Crewel and Unusual

by Molly Macrae

  “Text when it’s time,” Mel said, and closed the door.

  I needed to take up my position, but I went to Floyd’s first, to look for Geneva. She’d said the other ghost hadn’t been aware of her. But if she could make a connection, what would happen? Could it change her situation?

  I heard her before I saw her, sitting on the biscuit table, singing her mother’s song, and felt a wave of relief. “Everyone’s here,” I whispered. “Now we wait.”

  “Waiting’s only hard when you’re waiting for biscuits.”

  We had no way of knowing when Simon would make his move, or if he would. But we’d waited like this once before (last time, in the woods, near a sinkhole), so we settled in with knitting needles flashing to pass the time. Mine didn’t flash. They steadily clicked, though, until Geneva flew to me and said she heard the click of the back door opening. I finished the row, stuck the free needle in my back pocket, and set the rest aside. I sent a text to the others: He’s here.

  We let him come. Simon didn’t expect anyone to be there, so he didn’t see the two men sitting in the front corners or the woman behind the potted palm. Nor the ghost who hung nosily over his shoulder as he rummaged for the right box in Joe’s shop, and then the envelope in the box.

  “Unbearably smug,” Geneva said. “He’s wearing gloves.”

  I sent the text letting Mel and Ernestine know it was time to tie the rope to the doorknob opposite their hiding place, stretch it across the hall, turn out the light, and wait.

  “Point for the killer,” Geneva said. “He put everything back neatly.”

  Envelope in hand, Simon headed for the hall. Joe and John quietly took up new positions at the front door in case he turned and went that way. I followed Simon down the hall. He swore when he saw the light was out but kept going. When he turned the corner, I made my footsteps obvious to spook him. He stopped. I stopped.

  “Sierra?” he called. “Hello?”

  “Try this,” Geneva said. She made a moan I’d never heard before.

  Simon started walking again. I did my best to imitate Geneva’s moan. Simon hesitated. I moaned again. He took off running for the door—and that made his trip over Mel and Ernestine’s rope that much more spectacular. He did a full-body plant on the terrazzo. He probably lost his breath—if not then, definitely when I jumped on his back. And there, in the spot where he’d stabbed Belinda, I pressed the tip of my knitting needle.

  “You don’t want to move, Simon. This is the biggest, baddest pair of scissors you’ve ever seen, and I will pound them straight into your heart.”

  He wriggled. I pressed harder until John and Joe came and tied him with a sailor’s and a fisherman’s precision. When Mel turned on the light, and they flipped Simon over, he looked at my knitting needle. I blew on its tip, like it was a smoking pistol, and holstered it in my back pocket. Ernestine called 911.

  “Nice wounded-bobcat imitation,” Joe said.

  Thea, conducting her inventory in Simon’s shop, only came out when she heard the sirens. “Couldn’t help it,” she said. “I got lost in a good book.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The sirens brought the full deputy treatment—Clod, Shorty, and Darla arrived. “Sometime it would be nice if you didn’t try to show us up,” Darla said as she walked past me.

  Simon, full of fury, demanded they arrest all of us for false imprisonment, me for assault, and Joe for theft. The deputies untied Simon. Geneva wrung her hands. Neither of those actions bothered me, but a furrow showed up between Joe’s eyebrows, and then deepened, and our plan suddenly skittered.

  “Do you need medical attention, Mr. Grace?” Shorty asked.

  “I’m sure I do, but I’d like to see this settled first.”

  Clod and Shorty herded us up to the gallery where some of us had sat with them before.

  “I received a tip,” Simon said, before sitting down, “from a reliable, responsible source.”

  Geneva hooted and then clapped her hands over her mouth.

  “The source told me your brother took a valuable script from Garland Brown, and that I would find it hidden at the bottom of a box in his shop. And I did find it. It’s the envelope the deputy is holding.”

  Darla, wearing gloves, held up the envelope. Clod pulled on gloves, and she handed it to him.

  “Tell them he wore gloves while he prowled,” Geneva said.

  “First, what are you all doing here after hours?” Clod asked, connecting the rest of us with a slash of his finger.

  “Knitting, mostly.” John saluted Clod with his needles, and we followed suit.

  “Ms. Rutledge has only one needle,” Clod said. “And no yarn.”

  It was such an obvious observation, I ignored it. “If Simon looked for that envelope in a box in Joe’s shop,” I said, “shouldn’t his fingerprints be on whatever he touched while locating said box and on whatever else might have been in it?”

  Shorty and Darla exchanged looks I couldn’t quite decipher. Then Clod held up the envelope, and my attention zeroed in on it.

  “All right if I open this, Mr. Grace?” Clod asked.

  “Absolutely.” Simon sat back—a posture of confidence.

  “Mr. Dunbar?” Clod said.

  Joe’s posture didn’t reveal much. Refusing to meet Clod’s eye, and Clod using their surname, said more.

  “This wasn’t part of the plan,” Geneva said.

  I shook my head a very little bit.

  “You say no, Ms. Rutledge? Don’t open it?”

  “What? Oh, no, I was just asking myself if I believe Simon’s story.”

  Clod opened the envelope and looked inside. “Bring a chair over, Shorty.” Chair in place, Clod took out a sheaf of paper. “Exhibit A. Paintings,” he said.

  “Those are pastels,” Darla said.

  Clod counted them. “Ten pastels by . . . someone illegible, priced at—” He whistled and put the pastels on the chair. He dipped back into the envelope and brought out Belinda’s art embroidery pillow cover with the goldfinches, and then a sheaf of paintings. “Another ten or twelve, this time by the more legible and even less affordable Mr. Dunbar. I knew you were good, Ten, but I didn’t know you got this much for them.”

  “I don’t if someone steals them,” Joe said.

  “Is this a brother game?” Geneva asked.

  I didn’t try to answer. Clod took one more item from the envelope and handed the envelope off to Darla. I sneaked a look at Simon—rigid. And what Simon might not have noticed—I certainly hadn’t—while Clod captivated us with his show-and-tell: Shorty had moved. He stood directly behind Simon.

  Now Clod held a folded handkerchief—the unfinished forget-me-not hankie from Floyd’s Victorian sewing basket. Carefully, almost tenderly, he opened the folds to reveal a silver filigree embroidery stiletto.

  “That’s not possible,” Simon said.

  “What’s not possible?” Clod asked.

  “I mean—I meant I don’t recognize it,” Simon said.

  “Recognize what?” Clod asked.

  “But the script,” Simon said, turning to Darla. “It’s in the envelope.”

  Darla peered into the envelope. “Nothing left but scrap paper.”

  “Ask Ardis,” Simon said. “Ask her. Call her. Call her now.”

  “Here’s Ardis.” Ernestine held up her phone. “She says there is no script, this is all ad lib. She says Simon likes to rewrite lines and ad lib and thinks he’s being a creative artist, but he’s wrong. He’s a murderer.”

  Simon’s ad libs, after that phone call, proved Ardis right.

  “It was all there in the stage settings,” Ardis said the next morning at the Cat. “His cleverness, the clues, and his comeuppance.”

  “You were lucky that stunt with the envelope worked,” Clod said.

  Joe had stopped by with four cups of coffee—one for me, one for Ardis, and one for himself. The fourth, sitting on the counter, seemed to conjure Clod from thin air and caffeine.

  “We’
re lucky,” I said, “and not without skills.”

  Clod snorted but took a sip of coffee rather than rebut. “Anyway, the poor guy cracked, confessed, and then collapsed. But you took a real chance. He could’ve gone ballistic. You all didn’t have to go after him—it was only a matter of time before someone else caught on to him.”

  “You already had,” Ardis said, “when you refused to believe the gang killed Gar. His stage setting there was good enough for the casual eye, but it didn’t hold up to expert inspection.”

  “That’s what happened with Gar,” Clod said. “Simon offered him an extremely rare book on angling. But Gar, being an expert and a collector, knew the book wouldn’t be available outside of private collections unless it was a fake or stolen. It wasn’t a fake. Simon said Gar wanted to meet with him, that Gar was going to give him a chance to make things right, return the book, turn himself around. Simon agreed to listen, but he asked if Gar would meet him somewhere away from the prying eyes and ears of Blue Plum.”

  “Too bad Simon didn’t know the gang never broke driver’s-side windows,” I said.

  “How do you know that?” Clod asked. “That detail still hasn’t been released.”

  “But you told us there was a missing detail,” I said, “so we made use of those skills we’re not without.”

  “What about Belinda?” Joe asked.

  “Same thing. She recognized a book, something about it, and threatened to expose him. We’re still working on whether he’s the guy who tried to get into Rogalla’s office. Maybe prowled around his house, too, and let Bruce out.”

  “Which one of the rat-faced McDougals has the beard?” I asked.

  “Calvin,” Clod said. “Why?”

  “Ask him if Simon let the dog out. See what he says.”

  “Did Simon throw the scarecrow in the pool?” Ardis asked.

  For a brief moment, Clod looked shifty-eyed. Then he ignored her question and asked his own. “The stiletto wrapped in the hankie was a nice touch. Is that another one from Floyd’s?”

  “We borrowed it from Nervie,” Joe said. “It belonged to her grandmother.”

  “We haven’t found the one Simon used yet,” Clod said, “but Floyd gave a photograph and full description to the medical examiner. The ME says it sounds like a possible match. Oh, and the scissors—Nervie told us she had a pair of yours at the Vault and they’re missing.”

  “When you finish with them as evidence,” Ardis said, “we don’t want them back.”

  “Simon might’ve used them to shred her tablecloth,” Clod said. “The shredding and singeing were supposed to be a warning to keep Belinda from talking. She’d shown him the tablecloth, so he knew where to find it. He lured her to the storeroom with the promise of getting what was left of it back.”

  “Did he say anything about switching the tablecloths?” I asked. Clod looked blank, so I told him about the substitution.

  “Huh,” he said. “Her initial reaction—calling us, getting quiet while she processed the threat—that might’ve been what he expected. But then if she figured out it wasn’t her tablecloth, and blew off his threat, that could be when he decided to kill her.”

  I thought of Thea making her inventory of suspect books. “Was he going to kill everyone who figured out what he was doing? That wasn’t a sustainable business model.”

  After Joe and Clod left, Ardis asked, “Did Coleridge put that scarecrow in Al Rogalla’s swimming pool? And who did switch the tablecloths?”

  “If Cole is responsible for the scarecrow, it makes you wonder how Rogalla will retaliate. As for the tablecloths, I might have an idea.”

  I called Russell and asked if I could come talk to him about Belinda’s linens. He said he was at the house, clearing it out.

  “I could use a break,” he said.

  A bit of autumn mist hung in the air, muting the colors, as I climbed Vestal Hill. Russell waved from the porch when he saw me. We sat in a couple of rockers there, looking out over the town.

  “You aren’t hiding from Nervie today?” I asked.

  “No, hiding wasn’t going to work. I flat out told her I wasn’t interested. I don’t think she really minded. It was a shame she lost Pete the way she did. He and I were buddies in the service. Nervie and Belinda never did take to each other, though.”

  “I heard Pete left her,” I said.

  “Only in the final way. He’s buried at the VA in Johnson City. I help the Boy Scouts put flags on the graves every Memorial Day and make a point of putting Pete’s flag on myself.”

  We rocked for a while, and then I told him I knew the shreds he let me have weren’t the real tablecloth. “This might be a jump, Russell, but you said you didn’t know crewel work from a crawdad. But you used the term ‘crewel work.’ I think you know more than you’re letting on.”

  His rocker squeaked, and he appeared to ponder that.

  “Russell, please, I just want to know if the tablecloth is all right.”

  He nodded. “It’s safe. It’s in my mother’s cedar chest.”

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds.

  “It was hers,” he said. “It belonged to my mother, made by my grandmother. It’s something, isn’t it? She was magic with a needle. I lost it to Belinda in the divorce.” He looked at me. “I think you know how much that hurt.”

  “I think I do.”

  “When I saw she planned to sell it—I couldn’t let her do that. And then I thought I could teach her a lesson. So I took it, and I got back something I cherished more than I ever cherished our marriage.”

  “What did you substitute? It’s very close, but—”

  “My mother’s copy of the original. It wasn’t nearly as good. She made it when she was a girl. It was sweet, though, and I’m sorry Simon destroyed it. I’m sorry about Belinda, too.”

  “Can I buy the original from you?”

  “Maybe I’ll leave it to you in my will.”

  Thea stopped by on her lunch hour and told us Darla had asked her to help them with a complete inventory of Simon’s books, in the shop and in his house.

  “His position as director of Outreach and Distance Learning at Embree took him to campuses and libraries all over the southeast,” she said. “It had him hobnobbing with college presidents, deans, academics—you know, people who might also have nice private libraries.”

  “A guest on their campuses and in their homes,” Ardis said, “and he stole from them?”

  “And from other bookstores,” Thea said. “He has legitimate stock but felt no qualms about adding stolen books. Maybe he felt entitled to them.”

  Geneva floated down from the ceiling fan after I’d finished ringing up a sale of crewel yarn. She stopped directly in front of me and said, “What?”

  “Sorry?”

  She traced a giant question mark in the air. “The question you keep almost asking. The one that makes you look at me and then look away. What?”

  I took out my phone. “Last night, when you were gone so long in Floyd’s, I got worried. What happens if sometime you do make a connection with another . . .”

  “Let’s call this hypothetical being my boo-som friend. Are you worried we’ll disappear into a misty gray sunset together and you’ll never see me again?”

  “Is that any more unlikely than seeing you in the first place?”

  “As with so many questions concerning ghosts, I’m in the dark.”

  “Did you see your friend last night?”

  “Sadly, no. The rolltop desk was gone, and so was he. Happily, I think whoever bought the desk has a new houseguest.”

  Over lunch later in the week, I went to walk around the Vault. I went first to Nervie’s shop. She wasn’t there, and that was fine. She’d arranged her patterns in baskets. I flipped through them, looking for any evidence she’d copied other designers’ work. If she had, I couldn’t tell. Maybe someday I’d ask the twins about it. More likely I wouldn’t.

  When I went back downstairs, Sierra and Martha stood looking
into Simon’s shop.

  “It’s a bit more than I wanted to pay,” Martha was saying.

  “But the location’s worth it,” Sierra said, “and having jewelry in the actual vault will be perfect. Don’t you think so, Kath?”

  “Absolutely. Your work is gorgeous, Martha, and the vault’s a perfect setting.”

  Martha looked pleased and told Sierra she’d give it serious thought. I asked Sierra if the rumor about classes at the Vault were true.

  “Not any time soon,” she said. “Not before Christmas, anyway.”

  That wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for, but there’d be time to worry about that later. I went across the hall to look around Floyd’s. He’d sold the Victorian sewing basket with the half-finished hankie, but the biscuit table was still there. Floyd came over to help me admire it.

  “It’s a genuine East Tennessee piece,” he said. “Came from the Harmon family, out along the river. That’s the original piece of marble, too. Nothing fancy, but neither are biscuits.”

  Back at the Cat, Geneva hummed her mama’s biscuit song, and I offhandedly asked if she’d known a Harmon family. She stopped humming and without hesitation recited part of a child’s bedtime prayer:

  “And God bless Aunt Lou,

  and bless Ada, Lydia, Laura, and Clara, too.

  Amen.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Aunt Lou Harmon and her little four-part harmonies. My mama’s sister and her girls.”

  I called Floyd and told him not to sell the biscuit table to anyone else; I’d be right there. I ran the whole way back to the Vault, and later that day Joe brought the table home to the Cat in the bed of his pickup. We found the perfect spot for it in the kitchen.

  “Daddy used to say that Mama’s biscuits were so good they’d make you take back something you didn’t steal,” Geneva said.

  “Do you remember the recipe?” I asked. “Can you teach me?”

  “I remember the most important part.”