Silence of the Lamb's Wool (A Yarn Retreat Mystery) (6 page)

“It’s not that you can’t make phone calls,” I said, leading them around to the alcove where the three phone booths had been added. I unfolded the door to one and Bree looked in. I wondered if she’d ever even used a pay phone before.

Will walked across the large room with a hammer swinging from his tool belt. When he saw us hanging around the phone booths, he came over.

“So somebody is going to use them,” he said in a good-natured voice. “I just finished installing them.”

I introduced the caretaker to Bree, Olivia and Scott. “He keeps this place working.”

He gave us a self-deprecating smile. “I love doing it. It’s a pleasure to take care of something as historic as Vista Del Mar. I hope you appreciate how unique it is.”

“Will’s wife, Nicole, is supervising the fleece-to-fiber part of the retreat.” I did a few minutes on her background and told them about her store-cum-studio downtown. Will seemed to be beaming with pride as he wished them a great retreat and went on his way.

“Nicole is giving you guys your own spinning class tomorrow morning,” I said. I gave them the time of the class and said it was one of the few things planned for their pre-retreat. I mentioned there were also activities put on by Vista Del Mar. “I made sure you were staying in the same building and there’s a cozy living room in it where you can get together and work on the projects you brought along.”

“That sounds great,” Bree said. “Remember how I was so stuck on only doing projects that were the same as everybody else’s?” She pulled out something in different shades of red. As she unfolded it, she explained it was free-form knitting. “You just make it up as you go along, doing whatever stitches you want. It’s going to be a scarf and probably kind of crazy looking.” We all admired the interesting-looking piece as she said she was excited about working on it.

“Don’t worry about us. If they run out of things to do, I have something,” Olivia said. “You all might remember I was a little upset about my husband getting remarried last time. I was doing a pretty good job of feeling sorry for myself. Then I realized the best way out of it was to stop thinking about me and think about other people.” She had a very large canvas tote bag and pulled a knitted square out of it. “I started making squares to sew together. Then I give the blankets to people in need. I made up some directions.” She looked at the other two. “Maybe you’d like to make some.” Olivia also had a couple of works in progress with her.

“I can make squares or work on what I brought with me,” Scott said. “All I want to do is knit.” He said it was much better now that he’d come out and admitted to his wife and family that he was a knitter, but he realized he didn’t need to tell everybody. There was no reason his boss or other people who wouldn’t understand had to know he was a yarn lover. “But here, there is complete freedom to give myself over to it.”

I was relieved with their attitudes. I showed them the Cora and Madeleine Delacorte Café and then walked them to the Sea and Sand building, where they were all staying.

“See you in the morning,” I said as I turned to go. I didn’t add what I was thinking.
This time no one is going to die.

Tuesday morning I awoke to find Julius draped across my chest, but at least there was no phone call this time. I didn’t rush to get up and enjoyed the luxury of lying in bed for a few minutes more.

I’d finished off the evening doing my baking at the Blue Door. Even with the retreat, I had promised Tag Thornkill that I would keep to my regular schedule of baking. When I’d left the restaurant, a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting sat under glass domes looking delicious. I’d taken containers of The Blues muffins with me and left them at the usual spots around town. My last stop had been the Cora and Madeleine Delacorte Café. It had been late and the Lodge was empty when I set down the package in front of the closed door.

Julius made it clear that my extra minutes of rest were up when he went from lying on my chest to standing on it. I rolled on my side to push off his poking paws. “You can’t be that hungry,” I said, putting on my slippers. “I left you that cat food that smells like prime rib.” Julius was already walking across the room, stopping in the doorway to see if I was following.

When I got to the kitchen I saw the kitty prime rib appeared untouched.

“You don’t know what you’re missing. This is high-quality stuff,” I said, pushing the bowl toward him. He seemed to consider it for a moment then walked toward the refrigerator, looking up at me with a meow to be sure I understood what he wanted. I extracted the multi-wrapped stink fish and then held my nose as I pushed back the layers of plastic.

Julius rubbed against my leg as I went to his bowl and mixed a little stink fish with the other cat food to flavor it. Well, really to fool him. As soon as I stepped away, he was on that bowl like butter on popcorn.

I sat down with my instant coffee and instant oatmeal and thought I should have got going earlier and had my breakfast with the early birds. The dining hall excelled at breakfast. Visions of hotcakes with melted butter, scrambled eggs and crispy hash browns danced through my mind. My mouth was starting to water and I regretted not having at least brought home one of the muffins. I’d been so busy baking for everybody else, I forgot about me.

I drained my cup and finished the oatmeal. It was time to face the day. I had to laugh when I passed Julius’s bowl. He had managed to eat all the stink fish and leave all the kitty prime rib behind. His meal must have tired him out, because I found him napping on my pillow as I went to get dressed.

An hour later I was on my way across the street to meet up with Nicole. I’d just gotten to the stone pillars at the entrance of Vista Del Mar when I realized I’d forgotten something. I was so focused on the early bird group and their tote bags, I’d completely forgotten I was getting a lesson, too.

Other than the three I’d made up for Bree, Olivia and Scott, the tote bags weren’t finished. The bags and stuff to go in them were in the converted garage. I’d decided to keep them away from Julius after I’d found out the hard way that anything he could climb or jump in, he would. I could only imagine what he would have done with all those tote bags. Somebody might have gotten a surprise cat in with their drop spindle.

I stopped off in my former residence, grabbed one of the bags, put one of the drop spindles in it and retraced my steps. No surprise the sky was white. Though this morning it was a very thin white that was turning apricot as the sun melted the layer of clouds.

Once I was on the grounds, I passed a group of people carrying yoga mats and heading toward an open area. One of them turned and gave me a head bow and said “Namaste.”

“Namaste back to you,” I said, hoping it meant something nice.

I was a few minutes late and hoped that Nicole was already in the meeting room, setting things up for the spinning lesson. She had such limited time for the lesson, I wanted to make sure my people got the whole hour. The meeting room was really a small building set amidst the larger ones that had the guest rooms. It had been built more recently, but done in the same style of dark wood shingles so that it blended in.

A walkway led through an open area of dry grass. The door was unlocked, but when I checked inside the room, no one was sitting at the long table set up in the middle. I pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, expecting that any second Nicole would walk in with some kind of explanation.

After a few minutes, I took out my smartphone to call her, but remembered that there was no signal. Could there have been a misunderstanding about where we were supposed to meet? I walked out to the other meeting room I was going to use for the retreat and saw it was presently filled with the red- shirted group. I continued on, thinking I could use the phone in the Lodge. I was about to climb the stairs when I saw Bree running down the boardwalk. She reached the end and charged across the grassy area toward me.

“Call 911,” Bree called breathlessly. She was holding her phone trying to explain she couldn’t call. We rushed inside the social hall together and I explained to the woman behind the registration desk that there was an emergency.

It was a small town on a weekday, when there wasn’t a lot of tourist traffic, so the Cadbury Fire rescue ambulance arrived in a few minutes. They cut the siren on the red vehicle as soon as they entered the hotel and conference center grounds, but they still managed to be an attention-getter as they stopped on the roadway next to the Lodge. It helped that the morning workshops had all ended and everyone was hanging around getting ready for lunch. As the two men in dark blue uniforms got out and grabbed their equipment, the barefoot yoga group gathered around and a bunch of people in red polo shirts came out of the Lodge and stopped on the wooden deck to watch.

Bree was frantic, urging them to hurry as she ran toward the boardwalk to lead the way. The pair of paramedics rushed after her. I was a step behind. When I looked back I saw a whole crowd of people trailing along. I was sure Kevin St. John was somewhere in the pack.

Bree was running now, waving for the paramedics to hurry. Instead of going straight toward Sunset Avenue and the beach, she took a turnoff to the section of the boardwalk that twisted through the whole length of the dunes. The path went up a steep hill and then descended into a valley. Ahead, tall bushes obscured the view and it was only when we got close enough that I saw the bench next to the walkway. There was a woman sprawled on the ground. When I saw the aqua scarf artfully draped around her neck, I suddenly knew why Nicole Welton had never shown up.

“I’d gone walking to see if I could get a signal,” Bree said, holding up her cell phone. “Then I saw the woman on the ground. At first, I thought she’d fallen.” Bree still looked pale as we stood off to the side while the paramedics took over. “But when I asked if she was all right, she didn’t answer.” Bree’s face crumbled. “It was horrible. She looked like she’d been sick all over herself.” I could see that Bree was operating on nerves now and the words kept tumbling out. “I checked her pulse.” Bree explained that she’d learned CPR recently at her kids’ school. “I wanted to do something to help her, but you can’t do CPR on someone who’s breathing, can you?”

I let Bree continue to spew while my gaze went to the action on the ground, even though I was still feeling the adrenaline rush I’d gotten from hurrying to keep up with Bree, having no idea who or what we were going to find.

I knew I had only a few moments to get a look at the scene before Kevin St. John threaded through the crowd, trying to take charge.

I’d learned from Dr. Sammy that people’s area of focus is really very small. The whole reason Sammy’s magic tricks worked was because of that fact. It was also why people missed all kinds of details outside their center of attention. I recognized that my eyes had locked on the two men in dark blue uniforms hovering over Nicole and I was missing everything beyond that. I forced myself to expand my focus and take in the bigger picture, making note of the details. I saw a smartphone sitting on the bench. Farther down almost to the other end I noticed a circle mark on the wood seat. I pushed my gaze to look at the ground, where a white-lidded red paper cup lay on its side. I noticed a small square-shaped glass bottle nearby. There was something else in the sand, but before I could step closer to see what it was, Kevin St. John stepped in front of me and blocked my view.

“Ms. Feldstein, I know what you’re doing. There is no need for your amateur detective skills here. Now if you would gather your retreater and move along with everyone else and clear the area.”

There was no choice but to follow his orders. I put my arm around Bree and joined the line of people heading back to the grounds.

Bree and I had barely settled on the soft leather sofa in the Lodge when I heard the engine of the ambulance start up and the flashing red light reflect in the building. A moment later the siren went on as it left the grounds. Bree reacted to the sound, but I gave her a reassuring pat. “It’s a good sign that they’re in a hurry to get her to the hospital,” I said.

I hadn’t broken the news to Bree about who Nicole was. I was barely facing it myself, convinced that she would recover quickly and be well enough to handle the weekend retreat.

But this was no time to think about my problems. I felt for Bree. She had come so far on the last retreat, learning to be away from her family and to be on her own for a little while. And this retreat hadn’t even really started and already she’d been in the middle of an emergency.

I tried reassuring her that she’d really risen to the occasion. First trying to help Nicole and then getting help for her. My comments cheered her a little, but she still looked done in. “Can I get you something to drink?” I said, wanting to do something.

“A soda would be nice,” Bree said, brightening. “I feel a little weak in the knees. Maybe one with real sugar.”

I met up with Jane on my way into the café as she carried in a brown cardboard box and set it down next to the rack of chips. “I saw the ambulance drive in and everyone heading into the dunes. Did someone get hurt?”

When she heard it was Nicole, she sucked in her breath and stopped what she was doing. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know what happened, but I’m sure they’re doing everything they can for her,” I said.

“Does Will know?” she said, sounding frantic. “Someone should get in touch with him.” The words were barely out of her mouth when I saw him dash by and head for his blue pickup truck. It roared to life and pulled away.

“It looks like someone did,” I said. Poor Jane seemed so upset, but then I’d heard that she’d gone through a lot taking care of her disabled mother and all this had probably hit a nerve. I took an extra minute to reassure her before I left with a chilled bottle of ginger ale made with real ginger.

When I came back, Olivia and Scott had joined Bree. They both seemed confused.

“I thought we were supposed to have a spinning lesson?” Olivia said. Scott and I went to the meeting room, but when nobody showed up, we finally went to the dining hall and had lunch.”

“We heard sirens. Did something happen?” Scott asked. The two of them sat down and took out their knitting and began to work their needles while I tried to think of what to say.

Bree rushed ahead and told them about finding Nicole. Then I told them all who she was.

Bree got upset for me, but I urged her to take out her knitting, knowing it would help calm her. Frankly, I wished I had some yarn as well. I looked toward the gift shop and wondered if Gwen and Crystal had made their delivery. Telling the group I’d be right back, I went to the shop to find out.

Someone from the yarn shop had clearly been there because the gondola was full of yarn and supplies. It seemed foolish with all the yarn I had across the street, but I didn’t want to leave my people just now, and besides, you can never have enough yarn. I picked out a skein of kelly green cotton yarn and a set of circular needles. I’d made so many washcloths and bandannas, I had memorized the pattern.

I rejoined the group and we all began to knit. Silently at first, but then the conversation started. Scott was thinking of joining a group of knitters back home. He was worried about being accepted since the group was all women. Olivia admitted to moments of intense anger toward her newly married ex, though they were fewer and farther between. Bree had been told she was a helicopter parent, which meant she hovered too much.

“But look, I’m here. If I was hovering so much I’d never leave, would I?”

After reassuring Bree she was right, they all looked at me. “My life is running perfectly,” I joked. Then, being honest, I said that Cadbury had begun to feel like home to me and that I liked what I was doing and left it at that.

The ginger in the soda had a tonic effect and the color returned to Bree’s face. I think the knitting played a part, too. I sat with them for a while longer.

I was so busy thinking about taking care of the three of them, I barely considered there was probably going to be a problem with the retreat program.
Probably
was an understatement, but it was all I could handle at the moment. My aunt Joan would have been proud of how well I was taking care of the others. It was a skill I was learning from these retreats. Before, my whole MO had been that I was barely able to take care of myself. The thing I’d done best was drop things and move on.

When I saw Kevin St. John come from the office area behind the registration counter, I excused myself and went up to him. “Have you heard anything about Nicole Welton?” I asked.

His usually placid face appeared disturbed. “The news isn’t good. She died shortly after she got to the hospital.” I bombarded him with questions about how and why, but he said he had no details. “It’s troubling that her death is going to be connected to Vista Del Mar. Any idea of why she was on the grounds?”

I was going to say there could have been many reasons, including meeting her husband, who was the caretaker, but I just came clean and said she was there to meet me. “She was going to run a program for my retreat. We were going to go over some things.”

He shook his head with mock concern. “First the problem with the sheep shearing and now this. Some people might take all these obstacles as a sign that this yarn retreat business wasn’t for them.”

I waited, expecting him to offer to take the business over as he’d done before, but all he said was that he hoped I had some kind of backup plan. I think I understood. He was just going to let me fall on my face and then when I’d given up, he’d pick up the pieces.

“I’ll manage just fine,” I said defiantly. I sounded so sure of myself, I almost believed it. He tilted his head with a doubtful smile before he wished me a good afternoon.

I didn’t relay the bad news to my people, but just told them I had something to do and would be back to have dinner with them.

As soon as I was out of their view, all my confidence evaporated. What was I going to do? I didn’t even go into my house. I just hopped in my yellow Mini Cooper and drove into downtown Cadbury and parked in front of the Blue Door restaurant.

It was getting close to the time they opened for dinner. As I passed through the first dining room, I saw that Tag was in the kitchen and caught a snippet of his conversation with the chef about the proper placement of garnish on a plate. All the tables were covered in snowy white cloths and place settings, waiting for the dinner crowd.

In the second dining room I found Lucinda seated at one of the tables, inserting the dinner specials into the menus.

I bumped into a chair as I passed and the sound made her look up. Her first reaction was a happy-to-see-me smile, then she saw the trouble on my face.

“Come and sit,” she said, patting the empty space on the floral cushion that covered the wooden bench. “Did something happen?”

“Did something happen?” I repeated with an intonation that made it obvious that something big had happened. I told her about Nicole.

“She’s dead. I can’t believe it. Was it natural causes or foul play?”

All I could do was shrug for an answer. “I heard the news from Kevin St. John,” I said, and Lucinda nodded with understanding.

“Even if he knew, he probably wouldn’t tell you. I suppose he’s just concerned it happened on the grounds,” Lucinda remarked.

“Exactly,” I said. I told her how he was almost gloating over my problems with the retreat.

Tag heard voices and came into the room. Despite his fifty-something years, his hair was almost all brown and very full. If I hadn’t known him better, I would have thought he was wearing a wig. But a wig or anything artificial wasn’t Tag’s style. Nor were any sort of blue jeans or shorts. The restaurant was casual, but he still always wore a blue blazer over gray slacks.

“Casey just told me that Nicole had some kind of seizure on the boardwalk at Vista Del Mar, and she died.” The words were matter-of-fact, but Lucinda sounded like she could barely believe what she was saying.

Tag took the news with a hard swallow. He knew Nicole because The Bank was just a block away. Actually, Tag knew all the shopkeepers and coffee servers in the area. He took an exercise walk every morning at the same time and kept track of the goings-on of the street.

For a moment we talked back and forth about how horrible her death was and then Lucinda brought up the retreat.

“Not being able to get the sheep sheared at Vista Del Mar doesn’t seem like much of a problem anymore,” I said. “I should never have depended on Nicole so completely. I should have had her show me the process. At the very least, I should have made sure I knew how to spin yarn.”

Tag listened and the idea that I had twenty people coming in two days expecting to learn how to make yarn and no one to direct it, made him crazy. “You’ll have to refund their money,” he said, shaking his head as he considered all the fallout. He was getting agitated and taking it all too personally. I knew I had to do something or he would end up driving Lucinda nuts with his worry.

“I’m sure I’ll work it out,” I said. “I think I know what to do about the sheep shearing. It won’t have the same razzle-dazzle as having the sheep sheared in front of the bigger group. But I can just go to the ranch and pick up the wool.”

Tag started to react again, thinking of all the wool I’d have and not know what to do with it. He had a hard—no, impossible—time being spontaneous. This time Lucinda stepped in and told him I had so much experience doing so many different things, I’d be able to pull off the retreat. She sounded so convincing, I started to believe it.

I took out my cell, glad to have a signal, and called the rancher. My suggestion was fine with him and we agreed on a time for the next day.

“Instead of the sheep coming to us, we’re going to them. I’ll take the early birds with me,” I said to the couple.

“I’m coming, too,” Lucinda said. The restaurant is closed on Wednesday, so any time is fine.

Tag straightened a knife on the table next to him. “Exactly how many of these so-called early birds are there?” he asked.

“There’s Olivia, Bree, Scott, Lucinda and me,” I said.

“You can’t get five people in that little car of yours, and where would you put the fleeces?”

Before I could say anything, he continued. “We’ll take the restaurant van. I can put the seats back in.”

“You’re coming?” I said, surprised.

“Yes, give me the location and I’ll chart the course tonight.”

I had never gone anywhere with Tag and wondered if I was making a mistake. But under the circumstances any and all help was appreciated, so I accepted and they said they would pick us up in the morning.