A Wicked Yarn

by Emmie Caldwell

  “Uh-huh. How about I bring lunch like I was going to last week? Then just hang around and try to talk to people.”

  “Perfect.” Lia closed her menu. “I think I’ll have the pork chop that comes with German potato salad. What about you?”

  “Not sure yet,” Hayley said, her eyes still scanning. “All I know is . . . whatever I get, it’s gonna have a side of these fried pickles I’m seeing here!”

  Chapter 7

  The next morning, Lia spoke with a few of the vendors before the doors opened for the Crandalsburg Craft Fair. Most were subdued and as worried as she was about the craft fair’s survival. Lia had hoped to have a few words with Annie Bradburn, whose pottery jug had been the murder weapon, but Annie arrived at the last minute and dashed to her spot without stopping to talk to anyone.

  When their security guard, Bill Landry, opened the doors, only a scattering of tourists, all of whom looked like first timers, wandered in, gazing about curiously. Nothing near the eager rush of shoppers they’d seen the previous Saturday.

  A handful of browsers stopped at Lia’s knitting booth in the first hour, and she made one small sale—a pair of baby booties Maureen had made. When that customer left, Lia glanced over to her neighbor’s booth to see Olivia looking more downcast than usual. A line of medium-sized cellophane-wrapped baskets sat on her counter, filled with Olivia’s products—what she must have excitedly prepared last week for Mother’s Day.

  “My big order never showed,” Olivia said when Lia asked about it, adding, “Of course. I mean, there was no way either of us could find each other Sunday, was there? With the barn totally blocked off by all the police and press vehicles? The whole thing must have scared her away. I wish I’d given her my cell number, but I never thought of it. Who knew there was going to be a murder that night?”

  Lia sympathized. “Maybe your other baskets will sell,” she offered. “Even though Mother’s Day is over, they’d be perfect for somebody’s birthday or as a housewarming gift.” She knew the odds were not in Olivia’s favor, especially with the slow turnout, but she wanted to offer a glimmer of hope. A shopper stopped to browse at Olivia’s booth, and Lia moved back to let her wait on the woman.

  She gazed across the way and saw Maggie Wood sitting and stitching quietly at one of her quilts in progress. Zach Goodwin caught Lia’s eye as he stood behind his stacked jars of honey. He shrugged as though saying, Things are slow, but what can you do? Or maybe he meant, Wish I’d stayed home today! Lia considered strolling around, but then she got a customer. Or a would-be customer. The woman oohed and aahed over a delicate pink baby sweater and matching bonnet but ultimately decided to think it over.

  Belinda had remained holed up in her office after a quick walk-through before opening time. Lia wished she would come out to encourage the vendors. She wished someone would cheer them all up. One of Tom’s favorite quotes came to mind, and she could almost hear him say, If wishes were fishes and cattle were kings, the world would be full of wonderful things.

  Though she smiled at that, thinking about Tom turned her wistful, which must have showed, for the next thing she knew, Hayley was asking, “Mom, you okay?”

  Lia immediately brightened. “Where did you come from?”

  “Um . . . the door over there?” Hayley grinned. “I waved when I came in, but you looked about a million miles away.”

  More like thirty, Lia thought—the distance from Crandalsburg to the home they’d all once shared. “Just thinking,” she said. “It’s been quiet.”

  “Yeah, I see. Are you ready for lunch yet?”

  “Not really. It’s a little early.”

  “I know.” Hayley shoved her hands into her tunic top pockets and rocked on her heels. “After I fixed the sandwiches, I ran out of things to do, so I drove over. How about I wander around? Give me a shout when you’re ready.”

  “I will.” Lia was pleased to see that Hayley first stopped to say hello to Olivia, whom she’d met before, then bought a bar of herbal soap from her. She watched Hayley browse at a few other booths, chatting as she did so and always leaving the vendors with smiles on their faces even if they hadn’t sold her anything. It was a gift she’d seen in her daughter almost from the moment Hayley learned to talk, and it usually worked very positively. Though once in a while it got her into a bit of trouble. Too much talk with too little thought sometimes worked that way.

  After an actual buying customer—who took ages to make up her mind—Lia felt in need of a break. She waved Hayley back.

  Checking that Olivia could watch over her booth and leaving her cashbox safely with her, Lia picked up her purse. “I’d love some fresh air,” she said to Hayley. “Why don’t I grab one of the picnic tables while you get the food from the car.”

  Outside, Lia saw that several other vendors had the same idea. When she spotted Annie Bradburn sitting alone at one table, Lia made a beeline for it.

  “Hi, Annie. Mind if I join you?”

  The potter, a woman in her mid-thirties with a mass of curly light brown hair, looked up from the magazine she’d been paging through and smiled. “Sure, Lia, have a seat.”

  “Actually, I’ll take two seats. My daughter will be joining me in a minute.” Lia glanced over her shoulder. “Ah, here she comes now.” When Hayley came, Lia introduced them, then helped unpack the insulated bags, asking Annie, “Did you eat yet? We have plenty, including drinks.”

  “I had my lunch, but I wouldn’t mind an iced tea if you can spare one. It was great soaking up some sun, but it’s made me thirsty again.” She reached gratefully for the bottle Lia held out to her.

  “Not in a hurry to get back, then?” Lia asked.

  Annie wrinkled her nose. “To what? I’ve barely sold a thing all morning.” She brushed a blown leaf off of her long printed skirt. “None of us have. Turns out murder isn’t good for business. Who’d’a guessed?”

  “We’re all hoping the slump will be temporary.” Lia unwrapped a flaky croissant filled with chicken salad, impressed with Hayley’s lunch making.

  “I sure hope so. A lot of us, you know, depend on the craft fair for a big part of our income. Yes, there’s always Etsy, but I’ve been doing well enough here that I’ve neglected that part. It soaks up a lot of time to keep an online presence going, you know. I have only so many hours in a week, and I need to devote the major chunk of them to actually making the pottery. In other words, losing my craft fair income would mean bringing in hardly anything for probably weeks until I could get the online sites back in gear.”

  “Aren’t there other fairs you could get into?” Hayley asked. She bit into her brown bread and veggie sandwich.

  Annie shook her head. “I can’t do a lot of traveling. I have young kids and, well, other responsibilities that keep me close to home.”

  “I imagine the police talked to you,” Lia said, moving on to the murder. “That was one of your pots that was used in the murder, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh lordy, yes.” A lock of hair blew onto her face, and Annie brushed it back. “And what a shock that was to hear! At least they saw right away it wasn’t me who broke it over the guy’s head. Other than the fact that I would never do such a thing, especially with one of my own creations, I was home at the time, looking after Ken and the kids. But it got into the papers that my pot was the murder weapon. Not the kind of hashtag I need attached to my business, believe me.” She grimaced, then swung her legs over the picnic bench to stand and shake out her skirt. “I’d better get back,” Annie said. “Carolyn Hanson will want me to keep an eye on her stuff while she takes her break. Thanks for the tea!”

  Hayley looked after her while taking a swig from her water bottle. “Bummer about that bad publicity. One of your place mats was left on the body. Has that hurt Ninth Street Knits?”

  Lia shook her head. “As far as I know, the place mat was never named in the media as one of ours. Gilbert Bowen�
�s candles, either, or the metal clown sculpture. Only Annie’s pottery, sadly for her.”

  “Probably because it was the murder weapon. Annie made it sound like hers was the only income for her family, but she mentioned a husband. Doesn’t he bring anything in?”

  “Ken had a good job at one time, from what I’ve been told. But he was in some kind of accident about a year ago and is still recovering. I suspect they’re struggling to keep their heads above water right now.”

  “Yes, they are!”

  Hayley and Lia turned to see a plump, gray-haired woman approaching with some effort from the direction of the barn. “Didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” she said. She tapped at her ear. “New hearing aid. Picks up more than it should sometimes.” She came over to their table and introduced herself—“Florrie Goodwin, Zach’s wife”—before sinking down on Lia’s side of the table with a “whoof!”

  “Oh yes,” Lia said, remembering having met her some time ago. “Zach is the craft fair’s beekeeper,” she explained to Hayley. “He sells honey, and you, Florrie, make jams and jellies, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Florrie smiled. “In season, of course. Today I just brought lunch over for Zach. Anyway, I overheard you talking about Annie’s husband, and you’re new enough that I thought you might not know. Ken’s been in a bad way ever since that car accident. He might not ever be the same again.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!” Lia said.

  Hayley asked, “What happened?”

  “Well, the long story is he was driving home late on a back road, came around a sharp curve, and slammed into a bulldozer that was parked where it had no business being. The short story is it shouldn’t have happened at all.” Florrie shifted her position, wincing as she rubbed at a knee.

  “The bulldozer operator,” she continued, “was working a site. When it got to the end of the day, he called his boss, who told him to leave the dozer where it was and just put some cones around it. Said he’d send a flatbed to pick it up right away. It was still light out, so the guy did that and went on home. The dozer was sitting there hours later when Ken came around that curve.” Florrie drew a deep breath. “They said it was lucky he wasn’t killed, though from what he’s been going through since, he might feel differently.”

  “That’s terrible,” Lia said, shaking her head.

  “What happened to the bulldozer people?” Hayley asked.

  “Not much. Some fines were paid after everyone pointed fingers at everyone else. The dozer operator said he did what he was told and thought the rest would be taken care of. The boss said he called for the flatbed that never showed. The flatbed people claimed they never got a call. For my money the blame goes to the top guy. Maybe he was thinking he’d save a few bucks by waiting till morning? Or maybe he got distracted and just forgot. Either way, the buck stopped with him, to my mind.”

  Florrie pushed herself up with a soft groan. “Funny thing, though.”

  “What?” Hayley leaned forward.

  “That boss? It was Darren Peebles, the guy who just got killed here in the barn.”

  Silence fell between Lia and Hayley, and they exchanged glances.

  “Well, just thought you’d want to know the whole story.” She glanced at her watch. “Look at the time! I’ve got someone coming to check out our air conditioner. Better get going.” Florrie smiled. “Have a nice day!”

  “Oh wow,” Hayley said after the older woman had gone. “What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know what to think. It’s a disturbing story.”

  “It’s a good thing Annie has an alibi, because Florrie Goodwin just outlined a heck of a motive for her to knock off Darren Peebles. And with one of her own pots.”

  “I’m not so sure about that alibi, Hayley. I hate to say it because she’s obviously dealing with a rough situation. But an alibi that places you at home with a husband and kids during the time of the murder isn’t exactly rock-solid. How hard would it be to slip out unnoticed when everyone else was asleep, especially young children and an ailing husband who might be on painkillers? Or for them to back up a fake alibi?”

  Hayley grimaced. “You’re right, though I hate to admit that. I like Annie. “

  “It’s not to say that’s what happened. It’s just something we need to keep in mind.”

  “Sure.” Hayley brightened. “I just hope we can come up with someone else, someone who we wouldn’t feel bad about.”

  “I hope so, too,” Lia said. “Because the only two suspects we know about at this point are my good friend Belinda and a young woman I think I’d hate just as much to find guilty of murder.”

  Chapter 8

  Lia returned to her booth to find a familiar figure browsing through her knits, though she didn’t get her hopes up for a sale. The plumpish forty-something woman, Ginny Norton, visited the craft fair regularly and seemed to love everything in it, from Maggie Wood’s quilts to Bob Langston’s suncatchers, as well as just about every item of Ninth Street Knits that Lia laid out. But Lia had never noticed her actually buy.

  Lia put that down to limited finances and, perhaps, loneliness, since Ginny had dropped a few hints to that effect during their brief chats. The woman, who often dressed in colorful outfits—items that Lia found interesting but not always flattering—apparently lived alone after losing one family member after another, another fact she’d once bravely shared. The craft fair, Lia thought, might offer a way to socialize, as wandering a shopping mall did for some people. What she did for a living, Lia had no idea, and, she reminded herself, it was none of her business.

  “Hello, Ginny,” Lia said as she slipped behind her counter after retrieving her cashbox from Olivia. “How’ve you been?”

  Ginny refolded the lacy scarf she’d been looking at and returned it to its place atop several others. “Oh, I’m fine. Lovely scarf,” she said, patting it. “Just not my color.”

  Lia refrained from pointing out the other color choices beneath it. Ginny, of course, was not really shopping.

  “Quiet in here today,” Ginny said, glancing around. “I guess because of what happened last week, huh?”

  “Probably.” Lia might have said more, but Annie Bradburn’s story still filled her head. An actual customer stepped forward and asked about sweaters for five-year-old girls, and Ginny wandered away as Lia pulled up a collection from below her counter for the woman to look through.

  Lia was pleased to make that sale—a pretty yellow cardigan with a knitted white duck on the front that fellow Ninth Street Knitter Tracy Kaufmann had made—but a glance around the sparsely populated barn hinted that it might be her final one of the day. Hayley returned from a long chat with baked-goods vendor Carolyn Hanson.

  “I’m thinking cupcakes might not be a good choice, I mean if I was going to strike out in a new career. Carolyn clued me in about all the time it takes, and she has daughters who pitch in. I’d just have me, unless . . .” Hayley wiggled her eyebrows at Lia.

  “Don’t look at me. I’m a knitter, not a baker!”

  “Just kidding. But the more she described her schedule and other things, the less it sounded right for me.”

  Thank you, Carolyn.

  “So I’m leaning toward baskets. No perishable-type worries if the weather keeps customers away or if there’s any, you know, murders.”

  “Not a joking matter,” Lia said, though not really scolding. She knew what Hayley’s feelings were. “Things are really slow today. I’d like to circulate a little myself and talk to a few people. Want to come along, or have you had enough?”

  “Oh, I’ve barely started!”

  Lia didn’t bother Olivia about keeping an eye on her booth. The craft barn was empty enough for her to do that herself. She set her back in a minute sign on the center of her counter before coming around to join her daughter.

  They passed a few unmanned booths, whose sellers
had apparently grown as weary as Lia of waiting for nonexistent customers. As they neared Joan Fowler’s area, Lia could hear the artist complaining loudly to the vendor on one side of her.

  “This craft fair has been horribly managed from the start! Frankly, I don’t know why I’ve stayed this long.”

  A surprising statement, since Lia had seen crowds gathered around Joan’s booth on most weekends, eager to buy her watercolors and drawings. Joan’s sounding board, scenic photographer Mark Simmons, was surely just as aware of her steady success and looked just as puzzled. But the wiry artist’s negativity only grew, the wide sleeves of her vibrantly patterned top flapping as she gestured and groused in a voice that carried well beyond the immediate area.

  “Belinda doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing,” she insisted. “She’s a totally disorganized mess!”

  Hoping to at least tone down the volume, Lia approached to say, “Actually, I think Belinda’s been running the craft fair very well.”

  Mark’s eyes widened. Perhaps one of the most mild mannered of the craft fair people, he quickly moved to the far side of his booth to busy himself with straightening and shifting his photos.

  Joan drew a deep breath, but instead of letting out an expected blast, she responded in an ominously low voice, her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re sadly mistaken. Look around you. Is this pitiful turnout a sign of a well-run fair?”

  “It’s had negative press,” Hayley said, pitching in. “That’s bound to hurt business for a while. You have to give it time to calm down.”

  “And whose fault is that bad press?” Joan asked, turning her steely eyes on Hayley. “Belinda Peebles!”

  “You can’t blame the murder on her,” Lia said.