Dyer Consequences (6 page)

Kelly managed a sardonic smile in return. “Everyone tells me not to worry. Curt says don’t worry about all the extra expenses. You tell me not to worry about a bunch of gang wannabes who like to break into places around town and who may have targeted
me
now. I gotta tell you, Burt. Everyone’s asking a helluva lot.”

Kelly zipped her running jacket to her chin as she left the cottage and walked over to the square post by the corner of her front yard. It was her favorite place to stretch before setting off on a morning run—when it wasn’t covered with snow.

Thanks to the warmer temperatures over the last two days, most of the snow had melted into slushy piles. Since the early morning February sun was fairly weak, those slush piles were ice-covered now and would be until noon.

She stretched one long leg behind her as she leaned against the post. A flash of movement across the driveway caught her attention, and Kelly saw Pete race down the café’s back steps and through the outside patio behind the shop.

“What’s up, Pete?” she yelled as she stretched her other leg. “I thought I was the only one who went running this early.”

Pete came to a stop as he rounded the corner of the patio and spotted Kelly. He quickly changed direction and headed her way.

Kelly wondered why Pete was outside on a busy Saturday morning, until she glanced toward the parking lot. No cars were in sight except Pete’s old beige Volvo and Eduardo’s new green pickup.
That’s strange. Saturday is their busiest day of the week.

“Hey, where are your customers, Pete? I’ve never seen this parking lot empty on a Saturday morning.”

Pete panted as he came to a stop, his normally smiling face filled with concern. “I . . . I told Eduardo . . . to wave them off. The café and the shop were hit last night by vandals. ” He drew in a breath as he brushed a stray lock of blond hair off his forehead.

Kelly’s heart sank. The vandals had come back, and this time they’d found bigger targets. “Ohhhh, no! Pete, I’m
so
sorry.” She reached out and gave his arm a squeeze. He’d run outside without his coat and was standing in his shirt-sleeves, shivering. “Let’s go back inside. Have you called the police yet?” She beckoned Pete toward the café.

"Y-yeah, I called them first thing. And Mimi. Sh-she’s on her way,” he said through chattering teeth. “R-Rosa should be here, too. She works Saturdays in the shop.”

Kelly raced through the patio, her feet barely touching the flagstones, and up the back steps, Pete trailing behind. Afraid of what she’d see, Kelly shoved open the glass door and stepped inside. She sucked in her breath.

Broken glass and bottles were scattered all over the wooden floor, beer and wine pooling into puddles. Piles of what looked like flour or sugar were dumped everywhere. Napkins, silverware, dishes, candles, and jelly jars were jumbled all together beneath overturned tables and chairs.

“Oh, no . . . ,” Kelly whispered. “This is awful.”

“Wait’ll you see the kitchen. It’s worse,” Pete said sadly, walking through the destruction. “They left the refrigerator doors open and pulled everything to the floor. Spaghetti sauce is all over. All the food is ruined.”

Kelly followed him to the kitchen and flinched when she saw the damage. Pete wasn’t kidding. Spaghetti sauce smeared the counters, dripped down the grill, and splashed onto the walls. The smell of oregano and basil hung in the air. Wilting vegetables were scattered across the floor. Cheese balls lay where they’d rolled into corners, and chef’s knives and cleavers were standing on end, dug into the wooden chopping block as if they’d been thrown there.

“What a mess,” Kelly said, feeling guilty somehow. The vandals had targeted her, and she’d led them to their new targets. “We’ll help you clean up, Pete. Everyone will pitch in, and the sooner we do it, the sooner you can open the doors again.” She spied Eduardo still standing outside the front door, explaining to customers what had happened as they arrived.

Pete gazed wistfully out the window at his disappointed and disappearing customers. “I don’t know how soon that will be, Kelly. Wait till you see the shop. That will take quite a while to fix. Mimi and the others will have their hands full.”

Kelly grimaced. The sight of the trashed café made her momentarily forget the knitting shop. “How bad is it?” she asked, heading down the hallway that led to the interior of the shop.

“Pretty bad. I didn’t see much stuff broken, but everything’s in huge piles,” he said, following her.

Kelly turned the corner into one of the yarn rooms and stared. Pete didn’t exaggerate. The shelves that lined the walls and were usually filled with colorful fat cones of novelty yarns sat empty. Everything was on the floor. A huge multicolored pile of yarn. Cones of yarn, skeins of yarn, spools of yarn. All mixed together. Scattered on top were various knitted items—shawls, long fringed scarves, fluffy eyelash scarves, mittens, hats.

“Oh, what a mess.” Glancing to the large loom in the corner of the room, Kelly didn’t see any obvious damage. Neither did she see any bottles or liquids poured on the floors or over the yarns. “At least they didn’t pour wine over it.” She tiptoed around the pile and through the doorway into the next room, trying not to step on the gorgeous fibers.

This time, she saw no discernible pile. Instead, skeins of yarns and knitted garments were scattered everywhere, covering the floor entirely. At least a foot deep in yarns. The baskets and bins lining these walls gaped at her—empty. She could see through the arched doorway ahead into the main room and the library table—the gathering place. The table and floors were now filled with books, which the vandals had swept from the shelves.

She tried to step carefully through the foot-deep blanket of yarn covering the floor. “This will take days for them to sort through. You and Mimi both have insurance, don’t you?”

Pete didn’t answer, because Mimi burst through the front door into the foyer, her coat open and red knitted scarf dangling. She came to a halt. “Oh,
no
!” she wailed, hands to her face. “Look at this . . . it’s . . . it’s
awful
!”

“I don’t think the yarns are hurt, Mimi, just thrown on the floor,” Kelly offered, picking up several fluffy bundles of sherbet colors.

“Why would anyone do this?” Mimi said as she bent to pick up skeins that littered the foyer. “I never have understood vandals. Pete, did they hurt the café?”

Pete nodded dolefully and Mimi sucked in her breath, hand to her mouth. “Ohhhh, noooo! What did they do?”

“Threw food and wine all over the place,” Kelly said. “It’s a mess. Spaghetti sauce, wine, beer, smeared over everything. It’s nasty.”

“Yeah,” Pete said, releasing a discouraged sigh as he turned toward the café. “I’d better go and call that insurance agent. I’ll see you later.”

“Ohhhh, Kelly, this will take forever to clean up.” Mimi shook her head, staring balefully as she surveyed the rooms. “Oh, look at all the books on the floor. And patterns, too. I hope they’re not torn.”

Rosa charged through the door then, and her eyes popped wide at the scene.
“Madre de Dios,”
she said softly, scanning the wreckage. “This is terrible!”

Kelly started clearing a path through the yarns, picking up skeins and tossing them into the corners, creating a walkway. “How’d they get in, Mimi? Did they break the lock on the front door?” she asked, as she watched Rosa start clearing another pathway.

Mimi checked the heavy walnut door. “No, they didn’t,” she said, peering at the door handle and lock. “There’re no marks. Oh, my word, was the door left unlocked?”

“No way, Mimi,” Rosa protested, her arms filled with bunches of fat cotton chenille. “We
always
lock that door. And Connie was working at closing last night, and she’s a bear about that, remember? Her house was broken into once.”

“Well, the back door to the café was okay, too,” Kelly added. “No signs of a break-in. And Pete always locks that front door when he leaves in the afternoon. I know, because I searched for a way to get inside the shop one night when I left my bag here with my cell phone. All those doors were locked tight.”

Mimi let go of the front door, and it closed with a solid thud. She stood, staring out into the shop, both hands at her breast now. “Ohhhh, no . . .” she whispered. “Tracy has been staying late working with the dyes. Could she have forgotten to lock the door when she left last night?”

Rosa looked surprised. “I don’t think so. Tracy stayed late on Wednesday and Thursday nights, too, and she remembered to lock the doors. I showed her how to do it. Why would she forget on Friday?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Mimi said, worrying her lower lip. “Tracy’s such a conscientious girl. I can’t imagine it slipping her mind.”

Kelly pondered for a second. “I noticed the lights on late last night when Steve brought me home after dinner. I didn’t think anything of it because I knew Tracy was probably downstairs and up to her arms in the dye tubs again. She’s gone crazy for it. You’ve got a devoted pupil, Mimi. But I agree with Rosa, I can’t see Tracy forgetting something as important as locking the door. She impresses me as being very careful.”

Rosa started arranging the chenille yarns inside the antique cabinet where they’d been previously displayed. “Speaking of downstairs, I’d better go check the basement to see if they trashed it as well.” She started picking her way through the room, clearing a path as she did.

“Please, God, not the basement,” Mimi prayed as she closed her eyes. “All those bags of fleece and dyed yarns . . . I don’t want to think about what they could do down there.”

Following Rosa’s lead, Kelly started filling empty yarn bins and shelves. Sorting could come later. Right now, they had to find the floor again. “Maybe they didn’t even get to the basement, Mimi. It was hard enough for us to get around down there when we were working over the tubs.” She pictured the rabbit warren of rooms below.

“Lord, I hope so,” Mimi said, stuffing springy balls of eyelash yarn into the antique cabinet. “I hope they found what little money we had in the cash box and ran off—”

A muffled scream cut through the air, silencing Mimi. She stared at Kelly, mouth open. “Oh, my God! Was that Rosa?”

“I think it was,” Kelly said, dumping the rest of the yarn onto the floor. This time she stomped through the fibers, not caring what she stepped on, as she hurried toward the back of the shop and the basement stairway.

“What happened?” Mimi cried out as she followed behind Kelly.

Racing through the hallway, Kelly rounded the corner and charged down the steps. Pete was already ahead of her.

“Rosa, are you all right?” Pete yelled as he disappeared into the maze of rooms below.

“
Madre de Dios, no!
Please, no!” Rosa’s voice cried from the back room.

Kelly raced after Pete, her heart in her throat. Bursting into the tub room, she stopped short, almost tripping over a metal rod on the floor. The air was sucked out of Kelly’s lungs in an instant. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

Rosa stood weeping, her face in her hands, shoulders heaving. Pete was leaning over the laundry tub. A woman’s body hung over the tub. Her face and chest were submerged in the dark blue dye water. The woman’s blonde hair floated on the water, spread out in a fan around her submerged head. Blonde, no more. Now the hair was blue, as were the woman’s arms, which floated beside her. Dark blue. Aztec Blue. Tracy Putnam’s favorite color.

Kelly felt sick to her stomach. She barely heard Mimi’s piercing scream behind her.

Steam wafted off Kelly’s mug of coffee as she stood in the middle of the driveway’s melting slush. Mimi and Pete stood beside her, sipping her home-brewed coffee from an assortment of travel mugs. Kelly and her friends were huddled together outside the knitting shop as they had been most of the morning—watching Fort Connor police officers and investigators run in and out of the building, carrying bags, carrying cameras, conferring with one another.

Kelly and the others had watched sadly as the medics arrived and carried Tracy Putnam’s sheet-shrouded body to the ambulance. Mimi and Rosa wept softly. Kelly recalled a similar scene last summer, when she and her friend Megan had discovered Allison Dubois dead in her apartment. That same tight feeling was in Kelly’s gut now.

A young police officer—no more than a kid, Kelly thought—had questioned each of them separately, writing their answers on a small notepad. After that, the investigating detective in charge, Lieutenant Morrison, wanted to question them all again individually. Kelly offered her cottage as a place for interviews, hoping to soften the crusty Morrison. She still sensed he hadn’t forgiven her for solving her aunt Helen’s murder before he did last spring.

Watching Rosa come down the steps now, Kelly figured that Morrison would call her last.

“Oooo, that man is so, so... gruff,” Rosa said as she joined them, accepting a coffee mug from Pete.

“Don’t let Lieutenant Morrison scare you, Rosa. He’s not mean, just intimidating,” Kelly said. “What did he ask?”

“He wanted me to tell him everything I remembered when I went downstairs and found... Tracy.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to remember all that. I’m trying to forget.” She shuddered.

Mimi squeezed Rosa’s shoulders. “I know, Rosa. I’m trying to forget, too.”

“Why would those guys kill Tracy?” Pete asked as he stared at the clusters of uniformed officers and investigators who continued to stream into and out of the building. “I mean, if all they wanted to do was grab money and trash the place, they could have just locked her in the basement.”

Kelly spotted Burt emerge from the shop’s front door, engrossed in conversation with his old partner, Dan. Burt had arrived within minutes of Mimi’s phone call this morning, right after the police, and had shadowed his old partner ever since.