by Molly Macrae
The experiment might just as easily have been to see what Rogalla would do. Bruce paid the singed toilet paper no mind whatsoever. He gave it the cold shoulder on his way to the door and again on his way back to Floyd’s. Then he stood in front of Rogalla and did his jazz hands at Rogalla’s shins.
“And that’s the end of that,” Clod said. “Maybe for your next trick, you two can take up tap dancing.” He swiveled on his regulation deputy boot heels and marched off toward Sierra’s office.
I marched after. I sounded like one of Bruce’s fleas compared to Clod’s tromping, but he heard me and glanced back. From the look on his face, I was about as welcome as a flea. I made myself more annoying by spurting ahead and barring his way.
“I thought you were taking this seriously,” I said.
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“Because of all that baloney I just witnessed. Even with the perpetually unlocked back door, this has to be an inside job, and you didn’t even begin to make this a thorough investigation. Did you check to see if anything else is missing? From Belinda? From any of the others? Did you ask any of them? Did you ask Joe if anything’s missing from his shop?”
“I’m guessing he would’ve told me.”
“Did you check on anyone’s—everyone’s—whereabouts ? Did you get a list of everyone who’s been traipsing in and out the back door all week? Did you dust for fingerprints? Bruce might not be up to sheriff’s department standards for sniffing, but he’s interested in something in Floyd’s shop. Did it occur to you to find out what?”
Clod twitched one shoulder and then the other, the way a bull being pestered by flies might—bull and flies both knowing full well the twitching did no good. “Got that out of your system?” he asked when I stopped for breath. “The sputtering, anyway. I know you’ll never be out of questions.”
“At least you’re right about that.” I did my best imitation of Ardis, but she had a triple advantage over me: she’d been his third-grade teacher and his Sunday school teacher, and she matched his six feet so that she looked him straight in the eyes instead of staring up his bull-stubborn nostrils. “Are you at least taking Belinda’s accusation seriously? I don’t know that she has any proof, but there is definitely no love lost between them.”
Clod’s shoulders stopped mid-twitch. “What accusation would that be?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
He waited, and I wondered if I knew what I was doing.
“I and several other people heard Belinda say she knew that Nervie Bales destroyed the tablecloth. She was anxious for you to get here so she could tell you. She wanted Sierra to turn Nervie out of the Vault after you arrested her. Did she really not tell you any of that?”
Clod played poker; I knew that, and I knew he must be pretty good. “You might like to know,” he said, “that it wasn’t all fun and games at that dog-and-possum show just now. I noticed, for instance, that you left us for a short time and crept into the old vault with the books.”
“I didn’t creep. I walked.”
“You might also like to know that while you were thus occupied, I received a text message from Ms. Moyer telling me she no longer wanted me to look for the tablecloth.”
“What?”
“It’s her decision. It is, or was, her property. She called off the search.”
EIGHT
I went looking for Joe after things fell apart between Clod and Rogalla. He sat tying flies on a crate conveniently placed in a corner of his shop, where the eye of the casual brotherly passerby might miss him. Mine didn’t. I made him scoot over and sat next to him. “Did you hear any of what went on out there?”
“Hard not to,” Joe said. “I’m impressed. I thought I might need my earbuds, but they kept things reasonably civil.”
“Until Cole started calling Rogalla ‘Possum.’”
“And then that little bit of détente they’d forged because you tried to tell them something useful about flame tests went right out the window.”
“But neither one of them threw the other out the window after it, so no harm done.”
Joe smiled his sweet smile and shook his head. “Cole’s anger management is working better than I thought it would.”
“We’ll see. They went off to give their reports to Sierra.”
“Give her a headache, more likely.”
We heard Floyd call goodnight to someone.
“Floyd’s really stoked for tomorrow,” Joe said. “He’s a careful one with his words. Keeping them safe like his antiques, maybe, so he can take them out and look at them years from now. But the last couple of days he’s been downright extravagant. He must have strung two of three dozen together three or four times.”
I knew someone else who got chatty like that from time to time. I scooted a little closer. “I hope the opening turns out even better than everyone hopes.”
“It’s going to be fine. We’ll make sure it is.”
“Do you have much more to do tonight? What about supper?”
“I’m about wrapped up, here, but I told Cole I’d take care of that engine tonight.”
Rats. Joe Dunbar—nice guy and good brother.
“You can come along and help, if you want.”
“Gee, that’s so tempting,” I said. “I’ll pass, though, thanks.”
Except for the electronic sheep greeting me with its baa, the Cat was quiet when I let myself in the back door a little while later. Debbie would be closing out the cash register; the TGIF meeting long over, Ardis, Ernestine, and John would have gone home. Thea had returned to the library and Mel to her kitchen—with the rest of the scones. I checked.
“Weren’t they delicious?” Debbie said when I asked if she’d had one. She’d liked them so much she’d had two. “Ardis said to tell you she’ll meet you here tomorrow, and you can go over to the grand opening together. Text her if that won’t work.”
“Thanks. How was business this afternoon?”
She’d had time to change the mannequin’s clothes, trading its cape and fedora for a quilted tunic in the style of an artist’s smock and a hand-felted beret embroidered to look like a palette. Geneva wasn’t sitting on the mannequin’s shoulder. I didn’t see her on the fan or in the display window, either.
“It was a bit slow,” Debbie said. “It’ll pick up tomorrow with all the people in town.”
“I’m sure it will. I’ll come back here after I’ve had my fun at the opening so you and Abby can go over.”
“Sounds good. Ardis told me about the tablecloth. I’m really sorry. Why would anyone do a thing like that?”
I shook my head. “Have you seen Argyle?”
“Not since he said hello when I came in.”
“He’s probably in the study.” Geneva, too. “I’ll go on up. You can lock up, and I’ll let myself out later.”
“Sounds good.”
I checked the kitchen first, and then went up the back stairs. The study, up two flights, in the attic, was the only room in the Weaver’s Cat that Granny had set aside as her own private space. Granddaddy had made it perfect. He’d built cupboards and shelves into the eaves, made a window seat in the dormer, and carried a heavy oak teacher’s desk up there for her. They’d been very much in love. When he’d made her a secret cupboard in one of the walls, he’d painted the inside her favorite indigo blue and lettered across the edge of the middle shelf, My dearest, darling Ivy.
Now the study was mine. Granny’s books about looms, plants, dyes, and weaving, and her meticulous notebooks with her own dye recipes and weaving samples, patterns, and plans were mine. And her journals, the ones she’d hidden in the secret cupboard, were mine, too. When she died, she left a letter that led me to the cupboard, a cleverly hidden space I’d known nothing about, despite all the time I’d spent in the study as a child. Granny’s letter also opened my eyes to a part of her life I hadn’t known anything about. Hearing it from anyone else, I wouldn’t have—couldn’t have—believed what she told me.
And I did. I honestly did. Wrapping my mind around the “situation” and the “talent” was a work in progress. But, for instance, I’d followed a recipe called Juniper for Long-Lasting Friendships in one of Granny’s journals and made a lovely grayish-green dye. I’d dyed a skein of cotton rug warp with it and then braided the bracelet for Ardis. I didn’t need such a bracelet. Granny hadn’t mentioned anything in her letter or journals about “feeling” emotions from textiles or seeing ghosts; those seemed to be “bonus” talents all my own.
Granny’s secret cupboard wasn’t just mine anymore, though. Geneva had claimed it as her “room,” graciously adding she didn’t mind sharing it with Granny’s journals. The cupboard’s dimensions were close to those of a wooden coffin, something we’d both noted. She’d never said so, and it seemed indelicate to ask, but I had to wonder if that was part of the cupboard’s attraction.
There were times I wished I had the study all to myself, but sharing it with a ghost who’d been moaning less frequently and a cat that not only tolerated me but sat in my lap and purred wasn’t so bad.
I found the two of them curled up in the window seat. Geneva sat upright when I came in. Argyle blinked his eyes and went back to sleep.
“You look as though you’ve been to a funeral,” Geneva said. “Not the fun kind.”
“Is there a fun kind?”
“The ones where you dance on your victims’ graves. I’ve never done that, but I imagine there are spirits of all sorts involved. Spirits for drinking, high spirits. Ghostly spirits, too. Fun, one would assume.”
“I’m not so sure.” I sat down at the desk, put my feet on it, folded my hands, and rested my chin on them.
“Detective pose!” Geneva shouted. “Tell me about our case.”
“Well—”
“Wait! Let me join you in the appropriate mood and posture.” She brought her hand down slowly in front of her face as though wiping away her look of joy. Except that when her hand reached her chin, she still grinned. Then she went to the door and leaned against the frame. “Now, ask me why I’m leaning insolently in the doorway.”
“Why—”
“Because I’m your muscle. Even though you won’t equip me with a six-shooter, or even a tiny, cute, pearl-handled revolver, I’m your loyal hired gun. Look, even Argyle’s spirits have perked up.”
Argyle continued to snooze in the window seat.
“Are we solving another murder?” Geneva asked.
“Well, there is the murder of Garland Brown, but—”
“I knew it! And his murder is tied up with the destruction of the tablecloth. Didn’t you say someone tore the tablecloth to shreds?”
“Cut.”
“Cut, torn, the method of destruction doesn’t matter. The result is the important detail, because we can use the shreds to tie up Garland Brown’s murderer. Gag her, too.”
“That’s—”
“Genius. I know.” Geneva, excited, could rarely be still, and she hadn’t been able to stay in the doorway. She did her version of pacing—zipping back and forth across the room. I closed my eyes.
“Wait.” I opened my eyes again. “Why did you say ‘gag her’?” I took my feet from the desk and sat up.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Geneva zipped over and skidded across the desk so we were again nose to nose. I shivered again. “I know you’re Clod-strophobic as well as ghost-strophobic,” she said, “but you should call the deputy. After he hears what I have to say, he will be able to tie up both crimes with one neat bow. Call him immediately and tell him that I have indisputable evidence in those despicable crimes, and he should drop everything else and arrest Nervie Bales for murder and defamation of embroidery.”
“You—”
“Yes, I have proof.”
“Geneva—”
“You aren’t making the call. Call him!”
“Stop!” Even Argyle woke up and looked at me. “Sorry. Geneva, stop interrupting me and stop interrupting yourself. This is important—”
“I know!”
“Hush.”
She put her hands over her mouth.
“Sit down and listen to me.”
She settled, cross-legged, on the desk.
“You can take your hands down. Now tell me, calmly, how you know Nervie destroyed the tablecloth.”
“And killed Garland Brown.”
“Calmly. Tell me about Nervie and the tablecloth first.” I hoped she’d forget about the dubious connection she’d made between the vandalism and the murder. “Nervie taught her class here this afternoon.”
“But she left.”
“Do you know when she left?”
“Before her students.”
“Before the end of class or after class but before all the students left the shop?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“No.”
“Because I didn’t tick them off a class roster as they left the building.” But she was beginning to sound ticked off.
Asking Geneva when something happened was always tricky. The way she explained it, when you’ve been hanging around for more than a hundred years, without a calendar or a pocket watch—without a pocket, for that matter—the finer points of “yesterday,” “today,” and “five years ago” get blurry. Time became a fluid concept. Less like a river, though, and more like one of Joe’s shadowed fishing creeks—winding its way down a mountain, taking an unexpected tumble, disappearing into impenetrable rhododendrons, reappearing, slipping around a corner into the slow-moving eddy of an oxbow.
“I know you weren’t keeping track of the class roster, Geneva. I’m just trying to figure out the timing.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. I told you she left.”
“I know, and I’m glad you told me. I can call someone in the class to verify.”
“Because you don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you, Geneva, but this is important information. We have to get it right, okay? So, you saw her leave.”
“I saw her car leave.”
“You recognized her car?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I didn’t think you spent much time looking at cars.”
“That’s another difference between a ghost and a living woman. I have all the time in the world. And in the beyond.”
“Okay, I just didn’t—”
“Let me make this simple for you.”
“Please do.”
“The tablecloth was brown, right?”
“Brown linen. That was fairly common during the Arts and Crafts movement. Why are you waving your hands?”
“So that I don’t interrupt you by screaming. We’re keeping this simple and un-lecturey. The tablecloth was brown. What kind of car does Nervie drive?” Geneva paused. I could have interrupted her pause by screaming, but I didn’t. “Nervie drives a brown car. Who was killed? Garland Brown. We have solved several cases before now, and you did your fair share of detecting, so I’m surprised that you didn’t make those simple connections yourself.”
“Geneva, I—”
“Stop!” She started billowing—never a good sign. “Time—human time—is of the essence. Why aren’t you calling Deputy Dunbar? Why aren’t we going after the villain ourselves?”
“We need more information first.”
“Brown, brown, brown. It’s the trifecta of browns.”
“Is that a joke? You know we need to be logical about this, right?” But those were the wrong questions, because logic to a billowing Geneva was slipperier than time. Maybe it was a ghost glitch. It was definitely unnerving. She circled the room, around and
around, like a pulsing eddy of frustrations. Argyle slunk under the desk. My knuckles turned white on the arms of the chair, but I didn’t slide out of it to join him.
“Brown, brown, brown!” Geneva yelled. “Three strikes, and let’s get Nervie outta there.”
“But not yet.” She kept circling, and I couldn’t tell if she heard me. I kept talking anyway, trying to re-ground her. “You know how careful we need to be, in order to be fair to suspects and for our own safety, right? We have to be sure of our facts before we make accusations. It’s a big responsibility.”
“You think I’m making things up.”
“I hope you know I don’t. We have to ask questions when we investigate, though. We have to check statements, and we have to consider the impartiality of witnesses.”
Her circuits of the room grew smaller and tighter until she circled and billowed directly in front of me. “We also have to trust our partners,” she said. “If we don’t, then there’s nothing else to talk about.”
She was as good as her billowing, logic-impaired word. She refused to say anything else, and she disappeared into the secret cupboard. Argyle refused to come out from under the desk.
I slunk home in the twilight. Lights were on as I passed the Vault, and I thought about stopping in to see how things were shaping up—nothing snoopier than that. I made myself walk past. Then I called Joe, and his hey did more good than a glass of bourbon or any amount of snooping.
“How’s the engine?” I asked. “How’s Cole?”
“They’ll do.” Just as his hey had conveyed more than an offhand hello, his lean they’ll do had more going on than simple job satisfaction or family commentary. “Are you still at the Cat?”
“On my way home. Just passing the Vault.”
I listened as he gave directions to Clod about where to hit something with a hammer. When the banging started, his drawl warmed my ear again. “Quick word, before he hits his thumb. He doesn’t think the car gang killed Gar.”
“Wow. That’s interesting. Why not?”
“I haven’t pressed.” Again, more was going on with his words.