The first two phone calls went smoothly. If her knitting club friends thought I was responsible for her untimely demise, they hid it well. They seemed to be a tight-knit group (pun intended!), because the third person I phoned was expecting my call.
"What shall I bring to the wake?" the third woman asked.
"Uh…" The wake? I stammered for a moment, caught off guard.
"How about a deli tray?" the woman suggested.
"That would be perfect," I said. "Do you need my address?"
"Oh. Sure. Hang on, I'll get a pen." I heard some exaggerated shuffling of papers. This woman already had my address from one of the others, but we both played along out of politeness.
I made calls to a total of twelve women. All of them said they would be there, at my house, at seven o'clock.
I told Ruby the details, and then used her washroom so I could get right to errands and preparing for the wake.
The wake.
What kind of an Irish person was I, to have completely overlooked the obvious? Of course tonight's knitting club meeting wasn't just any old meeting—it was always meant to be a wake, of course. The only change was that now I was hosting.
An Irish wake is not so different from the death traditions of other cultures, especially now, in modern times. We don't typically lay out the body in the home of the deceased anymore, but there are traditions people keep up because they offer comfort. The true gift of ritual is that you have a blueprint, a guide for what to do next when you're in grief and can't think for yourself of what to do next.
I didn't know Voula Varga or her tastes, but I did know where to find the best whiskey in town. I loaded my car with supplies, and then drove by my father's, to borrow a clay pipe and some tobacco. It was unlikely the women would partake of that, or help themselves to a pinch of the snuff, but I would do my part and make my Irish ancestors proud.
The Crafty Knitters would be arriving at seven o'clock. I got so worked up over being a good hostess that I nearly forgot why I was hosting.
Jessica stopped by at four o'clock with folding chairs from her apartment, and she asked, "Remind me again, why are you doing this?"
I'd already caught her up on recent events when I phoned about borrowing the chairs, but it was taking a while for everything to sink in—for her, as well as me. I'd gone from witness to investigator in a single day.
I explained, "To find out more about Voula's connection to this Hollywood producer guy. I've called his office in California, but I keep going straight to voicemail. They must be taking a long holiday."
"Couldn't you just ask her friends over the phone?"
"Sure, but this is about getting a feel for Voula and her interactions with people. The more you know about the victim, the closer you get to the killer. If you can walk in their shoes, the clues start to pop out."
Jessica tossed her red hair over her shoulder as she moved the standing lamp over to the corner to make more space for the folding chairs we were setting up.
"I don't want you walking in victim shoes," she said. "Promise you'll go straight to the police with whatever you find out."
"They'll get their information." I snapped two more chairs into their seats-down position. "Eventually."
I looked up to catch her rolling her pretty blue eyes.
"You'll do anything to annoy Tony Milano, won't you? Just leave him alone already."
I bristled at the judgment in her voice. Jessica was one of the few people who knew about my brief fling with Tony, so many years ago, and lately she'd been getting weird whenever his name came up. There was something she wanted to say about my friendship with him, but she wouldn't spit it out.
"You should have heard him this morning," I said defensively. "The way he was talking about women knowing their place, it was offensive. I should have thrown my drink on him, but you can't do that with coffee."
"Too hot?"
"Too wasteful. I buy the good stuff, you know."
"I've never thrown a drink on anyone," she said.
"Me neither." I checked the time on my phone. "We still have a few hours before people get here. Should we pour some drinks and toss them on each other, to let off a little steam?"
Jessica laughed and then sneezed. With a plugged-sounding nose, she said, "Let's wait until the guests arrive and put on a drink-tossing show for them before the food fight. Every good wake needs some entertainment."
We both laughed over this as we finished setting up the chairs. Jessica kept sneezing, though, and by five o'clock she was raiding my medicine cabinet for cold medication. She'd had a successful Polar Bear Dip the day before, earning her ten-year pin, but she'd also succumbed to a cold that must have been lying dormant.
She swore she'd be fine to stay for the wake and be my protection against the crafty knitters, but by five thirty, Jessica was asleep on my sofa, snuggled under a red chenille throw and a warm, gray cat. I checked the bathroom cabinet and discovered she'd taken the nighttime cold medicine, even though there was a brand-new bottle of the daytime version.
I knew exactly what had happened.
She knew darn well which version was which, but didn't want to crack the seal on the new bottle—not that cough syrup would go bad once opened, but some people are funny that way, and will only accept something if it's already opened. That's why you're supposed to open the bottle of white wine as well as the bottle of red for your dinner guests, so they pick the one they really want rather than politely accepting whichever one's already open.
I let Jessica snooze, and when she was still an immobile lump on my sofa at ten minutes to seven, I gently relocated her to the guest room. I got her tucked into the guest bed, and she thanked me by kissing the top of my hand. Strange, but cute. And germy. I immediately washed both hands with antibacterial soap.
My doorbell rang as I was drying my hands. Jeffrey hid, because he didn't like the chimes. I ran out to answer the door, pausing to turn around the mirror by the entryway table. I'd remembered to stop the clocks and turn the other mirrors, but this one had evaded me.
I could hear, through the door, some of the women talking. The sound was muffled, but a woman with a strident voice said, "If this Stormy Day woman is the thirteenth, she should be told. It's what Voula would have wanted."
The thirteenth? Of what? There were twelve women in the knitting club. Twelve wasn't the sort of number that set off any alarm bells in my head, but thirteen was. Were they witches? Was the knitting group actually a coven?
I pressed my ear to the door, hoping to hear more, but it was just a jumble of voices as more people arrived. Someone knocked on the door, their knuckles rapping loudly over my ear, and I jumped out of my socks.
Once I'd scraped myself off the ceiling, I put on a welcoming smile and opened the door to the Misty Falls Crafty Knitters.
Crafty Knitters… and Possibly Witches.
Chapter 15
My top suspects for witches posing as crafters were Barbara and her sister, Denise. They both had straight black hair, which I knew was a stereotype for witches, but even stereotypes come from somewhere truthful.
These two had also been at Voula's table on New Year's Eve.
From the moment she stepped into my house, Barbara had taken charge of all the activities, moving chairs and rearranging the trays of food without asking me. She even scolded Jeffrey for trying to steal a slice of ham—not that he didn't deserve the scolding, but it didn't seem right. Worse, Jeffrey took Barbara way more seriously than he ever took me. He was so frightened by her hissing and her waggling finger that he slunk out of the room like he was packing a hobo bag and never coming back.
Like Voula, Barbara was an imposing figure of a woman, tall and angular, with her straight black hair cut on a crisp asymmetrical angle. Her sister, Denise, was the shorter, softer version. Both were in their sixties, but Denise did an unusual thing that made her look like a schoolgirl—she covered her mouth with her hand almost continuously, like she had something to say but wouldn't
let it out.
Barbara, however, had no problem talking. She led the readings from the Bible, and I couldn't go to the kitchen for a glass of water without her at my heels, asking in her loud, strident voice what I was doing and how she could help.
Eventually, I used her eagerness to get her away from the group for a private discussion, leading her downstairs to the laundry room on an errand to get more napkins. I knew the napkins were on a top shelf, behind the extra laundry detergent, but I took my time, pretending to be searching around.
"Were the two of you close?" I asked Barbara.
"Who?" She seemed surprised by my question.
"You and Voula."
"Oh. No, not really." She looked around my dark basement with suspicion, like it might contain reptiles, which made me imagine beady eyeballs lurking in the shadows.
"I thought you and your sister were close to her. Didn't I see you at the Fox and Hound with Voula?"
"Yes, but she wasn't the sort of woman who let people get close. You had to pay to play, if you know what I mean."
"Pay to play? Oh, you mean all the psychic consultation mumbo jumbo."
"Mumbo jumbo? No." Barbara gave me a deathly serious look, her large brown eyes bulging and glossy under the light of the single bulb overhead in the laundry room.
This was it. She was about to tell me about the coven. I asked, "Was she really a witch?"
"No. There's no such thing as witches."
I nodded. That's exactly what a witch would want you to think.
"But Voula Varga was the real deal," she said, giving me a chill that ran up my spine like a snake made of ice cubes.
"Real? How?"
"She was a psychic. I wouldn't be surprised if her spirit was walking around this wake right now, listening to what people say about her. That's why everyone's so shy about sharing their stories." Barbara looked up at the low basement rafters. Suddenly, she jerked her arms, as though she'd seen or felt something.
"Are you feeling okay?"
"Just a chill." She rubbed her forearms, which were bare below the elbow, her elegant black dress having only three-quarter-length sleeves. "I haven't been in a house with a basement in years. It's cold down here, like a mausoleum."
"Sorry it's so chilly. You can go back up if you like, and I'll find those darn napkins eventually, I'm sure."
"Voula knew things," Barbara said, her voice much softer and quieter than it had been most of the night. "Voula knew my soon-to-be-ex-husband was holding out on me. I paid for sessions with her, and she did her chants, communicating with the spirits on the other plane. It took so long, and I was about to give up and write off her fees as a valuable lesson learned, when she told me about his secret bank account. I sent my lawyer in the right direction, and we nailed my ex. I was so grateful, I happily paid Voula double for the sessions."
"Did she ask you to pay double? Or to pay some sort of finder's fee percentage?" I remembered the con artist books at her house. The truly noteworthy thing about Voula's reading choices was the lack of literature on communicating with spirit planes.
Barbara shrugged her bony shoulders and used her left hand, bare of rings, but with an indentation where a wedding band had once been, to smooth her silky black hair. "She had a way of asking for money without asking. She made you feel like she was doing you the favor by taking it."
"So, she wasn't exactly a friend?"
"I don't suppose she had any friends at all. She wasn't the warm, fuzzy type. My ex-husband said she was a narcissist, possibly a psychopath. He would know."
An image flashed in my head: the gun, left behind at the crime scene.
Ruby suspected the killer was a man. If it hadn't been a lover, it could have been another male enemy.
Barbara's ex-husband, whose name I didn't even know, shifted onto my list of suspects. If he'd been hiding money during a divorce settlement, that confirmed he was the deceptive type. If he knew Voula was the one revealing his secrets, whether the information had come from a spirit plane or somewhere else, he might have been angry enough to kill her.
My mind reeled with the possibilities. Six months in town was long enough to set up alliances and gather a few enemies. I didn't believe Voula was getting information from spirits on another plane, but it was possible she had human spies, or other ways of getting information. She could have befriended someone who worked at a bank, or even within the police force.
I turned away from Barbara and started moving boxes around on the basement's storage shelves, buying time before I would "find" the napkins.
"Do you know if Voula worked with anyone?" I asked casually. "Like an assistant, or someone who set up appointments?"
"I don't think so. Why do you ask?"
I'd prepared myself for a question like this, so I had my answer ready.
"I'm not sure if you know about what happened to me in December, but long story short, I've decided to keep my eyes wide open from now on. This is a small town, and when something bad happens, I'm not going to blindly walk into another dangerous situation."
"Yet you invite twelve strangers into your home," she noted coolly. "One of us could be the killer."
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but I remained calm and didn't whirl around to face Barbara. There was a teasing tone to her voice, but no malice.
I answered with equal coolness, "If one of the Crafty Knitters is the killer and takes me out tonight, that leaves eleven witnesses."
"I suppose it does. What's this?"
Something cool brushed against my ear. My breath caught in my throat as I froze. The coolness was Barbara's bony hand, reaching… for the napkins, on the top shelf. In her heels, she was taller than me, and must have spotted the plastic-wrapped stack once her eyes had adjusted to the low light of the basement.
"Ta da," she said triumphantly. "Found the napkins."
"Must have been helpful spirits guiding you."
She made a wheezing attempt at a laugh.
I turned around and studied her face. Despite the small smile on her thin lips, her eyes were still wide, the whites showing around her irises. She was afraid. Not of me, but of something, or someone.
And why wouldn't she be? A murderer was on the loose in Misty Falls, and it could be her ex-husband, or someone else she knew. The killer could be someone sitting upstairs right now, helping themselves to smoked meats and cheese.
"Everything's going to be okay," I said soothingly. "The police will catch Voula's killer."
She turned away slowly, then stopped. With her face in profile to me, she nodded forward as one gleaming tear ran from her eye, down her cheek, and fell upon the bare concrete floor. The tear darkened a circle. I blinked, and the tear was lost in the pattern of the gray concrete.
"Then what?" she asked. "Nothing will ever be the same again."
I didn't know what to say, but then part of an Irish prayer I'd printed out to read at the wake came to me.
"May you always hear, even in your hour of sorrow, the gentle singing of the lark." I paused. "That's an Irish proverb. I've got the rest of it printed out upstairs, but I can't remember the end."
"That was nice," Barbara said. She handed me the napkins without meeting my eyes, said she needed to use the washroom, then disappeared up the wood stairs.
I stood alone under the bare light bulb. The furnace kicked on, filling the basement with its rumble. I looked up at the other door, the closed one next to the one Barbara had just gone through. That door led to Logan's side of the duplex. I wondered if he was home, and if he could hear the party happening on my side. Someone turned up the music.
Logan wouldn't dare pop over, for fear of being cajoled into dancing.
I heard laughter, the clinking of glasses, and then one woman encouraging the others to take a pinch of the snuff, just for fun.
I got a feeling that, just like the other wakes I'd been to with my father, this one was going to last as long as the food and drinks held out, and many secrets would be spilled
.
Chapter 16
I'd never been to an all-woman wake before the one I threw for the Vibrant & Vivacious Voula Varga, Psychic Extraordinaire.
By ten thirty, everyone but me was drunk. That wasn't the unusual part, though. All dozen of the ladies had brought their yarn and needles, and they were actually knitting. Someone started a drinking game: if you dropped a stitch, you had to take a shot of whiskey. Naturally, this led to more dropped stitches and more drinks.
Nobody seemed to notice that I was neither drinking nor knitting. I had my trusty ball of yarn, and I wound it partly onto one hand loosely, the way I'd seen others do, then wound it back onto the ball. Jeffrey had finally ventured out and sat on the coffee table, smack dab in the middle of the living room, watching all the wiggling strings he wasn't allowed to play with. For him, this knitting wake was either heaven or hell, or maybe both.
I kept my mouth closed and my ears open as people related their personal stories about Voula. Barbara told the same anecdote she'd shared with me in the basement, about Voula locating the money her ex-husband had squirreled away.
"She always saw right through people," said the youngest woman in attendance, a round-cheeked redhead. "She knew my boss didn't hate me, but was only behaving like a total freak because of a lawsuit by a former partner."
While the redhead called her boss colorful names, I realized I knew her from Jeffrey's veterinary clinic. She shared a few details about the lawsuit and I quietly smiled to myself—not because the case itself made me happy, but because this must have been the business Logan was attending to when I first met him, and now I knew things about his life he hadn't told me.
There's definitely satisfaction in knowing something that someone else thinks is a secret. Voula must have been the happiest woman in the world, with all the information she had. Over the evening, I heard story after story about her many insights.
Death of a Crafty Knitter Page 11