by Tracey Drew
I guided Harry through the crowded pub, and as we approached our table, he stilled, staring down at the third chair pushed underneath. He cleared his throat. “Is someone joining us?”
“In a way.” I slid out a chair for him then circled the table to take the one with its back to the band. “That one’s for Nana Dee-Dee. It’ll always be Nana Dee-Dee’s.”
“Too right.” He eased into his seat, surreptitiously dabbing at his nose with a tissue that had mysteriously appeared in his hand. “All this pollen around at the moment. My allergies are playing up.”
“Next time, take an antihistamine, eh?”
Harry sniffed, waving a hand in my general direction. “Go fetch me a beer, will ya? Table service is nonexistent in this joint.”
I patted his hand and left him to gather himself.
The Stone’s Throw was packed tonight, and Oliver was tending the bar, alongside two of his staff. Although the overall mood was light, the raucous outbursts from the locals’ tables were interspersed with the occasional solemn silence. Three of their own were currently dealing with the justice system, while the Werths’ son, Dylan, had arranged with his grandparents to transfer to Wellington for the new schooling year.
Mostly, I sensed relief that things had returned to normal. Well, as normal as things got in Cape Discovery.
Dougie stood at one end of the bar, oblivious to the cluster of warm bodies around him, all trying to order their drinks while he talked the young bartender’s ear off. Overhearing him complain about the noisy workmen who were tidying up Isabel’s house before she listed it with my mother, I felt a twinge of something…residual anxiety…sadness?
When I eventually reached the bar, I caught Oliver’s eye, and he took my order personally.
“Breakfast’s on me tomorrow morning.” I shouted to be heard over the crowd and the pub’s sound system.
At that very second, all the stars and planets aligned to provide a pause between songs combined with a conversational lull. I suspect every person in the room heard my offer. And in that pin-drop three beats of silence, I realized no one but Oliver knew that a ham and cheese croissant from Disco’s was the only thing on offer.
Laughter rippled through the pub. One of the old guys who played lawn bowls at the club as if training for the Olympics piped up from the other end of the bar, “If Ollie doesn’t want to take you up on your offer of breakfast ’n bed, lassie, I’ll take his place.”
Six months ago, in my old life, I would have wished for a passing alien spacecraft to home in on my radioactively hot thermal image and beam me up to probe me to their heart’s content. Anything to escape such public humiliation.
But you know what? I’d had a growth spurt since returning to my hometown.
There are worse things in life than being embarrassed. Like being invisible. Like never being embarrassed because you never put yourself out there. Like not knowing the difference between people laughing at you and people laughing with you.
So I turned to the old fella yukking it up with his pals and smiled my sweetest butter-wouldn’t-melt smile. “Happy to oblige, sir. Visiting hours at the nursing home’s dementia ward start at eight, don’t they?”
As his mates roared with good-natured laughter and gathered around to slap his back, the parting crowd left a visual gap in a direct line to the opposite side of the pub. A direct line that ended with Eric Mana sitting solo at a table, studying me with a hooded gaze. In that gaze, I sensed the man watching me, not the detective.
And I had no idea how to interpret my feelings on the matter.
Eric’s eyes slid to a spot behind me. Without checking, I knew it was Oliver who’d rekindled the detective sergeant’s chilly stare. I also knew, from the tiny hairs prickling along my nape, that Oliver’s answering look was just as icy, just as hard.
What I didn’t know was why.
But I’d puzzle over that another day.
I turned back to Oliver, who slid two glasses across the bar, and asked him to start a tab for our table. He smiled, setting those tiny hairs of mine reacting in a much nicer way, and said he’d be walking Maki again tomorrow, so he’d meet me at Disco’s in the morning.
Once I’d settled back at our table, Harry put aside his glass and folded his hands in front of him. “So, where’s your head at, Tess?” he said gruffly. “You gonna head back to the big smoke like Isabel, or will you put up with your nutty family a while longer?”
That’s what I wanted to talk to him about.
Even since Mum had discovered Isabel was planning to leave town, she’d dropped unsubtle hints about the possibility of Isabel’s replacement hiring a guidance counselor. Me, for example. Trouble was, I hadn’t missed the stress—which manifested both physically and emotionally—of working within the rigid confines of high school rules and restraints. The time spent licking my professional and private wounds in Cape Discovery had allowed me to reevaluate my priorities.
And for the first time in a long time, my priority was me.
“I want to stay.” I slid my hands across the table to cover Harry’s. “You’ve grown on me, you old nut.”
Harry’s lovely face wrinkled into deeper lines as he grinned. “Like fungi, eh?”
“Exactly like fungi.” I squeezed his warm fingers. “And I’ll keep Nana Dee-Dee’s store running like clockwork for you until you tell me otherwise.”
He grunted. “You’ve been working for chump change these past few months. That isn’t right.”
I smiled at him. “It’s not about the money. I do it for all the fringe benefits.”
“About that…” Harry cleared his throat. “Dee-Dee and I have had a talk, and we’ve decided—”
“Nana Dee-Dee?” My smile wobbled. “You talk to her often?”
“Every day, now that I can get a word in edgewise. She’s still in here”—he tapped the spot over his heart and then his temple—“and in here. I can hear her clear as day, giving her opinion on everything under the sun. So I know that unless I give you what she wants, she’ll go on and on about it until I do.”
A chuckle escaped me. There had never been any awkward silences when Nana Dee-Dee was around. There was rarely silence, period. I so missed her easy chatter that had soothed away my woes like a balm.
“And what does she want to give me?” I asked.
Harry met my eyes with his own clear blue gaze. “Unraveled,” he said. “Nana Dee-Dee and I want to offer you Unraveled.”
When my voice got swallowed down in one giant gulp, my granddad continued, “You’ll have complete control over every aspect of the business. And for what it’s worth, whatever knowledge and experience I’ve gained over the years. You can put your own stamp on Unraveled. Nana Dee-Dee would love that.”
Put my own stamp on the little store I’d come to love? Oh, I could think of a few things I was dying to try. I opened my mouth, then closed it again, tears welling in my eyes. I knew gut-level deep that Nana Dee-Dee really would love me to keep her dream alive. And not because I was obligated to, but because she understood me well enough to know coming home to Cape Discovery and Unraveled was what I truly needed.
At my continued stunned silence, Harry switched the position of our hands. This time, he squeezed mine. “We understand if you have other plans. We wouldn’t want to tie you down to such a commitment, because owning a yarn store probably didn’t make your list of top career choices…”
Who wouldn’t want a career where you got to pimp out gorgeous yarn to like-minded serial knitters and happy hookers every day?
“Yes,” I blurted out. “I want it—thank you!”
“I suppose you’ll also want your own place, so the cats and I don’t cramp your style…” Harry said, but the hope that I’d disagree permeated his every word.
“And leave Kit and Pearl to fend for themselves?” I said. “Their litter tray doesn’t empty itself, you know. If I leave, there’ll be mutiny.”
With a chuckle, he shook his head. “Seriously, Tess
. I love having you around, but we don’t need a babysitter.”
“What about a roomie?” I said, aware of how proud Harry was of his independence. “You’re house-trained. There’s that, at least.”
“I am indeed. It’s a steal of a deal.”
I lifted my glass, angling it in a toast to Nana Dee-Dee’s spot, then at my granddad. “Thank you. Both of you.”
Harry dabbed at his nose again. “Should be thanking you for taking the store off our hands. Though I expect I can still hold down the fort while you’re off gallivanting in your spare time.”
“Here’s to gallivanting well and often.” I sipped my drink.
As the guitarist plucked out the opening notes of their first song, Harry toasted me in return.
Content, I let the melody wrap around me like a cozy fireside rug tossed over the shoulders. With a pair of devilishly delightful black kitties on my lap.
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Sneak Peak of Purled & Poisoned…
Chapter One
A thirty-five-year-old former guidance counselor, an octogenarian reality-TV-show junkie, and a mischievous feline duo walk into a bar…
Hang on—that sounds like the opening line of a bad joke.
But in reality, that’s my reality—minus the felines—entering a bar every Friday night for happy hour with my granddad, Harry. And even then, it takes a spot of bribery to drag him away from his favorite show so he’ll join me down the road at the Stone’s Throw, where everybody knows your name.
Wait—now that sounds like the theme song from an eighties sitcom.
Let me back up a minute before you think you’ve fallen into an episode of The Twilight Zone.
For those who haven’t already met me, I should probably introduce myself. I’m Tessa Wakefield, the new owner of Cape Discovery’s premier yarn store, Unraveled. We’re a small but mighty business located in the heart of New Zealand’s sunshiny Hawke’s Bay. Let me share some of the spiel I’m writing for our work-in-progress website:
If you’re after merino, mohair, or help with moss stitch, we’ve got you covered.
If friendly conversation and Crafting for Calmness classes ring your bell, you’ve come to the right place.
But if mystery, madness, and murder make you quiver, then…
And I don’t quite know how to finish that last statement because the only mystery and madness I’d encountered, until a short time ago, was my well-meaning, albeit slightly loony family. My life recently took a sideways skid when I stumbled upon my first—and hopefully, last—crime scene. Complete with murder victim. Trust me when I say that the experience was nothing like the crime shows Harry enjoys binge-watching.
For starters, the central character’s two cats don’t usually accompany them, thereby contaminating the crime scene. Yes, that actually happened. Now the enigmatic and occasionally charismatic Detective Sergeant Eric Mana has likely stuck me on his watch list of ‘harmless but potentially criminal crackpots.’
So, in summary—or in a nutshell, running with the I’m a bit of a screwball analogy—from now on, I’ll stick with my knit one purl one, adding in the occasional crocheted granny square to keep things interesting. And I’ve hung up my one-time-only sleuth’s deerstalker hat.
The world can thank me later.
Tonight, I had matters more pressing than shady deals, sordid affairs, and cold-blooded homicide to attend to. Like preparing for the first Crafting for Calmness class since Unraveled reopened this past Monday. During the week, every one of our regulars had popped in to ooh and aah over my brother’s Michelangelo-worthy paint job and to reassure me that my Nana Dee-Dee, who passed away late last year, would’ve been proud of the store’s revamp.
Fortunately for business, the regulars had also been unable to resist the temptation of all the new deliciously squishy yarn choices. The flurry of sales had almost made me purr with pleasure.
What hadn’t made me purr was discovering an hour ago that one of my inherited fur babies had weaseled their way into the cupcakes I’d purchased for that evening’s class. Which fur baby, you ask? Kit, of course. ‘Bigger-boned’ than his litter sibling Pearl, Kit had an ongoing love affair with food. Preferably human food. And yet again, he’d sampled frosting off several cupcakes while indenting the remainder with his paw-print signature.
No longer naive in the ways of my late nana’s kitties, I’d leaped into action and defrosted a packet of sausage rolls from the freezer. The pastry now golden brown and smelling heavenly, I transferred the delicious morsels onto a plate, all the while attempting not to step on the eight black paws currently circling my ankles.
“Not for you,” I scolded Pearl as she streaked to the hallway door, behind which stood the flight of stairs leading from the two-bedroom apartment I shared with Harry to Unraveled below. She turned and sat up straight, curling her tail elegantly around her sleek body as she let out a solitary heart-breaking mew.
Kit trotted ahead of me, his furry belly swaying from side to side. He too plopped himself down by the door, eyeballing me and meowing at volume as if to say, “Pay no attention to her, human. I’m the one who’s starving!”
I hesitated. Harry should have fed them, but maybe he’d lost track of time…
The door to his bedroom swung open, and my granddad stepped out, holding two knitted beanies in front of his plaid button-down shirt. “Which one, Tess? The navy blue? Or the red-and-white striped one for a pop of color?”
He tugged the striped beanie over his mostly bald head and struck a pose. “Not too Where’s Wally?”
Without one of the numerous beanies Dee-Dee had knitted or crocheted for him, Harry just wasn’t Harry.
“Have you been watching reruns of What Not to Wear?” Narrowing my eyes, I shot him a sly smile. “Or is this because there’s a couple of new attendees joining us tonight?”
I’d swear on a stack of bibles a blush rose on my granddad’s wrinkled cheeks. “Anything wrong with a man trying to look presentable, so he doesn’t embarrass his granddaughter?”
With a chuckle, I shook my head. “Stick with the navy blue. That way, you’ll slip under Mum’s radar; Sean warned me she’s planning to make an appearance.”
“Lord save us from your mother’s meddling,” he grumbled before disappearing back into his room.
“I hear ya,” I muttered and headed downstairs, the cats hot on my tail.
After a quick stop for a kitty bribe from the container I kept near the store’s back door, I shooed the pair outside. They’d slink in again with the first attendees, hoping their cuteness would result in more treats from the regulars. Unlike his sister, Kit felt no shame in performing his meerkat routine or allowing a belly rub in exchange for a treat.
I hit the switch for the store’s main lights, and while pausing to admire the fresh coat of pale buttercup-yellow paint that never failed to lift my spirits, I spotted a lanky shape hovering outside. My little brother. Who, at age thirty-two and a string-beany six foot three, was not so little in either sense.
Once I’d set down the sausage rolls on the counter, I unlocked the front door and pulled it open. “Well done. You’re actually early for once…”
Before he could defend his usual tardiness, Mum stepped out from behind him, her face puckered into its mother-lion-defending-her-poor-defenseless-cub scowl. “Sean’s much more punctual now that he’s back home with us.”
“Hey,” my brother greeted me glumly. “Mum came with.” Sean gave me a please kill me now grimace and tromped over to the counter, where he readied himself to ring up any impulse purchases the class members made that evening.
Ten percent discount in-store for attendees plus a smiley-face stamp on a loyalty card for every twenty-five dollars spent—a couple of the new ideas I’d implemented. It helped that Sean, when motivated b
y cold, hard cash, could charm the knickers off even the oldest class members with his dimpled smile and inherited gift of the gab.
While my brother skulked behind the cash register, Mum scooped up the platter of sausage rolls with a disapproving sniff and sailed into the adjoining workroom, set up for the classes. She flicked on the lights, and I watched her not-so-subtle examination of the freshly painted room. Of course, she wouldn’t criticize the skill of application, not when it was Sean who’d donned the painter-for-hire hat. But would she approve of the sanded-back and restained large rectangular worktable, the new seat covers I’d run up on Dee-Dee’s sewing machine, and the watercolors by a couple of local artists that now adorned one wall?
Luckily for my sanity’s sake, she didn’t have time to voice her opinion before the first of our regulars appeared.
Mary and George Hopkins arrived with Mary’s sister Edith, who’d come to stay for a few weeks. Mary was the founding member of the Crafting for Calmness’s subgroup of crocheters—cheekily known as the Happy Hookers. I’m certain she chose the name just to annoy another member of the group: Beth Chadwick, a sixty-something widow completely loyal to the craft of knitting. I was never quite sure what the wee bit tightly wound Beth thought of Dee-Dee’s Serial Knitters name, but the gentle rivalry between the groups kept Thursday evenings lively.
The moment Edith entered the store, Harry appeared as if by magic and gallantly offered to show her where the restroom was located. Not quite the debonair flirtation he might’ve been aiming for, but practical at least, and the shy-smiling Edith didn’t seem to mind.
Beth arrived next with one of her ‘church ladies,’ who was also new to the area. Her replacement false teeth nowhere to be seen, Beth frowned her way past Harry, who was busy chatting with the blushing Edith. Thanks to a goose named Reggie, Beth had flushed her bottom dentures down a church toilet while cleaning it.