Last Wool and Testament: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery (17 page)

“Are you trying to prove how safe you supposedly are?”

“I’m hoping you won’t whack me with that thing,” he said, nodding at the poker. “I’ll roll over and bare my throat, too, if that’ll help.”

I lowered the poker a fraction and he relaxed a smaller fraction, slowly lowering his arms. Neither of us made any sudden moves, and after ten or twenty seconds, during which we stood there gauging each other, his eyes left mine and he looked around the room. I kept my eyes on him.

“Your supper smells good,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Oh, hey, and I didn’t realize you had company.”

“There’s no one here…” Except the ghost? I whipped around. The room was empty. I cleared my throat to cover my moment of panic. Then I saw he was looking at the table set for two. With two plates of tuna noodle casserole, no longer steaming.

“But you must be expecting someone any minute.”

“Oh, right. Ruth. I invited her. She was so kind to let me stay here. It was the least I could do. In fact, when you knocked, I thought you were her.”

He moved closer to the table. I did, too, poker arm tensed.

“I wonder if she was confused, then,” he said. “Because she left about an hour ago saying something about skipping supper and going straight to the town board meeting. Isn’t this her casserole dish?”

My bad lie was beginning to make me queasy. And annoyed. Why did I feel I owed this guy any explanations about anything? He was supposedly here to tell
me
something about Granny. It was time to start asking
him
questions. “You recognize Ruth’s dish?” Not what I’d meant to ask.

“Oh, sure.”

“How?” Definitely a fail in Interrogation 101.

“Didn’t Ivy ever tell you Blue Plum is the potluck capital of the world? You graze enough potlucks, you recognize the dishes and the cooks behind them. Light green Tupperware salad bowl? Way too much dressing. Ruth’s casserole dish? Guaranteed edible. Besides, that smells like her tuna noodle. The curry gives it away. As long as she’s not coming, may I?” He indicated the second place setting.

Somehow we’d ended up on either side of the table, me standing behind my chair, he behind the one opposite.

“Um.” I’d been saying that a lot lately. Very uncharacteristic.

While I tried to figure out how I suddenly had a guest burglar for dinner, he took off his hat and raincoat, hanging the coat on the back of the second chair on his side of the table and putting the hat on the seat. I held on to my poker.

“How about I warm these in the microwave?” Without waiting for an answering “um” from me, he whisked the two cold plates off the table.

Conversation lapsed further while the microwave
zapped first one, then the other plate. He returned them to the table and pulled his chair out and started to sit. I didn’t. He noticed and hesitated.

I nodded at his plate. “Go ahead.”

“You sure?” Again, without waiting for an answer, articulate or otherwise, he sat and dug in.

I stayed on my feet, weighing the poker in my hand and my options. I still had my phone in the other hand. I was also still hungry, not having finished what was on my plate, and his gusto only made the food look better. The longer I stood, the slower his rate of fork to mouth became, though, until he put his fork down and dabbed his lips with his napkin.

“Not joining me?”

“Not sure. I have a few questions.”

He took a sip of water. Raised his eyebrows.

“First, what were you looking for last night? Second, did you really come out here tonight to tell me something about my grandmother or was that a convenient excuse for getting in without breaking in? Although, come to think of it, why would you tell me if you were planning to break in again? And fourth, or third, or whatever, if you do have something to tell me about Granny, what is it?”

“Hey, look, I really am sorry I scared you last night.” He started to push his chair back. I raised the poker. He stopped, raised his open hands. “Do you have to hold that thing like you plan to use it as soon as my back is turned?”

“Yeah. Sorry if that bothers you, but burglars in the house seem to have that effect on me.”

He started to smile. I narrowed my eyes and he stopped.

“Okay. Hm. Okay.” He brought his hands together in a double fist, head slightly bowed. He bounced one knuckle of the fists against his lips, his eyes moving from left to right and back again. He appeared to be wrestling with
something. But what? Bad news? How best to break that bad news to a woman standing over him with a poker? A lie of his own?

His left eye twitched and he straightened his fingers, resting their tips against his chin. With his lean, bearded face he reminded me of a monk in a painting by someone like El Greco. I half expected him to close his eyes and start chanting or say amen.

“Okay.” He shook himself and ran his hands through his hair, head still bent. “I kind of got lost in your questions, but I think maybe they can all be covered with one answer.” He sat up and looked at me. “It might come as a shock.”

“Shock and I are best friends lately. Give it a shot.”

“Okay. I was looking for evidence because I think Emmett was blackmailing your grandmother.”

Even with his warning, his catchall answer begged for me to drop everything and stare at him. If I’d lost track of the poker and let it fall crashing to the table, it would have been understandable. Through tremendous effort I kept it cocked and ready.

“I expected more of a reaction,” he said, studying my face.

“I’ve been getting some practice. I’ll give you a ‘wow’ on that, though. It deserves it.” I thought back over the last day or so: secret dye journals, ghosts, burglars. Now blackmail? Why not?
Why not
was going to be a useful philosophy for as long as I stuck around Blue Plum—I could see that—and without thinking, I began working through Joe’s contribution to my weird new life out loud.

“Blackmail isn’t the first possibility that jumps into my head, but first possibilities don’t seem to matter much these days. And it might explain how Emmett got the house without anyone else being aware. But what could he possibly know that was worth blackmailing Granny for?” My tongue skidded to a halt before “secret dye
journals” slipped out. Oh, surely not. Surely Emmett Cobb hadn’t tripped over or somehow fathomed Granny’s notion that she had a “talent.”

“Blackmailed her over
what
is definitely the question,” Joe agreed. He puzzled over that, brow furrowed, swirling his fork through the bit of golden sauce left on his plate.

Granny said she did her best thinking while throwing a shuttle and thumping a beater bar. The rhythm organized her thoughts; the warp and weft gave her a scaffold to build on. I watched Joe thinking with his fork, not offering my answer to the blackmail question. Instead, I wondered how easily he might form his own answer, given access to whatever evidence he was looking for. And how would his answer, correct or not, create its own cascade of problems? I pictured Granny watching helplessly as her tightly woven fabric unraveled.

Joe rested the fork, cocking his head and looking at his plate. For a second, the fork looked like a brush in his hand. Then he licked it. On the plate he’d painted a delicate curry-sauce fish leaping toward the rim, chased by a swan with wings and neck outstretched. Joe doodled swans. Granny doodled swans. Mean swans. There was more to this story than he was telling. Cobb. A male swan was a cob.

“But, yeah,” he said, pushing the plate away. “I was thinking the same thing. About Ivy’s house. Whoa, watch it.” He snatched my water glass out of the way before I swiped it off the table with the poker I was suddenly paying no attention to.

“You knew about the house?”

“Why don’t you put that thing down?”

“I’m not sure I want to.” I did want to. It was heavy. “If I put it down, how do I know I can trust you?”

“Plenty of people do. Ardis, Ruth. Ivy did.”

“She did? But you broke in here.”

“One time. I came in, uninvited, one time. And I didn’t break anything to do it.”

“You’re a burglar.”

“I didn’t take anything, either.”

I didn’t bother pointing out he hadn’t had time before I surprised him.

He held his hands out, placating, pacifying. Playacting? “I was trying to help. I really was. And, just so you know, it wasn’t me who got into Ivy’s house.”

“You know about that, too?”

“And Maggie. She must’ve gotten out when whoever it was got in. I’ve looked around the neighborhood, asked around town, but haven’t found her. I’m sorry. She’s a sweetheart. So, can we have a truce? And will you put that thing down before you crack Ruth’s casserole dish?”

He cared enough to look for Maggie? I looked at the poker and compromised by tucking it under my arm like a swagger stick. I was still armed, but the tableware could thank me for being less dangerous.

“Can you get me into Granny’s house?”

“Absolutely not.” He obviously expected me to believe that. The lowered brow, the set jaw, the thinned, unsmiling lips were working hard to convince both of us. But the slight blush playing over his ears betrayed the possibility that I now had a burglar up my sleeve. A burglar with a soft spot for lost cats.

“It probably doesn’t matter, anyway. Max should be back with the keys tomorrow. Thanks for looking for Maggie. So, what kind of evidence were you looking for out here? Wouldn’t looking at Granny’s make more sense? And why didn’t you go to the police if you’re so sure Emmett was a blackmailer? Did Granny ask you not to? Did she ask you to get the evidence back for her?”

“We didn’t discuss it.”

“You didn’t? Then what’s your stake in this and why
didn’t
you go to the police?”

He didn’t answer, instead chewing his lip and studying a cuticle. I needed to stop asking multiple and multipart questions so I’d know if he was floundering somewhere in my stream-of-consciousness grilling or was just refusing to answer. I decided to help him out.

“You didn’t go to the police,” I said, feeling my way along that thought carefully, “because he was blackmailing you, too.” I tensed for a reaction.

He didn’t blink, but asked, “You don’t think that’s kind of a leap?”

“It was more of a leap to consider blackmail to begin with, and no, I’d say it might take a blackmail victim to know one. Birds of a feather. Granny drew pictures of swans, too.”

He didn’t answer. The sauce fish and swan on his plate hadn’t held their lines. He scraped the fork through what was left of them.

“Okay, well, I think I’d also say that’s the real reason you were out here looking around.” I continued, feeling my way slowly. “You were looking for a record of some kind that Emmett kept. That he probably kept hidden. Otherwise someone—the police, for instance—would have already found it. And you might be sorry if they found it. You weren’t looking just because you think he was blackmailing Granny; you were looking to protect yourself. Because blackmail, and whatever Emmett had on you—those are the kinds of things that would make life complicated for your brother. I’m just thinking aloud here, but don’t you think that might be right?” Hidden dye journals, hidden blackmail records—they made sense to my overloaded, overstressed brain.

He again didn’t say anything and we stared at each other, seemingly at a stalemate. Although I couldn’t think what consensus or goal he hoped we’d reach. Watching him, I also couldn’t tell if he thought we’d made any progress toward it.

“I’ll give you my phone number,” he finally said. “It’s a good idea for you to have it.”

“Why?”

“Ruth asked me to give it to you. You know, in case something happens. Blocked drain. Roof leak.” He took a pen from a pocket, reached across and jotted the number on my paper napkin. “Place is pretty solid, though,” he said, looking around. “I doubt you’ll have any trouble.”

“What are we talking about now?”

“Oh, sorry, I thought Ruth told you. She hired me today as a temp until they find someone permanent for Em’s place. Feeding the animals, mowing and whatnot. Lock up at the end of the day. General handyman. You know. Look after the place.”

“You have keys?”

“She handed me a whole raft of them, yeah.”

“You have a key to this house?”

“No doubt.”

“You can let yourself in.”

“Well, yeah, I guess…”

“I think I need you to leave now.”

Chapter 17

H
e had keys to the cottage?

I needed to think and I couldn’t do it with him and his bonny, burglarous eyes sitting there looking at me. Finishing my supper in peace, without feeling the need to clutch a poker, would be nice, too. Despite my request, he didn’t leave immediately, and that left me unsure of my next move. How did one eject a seemingly friendly burglar if one wasn’t entirely willing to connect a cast-iron poker with his flesh?

“Um.” My new word for all occasions.

“I’ll only be a tick.” He got up, no longer looking worried by me and my weapon. He tucked his chair under the table and took his dish to the sink, being, apparently, a neat and domestic burglar. Which was better than being a feral one, I guessed. I must have snorted. He caught my eye and smiled.

“I’m not smiling.”

“Sorry, my mistake.” He continued to smile, retrieving his jacket and hat from where he’d left them on the chair. He put the jacket on and glanced out the window over the sink. “Rain’s letting up. Downpour like that buggers up the fishing for a few days, though.”

I wondered why it was buggered up, but didn’t ask. Under other circumstances it’s possible I would enjoy
getting-to-know-you type small talk with a nonthreatening, passably good-looking, artistic, fishing burglar. But right now I was more interested in getting the burglar out of the house.

He set his hat on his head, opened the door, and looked back at me. “Good night, Kath. Get some sleep. Get your mind wrapped around things. Then give me a call, okay? I’ll leave you to finish your supper in peace without the poker getting in your way.”

I almost smiled again, almost nodded. He did nod, tugged his hat low on his forehead, and pulled the door shut behind him.