Yarn to Go (8 page)

9

“DON’T YOU SEE? THEY THINK ONE OF US DID IT,”
Bree squealed. I’d just walked back into the meeting room and told Kris that Lieutenant Borgnine was waiting to talk to her. As Kris headed to the door, she stopped when she got close and dropped her voice.

“I did the best I could to keep them knitting and calm, but I’m afraid the natives are freaking out.” Kris looked back as Bree continued.

“What if it is one of us?” Bree looked around at the group. “And then one by one we start disappearing. Like that Agatha Christie story.” She jumped up. “I don’t care what that police guy says. I’m leaving.” She made a rush toward the door Kris had just gone out of.

“If you leave, it’s going to make you look guilty,” Scott said. The sound of a male voice startled us. “If I were a cop and one of this group bolted, I’d chase after her.”

Bree looked stricken. “What would my boys do if I went to jail?” She started to cry. All the commotion made Olivia stop thinking about whatever seemed to be continually on her mind and she went over to Bree to comfort her, though with a few prickly comments.

They all wanted to know what Lieutenant Borgnine had asked me and seemed apprehensive about their own turn with him. Even Lucinda seemed worried.

“Do you think he’s checked up on us already?” she said, rocking her head with concern. “Tag doesn’t know, but I have a few outstanding parking tickets.” Poor Lucinda. Tag would definitely throw a fit about unpaid parking tickets. In his detail-oriented world, you never left anything like that hanging.

“Isn’t Tag your husband?” Scott said. “If my wife had a few parking tickets I wouldn’t have a conniption fit.”

“You don’t know Tag,” Lucinda said. Scott still seemed confused, and Lucinda tried to explain that Tag had been an engineer, and everything he did had to be perfect, just so. Every
i
dotted and
t
crossed.

Olivia had gone back to working on her knitting. She seemed to go off in her own world again and looked lost in her stitches.

“Didn’t Edie say something about a romantic story with you two on the cover of the menu at your restaurant?” Melissa said. “Something about high school sweethearts who reconnected?”

I heard Lucinda suck in her breath. No way did she want it out there to anyone besides me that their ending wasn’t totally happily ever after. “Forget I mentioned anything,” Lucinda said.

“So are you going to tell us what that cop asked you?” Sissy said, seeming agitated. “I’d like to know what to expect.” She stopped and swallowed.

“I think we should be questioned together,” her mother said. “Sissy, you’re likely to say the wrong thing.”

Sissy flashed her eyes. “Me say the wrong thing? You wrote the book on that. When you came to school with me in third grade, didn’t I tell you not to say that I hated math? And what did you say, first thing? ‘Miss Quinn, my daughter hates math.’”

“You’re not going to bring that up again,” Melissa said. She looked at the rest of group and rolled her eyes. “So, I made a mistake. It was how many years ago?”

Lucinda interrupted before their fuss could escalate. “You know, Casey did some work at a detective agency. She can probably wrap this case up before the cops figure it out.”

It was my turn to suck in my breath, and suddenly I regretted that I hadn’t been more specific about my duties to Lucinda. I’d just been a temp and was either a detective’s assistant or an assistant detective, depending on your point of view. Most of my work had been tracking down people on the phone. In the month I’d worked there, I’d gotten quite good at getting information on people. But the closest thing to actual detective work I’d done was taking over a surveillance when one of the PIs had a toothache. It hadn’t turned out well. Just my luck I’d been dressed in a bright red top that day. The subject had noticed me sitting in the car and took off out the back door.

I didn’t think that qualified me to figure out what happened to Edie. I was about to try to tone down what Lucinda had said, but Bree jumped in. “If you’re going to investigate Edie’s murder, you have to realize it wasn’t me. I don’t think it was any of us.”

“But who else is there? Who even knew Edie besides us?” Melissa said. She nudged Olivia and urged her to join the discussion.

“To start with, there was a guy sitting at the table with me last night. I saw him talking to her when she went to get her dinner,” Scott said.

“What were they talking about?” Bree asked.

Scott shrugged and blew out his breath. “Probably nothing important. I forgot that Edie picked up people wherever she went. You all know how I met Edie,” he said. “She found me in the yarn department of a craft store. She figured out right away what was going on. I tried to act like I was just playing with the yarn. I tossed the skeins I was holding back into the bin they came from like I was playing basketball. But then she saw the needles I was holding. Edie wasn’t one to mince words. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re a closet knitter aren’t you?’ Right away she told me about this retreat and said it was just what I needed.”

“Didn’t you say you went to her house to knit?” I asked.

“Hey, I see where you’re going. No, I didn’t have something going on with her. I only went there a few times.”

Kris came back in the room and saw that the only one knitting was Olivia.

“How was it?” I asked, and she shrugged.

“He wanted to know what I saw and what I knew about the group.” She looked around at everyone. “He asked me to send Scott in.”

Reluctantly, the one male member of the group got up and headed toward the door. “You didn’t see any media people around, did you?” he asked Kris.

She shook her head and he left.

And so it went. When Scott came back, Bree went to talk to Lieutenant Borgnine. Lucinda went after her, and no matter what any of us could say, Melissa and Sissy went together. I’m sure Lieutenant Borgnine was thrilled about that. Olivia was the last one to go.

By then the group had realized they’d missed lunch. Lucinda called Tag and talked him into having the cook whip up some treats.

Just as Olivia returned from talking to Lieutenant Borgnine, Tag arrived with the food. The Blue Door was known for using as much local food as possible. Tag had brought thin-crust gourmet pizzas with fresh mozzarella cheese, tomatoes they grew behind the restaurant, garlic from Gilroy, artichoke hearts from Castorville and olives from Paso Robles. I knew the vegetables in the chopped salad came from a local farmer’s market that sold produce grown in the Salinas Valley and the dressing was made with olive oil from a boutique grower in Carmel Valley. He’d brought a selection of fruit—raspberries from Watsonville, strawberries from Oxnard, grapes from Delano—and a selection of cheeses from a small producer in Point Reyes Station.

I think Tag was happy to have a reason to come back to the conference center so he could see Lucinda and make sure she was all right.

“Let me help you with that,” Tag said. Sissy was trying to cut her own piece of pizza with the tool lying next to it, and it was clearly driving him crazy watching her struggle with it. She gave him a dirty look, no doubt reminded of her mother. Finally, Tag couldn’t take it anymore.

“The pizza has already been cut into exactly equal-sized pieces.” He took another spatula, picked up one of the perfect little rectangles of pizza and deposited it on her plate. Lucinda came over just in time.

“Tag, honey, thank you for bringing this feast over,” she said, giving him a hug. Everyone else added their thanks. “But don’t you want to get back to the restaurant? The waitstaff is probably setting the tables all wrong.”

Tag’s face clouded. “Do you really think they are? You’re right. I better get back there.”

When he left, Lucinda rolled her eyes and turned to me. “I love him, but he drives me crazy. I must have told you how he started going around with a ruler making sure all the plates were the same distance from the edge of the table. He said he saw some English butler doing it on a TV show.” Lucinda rocked her head with disbelief.

Kevin walked in and sniffed the air, then saw the food. “Nobody cleared this with me,” he said. He pulled me to the side. “Vista Del Mar does all the food service on the premises.”

I started to argue. The gift shop certainly didn’t get their food from the Vista Del Mar kitchen. I made their muffins. And what did it matter anyway? We’d been through a shock and missed our lunch. As soon as I said something about talking to the Delacorte sisters, he backed off and turned on his heel.

I left the group to eat and went outside where I could get some privacy. I pulled out my cell phone and called Frank. He was probably going to freak. He hadn’t heard from me in months, and suddenly I was calling him every day.

“Feldstein?” Frank said. “Again? What’s up now?”

“I was hoping you could help me with a situation.”

“Okay, Feldstein, I knew you were leaving something out when you called before. What kind of mess are you in? Need a background check on a guy you met online? Take my word for it—he’s probably married and a deadbeat besides.”

“I love your take on people,” I said. “I don’t need a background check, and for your information, I meet guys the old-fashioned way, in person.” I brought up the retreat and told him what had happened. As soon as I said the word
murder
, Frank made a noise, and even though I couldn’t see him, I pictured him leaning back in his reclining office chair, shaking his head.

“Feldstein, you’re in charge of a group and one of them is murdered the first night? How could you let that happen?”

“It isn’t like I planned it,” I said with an edge creeping into my voice. “And now, the thing is, they kind of think I’m going to investigate and find out who did it.” I paused while I got to the uncomfortable part. “But, well, I’m not sure how to proceed.”

Frank laughed, and I heard his chair squeak in protest and knew he must be trying to recline farther. He had this habit of leaning back to the extreme, and one of these days, he was going to push too hard and the whole thing would break. I knew it sounded ridiculous, but I always pictured that when the chair broke it would somehow catapult him into the air, which would have been quite a sight.

“We mostly stick to getting the goods on cheating spouses, and catching insurance cheats—skiing when they’re supposed to be on crutches. But I suppose I could give you a few pointers.” He stopped for a moment. “You carrying these days?”

“Carrying? You mean do I have a gun? Not even close. All I have is a flashlight.”

“Ooh, that’s really going to scare someone. What are you going to do? Shine it in their eyes?” I heard the chair make more noise as Frank readjusted himself. “Here’s the deal, Feldstein. The cops aren’t going to be happy with you for interfering. They will probably think you’re trying to make them look bad, which, incidentally, you are. So, it’s best if they don’t know what you’re up to. Though you do have an advantage. If there’s some cop you can flirt with, you might be able to get some inside information.”

“There’s something I didn’t mention, Frank. I have to solve the whole thing by this weekend.”

“Geez, Feldstein. That’s a lot of pressure. Okay here goes.” He began to outline what I should do, beginning with finding out as much as possible about the victim. What about the murder scene? Was there a struggle, forced entry? My head was starting to swim. Frank stopped for a minute and laughed. “I hope you’re writing all this down, Feldstein.” He had a point, so I started taking notes. Whether I’d be able to read them or not later was another question.

“Here’s a real hint, Feldstein. Go for the people closest to her, like her husband. That’s most likely who did it,” Frank said. “Kind of a lot to do, huh?”

“Well, now that you mention it, yes,” I answered before he threw in some more things to consider. How was I going to find out her time of death or who saw her last?

“By the way, how exactly was she offed?” he said. When I mentioned the knitting needles, I heard him make a
yuck
sound.

“Stabbed with knitting needles? I thought it was just sweet little old ladies who knitted. Who knows anymore?”

I tried to tell him about each person in the group, but he was already getting impatient.

“Feldstein, just concentrate on the big three. Means, motive and opportunity. Who had the needles, who wanted her dead and who doesn’t have an alibi. Oh, and it’s a good idea to take notes.” Before I could say anything, he was getting off the call. “Got to go. Keep in touch. And if this yarn thing doesn’t work out, I might have a couple of weeks for you next month.” With a click he was gone.

I tried looking over my notes and groaned. If only Frank hadn’t talked quite so fast. Words here and there stood out, but most of what I’d scribbled was illegible. Uh-oh. But he had made me think about the murder scene. I sat down on a bench at the edge of the walkway and started to write down what I remembered. The door was locked when we got there. I remembered that because the housekeeper had used her key to open it. Edie was lying on the bed, but I wondered if she’d struggled with her killer. Then I drew a blank. What had I gotten myself into? My brief experience working for Frank certainly didn’t prepare me for this, nor did reading all those Nancy Drew mysteries when I was growing up.