How to Knit a Murder

by Sally Goldenbaum

  It was true that she wanted to see the beauty of Sea Harbor through her mother’s eyes, to savor it in a way she never had. But the reason she needed to come back was to throw away fragments of the past that were no longer a part of Rose Woodley Chopra.

  Her old therapist, and then friend, had weighed in heavily. Many times. “Do this,” Patti had intoned. “You’re one strong lady, Rose Chopra.”

  Rose knew she was strong. Strong and mighty her dad used to say, his way of complimenting her height, the extra pounds she’d carried then, her strong face. But that same physique, when wrapped around a painfully shy preteen, was described differently by others.

  She had stayed quiet and let Patti go on listing reasons why Rose needed some time near the sea, time to remember the places and pockets of the small seaside town that were truly magical. The place her mother loved so much she composed poems about walking by the sea.

  The sea and me,

  Its healing rush.

  Infinity in its caress.

  She had tuned back in to her therapist just as Patti finished her list.

  You promised your mother you’d take her back to the sea. A promise that carried her through chemo and injections and excruciating days.

  And you promised yourself, too. To do it for you, Rose. Patti’s soft voice was caring and loving, even when she asked, And what happened, Rosie? You waited too long. And she died.

  Rose had felt the air being sucked out of the room.

  And that’s when she packed her suitcase and headed to Massachusetts.

  Rose realized she was now a block past Harry’s deli, standing still on the sidewalk again. Like a statue.

  “What do you think?”

  The voice wasn’t Patti’s and it was no longer inside her head. It came from near her elbow. Rose looked over.

  The woman wasn’t looking at her, but at a shop window a yard or two in front of them. Her hands were on her hips, her head cocked to one side.

  Rose was about to ask the woman what she was talking about. And then she stopped, her eyes concentrating on the stranger who had just spoken to her. The woman was about her own age, no, younger maybe, but that was where the similarities stopped. She was exquisite, that perfect beauty that stared out at you from the cover of magazines. Unnatural. Unreal. The woman’s looks made Rose feel naked—as if every one of her own imperfections was suddenly in bold relief as she stood near the stranger. She had an urge to turn and walk away.

  It wasn’t until the woman’s expression turned to confusion that Rose realized she was staring at her.

  “You don’t like the window display?” the woman asked. Then, as the woman brushed a strand of platinum hair over one shoulder, Rose realized her first impression was wrong. This wasn’t unnatural beauty. It was the opposite. Pure, natural. Unaffected. Not a spec of makeup. She wasn’t tall like a model, but small, delicate looking, but her tight jeans showed muscles beneath. And her Harvard sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, indicated the woman could probably hold her own. Rose wondered briefly if she even knew she was utterly stunning—or if she cared.

  Rose pulled her eyes away and looked at the display window.

  Her eyes widened. “Whoo,” she said, lifting one hand to her chest. The sound was more a breath than a word, like the sound one made when seeing a famous museum piece for the first time. She stepped closer.

  On the other side of the window was a cave, a hollowed-out shape made of something Rose couldn’t identify. Papier-mâché, maybe? She had made some with her sister’s kids last Christmas. But this wasn’t a child’s molded rabbit or bird or a tree ornament.

  The cavern-like structure was filled with gravity-defying formations—and they were all made from silky strands of fiber: icy gray and blue yarns. Stalagmites and stalactites knit into slender shapes, some that seemed to grow up from the floor, others hanging, shimmering from the ceiling of the cave. Tiny lights hidden in the crevices lit the cavern’s beauty.

  Rose took off her sunglasses and looked more closely into the scene.

  A movement on the floor of the display window pulled her eyes down to a calico cat, unfurling from a nap. It sat up and looked at Rose as if they’d met before.

  Rose stared back. The cat tilted its head to one side, its green eyes keen and strangely insightful. So, it seemed to be saying, you’re here. Now what?

  Rose shifted from one foot to the other. Finally she pulled away, embarrassed that she had almost answered the animal.

  She turned to the woman, who was still standing next to her, waiting. “It’s amazing. What is this place? Heaven?”

  “Sort of. Yes,” she said, a hint of a smile in her voice for the first time.

  But her face was still, and Rose wondered if she was one of those models who was told not to smile, to keep the wrinkles away. Rose felt a reserve in the woman, or maybe, she supposed, it could be shyness, although why would someone who looked like she looked be shy?

  The woman went on talking. “It’s a great yarn shop. I’m surprised there are still people in Sea Harbor who don’t know about it.” She paused, then looked directly at Rose as if assessing her. Finally she reached out her hand. “Hi. I’m Bree McIntosh.”

  Rose took the outstretched hand, the woman’s friendly gesture a nice surprise, one that lessened the distance Rose had imposed between them. “I’m Rose Chopra. Did you create this window? These absolutely gorgeous pieces of art?”

  “It’s nice you called it art. Some people might not see it that way. Yes, I helped. It’s a group effort,” she said. “I’m a disaster at knitting sweaters and mittens. But I love to turn yarn into art, twisting and turning, playing with colors. We’re having a fiber art show over in the Canary Cove Art Colony, and the display is partly to advertise that. I’m glad you like it. Be sure you come to the show.”

  “I love it and I will if I’m still here. It’s amazing. And so is the cat. Did you knit it, too?”

  Bree laughed. “That’s Purl. She’s a love. The yarn shop mascot.”

  “So you work here?” Rose asked.

  “I help out when they need me. I’m teaching a class for Izzy and doing some things over in the art colony, too. Art is my therapy. Well, therapy on top of therapy. I’ve had both.”

  Rose looked at her, for a minute surprised. But she shouldn’t be. Therapy wasn’t her private domain. But, even after her own years of therapy, it still surprised her when someone who looked perfect needed therapy, too.

  “You should come to a class, Rose. They’re fun.” Her voice was warmer now, as if somehow Rose had passed a test and they were connected.

  “Maybe I will,” she said. “Is the shop new?”

  “I don’t think so—but I’ve only been in town a few months, so what do I know? Someone said it used to be a bait shack. Kids would sneak cigarettes and smoke behind the garbage cans near the seawall.”

  A bait shop. Rose remembered it now. An ugly, smelly place with cracked windows and peeling paint. Her mother had warned her never to go inside—the smell would never come out of her school clothes, not to mention the danger that might lurk behind the bins of unsavory wiggly things. And she remembered the boys in the back, too. The cool boys. Smoking and sometimes worse things.

  She had heeded her mother’s advice about the shack and instead sought the safe and quiet sanctuary of the bookstore next door. Rose glanced over, pleased to see it hadn’t changed much at all. A new paint job, maybe, but the gold painted letters on the glass door were the same—SEA HARBOR BOOKSTORE—with its creaky hardwood floor and the nice couple who didn’t mind Rose curling up in a chair for hours, a stack of books at her side and her shirt smudged from the chocolate-covered peanuts she’d pulled from her backpack.

  She had loved that store. And the owner’s son, too. Her first silly crush. Danny, the tall, lanky popular kid, lots older and wiser than Rose. One day when he was helping his dad he’d noticed her huddled over a book, and he’d glanced down and read the title out loud. She still reme
mbered it—Dandelion Wine. “Hmm,” he’d said. And then he said that he liked Ray Bradbury, too. When he walked on, Rose wondered if he had heard the pounding of her heart or knew that his words alone had elevated Ray Bradbury to the status of genius.

  Beside her, Bree McIntosh was saying something as cars rushed by, horns honked, and late afternoon shoppers moved in and out of shops. But for a brief moment Rose’s memory blocked out all the sounds.

  Finally she shook it off and turned back to Bree, but the blonde woman had turned away and was moving off down the street.

  A man, leaning against a fence just a short distance from the yarn shop, seemed to be watching her. She probably got that a lot, Rose thought.

  She watched as the slender, gangly-looking man pushed off the fence as Bree drew close. He stood tall, his thick hair pulled back in a ponytail. Everything about the man looked rough and messy to Rose. Even the bright orange bicycle next to him. He lifted up his sunglasses and continued to watch the woman coming toward him, and for a brief moment, Rose wondered if Bree would be all right. Then she scolded herself. She was in Sea Harbor. Of course she’d be all right.

  She shook away the thought and turned back to the yarn shop, surveying it more carefully. Fresh paint, a bright blue awning, windows that sparkled. Everything about it was welcoming, including the sign above the door. THE SEASIDE KNITTING STUDIO.

  At that moment, the shop door opened and several women walked out, laughing and carrying canvas bags with identical yarn logos printed on the side. One of the women glanced over at Rose and smiled. About Rose’s height but slightly broader in girth, the woman wore a bright yellow blouse, tied neatly at the neck with a small bow. She paused, then cocked her head and opened her mouth as if to say something.

  Rose shifted uncomfortably beneath the woman’s look. But then the woman closed her mouth and shook her head slightly, as if apologizing for her stare. She turned away, stepping off the curb and following her friends across the street, horns honking to hurry them along. Rose watched their reflections in the yarn shop window as they gathered on the opposite sidewalk, mouthing good-byes before scattering in different directions.

  The woman in the yellow blouse pulled open a heavy glass door between McGlucken’s Hardware Store and an ice cream shop and walked inside. It was a door Rose knew well. It led to creaky wooden steps, a musty hallway above, and small offices huddled above the shops.

  Rose remembered climbing those steps every week, heading up to her orthodontist’s office, where her mouth had been filled with wires. Unconsciously she put a finger to her lips. The teeth were straight now, but the procedure never quite pulled her front teeth together. It didn’t matter, her mother said. Gladys Woodley could name—and frequently did—every movie star with the tiniest space between her teeth. It was distinctive, her mother told her. And Rose was distinctive and lovely, too.

  A scratching on the window pulled her attention back to the calico cat, its mouth shaped into a meow. Waving at her, its small paws moving back and forth on the glass.

  Rose leaned down and pressed her fingers to the window, mirroring the cat’s paws.

  Come in, the cat seemed to be saying.

  Rose smiled at the cat. Okay, she said, and headed to the door.

  Chapter 3

  Mae Anderson stood behind the checkout counter, tallying the yarn shop’s daily receipts.

  The bell above the door jingled, startling her. The shop manager looked up with a frown, ready to scold whoever it was for coming in at closing time. All their customers knew the shop closed early on Thursday night.

  “Thursday night, early clos—” she began.

  But her sentence fell off as the interloper, as Mae had already named her, tripped on the welcome mat, grabbed the edge of a round display table, and stumbled to the floor along with a basket of cashmere yarn. In seconds, Purl jumped off the raised display window floor and began rubbing against the woman’s leg.

  “Good grief, girl. Are you all right?” Mae rushed from behind the counter and across the room, a wad of receipts still in her clenched hand and strands of gray hair flying loose from her bun.

  But Rose was already getting up and scooping up the scattered skeins of yarn. “I’m so sorry,” she said, her cheekbones flushed with embarrassment. “Such a klutz. And such beautiful yarn. I hope it’s not—”

  “Oh, poo. Don’t mind any of that,” Mae scolded, peering over her glasses to be sure the woman had no obvious wounds. “What are you doing falling like that? Trying to make an entrance, are you?”

  Mae chortled at her own words, and Rose relaxed slightly.

  She looked at the receipts in Mae’s hand. “You’re closing, aren’t you? I didn’t read the sign. I’ll come ba—”

  But before Mae could assure her that new customers were never turned away, a commotion near the back of the shop interrupted. A husky voice, too loud for the size of the shop, filled the space.

  “Mae, help. I need you.” In seconds a long and lean Izzy Perry caught up with her voice. Her cheeks were flushed and strands of damp multicolored hair hung loose to her shoulders.

  Mae put her skinny hands on nonexistent hips and stared at the shop owner, the woman beside her momentarily forgotten. “Good grief, Izzy, slow down now. And why is your hair wet?”

  “It’s a flood, Mae. There’s a leak in the ceiling over the library table. It’s coming from the apartment.”

  “Why don’t we fix it, then?” Mae suggested calmly, the lift of her thin brows expressing some doubt as to her much younger boss’s competence at that moment. She walked over to the computer and began tapping on the keyboard with long bony fingers, searching for the plumber’s phone number.

  “I could look at it if you want. At least while you’re waiting for the plumber?”

  Izzy looked over at the stranger standing a few feet away. A nondescript woman cradling Purl in her arms.

  Mae’s fingers stopped moving. “Are you a plumber?”

  Before the woman could answer, Izzy spoke up. “Do you know about broken pipes that leak through the ceiling?” Professional credentials mattered little when a steady stream of water was puddling on the massive old library table, which was far too heavy to move quickly and way too close to baskets of yarn.

  “Yes,” the woman said, looking up and attempting a smile. She rubbed Purl’s soft belly. “I can try anyway.”

  “Well, all right then,” Mae said, peering at the stranger over the top of her rimless glasses.

  “Great. Follow me,” Izzy said, spinning around and heading toward an archway and a short stairway.

  Rose followed the long-legged woman, her eyes on the shop owner’s loose blue sweater, traces of a summer tan still visible on her long neck, and thick wavy hair loose on her back. She noticed damp splotches creating a crazy pattern on her white skinny jeans, a cell phone protruding from the back pocket. The woman had no shoes on, but thick green socks with orange polka dots also showed signs of the ceiling leak. Somehow, even with the water damage, the woman looked put together. Geesh, Rose thought, has Sea Harbor turned into some kind of Stepford Wives place with only beautiful people allowed in?

  Izzy led the stranger through the archway and down three steps to a cozy knitting room, and around a long table holding several bowls half-filled with brown water. The ping of additional drops was the only other sound in the room.

  Rose noticed several other women on the other side of the room but Izzy ignored them, bringing her attention instead to the widening stain on the ceiling before ushering her out the alley door and up an outdoor staircase to the apartment above.

  * * *

  Once the alley door banged shut, Cass Halloran walked over to a high window near the back door. “Who the heck is that?” She put her elbows on the sill and peered out at a step and the bottom half of two legs. The jeans were slightly frayed at the bottom, the tennis shoes worn.

  Birdie Favazza spoke up from an old leather chair near the fireplace, her small silvery head lifting.
“Patience, Catherine. I suspect we’ll know soon enough.”

  No one ever called Catherine Mary Theresa Halloran anything but Cass, no one except Birdie Favazza, who reserved it for gentle chides or admonishing Cass about such things as refusing to rip out a lumpy row on a hat or coming to knitting night smelling a bit too much like lobster.

  “She must be a fix-it person,” Birdie said, wagging a knitting needle as she talked. “She looks strong, solidly built, and has good arms and hands. Rosie the Riveter, perhaps, come to save us.” Birdie’s sweet voice trailed across the room.

  Cass laughed, amazed at Birdie’s eyesight. She had seen a brown-haired blur in jeans. “But you’re wrong, Birdie. She didn’t have the right hairdo for Rosie. My ma had a poster of that gal in our kitchen for years. I kind of related to her.”

  Birdie chuckled, her bent fingers deftly casting on a sleeve for the alpaca sweater she was knitting for Nell. She was trying hard to imagine the lobster fisherwoman’s thick black hair cut short into bouncy black curls. “The real mystery here is how Izzy found her in the three minutes she was out of this room. A pipe leaks and a ponytailed Rosie the Riveter shows up? Our Izzy has karma.”

  “Either karma or she’s a witch,” Cass said. She turned away from the window and walked over to the library table, following the enticing odors of their dinner.

  Nell Endicott had been quietly standing on the sidelines, wiping away small puddles of water that had collected on the thick wood and stirring her casserole periodically. She looked up. “I wonder if she’s a real plumber or someone like Ben, who thinks he’s a plumber, until the leak gets worse and he calls a real plumber.”

  Mae appeared in the archway, as if summoned by Nell’s wonderings. “Sure she’s a plumber. Although I think Iz would have taken a Ben Endicott if one had appeared. But the gal said she’s a plumber.” She stared at the damp ceiling above Nell’s head, her thin face pinched in a frown. “Well, maybe she didn’t say that. She said yes to something. I don’t know the girl, but Purl likes her and that’s worth something.”