Lia stopped. She couldn’t have heard that, could she? But a few steps closer confirmed that she had. A man lay on the floor beneath both women’s gazes, clearly lifeless.
“It’s Darren,” Belinda said.
“Are you sure?” What Lia saw was a man in a suit, with his face covered.
“Yes. I lifted the place mat to see.”
Good heavens! It was one of Lia’s knitted navy blue place mats, its white daisy incongruously cheery. Peering closer, Lia saw what looked like a circle of dried blood surrounding Darren’s head, mixed with shards of broken pottery. Two tall, handcrafted candles flanked his body, and worst of all a metal sculpture of a grinning clown had been planted inches beyond Lia’s blue place mat like a bizarre headstone.
Lia looked to Belinda with horror, unable to voice what sprang instantly to mind.
“I didn’t do it,” the craft fair manager said flatly. She stepped back and pulled a phone from her jacket pocket. Lia watched as she punched in three numbers. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “My name is Belinda Peebles.”
She coughed and cleared her voice before adding, “I’m at the Schumacher barn. Send the police. There’s been a murder.”
Chapter 4
With years of nursing behind her, Lia thought she knew how to deal with stress. But she was learning what a huge difference it made to not be the one in control. As she watched officials and technicians flood the area, she thought she understood what it was like to be the patient lying on the table, waiting anxiously for what came next.
She worried for Belinda, who’d stated to Lia that she didn’t do it. Belinda had also told her that her spare key to the barn had been stolen. But she’d shut down after that, possibly as shocked as Lia and processing it in her own way. Lia knew how bad it would look for her friend, at least at first glance. Would a deeper examination find evidence to exonerate her?
Lia thought about the broken pottery, the candles, and the clown sculpture placed next to the body, all apparently taken from the craft fair’s vendor stalls, including her own knitted place mat. But why? Besides the fact that Belinda was not a murderer, it would be totally unlike her to then set such a strange scene like that. But would the police see it that way?
Lia and Belinda were quickly separated for questioning. Lia told all she knew, which was minimal, but she was asked to go over it multiple times. She understood why, though the repetition was still terribly tedious. It was a relief when it ended and she was told she could leave. Lia had assured Hayley by phone that there was no need to come, but she was cheered to spot her waving behind the cordoned-off area and hurried over.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Hayley asked.
“I’m fine.” Maybe not the exact truth, but she was still upright.
“C’mon, let’s go,” Hayley said. “My car’s over there.” She pointed to her burgundy Nissan parked partway down the road.
Lia blinked. Her brain had grown fuzzy with fatigue. “What about mine?”
“We can get it later, Mom. You don’t want to drive right now. You need to get home.”
Lia surrendered without further argument. There were times when giving up control was a good thing.
* * *
* * *
After she got home, Lia tried to reach Belinda, but her calls and messages went unanswered, leaving Lia with little choice other than to wait. She allowed Hayley to fuss over her a little and sipped at her second cup of tea, her feet propped on a hassock.
“I’m so sorry for all the vendors,” she said after going through all the details of the scene at the barn with Hayley and moving on to the collateral damage of the murder. “This was going to be such a big day for sales. Everyone loaded their booths with particular things for Mother’s Day. Oh, and poor Olivia! She had a special order. It would have been her best sale in a long while. She was so excited.”
“At least it’s not perishable,” Hayley said. “Olivia’s stuff, I mean. And yours and a lot of the others.”
“But not Carolyn’s,” Lia said, shaking her head. “She and her daughters probably baked loads of coffee cakes and every other kind of pastry for today. I don’t know what they’ll do with it all.”
Hayley clicked her tongue. “That’s a shame. Maybe they can sell them out of her house? I wouldn’t mind running over for one.” She set her own cup on one of Lia’s narrow end tables. “What do you suppose will happen to the craft fair itself?”
“Well, the barn won’t be sold, at least not to Darren Peebles. But, gosh, even if it isn’t, the murder itself might cause plenty of damage to the fair’s reputation.”
“Unless it’s solved right away, over and done with, back to normal.” Hayley appeared to think that cheery thought over. “But I guess a lot will depend on who did it.”
“Yes,” Lia agreed. “Who.” If the murderer was someone connected to the Crandalsburg Craft Fair, it was doomed, and they both knew the fair’s manager, Belinda, was in a tight spot. There was the very public fight she’d had with Darren, and the fact that his death would clearly benefit her. To top it off, she had been the person on the scene when Lia had arrived, gazing down at her dead ex-husband.
“But,” Lia said, coming to her friend’s defense, “besides the fact that Belinda would never do such a thing, if, hypothetically speaking, she had, she wouldn’t kill Darren at the barn, would she? It’s just common sense that she’d pick anywhere else.”
“Maybe it wasn’t planned, Mom. It could have been one of those heat-of-the moment things.”
“But she didn’t look the least bit heated when I walked in. And the candles? The clown sculpture? Why in the world would she drag those around him?”
“I don’t know,” Hayley said with a helpless shrug. “If you’re crazy enough to commit murder, maybe you’ll do lots of other crazy things.”
Lia frowned. “Maybe.” But maybe not, too. It didn’t sit right with her.
“So what exactly did him in?” Hayley asked. She shifted position in her chair, curling her bare feet under her. “You said there was blood.”
Lia nodded. “Around his head, along with broken pottery. My guess is he was hit hard with one of Annie Bradburn’s beautiful pots.”
“Ugh! How much strength would that take?” Hayley asked. “Could a woman do it? I mean, if not, maybe that would let Belinda off the hook.”
“I have no idea, dear.” But Lia pictured Belinda’s solid build and remembered how effortlessly she’d lifted Lia’s packed moving boxes out of the back of her car. That argument wasn’t going to fly. “We’ll just have to wait for an official report.”
Hayley offered to stay overnight with Lia, but Lia waved the suggestion off. “No need. Go back tonight as planned and arrange for your time off. Do you think that’ll be doable?”
“Sure. I’m between projects right now so nobody’ll mind. Huh! They might not even notice I’m gone!”
“Is that the problem?” Lia asked gently.
“Just kidding. No, it should be fine as long as I tie up a couple of things first. Is my coming Thursday or Friday okay with you?”
“Absolutely, for as long as you need.”
They heated up the leftovers from the previous night—Lia hardly able to believe it had been only twenty-four hours—and ate a quick meal, after which Hayley drove them back to the barn to collect Lia’s car. They hugged one final time before Hayley took off, promising as usual to text Lia that she’d made it back to her place in Philadelphia safely.
As Lia watched her daughter drive away, she wondered about the remark that Hayley had passed off as a joke. They might not even notice I’m gone. Sometimes jokes could be revealing. Lia would hold on to it and wait for more to come along.
* * *
* * *
At ten the next morning, after multiple calls to Belinda continued to go to voice mail, Lia decided to go to her house. She knew
how Belinda tended to hole herself up, convinced that not talking about a problem meant it would go away. That wasn’t going to work so well this time.
Belinda’s house was the one she and Darren had once shared and which she had retained after their divorce. It had impressed Lia and Tom when they first saw it years ago, with its vaulted-ceiling living room, roomy eat-in kitchen, and airy sunroom, along with the beautiful landscaping. But Lia saw signs of neglect in that landscaping—overgrown or dead shrubs—and siding that needed a good power wash, along with several missing or broken slates on the roof. Whether the unkempt condition was from lack of money or time, Lia didn’t know, but it set a depressing tone as she drove up.
She rang the doorbell, banged the knocker, and called out until she finally saw an upstairs curtain twitch and in a minute or so heard the locks turn. Belinda stood before her, dressed in sweat pants and a long shirt. Her hair looked like she hadn’t touched it since getting out of bed.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking puzzled and just a little annoyed.
“I came to see how you’re doing. You aren’t answering your phone.”
“I’ve been too busy using it. All the events at the barn have to be rescheduled, which is a major headache. Then there’s the cleanup. Did you know you can’t just send in a regular crew? It has to be done by a licensed crime scene cleanup crew. I just spent half an hour explaining that to Alfred Schumacher, who’d love to push the expense onto me. In his dreams!”
“I’m sorry about all that. But I’m mostly concerned about you. May I come in?”
Belinda looked hesitant, but she stepped aside. Lia headed directly through the large foyer and down the hallway to the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“I had coffee.”
Lia looked in the double-door refrigerator, glad to see staples like eggs and milk. Not exactly bare but not much. “Scrambled or fried?” she asked, pulling out the eggs.
“Neither.” At Lia’s raised-eyebrow glare, she gave in and pointed to the freezer. “There’s bagels in the freezer. And I think there’s a tub of cream cheese somewhere near the back. I’m not sure how old it is. Want coffee? I’ve got the hazelnut K-Cups that you like.”
Glad to see her friend cooperating, Lia let Belinda make coffee as she pulled out a bag of frozen bagels and dropped two halves into the toaster. She found the cream cheese and checked it carefully. Seeing nothing suspicious, she set it next to the bagel plate.
Within a few minutes, with one toasted bagel consumed and the coffee doing its work, Lia could see positive signs of tension leaving Belinda. She sipped from her own mug, then asked, “So, how did it go with the police yesterday?”
“I don’t know.” Belinda licked cream cheese from her lips. “Not terrible. They asked a lot of questions. I gave them what I knew, and that was it.”
“You were still there when I left.”
“Yeah. Every time a new guy showed up, I had to go through the whole thing again. Like, was it too much trouble for one of them to tell the other what I’d said?”
“You told them about one of your keys to the barn missing?” When Belinda nodded, Lia asked, “Did they seem to believe it?”
“Why wouldn’t they? It’s true.”
“They might think it was very convenient. You know you’re going to be their first suspect, right? I mean, because of your relationship with Darren and how his death benefits you.”
“Of course I know that. But I can’t be the only one who would have wanted to kill Darren. There’d probably be a line from here to Pittsburgh of people who’d be happy to do away with him.”
“But his body didn’t end up in any of their workplaces, which makes you first in line. Have you thought about getting a lawyer?”
“No, because I don’t need one, and I’m not going to waste the money!” Belinda’s bravado faded. “I can’t afford to. Lia, if anyone thinks Darren’s death is going to benefit me, they only have to look at my bank account. I’ve been living week to week. Losing this time at the barn will cost me. The police can suspect whoever they want, but I’ve got to keep my events going or I’m going to go under—lose this house, for one thing! So if you’ll excuse me, I really have to get back to work. Thank you for stopping by.” Belinda stood up and waited for Lia to do the same.
Lia sighed. At least she’d got some food into her friend, and she’d learned that no charges had been made. Belinda wasn’t ready to discuss anything further than that, and Lia couldn’t force her to. “Will you please call me if anything new comes up? Or if you just want to talk? Please?”
Belinda’s expression softened. “I will.” She walked Lia to the door, then gave her hand a squeeze at the last moment before closing it. Lia shook her head lightly as she stood on the narrow porch. It had struck her when they’d first visited as the kind of porch that said don’t linger, which was exactly the message she’d just gotten. She hitched her purse onto her shoulder and stepped down to squeeze between two overgrown rhododendrons on the way to her car.
She wouldn’t linger, but she would be back after she picked up a few groceries to fill in Belinda’s meager fare—things like easy-to-cook frozen dinners, fresh fruit, and a few packs of cut-up veggies. Belinda might receive it with another puzzled scowl, but Lia knew that deep down she would be grateful. It just was so darned hard for her to express it.
Chapter 5
Lia spent much of the next few days knitting in front of the television, which spouted nonstop talk about the murder. With Crandalsburg normally such a peaceful, crime-free town, it had become topic number one, and she suffered through on-the-street interviews with people who seemed happy to float wild theories in order to be on-camera. She dropped stitches when one such resident began with “Well, everyone knew the ex-wife had a grudge and was capable of . . . ,” and again when another recommended keeping one’s distance from the craft fair because “You never know!” But she kept watching, feeling the need to catch any nugget of information that she could, though it required plenty of sifting.
The gold nugget that finally appeared was the news about Darren Peebles’s time of death: several hours before Lia had come upon Belinda standing over him in the barn. Lia was excited to hear that, though further thought tempered her joy. The time of death might not let Belinda totally off the hook. But it was still an important step.
Meeting up with the Ninth Street Knitters offered a welcome respite, as the weekly Thursday night get-together came up. Although it meant a longer drive since her move to Crandalsburg, the trip to York was doable, but she would have driven twice the distance in bad weather if she had to. She’d already spoken with each of her knitting friends by phone soon after the murder and had dealt with the immediate questions, so she looked forward to an evening focused on catching up with everyone’s lives as they knitted and nibbled at the various treats brought along.
Jen Beasley’s house on Ninth Street had become the regular meeting place some time ago, both because of its central location and because of Jen’s insistence that she loved hosting. She also had the largest living room and an extremely lovable cat, which altogether made the decision a no-brainer.
When Lia pulled up, she saw the others had already arrived and hurried to gather her shrimp dip and knitting, keeping the two carefully apart. She didn’t bother to knock—none of them ever did—and walked right in. Jen’s husband, Bob, happened to be crossing the foyer, and he pointed to the kitchen.
“They’re all in there,” he said before turning away to sneeze.
“Caught a cold?” Lia asked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe. But I’ll keep out of everyone’s way just in case.”
Lia wished him well and followed the voices coming from the kitchen. Hugs were exchanged amid the chatter, dishes were uncovered or unwrapped, with some carried into the living room, where the women gradual
ly settled themselves in. Jen lifted her fluffy tan-and-white ragdoll cat, Daphne, off the sofa and onto a floor cushion from which the feline blinked her amazing blue eyes amenably at them all before curling up.
Lia chose the chair next to Daphne’s cushion as she usually did so she could reach down and pet her once in a while. It had been a while since she’d had a cat of her own, and Daphne helped fill that void a little. Lia also loved the feel of Daphne’s thick, silky fur and knew her yarn was safe next to that calm, contented creature. When questioned about how she came up with Daphne, Jen said it was the name of one of her grandmother’s shrubs in North Carolina, a plant she’d always loved for its sweet aroma. To her mind that translated to the perfect name for her sweet southern belle of a pet.
“So, Lia,” Jen asked as she began to work on a ribbed green hat with cabled trim, “will the craft fair go on and will the Ninth Street Knitters have a booth to knit for?” Jen was the oldest of the group by just a few years, though she didn’t look it with her still-dark hair and a figure kept trim by years of yoga and wise eating.
“I hope so!” Tracy Kaufmann, blond, petite, and the youngest, was also the fastest knitter in the group. Her hands fairly blurred as she worked at a small pink-and-white cardigan. “I’ve made so many fun things since you took that booth, Lia, pieces I wouldn’t have a reason to do otherwise. My boys have been turning up their noses at anything handmade. You’d think I was forcing ugly Christmas sweaters on them!” Tracy had twin sons in middle school, an age where wearing anything without the proper logo was out of the question. Lia had gone through that with Hayley and understood.
Maureen Evert and Diana Reynolds both started talking at once, something they often did. Lia was only surprised that they’d waited this long. The two were usually bursting with opinions and stories to share first thing at the meetings. Lia loved them both and often found their chatter soothing as she knitted, especially now that she lived alone.
A Wicked Yarn Page 3