“I’m still figuring things out, Mom. Just give me a little more time, okay?”
“Sure.” Lia glanced over. Hayley didn’t look distressed, so she turned her attention back to the road and let the topic be. Hopefully not for too long.
They both perked up when the first sign for the Weber Farm appeared, featuring a picture of an alpaca.
“Yay!” Hayley cried as Lia turned at it, then continued on the country road for a few more miles.
“I think I see them!” Hayley said before long. She pointed toward a field in the distance where Lia spotted what looked like long-necked sheep grazing contentedly. Soon she was turning into the farm’s parking lot to pull next to a bus that must have brought a visiting group.
“If you hurry you can get in on the tour. It’s just starting,” a young man told them as they walked over to a gate. Lia had already taken one, but she was glad to go again with Hayley.
They hustled in the direction the young man had indicated and joined a group of a dozen or so senior citizens lined up along a fence that encircled several alpacas. Hayley’s voice instantly joined in with the oohs and aws aimed at the extremely cute animals, which stood about three feet high at the shoulder, their curly heads stretching several inches higher. The animals gazed back with their large eyes at the humans, looking as though they considered them just as cuddly.
“These animals have recently been shorn,” a female tour guide in jeans and a green Weber Farm–logoed tee explained, “something we do once a year as the weather warms up. We want their fleece, of course, but we also want to keep them comfortable. If you come back to see us in the winter, they’ll look more like teddy bears.”
The alpacas were huacayas, she explained, which accounted for their fluffy, crimped fleece. “Suris,” she said, “have silkier, heavier locks that hang down. Our huacaya fleece is wonderful for knitting, whereas suri fiber is usually blended with cotton, wool, or silk to be woven into high-end fabrics.”
“Do they bite?” one gray-haired woman asked.
“They don’t bite. Alpacas are extremely docile.”
“What about spitting?” Hayley asked.
“Alpacas spit when they are distressed or feel threatened. They will sometimes spit at one another when they are competing for food or trying to establish dominance. They won’t spit at people unless they have been abused. We make sure that doesn’t happen.”
The guide, a woman of about Olivia’s age who Lia thought might be Shelby Fischer, talked about the humming sounds contented alpacas made and the shriek they emitted when danger was near. As she spoke, a couple of the animals wandered close enough to be petted, much to the delight of their visitors. Hayley coaxed a third one over long enough to run her fingers through its fleece, which, from the look on her face, made her day.
“What do they eat?” one man in the group asked.
“Grass,” the guide answered, “or a good grass hay, not alfalfa, which can be too rich for them, though we might give it occasionally to put a little weight on an animal.”
A few more questions were thrown out, but all eyes were on the sweet-looking creatures that strolled before them.
When the talk ended, Lia went up to the guide to introduce herself and ask if she was Shelby Fischer.
“Yes,” the woman said with a smile. She ran a hand through her light brown curly hair, which mimicked the animals she cared for.
“Olivia Byrd mentioned that you might be here,” Lia said. “She runs a booth next to mine at the craft fair.”
“Oh, Olivia!” Shelby said. “We go way back. How’s she doing? I should get in touch with her.”
“She’s fine. She told me you had once worked in Darren Peebles’s office. Would you mind talking to me about that?”
Shelby’s cheery expression darkened. “You’re not a reporter, are you? If you’re looking to write something about how bad his employees feel about what happened, you won’t hear that from me.”
“I’m not a reporter,” Lia assured her. “I’m a friend of Darren’s ex-wife, so I have a pretty good idea of what he was like, at least in his personal life. I need to learn more about the other side of him, the business side. This could help my friend a lot.”
Shelby thought about that a few moments. “She’s the one who found the body?” When Lia nodded, Shelby said, “Okay. But can you wait until my break in about half an hour? I have a few things to do for these guys,” she said, gesturing toward the alpacas.
“That’d be fine. I can look around the yarn shop.” They agreed to meet in the café, and Lia and Hayley went off to the farm store, Lia to choose the yarn for her customer’s sweater and to hope Shelby wouldn’t have a change of heart in the meantime.
“Oh, wow!” Hayley exclaimed when she saw the colorful array of yarns. “I thought they’d all be beiges and browns.”
“No, they can be dyed,” Lia said. She knew which colors she would eventually pick, but she couldn’t resist wandering past all the others. And touching.
Hayley either, apparently. “They’re so soft!” she said.
“Softer than sheep’s wool,” Lia told her, “and stronger, too. Oh, and hypoallergenic,” Lia said, explaining about the lack of itch-producing lanolin in alpaca wool. “That means it isn’t water resistant, but it is very warm.”
Hayley checked the price. “And expensive.”
“Right! And exactly why I only buy it for special orders. It’s definitely an investment.” Lia watched Hayley linger over a beautiful periwinkle blue yarn, a shade Lia knew would look lovely on her. A future Christmas or birthday surprise, perhaps? She’d have to think about that.
Lia chose her yarns, a luscious cream for the body of the sweater and rust, tan, and dark blue for the trim. As she brought the skeins to the cashier, Hayley browsed through the jewelry, finally picking out two bracelets made of felted alpaca fiber with ceramic beads woven in. After paying for them, she presented one to Lia.
Lia took it with pleased surprise. “How pretty!”
“I love them. But,” Hayley added solemnly, “we can’t wear them at the same time.”
“Heavens no!” Lia agreed, playing along with a smile. She dropped hers into her purse as Hayley slipped her bracelet on. “Thank you, dear.” She glanced at the clock. “Time to meet up with Shelby. Fingers crossed that she hasn’t changed her mind.”
Chapter 13
Several members of the senior citizens group were finishing up their stop at the Weber Farm’s café, which worked perfectly for Lia and Hayley, as they had their choice of empty tables. Shelby Fischer hadn’t arrived, but Lia and Hayley went ahead and ordered their sandwiches and drinks from a waitress, who seemed in a hurry to serve them. Lia hoped Shelby would join them soon. By the time their food arrived there was no sign of the tour guide, but as Lia lifted her sandwich for her first bite, the woman dashed in. She seemed back to her cheerful self, her concerns about speaking with Lia appearing to have vanished during her time with the alpacas.
“Sorry! A cria got separated from its mom. I needed to take care of it.”
“Cria?” Hayley asked. “Oh, that’s right. That’s what you call the babies, right?”
“Uh-huh. The moms and babies get upset when they’re separated for too long. I hate to see that.”
“You really love your job, don’t you?” Lia asked, setting her egg salad sandwich down.
“I do,” Shelby agreed with a smile. She ordered tea and a veggie burger from the waitress who’d hurried up to their table. “I’ve been crazy about animals all my life and love being outdoors instead of stuck in a stuffy office.”
That was a good cue for Lia to begin questioning the woman about her time in Darren Peebles’s office, but she decided to give Shelby a chance to eat first. She listened quietly as Hayley and Shelby chatted about alpacas, during which time Shelby’s food arrived. When the farmworker finished h
er burger and leaned back to sip her tea, Lia brought up Peebles.
“Olivia said you were working for him around the time of the bulldozer accident.”
“Gosh, yes. That was awful. The whole office was walking on eggshells for days.”
“I guess Peebles was pretty upset, huh?” Hayley asked.
Shelby huffed. “More like mad. And Mr. Mathis was furious, too.”
“Mathis?” Lia asked.
“Adam Mathis. He’s partners with Mr. Peebles. Was, I guess I should say.”
“Tall guy? More fit than Darren?” Lia asked, remembering the man who’d accompanied Peebles to the craft fair barn hours before the murder.
“No, Mr. Mathis isn’t tall, and he’s on the pudgy side.” She rolled her eyes. “You should have heard some of the fights between them. They’d close the inner office door, but their voices still carried all the way down the hall.”
“Fights about the accident?” Hayley asked.
“That, and about nearly everything else that came up. How they ever became business partners I can’t imagine. They couldn’t agree on a thing. I heard Mr. Mathis accuse Mr. Peebles of leading them toward bankruptcy.”
“Wow!” Hayley said.
“Yeah, wow,” Shelby agreed. “It wasn’t a great atmosphere to work in. I was glad to get away.”
“Did you ever hear them discuss buying the craft fair barn?” Lia asked.
“No, but that might have come up after I left. When I heard that Mr. Peebles had been negotiating a deal on it, I figured Mr. Mathis wouldn’t have been happy about it,” she said, adding with emphasis, “At all.”
“Why was that?” Lia asked.
Shelby took a sip of her tea. “I think the firm’s finances were stretched pretty thin. Too many properties sitting undeveloped for one reason or another.” She grimaced. “Poor Charlotte.”
“Who’s that?” Hayley asked.
“She was Mathis’s assistant. He blamed every glitch that happened on her. Like, once a project got stalled when some old bones were dug up. They have to be examined, you know, by the county coroner and archeologists, and that takes time. Mathis made Charlotte feel she should have somehow known about them and it was her incompetence that was losing him money. He could be really nasty.”
“Sounds like he might have made Darren Peebles look good by comparison,” Lia said.
“Well,” Shelby said with a tight smile, “maybe less bad. Mr. Peebles had his moments, too. I’m sure there must be businessmen who are great people and honest, and all that. But those two turned me off in a big way. Especially when I finally decided to quit.”
“Oh?” Lia asked, remembering Shelby’s reaction when they’d first approached her. That dark look had returned.
“Yeah, when I’d had enough, I gave them my two weeks’ notice. Normal procedure, right? Oh no, not with those two. They yelled and told me to get out on the spot. Practically threw me out and made me feel like crap.”
“No!” Hayley gasped.
Shelby nodded. “When I applied for a job here, I wasn’t about to ask them for references. I told the Webers I’d had disagreements with my former bosses but without going into details. Maybe they knew enough about Peebles and Mathis to understand, I don’t know. But they hired me, for which I’m very grateful.” She paused, jerking her chin up. “And I don’t think Mathis is going to cause me any more trouble. He has other things to worry about now.”
“Such as?” Lia asked.
“Well.” Shelby leaned forward on the table. “With his partner dead, Mathis gets full control of the business, doesn’t he? I mean, there’s no wife or anyone else to inherit, at least as far as I know. So I’m guessing the police will be asking him a lot of questions. And frankly?” Shelby looked from Lia to Hayley. “I hope he did it.”
* * *
* * *
She’s right, you know,” Hayley said after Shelby left to get back to work. “About Darren’s partner having a good motive. But wouldn’t there be easier ways to grab control of a business?”
“Better ways, certainly,” Lia said. “But knocking off your partner would be quicker. And cheaper. As long as you don’t get caught, of course.” Lia reached for her iced tea and took a long swallow. “What still bothers me is where Darren was murdered. None of the three people with motives that we’ve come up with so far have any reason that I can see to do it at the craft fair barn.”
“But the timing—middle of the night—works for everyone. Easy to show up with no one the wiser.”
“Though not so easy to get Darren to show up. How was that managed?”
“Skillfully,” Hayley said. “We won’t know exactly how until we discover who.”
“You’re probably right. And maybe not even then,” Lia added, not liking the idea of such unfinished business. “But,” she said, “on a more positive note, I have a fantastic knitting project I can’t wait to get started on.” She gathered up her bag of yarn, her fingers itching to dig into it. “With a little luck, something useful will come to me while I knit.”
* * *
* * *
When they got home, Lia realized she’d missed a call on her cell phone from Jen Beasley. The voice mail message Jen left simply asked Lia to call.
“Does she want Daphne back?” Hayley asked, swooping up and hugging the cat as though she intended to stop that from happening.
“I’ll see.” Lia called Jen and after a short chat reported to Hayley. “She asked me to keep Daphne a little longer. Some complications came up. Looks like we have a cat until the next Ninth Street Knitters meeting on Thursday.”
“Woo-hoo! You get to stay,” Hayley said to Daphne, who purred either at the news or at Hayley’s happy squeezes. Hayley’s own phone pinged, and she reached for it, juggling to keep hold of Daphne with one arm before finally sitting down to read the text. “It’s from Brady,” she reported. “He has news and wants to meet up.”
“News about the murder?”
“That must be it. He’s on duty but has a break soon and will be at the tea shop. I’ll tell him I’ll run over. Want to come?”
“You go,” Lia said, sure that Brady hoped Hayley would show up alone. She also doubted that the tea shop, with its more delicate fare, was Brady’s usual break choice and might have been picked for Hayley’s sake. No use spoiling the young man’s plan by pulling a third chair up to the table. Lia trusted Hayley to get the full story of whatever Brady had to share.
“I’d better clean up a little first,” Hayley said heading for the stairs. “I grabbed a lot of alpaca snuggles on our way out of the farm. But I loved them all!” She paused. “It’d actually be a fun job to be around them all day like Shelby is, wouldn’t it?” she asked, then trotted on up.
Lia refrained from pointing out all the financial considerations that instantly popped into her head and instead reached into her bag of supersoft yarn for a major dose of her own kind of sensory comfort.
Chapter 14
Lia had hoped to catch up with Belinda at her home the following morning but learned that her friend was at her office in the craft fair barn, where the weekly dance class was going on. When she proposed a trip to the barn, Hayley readily agreed and insisted it was her turn to drive. Lia didn’t argue.
As they paused at one of Crandalsburg’s few stoplights, Hayley continued a discussion that had been ongoing since her report of her meeting with Brady. “I still think it’s significant,” she said, referring to a years-ago incident concerning Martin Brewer that Brady had dug up.
“But it was decades ago,” Lia said, sticking with her original argument. “The fact that Brewer once physically attacked a fellow historian during a debate doesn’t automatically mean he’s capable of murder.”
“It was bad enough that the other guy pressed charges,” Hayley pointed out.
“Yes, but Brewer was in his late
twenties then. He’s in his sixties now. People change.”
“He’s not decrepit.” Hayley stepped on the gas as the light changed to green. “You said he looked in good shape and full of energy. He’s just as passionate about history now, maybe even more so.” Hayley paused to navigate a left turn. “And he obviously really hates to be disagreed with or when things don’t go his way.”
Lia had a momentary worry for the quiet-mannered woman who consistently defied Brewer by knitting during his lectures.
“Yes, all good points,” she said. “I would be more convinced if our professor had shown anything more than a bad temper lately. As it is, I struggle to imagine a man of his position and intelligence resorting to such violence.”
“Don’t rule him out because of his degrees, Mom. A lot of people can be book smart but really life stupid.”
Lia glanced at her daughter. “That I can totally agree with. There were one or two doctors I worked with who were brilliant surgeons but made spectacular blunders in their personal lives. They always came through for their patients, though.”
Hayley was quiet for a while. “Do you miss your work at the hospital?”
“In a way,” Lia said. “Dad’s death was a shock.” She paused for a deep breath. “But remember, we’d had plans to retire early. Dad’s dream was to buy a small farm, and we were both more than ready to leave our jobs. The farm idea got scrapped, of course, but our finances were in good enough shape to allow me to come here and start a new life. That, I think, was the best thing in the world for me to do. Belinda was a big help with that, and it’s partly why I want to help her now.”
“You will,” Hayley said firmly. “We both will.”
They fell silent for a while, each absorbed with her own thoughts, until Hayley turned onto the drive that led up to the barn.
“That really is a beautiful building,” she said as she took in its red sides and the metal rooster up top. “It would have been a crime for Darren Peebles to tear it down just to spite Belinda.”
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