Yarn to Go (16 page)

19

AS LUNCH WAS ENDING, I WAS STANDING OUTSIDE
the Lodge with the doors of the white Vista Del Mar van open, waiting for my crew. Though I didn’t quite get what a yarn tasting was, I was glad we were all getting out of Vista Del Mar for a while.

The something I had to do while they were eating was to change. I’d dressed in such a hurry in the morning, I hardly looked appropriate to accompany the group on the yarn tasting. I was beginning to understand that as the person in charge, I was supposed to dress like it. I replaced the jeans, T-shirt and fleece jacket with a pair of gray slacks and a black turtleneck. I redid my hair so that it hung smoothly to my shoulders and added a burnt orange cowl I found at my aunt’s.

While I was waiting, Lou Spaghazzi went by. He seemed to note the change in my appearance and that I seemed surprised to see him back there. “I’m keeping my eyes on things,” he said, gazing around the grounds. “I don’t get why Edie wanted to come to this place. The accommodations are about as fancy as a prison cell. With all the dark wood and gloomy weather, this place seems creepy. Like anything could happen here.” He stopped to use a toothpick to get something out of his teeth. “I didn’t realize that woman Joan was your aunt. Too bad about her accident. I heard some other woman who came to these retreats tripped over the cliff by the water. That’s three people dead all within the last six months. It makes you wonder.”

The information I’d just gotten certainly did make me wonder about him, and I almost called him Lance to see how he would react, but he was too quick for me and had gone up the path before I could put my thoughts together.

I heard a burst of conversation as Melissa and Sissy arrived with Lucinda. My friend gave me an appraising look and then a thumbs-up. The rest of the group trickled in, including Scott, and everyone climbed in the Vista Del Mar van and we headed for town. I thought back on what Lou had said. To me, Vista Del Mar had always seemed just a little moody, but looking out at it now, I could see his point. There was definitely something slightly sinister about the dark buildings, the grounds left wild and untamed and the waves crashing into the rocky shore.

The van left us off in downtown Cadbury. Being Saturday afternoon, the area was busy with locals and tourists who came from all over. Who could blame them? The Monterey Peninsula was definitely one of the most beautiful spots in the world. And Cadbury by the Sea was a genuinely appealing small town. The main street was called Grand Avenue and lived up to its name. It was wide with a strip of park down the center dividing the two lanes of traffic. It wasn’t a beach town, but rather a seaside town, and the water was visible from everywhere. Gulls flew overhead, and now that the clouds had cleared, the light had a special iridescence from the sun mixing with all the salt spray in the air.

I looked at the row of stores in front of me. They were appealing without being cloyingly cute. No “Ye Olde” anything here. It was a tourist destination, but the locals pretended not to notice.

Lucinda stood next to me and looked up the street toward her restaurant. The former house looked inviting with its white siding and blue trim. Window boxes hung at every window with perfectly color-coordinated pansies, thanks to Tag and his fanaticism.

It had only been two nights since I’d done my usual baking, but I missed it. When I went to work, the rest of Cadbury was usually in bed. I liked looking out over the quiet streets as I pulled out the ingredients for the restaurant’s desserts. And I capped off the evening with all the batches of muffins. It was my own little world of wonderful smells and delicious outcomes.

Lucinda was looking at the converted house with other things on her mind. “Do you think I should stop in and maybe check on things?” she said. She had scrunched up her face in concern. I grabbed her arm and shook my head.

I led the group around the corner to a side street that sloped down toward the water. The houses were small here. The colorful authentic Victorians were mostly on the other side of Grand Avenue. With their pastel colors, turrets and fish-scale siding they were a treat for the eyes. I was particularly fond of a large one painted buttercup yellow that was a bed-and-breakfast. The Delacorte sisters lived in one of the grandest Victorians at the very top of the slope the town was built on. I’d never been inside, but it was painted a lavender gray and had a lovely private porch on the third level that was supposed to have a view over the top of town down to the water. I’d heard you could sometimes see whales from there as they stopped to feed in Monterey Bay.

Cadbury Yarn was in a converted bungalow. It had an inviting porch with a wicker rocker, along with a rainbow-colored wind sock that blew in the constant breeze. A happy-sounding bell tinkled as the door opened and we filed inside.

All my aunt had said on the schedule was “yarn tasting,” and I still didn’t know what that meant. I’d only been in the store once, to confirm they had everything ready for the retreat. All I did know was that Gwen and Crystal, the mother-daughter team that owned the yarn store, would handle it and I could just be an observer.

Gwen grabbed Kris in a hug and was effusive about the sweater the master teacher was wearing, but she also seemed to be asking something about a shawl and why she wasn’t wearing it. Kris ended the topic with a wave of her hand toward an empty spot off to the side of the room.

“That would be perfect for the kiosk,” Kris said before thanking Gwen for being the first store in the area to carry Retreat in a Box.

“It’s such a lovely idea,” Gwen said. “People come in all the time wanting to make something but with no idea what.”

The rest of the group moved from the entranceway into what was probably once the living room of the house. I caught up with them as Crystal was talking to them. I wondered how she got along with her mother since they worked together. They certainly weren’t a matched set. Gwen was old-school Cadbury. Plain, sensible clothes and shoes, minimal jewelry and no makeup. On the other hand, the woman standing before me was wearing jeans with layers of different-colored shirts on top, and two scarves wound around her neck. I laughed when I noticed the unmatched earrings. Why not? One ear had a small hoop and the other a large one. When I looked down at her feet, I saw that she was wearing mismatched colorful socks, too. Her eyes were outlined in black, and her lips were a glossy pink. And she had the hair I’d always wished for. Hers was a puff of short black curls, that looked like tiny Slinkys.

I’d only seen her a few times, but I immediately liked her. Lucinda had filled me in on her story. Crystal had run off with a musician named Ricx Smith. They’d gotten married and moved up to San Francisco. The marriage had lasted long enough for her to have two kids before he took off on some personal journey to find himself, with the help of a young blond. Crystal had moved back to Cadbury and in with her mother and had to deal with endless I-told-you-sos, because of course, her mother, Gwen, had seen the writing on the wall as far as Ricx was concerned from day one.

Ricx? I was guessing that his real name was Rick and the
k
was changed into an
x
to make him sound more like a rock god.

“I was just explaining the yarn tasting,” Crystal said, addressing me. “You know how you can taste wine before you buy it? This works the same.” She had held up a skein of pretty blue and purple yarn as she spoke. “You can’t tell by looking at this what it will look like when you knit with it. Will the colors be stripes or more of a heathery tone or will it be downright awful looking? And what will the yarn be like to work with?” She pulled off a length of it and held up a pair of knitting needles. “So you try it out and find out.”

She took the group past the cubbies filled with yarn arranged by color to a room at the back, no doubt once a dining room. A long wood table was surrounded by captain’s chairs.

She gestured with her arm—the way Vanna White pointed out letters on
Wheel of Fortune
—to the baskets of yarn available to try and pointed out the selection of needles in old mason jars on the table. “Let the tasting begin,” she said, holding up her shears.

I was the only one who held back. The rest were like kids in a candy store.

Scott found a dark blue yarn flecked with bits of white and silver. “I bet my wife would love a scarf made out of this.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Crystal said, giving her mother a sidelong glance. “I told you these specialty yarns would be a hit.” I listened and nodded to myself with understanding, imagining what it would be like if my mother and I had a business together. Crystal undid some of the skein to show him how the yarn changed textures and thicknesses. “If my mother had her way, the whole store would just be plain yarns,” Crystal said as she snipped off a long piece for him.

The rest of the group found yarns that pleased them, and Crystal and Gwen cut off lengths for them to try. I was just relieved not to be concerned with everyone’s well-being for a few moments. I hung back, never thinking of trying any of the yarn myself. I had enough on my plate with the kit Kris had given me.

Then I caught a glimpse of one of the yarns in the basket and couldn’t resist the urge to pick it up. “Dr. Blue’s Wild Ride,” I said, admiring the unusual yarn I’d first noticed when they’d brought it to the Vista Del Mar gift shop.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Crystal said. “You want to try some?” My first impulse was to say no, but I couldn’t seem to put the yarn down. I’d always thought of yarn as being one color, but this kept changing as the strand went on. First it was a fuzzy blue, then it was mixed with some strands of purple metallic and farther up there were sparkles.

“I wouldn’t know how to try it,” I said, explaining my novice standing.

“I’ll show you,” Crystal said. She cut off a strand and grabbed a pair of plastic needles out of the jar on the table. Her fingers were almost too quick to follow as she cast on some stitches and began to knit. “You could just do all garter stitch,” she said as she zoomed through a row. After a few rows, she handed it to me. “Here, you give it a go,” she said. I have to admit that it was pretty cool when I saw how the changing yarn looked when knitted.

“I’m not trying to sell you or anything, but if you buy it and have trouble, you can always come in here and I’ll help you.”

I brightened at the idea. Maybe it was the fuss with her mother, but I felt like we were kindred spirits.

“Sold,” I said when I’d finished with the strand and made a tiny swatch. I followed her as she went to the bin.

“You might be able to get by with three skeins for a scarf, but it’s probably better to get four.”

I looked at the price on the yarn and suggested I get three now and come back for a fourth if I needed it.

“I’m not trying to push yarn on you, but you want to make sure you have all the same dye lot.”

My look gave me away again, and she grabbed a couple of skeins of worsted-weight gray yarn. She showed me the label, and both were called pearl grey, but when she held them next to each other, they were different. One was definitely darker than the other. “Same color but different dye lot. You want all the yarn to have the same number, particularly in any of the hand-dyed yarns we have.” She pulled out two more skeins to show how different they were even though they were both lavender sunset.

“Got it,” I said, pulling out another skein of Dr. Blue’s Wild Ride.

Crystal showed me the right size needles to use. “I might already have this size,” I said. “My aunt left me all her knitting supplies.”

“If you want I’d be glad to help you figure out what size the needles you have are.”

I nodded, appreciative of the offer, and said when the retreat was over, I’d get in touch with her. She scribbled her number on the receipt she’d written up for the yarn.

“How’s the retreat going after what happened to Edie?” Crystal said in a low voice. She glanced in the direction of her mother. “Mom thought it was best we didn’t say anything about anything, just put on the tasting like nothing happened. I went along with it, but it seems kind of odd. Edie was a force of nature,” she said. “You know what she said about my earrings?” Crystal gestured toward the unmatched pair. “She said it was dangerous to throw off symmetry. Dangerous?” She put up her hands at the absurdity of the comment and then began to talk about what she’d heard on Channel 3 News. “Supposedly Cadbury PD is on the case and are close to naming a suspect.”

“Really?” I said and explained I’d been cut off from everything.

“Vista Del Mar will do that to you,” she said with a smile. “The supposed charm of the place is that it’s like the old days and you can step back from the modern world.”

I asked if they’d given any hint to who the suspect was, but she shrugged. “I’m not so sure how on top of things they are. They never found the driver in your aunt’s accident, and the whole thing with Amanda Proctor is just weird.”

I asked her why. “She came to the yarn tasting your aunt put on, and I talked to her. She was a smart woman. Too smart to be standing on the edge of cliff, knitting. I think either it was suicide or someone pushed her.”