Last Wool and Testament: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery (32 page)

“Geneva? Honey? Listen to me. There is a point and it has to do with patterns. The point is, Nicki killing Em doesn’t fit.”

Ardis unlocked the Cat’s door for us. Rather, for me. Geneva trailed behind as my personal, invisible rain cloud. I hadn’t been sure she’d come with me and on the way into town she’d been uncommunicative except for a dismal moan or two. The shop drew her, though. Something about it agreed with her and she seemed to stretch and breathe more easily once we were there. Odd to say of a creature who didn’t have any more need of breath than a limp dishrag.

“Do you know that today is Saturday?” Ardis asked. “I don’t work on Saturdays. Debbie and Nicki work on Saturdays, and when Debbie came in and asked where Nicki is, I realized my mind is such a mess I hadn’t even thought to call her and tell her what happened. Who am I kidding that I can pretend everything is normal? But Debbie’s in the kitchen pulling herself together and we’ll make this into a normal day if we have to beat it with sticks.”

Geneva had draped herself over the chartreuse sweater
set again. They really did nothing for each other. But she perked up when Ardis mentioned beating with sticks and drifted closer.

“I’ll give you the morning to pretend everything is normal,” I told Ardis. “You and Debbie and I will play shopkeepers and live out a lovely fantasy that nothing has changed. It’ll be good for us.”

“Like a vacation from madness.”

“And we need one. Oh, sister, do we need one. But let’s close the shop this afternoon, in memory of Nicki.”

She got weepy at that point but nodded.

“And for another reason. I’m assembling the posse and I need you and Debbie there.”

She straightened her spine. “We will be.”

“And me?” Geneva asked.

“Yes.” Oops. I glanced at Ardis, but she took the extra affirmative in stride.

“Yes!” she repeated, pumping her fist. “Mild-mannered shopkeepers this morning. The posse rides this afternoon. We are here. We are strong. Time to open the door to our clamoring public. Get the lights, will you?”

Geneva followed me over to the light switches. “Warn her about the horses,” she whispered. “She’s large and excitable and I’d hate to see who she’ll beat with sticks if you disappoint her the way you disappointed me.”

The pattern of a small town reacting to tragedy is vivid with shock and sorrow. We should have known that would overwhelm the soothing morning we hoped for. News of Nicki’s death, although not the details, spread and TGIF members and others stopped in to share their disbelief and offer comfort and memories. Geneva enjoyed the tears.

Platitudes and bromides were foremost, as might be expected, but a few snippets I overheard helped me begin to understand the pattern of Nicki’s life. The most
illuminating came from three women who staked out the comfy chairs nearest the counter and brought their work with them.

“I remember a skinny little girl, always following behind, trying to be like the big kids,” the first said. She gave her drop spindle a twirl and let it fall, drawing out a fine thread of wool.

“Like a little moth fluttering around the brightest lights she could find,” the second said as she measured the shawl she was knitting against her arm. “And she got burned a time or two.”

“Bless her heart,” the third said, glancing up from her cutwork. “Looking for someone or something to fill the holes that pitiful excuse of a family left.”

Debbie caught me listening in. “They only come in on Saturdays,” she whispered. “Ivy called them the Three Fates.”

“What holes did her family leave?”

“More than holes, really,” Debbie said. “The family pretty much disintegrated. Dad in and out of the picture. Mom with a string of boyfriends. Grandmother an alcoholic. They’re all still around, but they never gave her what she needed. Nicki told me she finally found herself when she took a fiber arts class at the community college and met Ivy.”

Halfway through the morning I received another interrupted report from the Spiveys. This time it was Shirley.

“Emmett Cobb was a boring man,” she said, “but we’re making progress. Mercy was a tad miffed when you hung up on her earlier. I told her what we’ve found is important enough we should try calling you again because no doubt you’re distracted in your grief, the way Angie is now that she’ll have to go out and join the workforce.”

“Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear about Angie and I would like to hear what you’ve found.”

“Can you hold a sec? Another call coming in.”

I did hold and finally disconnected because she didn’t come back. I decided that later I would run by Angie’s. It would be better to see for myself what they’d found, anyway. Ardis saw me with my phone.

“Have you alerted the rest of the posse?” she asked quietly.

“Not yet.”

“You call Ernestine and Joe. I’ll call Mel and Thea. What time?”

“I did talk to Joe and told him two.”

“Something else to think about, hon. Do we expand or stick to the original group? There’s a lot of talent and ardor to draw on. And loyalty.”

“I think we need to keep it small, keep it close.”

“Keep it safe.” Ardis said.

By one o’clock we were emotionally exhausted. Debbie locked the front door and we ate a quick lunch in the kitchen before heading up to the TGIF workroom.

“High noon would have been more appropriate than two o’clock,” Geneva said on the way up the stairs. “You should have asked my advice.”

I chose my words so they’d mean something to her
and
Ardis and Debbie. “Meeting first, showdown later.” Big words and I hoped not foolish.

Chapter 34

A
rdis, Ernestine, Debbie, Mel, and Thea sat facing me. Geneva insisted on standing next to me as loyal sidekick. Or hovering next to me. Whatever she did, her presence at my side didn’t give me the sense of support she seemed to think it should. Joe hadn’t showed up. He had delivered the flash drives to everyone, but the situation had changed, and that changed the data of some of the questions we needed to answer.

“You’re on, hon,” Ardis said.

“Wait.” Debbie went across the hall and came back pushing a large whiteboard on wheels. “There—now we’re an incident room.” She handed me a marker and eraser and sat back down.

“Don’t blow it,” Geneva stage-whispered.

I abandoned the notebook I’d planned to use for my visual aids. Breathed in, breathed out, faced the inspiring expanse of the board, and wrote four words:
pattern
,
construction
,
connection
,
access
. “This is what I’ve been thinking about since, um, since the incident last night. We’re looking for patterns and we’re constructing a picture. We’re looking for how the patterns and the pieces of the picture are connected, the way the separate sections of a tapestry are sometimes joined together.”

They nodded.

“And we’re looking at access. How did Emmett gain access to people’s secrets? Who had access to poison? And access to the cottage so the poisoned bottle of gin could be left where Emmett would find it? Who had access to the information that Max Cobb was back in town? Who had access to snakes? The police believe all of that is down to Nicki. That it’s over. I don’t. Her pattern of collecting, amassing, obsessing doesn’t fit.”

“Why not?” Thea asked. “Devil’s advocate, but Emmett was collecting secrets. So how is that different?”

“You’re right. Nicki’s pattern is similar to Emmett’s. They were both collecting. Creating something. Nicki was creating something extremely weird, to the point that Joe thinks she was trying to
be
Granny, not just enshrine her. But she
was
creating. The murderer’s pattern is one of destruction.”

“But, oh, this is awful to think, but what if Nicki didn’t really find Ivy when she died?” Debbie asked. “What if she killed her?”

I stared at Debbie. Her question was a complete sucker punch and left me almost gagging. Nicki kill Granny? Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“No.” Ardis came around the table and put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “No. Definitely not part of the pattern. Nicki did find Ivy. She would not have killed her. She couldn’t have killed her. Nicki was in the shop with me the entire morning. Ivy was at home. She got up out of bed and dropped to the floor and no, the attack was not induced by digitalis or any other means. Her old heart plain gave out. No one killed Ivy. Trust me.” She stayed there with her hand on my shoulder.

“This is all worth talking through, though,” I said, when I was breathing normally again. “Debbie’s question is exactly the kind of thing we need to look at. But first I want to show you something else. I’m going to rearrange these words and add one more.” I erased them,
then rewrote them in a column, this time with
construction
and
connection
sharing a line:

Pattern

Access

Construction, connection

Trust

“P.A.C.T. Corny, huh? But each of us needs to be clear on this. Whatever secrets we dig up, whatever personal information we discover, none of it goes any further than this group unless it has to go to the police. Agreed? If not, now’s the time to leave the group, same as Ruth did yesterday, and no hard feelings.”

They sat there, calm and serious, eyes on me and not gauging one another’s intent. Each of them nodded. Except Geneva. She’d draped herself over a corner of the whiteboard looking like a bored teenager.

“Guns would be more exciting,” she said. “Trust me.”

She yawned ostentatiously, then drifted out of the room. I had to remind myself not to roll my eyes or tsk. Instead, I held up the rolled canvas.

“This is the design for the tapestry I told you Granny was working on. The one missing from the house.”

“Nicki took it?” Ardis asked.

“Mm-hmm. Maybe she planned to weave it herself. I don’t know. Anyway, if you had a chance to read the files on your flash drive, you know what this is and what it meant to Granny. What you don’t know is what she told me in a message she left on my phone a couple of days before she died. She said, ‘It is what it is, a bit of a puzzle.’ I thought she meant she was having trouble with the design. That it wasn’t turning out the way she planned. Now I think she meant that it is literally a puzzle. Take a look.” I unrolled it on the table.

“Oh law,” Ardis said. “I might cry. I surely might.”

“No time for tears,” Ernestine said. “I’ve brought my magnifying loupe. Let’s see what we’ve got.”

“You want to give a hint what we’re looking for?” Mel asked.

“No. I want to see if you see the same thing I did. It’s what kept me awake last night.” I watched as they examined the painting inch by inch. Mel laughed when she found the little purple Mel on Main Street. Ardis touched the open door of the Weaver’s Cat.

“Oh my.” Ernestine looked up. “Perhaps I have an unfair advantage with my loupe.” She took the hands-free magnifier from around her neck and passed it to Thea. “Did you count him six times?”

“Eight.”

“Nine,” Ardis said. “In case you missed one, he’s hiding near the culvert in the creek. Nine nasty Emmett Cobbs in the Blue Plum tapestry. It sounds like a vile children’s rhyme.”

“I like the one in the pillory,” Mel said. “Serves him right. Kind of elaborate, though, isn’t it? Ivy was always straight up. Why not just turn him in to the cops instead of turning him into a tapestry?”

“Or leave a simple, written record?” I asked. “I wondered the same thing. But remember, she hadn’t told anyone anything so far. Not Ardis, not me, not her lawyer. We might never know why she didn’t.”

“But we do know she didn’t expect to die when she did,” Debbie said. “And she could always go back and take Emmett out of the tapestry later, if things changed.”

“Or not put him in,” I said. “This is only the cartoon and she’d only woven the lower border. We don’t know that she really planned to weave him in. But I think maybe she did. I think she didn’t say anything because she didn’t know who to say it to and she was worried about other victims. Or other repercussions.”

“It’s a beautiful painting,” Ernestine said. “And quite wicked, too.”

“Okay, I’ve changed my mind. This is exactly like Ivy,” Mel said. “Because the more you look, the more you see, and the richer the story she’s telling. It’s Blue Plum in all its grime and glory. Look, there’s a Dumpster. Hah! And those are Emmett’s legs sticking out of it, like he’s Dumpster diving.”

“He was,” Ardis said. “You can bet he was, like a rat sneaking through people’s garbage. And do you see him there, at the post office? A year or so ago he was in the habit of stopping by here each morning for a bit of a gossip and before he’d leave he’d offer to drop the mail by the post office for us.”

“Only maybe he took the mail home for a look-see first,” Debbie said.

I felt a chill down my left arm, and not just from the perfidious activities of Emmett. I glanced over. Geneva was back and staring at the cartoon, as absorbed as we were.

“This is the evil blackmail edition of
Where’s Waldo?
” Thea said, ever the librarian.

“It’s a Tennessee stack cake,” Mel said. “Layer upon layer upon layer and each one hiding a secret filling.”

“It’s full of hiding places for the darling little Em,” Geneva said. “Like the secret hiding places he had at our house.”

“What?”

“Secret hiding places. At our house.”

“Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. Well, shouted.

Chapter 35

M
y shout was followed by silence. But only from the living humans in the room. The dead one took vociferous offense. It was all I could do not to cringe and cover my ears. Pretending to cough or sneeze wasn’t going to cover this slipup. It was barely possible Mel thought my “Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me?” was directed at her remark about stack cake. Except I’d been looking at Geneva, to my left, and the only thing visible in that direction was a dressmaker’s dummy standing in the corner.