Death of a Crafty Knitter

by Angela Pepper

  "Stanley, you sexy beast," I said. "I'm totally cheating on my Jeffrey with you. He'd be so jealous. That would serve him right for cheating on me last night, on someone else's lap. Yes, it was cheating! I know my father was sort of his original owner, but it's complicated."

  Stanley turned his fluffy head to give me a knowing grin. When he returned his attention to the sidewalk ahead of us, his body language changed, his body getting stiffer and slower with tension.

  There was a dark-haired woman with a smaller dog, a Corgi, walking toward us. I stopped and tugged the leash, thinking we could cross to the other side and avoid the strange dog, but Stanley tugged me forward, toward the Corgi. He wasn't scared, he was excited. Not being a dog owner, I hadn't read the signals right.

  Stanley and the brown and white Corgi gave each other a good sniff, tails wagging. The dog's owner, a willowy girl with raven-black hair, gave me a suspicious look.

  With a voice lacking any sweetness, she asked, "Hey, aren't you that creepy guy's wife?"

  "Do you mean Marvin? No. I'm just walking this dog for a friend."

  "Whatever. He's gross." She pulled her dog's leash and hauled it away down the street without further explanation.

  "She's not wrong," I said to Stanley, who just smiled, pink tongue flopping out.

  We continued on our way, stopping to mark a few pristine patches of white snow, then arrived at the coffee shop. Marcy was sitting at a round table outside, smoking a cigarette.

  She saw Stanley first. "That dog looks just like…" She looked up and saw my face. "Stormy and Stanley. You two make a cute couple."

  Stanley greeted his owner with snowy paws, then tried to climb onto her lap.

  "Oof! You're not a lapdog," she said.

  I could see there was a lineup inside the cafe, so I took a seat across from Marcy. The metal chair was so cold, it made my sore muscles feel even stiffer, but at least I wasn't as bad as the day before.

  "What's going on here?" Marcy asked. "Is this a regular thing, you taking my Stanley-boo-boo on expeditions?" She ruffled the dog's ears. "Stanley, are you cheating on me?"

  "I'm the cheater."

  She grabbed another cigarette and lit it from the stubby one in her mouth. "Is that so?" she said on the smoky exhale.

  "Cheating on my cat, Jeffrey. He's a Russian Blue, not quite a year old. Super energetic."

  "My husband is allergic to cats," she said on another smoky exhale. "Did you know that?"

  "He hadn't mentioned it."

  She offered me the package of cigarettes, out of politeness, and I declined.

  "Since when do you smoke?" I asked.

  "New Year's resolution," she said. "With all those people quitting, some of us had to start back up to restore the balance."

  I laughed at her joke, even though it didn't seem very funny. Marcy had looked healthy and happy just a few days earlier, and now she looked like she'd been washed in a puddle and crammed into a gym bag.

  She asked me what I was up to that fine morning, with her dog, and I explained how we were in the market for another laptop, since my father was so happy with his.

  "Is that all?" Marcy extinguished her cigarette in a makeshift ashtray, the lid of her takeout coffee. The chemical smell of singed plastic hit my nostrils.

  "And I wanted to access your computer expertise for a few minutes, if you don't mind."

  "Don't worry, I'm going to shut down that email responder. I've been meaning to get to it. At first it was funny, but now I don't feel right contributing to the mass hysteria." She twirled one finger next to her ear. "This town gets a bit cuckoo over things."

  "Shutting it down is probably for the best. But, actually, I was wondering a couple of things. First of all, did you ever do graphic design? Like for websites?"

  "No, programming only. I don't have the eye for design. Marvin says even my crafts are hideous. He doesn't like this beautiful leash I made for Stanley." She held up a length of the rainbow rope. "Crochet," she said. "I prefer it over knitting. I'm working on a blanket right now. Marvin hates it. Of course."

  "I'm sure it's beautiful," I lied.

  "What's the other thing you wanted to know?"

  "Oh, just if there was a way to find out who registered a domain name. I tried the basic whois searches, but it's a private registration."

  She leaned in over the round cafe table and whispered, "There's no such thing as private on the internet. What's the domain name?"

  I pulled a notepad from my purse, along with a pen, and jotted down the website address for the disappearing film studio. I could have told her the name, since it wasn't that long, but I had a plan, courtesy of my father's lesson that morning.

  "This is just some silly thing involving my ex-fiancé," I said. "He told me about this hot investment thing, but I think he's playing a prank on me."

  I handed her the piece of paper. I kept my hands moving in my purse, pretending to be paying attention to that, but my eyes were on Marcy's face as she looked at the paper.

  She tilted up her chin and frowned, but no more than any person would when reading a shakily handwritten note.

  "You want the company that registered this?" she asked.

  "The company, or the person. If it's a guy named Christopher, I won't be surprised."

  "Give me a day or two." She tucked the paper into her coat pocket in a gesture so casual that I assumed she'd already forgotten about it. "What's Jessica been up to?"

  "Not much. She's got a cold."

  "From the Polar Bear Dip." Marcy shook her head. "Silly girl. She just had to get her ten-year pin."

  I laughed, and we talked about Jessica for a bit. The line had disappeared inside the shop, so I got a small coffee to drink with Marcy while she had one more cigarette.

  It's illegal to smoke on the sidewalk in Misty Falls, thanks to the Oregon Indoor Clean Air Act. Contrary to the Indoor part of the name, the act extends to outdoor public spaces. A few people walking by gave Marcy a pointed look, but nobody said anything, because most of the locals adhered to the philosophy of Live and Let Live.

  Well, except for the ones who shot people.

  Chapter 28

  Back at Misty Microchips, I did buy a new laptop, the same model as my father's. Since his was in a teal case, I got mine in red to match the case for my phone. Marvin and Marcy gave me a small discount for paying with my bank card instead of my credit card.

  As we walked out of the store, my father patted me on the back. "I'm proud of you for not using credit."

  "I wanted the discount."

  "Yes, but a lot of people your age wouldn't have the choice, because they don't save up for big purchases."

  I used one hand to wave away the undeserved compliment. "I'm just lucky to have had a few jobs that paid well, plus it's easy to save when you're a workaholic."

  "Whatever you say." He chuckled at my modesty.

  We got into the car, and I started the engine. It came to life with an expensive purr. My father was right about me being responsible with money. The car had been a splurge, but at least I'd bought it outright, no lease, after one test drive. That was my party side, though. My conservative side would probably have me driving the same vehicle until well into the future, when everyone else had flying cars and jetpacks.

  As I looked past my father to check the lane before pulling out, he caught my eye and gave me a hopeful look. "Crime scene next?"

  "I don't know, Dad. We start with a few unlawful entries, and before you know it, we're pulling stockings over our faces and holding up the Misty Falls Credit Union." I put on the turn signal and drove in the direction of our next lead, knitting club member Barbara's ex-husband.

  On the drive, I told him about Marcy's non-reaction to the website. He agreed with my assessment that she hadn't been involved, and we both crossed our fingers that she would find something useful with the domain name.

  Finnegan Day held his finger to his lips and pressed his ear against the crack in the door. "Someone's
worked up about something," he whispered.

  We were at Kettner Insurance, the workplace of the eponymous owner Mr. Hank Kettner. I'd never been there before, because I purchased my home, business, and car insurance from a business in a convenient location that didn't look nearly as luxurious as this place.

  I pressed my ear to the crack at the other side of the door and ran my fingers over the wood surface. It was a beautiful, dark wood, and not hollow core, or we would have been able to hear what the people inside were arguing about. All I could pick up on was the tone: angry.

  My father wasn't doing much better, by the look on his face.

  Still trying to listen, I asked in a whisper, "Is a lot of detective work just like this? My heart is racing. This is so much fun, and we're not even doing anything."

  Suddenly, the door began to vibrate. We both stepped back, eyes wide. The vibration was accompanied by a whirring, mechanical sound. The door swung open. A fifty-something, attractive man in an expensive suit came through in a wheelchair.

  We stood back to let him by, and then walked into the insurance office. The Kettner Insurance reception area was spare and elegant, with fragrant fresh flowers. A red-faced woman stood behind the reception counter, looking like she was either going to cry or smash the flower vase on the gleaming marble floor.

  My father beat me to asking her if she was okay.

  As her answer, she brought her palms together in front of herself and said, "I express my anger in appropriate ways." She took a breath and let it out. "Starting now. How may I help you?"

  "We don't have an appointment, but who would I need to kiss up to for a few minutes with Mr. Kettner?" My father leaned on the counter in a casual pose. "I bet you're in charge of things around here," he cooed.

  "The schedule's pretty tight," she said.

  "Speaking of pretty, what color would you call your eyes? Would you say they're a teal sort of blue?"

  She tittered and started tapping away on a keyboard. "Let me check the schedule again."

  While they talked, I perused the framed photos on the wall. The images gave me a sinking feeling. I checked the inscription under one of them, then tapped my father on the shoulder to get his attention.

  He and the receptionist were talking about office politics, and how important it was for support staff to be respected. I managed to pull him away, and excused us for a minute.

  "You should be taking notes, not stopping me," he said.

  "That was Mr. Kettner we saw leaving, in the wheelchair. He couldn't have shot Voula, because it happened on the second floor, and the only access was stairs."

  "He could be faking. A wheelchair is a great alibi. You could kill a dozen people, as long as it's always up a flight of stairs."

  I rolled my eyes. "Some of those photos are a decade old, and he's in the wheelchair in all of them."

  "And isn't it rather convenient that dated photos of our suspect in a wheelchair have been left out here for us to see?" He grinned. "I think we need to dig deep on this possible lead. I'll take the receptionist out for lunch, somewhere that serves martinis."

  I shook my head, but I was smiling.

  "Dad, I have a better idea. Let's drive to the victim's house and look around. Maybe we'll see something outside."

  "Or maybe we'll find a window that's been left unlocked."

  He turned and thanked the receptionist, then apologized that something had come up and we didn't need an appointment after all.

  As we drove up to the victim's house, my father said, "You're right. That house does have a face, and not a nice one."

  "At least it's been released. I don't see any crime scene tape."

  We pulled up and parked where the victim's hearse had been on my previous visit. A chill ran through me at the memory of that day, then suddenly things got weird. My head was full of stars and my mouth went dry. I mumbled a warning that I was going to throw up, mere seconds before I pushed the car door open and did so on the snow. My butt was still in my seat, thanks to the seatbelt, and my position couldn't have been more awkward if I'd tried.

  My father leaned over and patted me on the back. "You'll be okay, sport," he said. "Everybody barfs. I wish I had something more profound to say, but it is what it is. Stormy, everybody barfs."

  I'd stopped heaving, so I got out of the car, stepping over the dirty snow.

  "Don't tell anyone," I said.

  He leaned over the driver's side and peered up at me from inside the car. "Who would I tell?"

  "Tony. Or Kyle. Or your other buddies. Just don't tell them I barfed, okay?"

  "Not a word," he promised.

  I looked up at the leering face of the house and shivered. My stomach lurched, but had nothing to fling around anymore, so it settled down. I found a clean patch of snow and scooped some up to freshen my mouth. The snow worked well enough, and I felt much better already.

  My father had gotten out of the car and was examining something on the underside of the handrail on the stairs leading up to the house's porch.

  I watched over his shoulder as he tried a few different combinations on the lockbox—a miniature safe that real estate and rental agents commonly use to leave keys for each other.

  The lockbox opened. "Hot buttered rum," he exclaimed. "We're in business."

  A minute later, I was following him into the house. I didn't ask about the legality of entering this way, and when he gave me the half-dozen codes the local real estate agents commonly use for their lockboxes, I stored them inside a note on my phone, just in case of emergency.

  The house was cold inside, the heat on barely enough to keep pipes from freezing.

  "What's different from last time?" he asked.

  We walked through the lower floor and I described what had been in the rooms before. All the furniture had since been removed. As we went from room to room, I led the way to speed things up. The house hadn't felt homey with the sparse furniture, but now it felt downright menacing.

  "I heard from Kyle that they located some distant cousins," my father said.

  We stood in the room where the red velvet sofas had been.

  "Good," I said. "They took the red sofas?"

  "The cousins told the property management company to go ahead and sell off the furnishings to pay for the cleanup bill. From the photos you took, I'd say the rental outfit's still going to lose out. I can't blame them for moving quickly to get it rented. The longer the house sits empty, the more people are going to talk about it being haunted."

  I zipped my winter coat all the way up. "There's something truly spooky about the interior of a house being this temperate."

  "Absolutely." He rubbed his chin and scanned the room again. "That's odd. This house feels smaller on the inside than it looks from the outside."

  "Must be the lack of furniture. I had a friend in the city who did staging. She said the right furniture will make a room look bigger. Of course, they cheated, with special beds that were shorter than normal, so they looked like doubles or queens, but weren't. I tried lying down on one at an open house, just to see for myself, and my toes hung off the end."

  "Hustlers and scammers." He shook his head. "Part of me thinks this woman got a taste of what she'd been dishing out. What do you call that again?"

  "Karma."

  "Right. Karma." He headed toward the staircase and used his cane to steady himself on his way up.

  I gave my stomach a moment to settle, then followed him.

  The bedroom was empty, devoid of anything resembling a clue, and the bathroom was clean and bare as well. We went into the big room at the end of the hall last. This room spanned the width of the house, and the two windows on its long wall were the ones that formed the eyes of the house.

  There was something off about the room, but I couldn't put my feeling into words. Perhaps it was the bloodstain on the floor.

  We stood on either side of the dark shape, looking down in respectful silence.

  My father said, "There's an old saying. I
t might be from monks, or that Confucius guy. Something about going on a journey of revenge and digging two graves, because one is for yourself."

  I crossed my arms and shivered as I looked around the room again. It was empty, except for one tapestry-style rug hanging on one wall. Why had the people who removed the furnishings left the rug? Did it come with the house? Did a ghost tell them to leave it? I shuddered again, then walked back to the doorway to get a better look at the windows.

  "Do you notice something odd about this room?" I asked.

  He came over to stand with me and see what I was seeing. "An amazing view of the whole town, but I wouldn't call that odd."

  "What makes the windows look like eyes is that they're symmetrical from the exterior. But from here, that one's in the middle and that one's right at the edge of the room, not symmetrical at all."

  He let out a low whistle, then we raced each other to the rug. He beat me, even with the cane, and lifted up the rug to reveal a square-shaped hole in the middle of the wall. We both stuck our heads through the hole, which was the size of the other windows. The home's true exterior wall was set out about five feet, and the gap between was unfinished wood, suitable for storage, but not much else.

  "Why would someone do a stupid renovation like this?" he asked.

  "It must have been for that movie. Remember when they shot it on location here? They renovated the house to make it match a certain look, the cover of the book the movie was based on, I think."

  "This is a lot of wasted space, but I'm guessing the property management company left it this way, because it wasn't worth doing a full renovation for a bit more space."

  "Or maybe the old house needed to keep these original walls for stability."

  I started to put my leg through the box, but my father stopped me. "Evidence," he said.

  "Evidence?" From where I stood, I looked at the door to the room and imagined myself walking in that day. I saw myself kneeling over the body, running out, then coming back.

  All that time, when I'd assumed I was alone, and that I was safe because I'd checked all the closets and logical hiding places, someone could have been standing right here.