodded noncommittally and darted a few glances to locate the twins. They were looking through the rows of button drawers, making as little noise as possible. Browsing the buttons put them in a good position to hear everything being said at the counter. So far, though, they hadn’t offered to fill in the gaps I was leaving. I wondered how long that would continue.

“You couldn’t give me directions to Cloud Hollow, could you?” Sylvia asked.

“Me? Gosh, no.” That sounded more polite than “absolutely not” or any of the more emphatic variations that sprang to mind. But if Sylvia and Pen knew enough to stop at the local wool shop for directions to Cloud Hollow—by name, no less—did they also know who owned Cloud Hollow and her connection to the Weaver’s Cat? Depending on whom they’d already talked to, they might. Or maybe not, if they needed directions to the farm. Maybe the Weaver’s Cat was their first stop. At least they didn’t seem to know what Debbie looked like. Maybe they didn’t know her name yet, either.

“You’ve never been out there?” Sylvia asked, bringing my zigzagging thoughts back into focus. She was still trying for mildly curious but was no longer pulling the wool over the wool shop owner’s eyes.

“Honestly, Sylvia, you wouldn’t want my directions even if I could remember them to give you.
I
can’t even follow them. The one time I was out that way I almost didn’t make it back alive I got so turned around. Crossing the river, recrossing the river, re-recrossing the river. It was a nightmare. And the roads? Whoo. Full of twists. Full of turns. And GPS doesn’t even know the place
exists
.” I should have gone with the rude refusal. Stomping her request flat might have kept me from blathering on, something I’m prone to do when trying to compensate for not lying. Even the twins turned around and stared when they heard me driveling on.

Sylvia considered my overblown answer, head tipped, eyes infinitesimally skeptical. Then she smiled and shrugged and looked over at the twins, making me realize that she was aware of their interest all along. The wily twins were quick to turn away, though, and she didn’t catch their rolled eyes.

“Good Lord, you are pathetic,” Geneva said from her perch on the ceiling fan. “My jaw droppeth.”

“No need to blush, Kath,” Sylvia said kindly. “I think you’re probably a very good and loyal friend.”

She left the shop, leaving me to wonder what kind of friend she’d call me if she knew I was tempted to turn the ceiling fan on full blast to see if anything jaw-dropping happened to my friend up there.

The camel bells got a workout over the next few minutes. The Spiveys left on Sylvia’s heels, but only after Mercy winked at me and Shirley touched a forefinger to the side of her nose. If they assumed I knew what either of them meant by those gestures, they assumed wrong. I wasn’t sure whom I pitied more, Sylvia and Pen, Debbie and her sheep, or myself and the shop, if the twins were teaming up with the wannabe journalists.

As soon as the bells quit quivering behind those two, they jingled again. That proved to be one jingle too many for Debbie’s nap. She woke with a start and an exclamation, startling the cat as well as the next customer. This was no ordinary yarn shop customer, though. This was a woman in a tailored, charcoal gray pinstripe suit, a silk blouse, and three-inch heels. She stopped just inside the door and put her hands on her hips, one shoulder slightly forward, as though she’d been practicing since girlhood for the chance to pose like Wonder Woman. She also didn’t beat around the bush.

“Which one of you is investigating Shannon Goforth’s murder?”

“K
eep that cat away from me,” Wonder Woman said, her throat sounding tight and her voice brittle. She was already flushed and breathing hard when she came through the door. Adding fear, allergies, or dislike of cats to that mix wasn’t improving anything.

The cat, of course, took her words as an invitation to come on over and say hi. The woman moved away, putting a display table between them. The cat blinked at her and teased by pretending to follow. She fell for his trick, backing farther away and ready to protect her ankles, but he faked her out by leaping onto the table and appearing at her elbow. It looked to me as though he wiggled his ginger eyebrows at her, but that might have been a trick of the light.