Spinning in Her Grave

by Molly Macrae

  “Oh my.” Perceptive Ardis did a good imitation of being aghast at the indelicacy of my bringing up the article I’d just brought up. She added a wince for good measure.

  And whatever the deputy imagined that article was, it unnerved him to the point he didn’t ask for a detailed description. That was just as well because I had nothing at all in mind. I only wanted a reason to run upstairs and pretend my phone was ringing so I could talk to Geneva. It was decided that one of the deputies would stay downstairs with Ardis while the other two accompanied me. Ardis’ watchdog was in for a treat. As the other two and I left the room, she launched into a description of her latest—completely imaginary—gastritis attack.

  My escort to the attic seemed like overkill, considering that people had walked around the store the whole day, going up and down the stairs and in and out the front and back doors, leaving traces and obliterating them left and right. The deputies must have been under orders, though, so up we marched, one in front and one behind and me reflecting on how handy it was, though maybe not such a good thing, that I was learning to lie so well.

  Geneva wasn’t in sight when we reached the study. I’d hoped to find her in the window seat, either sitting or huddled in one of her damp heaps. She’d said she was going to her room, though. Her “room” was a cupboard with a well-hidden door that Granddaddy had built for Granny. The interior was beautifully finished and painted in Granny’s favorite dark blue. Geneva said she felt snug and safe in there. I couldn’t tell if she’d ever thought about why that might be. I also wasn’t sure it would be polite or wise to tell her the reason that seemed so obvious to me. The cupboard occupied the narrow space, floor to ceiling, between two joists. It was roughly two feet wide, maybe fifteen inches deep, and probably six feet tall. It had three shelves in it, but otherwise it wasn’t far off from being the shape of a coffin standing on end. I longed to ask Geneva if she remembered having a coffin of her own.

  “Hang on a tick,” I said to the deputies when we crowded into the room. I put my hand on my pocket. “That’s my phone.” The phone hadn’t made a peep or a buzz, but they didn’t seem to notice. I pulled it out. “Geneva, hi! You’ve caught me at kind of a bad time. Geneva? Are you there?” I moved closer to the cupboard door, narrowing my eyes and leaning into the phone to show the deputies how bad the connection was. “Geneva?”

  Her misty form emerged from the cupboard with a sigh and a moan—her usual behavior when I interrupted her—but her reaction when she saw the deputies was different and interesting. The moan cut off abruptly and she moved along the wall into the corner away from them, not drifting so much as slinking. She stayed there, shoulders drawn, looking at them sideways. She was like a worried cat, ready to protect herself with claws and a hiss.

  “Oh, joy,” she deadpanned. Appropriately enough. “I said I wanted to be alone and you brought company.”

  “Look, I’ve only got a minute and this is kind of a bad connection—”

  “Have your friends come to arrest me?”

  “What? No. Why would they? Not to mention how could they? Forget that right now. I came to tell you . . . I mean I called . . .” I cleared my throat and tried again. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Ardis is having TGIF over for a get-together this evening at her house. I’m going. Would you like to come with me?”

  “Will everyone be knitting?”

  “Some, probably. They always do. But it’s more of a supper thing. You know, talking, catching up, making plans for the inves . . . for our next interesting project.”

  “BYOB?”

  “I guess. Would that make a difference?”

  “I meant bring your own ‘boo.’ If I go with you, I will be the ‘boo.’ If there were more than one ghost, we would be ‘boos.’ Never mind; I do not feel much like laughing, either. Speaking of which, the jokers standing behind you do not look as if they share half a sense of humor between them. I think you should hang up and go with them quietly. They make me nervous.”

  “But will you come with me tonight?”

  “Mmm, no, probably not. I’m fairly busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  She slunk farther into the corner, arms crossed and shoulders drawn up to her ears.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you don’t have your own important things to do. But I wish you would come with me.”

  She hmphed.

  “Otherwise I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again. Hang on.” I turned to the deputies. “Any idea how long you guys are going to keep the store closed? Do you think we can reopen tomorrow?”

  “Ma’am, you need to come along with us now. Get the, er, item you came for and call your friend some other time.”

  “One more second. Just . . .” I turned back to Geneva, but she was gone. I finished the “call” anyway, hoping she was still listening. “I have to go now. If you don’t come with me to Ardis’, I’ll try to stop by later. We have a lot to talk about. Keep an eye on things and watch for me, okay?”

  She didn’t answer. I rested my hand briefly on the hidden door. I didn’t like being made to leave the shop and then being kept out of it. Even more, I didn’t like leaving Geneva alone and having no way to get hold of her short of tossing pebbles at a window.

  I tapped the door twice with my fingertips; then to make good on my reason for going up there, I crossed to the desk. I pulled open the middle drawer and grabbed the first thing that came to hand.

  “What the heck is that?” one of the deputies asked.

  “An orifice hook.” I was feeling mean and enunciated clearly to gain the full effect of the tool’s vaguely suggestive name. I wasn’t disappointed. The deputy who’d asked took a step back, earning a black look from his partner. “This one belonged to my grandmother,” I said. “Works like a charm. Have you ever used one?”

  What I held on my outstretched palm was the most useful tool a spinner could have in addition to her wheel. It was a three- or four-inch hook with a gripping handle. That particular hook was brass and slightly flexible and the handle was a smooth, lovely-to-hold pear shape made of walnut. Granddaddy had made it for Granny. She’d used it, as spinners have used them for untold centuries, to fish the end of her finished yarn through the orifice of her wheel’s flyer assembly.

  I could have explained that to the deputies, but I didn’t. I smiled and let them stare at it and reminded myself never to try flying with one in my carry-on luggage.

  “Leave the door open when you come, will you?” I said, heading for the stairs. “The cat likes to nap up here in the window seat.”

  • • •

  By the time the two deputies and I got back downstairs, Ardis had talked her deputy into buying a gift certificate for his wife’s birthday. That one assured us, again, that they would work as quickly and neatly as they could in the shop. I gave him a spare key. He gave me a receipt for it. Ardis slipped a set of stitch markers in the bag with the gift certificate, and we left the Weaver’s Cat in their hands. They weren’t such bad guys, we agreed. And they were doing their jobs.

  “Doing the job well,” Ardis said, “with methodical minds and trained, capable hands. The kind of solid police work that will produce a useful line of information for their investigation.”

  “And now we start our own strand.”

  “Yes, we do. With more imagination and less official constraint.”

  Main Street didn’t appear to know that Blue Plum Preserves was over. There weren’t throngs of people, but there were plenty of them and the street was still closed to vehicles. The other shops were open. People laughed. A family walked past eating deep-fried pickles on sticks. It took a few minutes to realize the big difference—there wasn’t any music coming from the stage at the courthouse and there were no more clangs from the blacksmith or toots from the antique farm machinery.

  “Surreal,” Ardis said. “For some reason, those deep-fried pickles don’t look appetizing without background music.”


  Our first priority was checking on Mel and Sally Ann. We hadn’t seen either of them at the scene of the tragedy, and we wanted to offer them our entirely genuine condolences. That wasn’t something we could do in a quick call or text. Dan had told Ardis that as soon as he pulled himself together, he was going over to the café to break the news. We weren’t sure, then, if we would find Mel’s on Main open, but it was a good place to start.

  Mel’s was at the other end of our block of Main Street, close enough to the Weaver’s Cat that hot coffee or soup didn’t cool too much on a walk between the two on a cold winter morning. Before we reached the corner, we heard a shriek of electronic feedback and then someone testing the microphone with a finger tap. Ears perked up among the last gaggles of festivalgoers and people moved toward the courthouse in the next block, catty-corner to Mel’s.

  “It’s the mayor,” Ardis said. “And it looks like his head hasn’t exploded yet, but let’s go on over there and see if it will. At least then we’ll have some good news for Mel in this dark time.”

  Sheriff Haynes joined Mayor Weems at the top of the courthouse steps and they stood together, flanked by the massive columns supporting the courthouse entablature. The sheriff looked like a column himself—tall with a solid barrel of a chest, his face grim as though he supported the weight of many woes. Mayor Weems looked strained almost to the point of hyperventilating. He was a slighter, shorter man and he was having trouble standing still. His natural, political inclination was probably to be out there in the crowd, shaking hands and slapping backs. Or standing behind the microphone, making happy news, but the sheriff held that position. Sheriff Haynes didn’t look like one to budge. The “joint statement” he delivered was to the point. The gist was almost the entirety.

  They felt certain the shooting was an isolated incident, he said. The public was not in danger; however, the investigation was ongoing. Evidence was being collected and leads developed. Anyone with information was asked to call the sheriff’s department. Haynes asked for a moment of silence as thoughts and prayers went out to the family of Reva Louise Snapp. Then he confirmed the news that made no one happy.

  “Because of the serious nature of the incident, after much discussion and with deep regret, Mayor Weems and his board of aldermen have deemed it best to cancel the rest of Blue Plum Preserves. Find your family and friends, find your cars, and go on home. We will be taking no questions at this time.” With a jerk of his head at Mayor Weems, Sheriff Haynes started toward the courthouse door, obviously expecting the mayor to follow.

  Mayor Weems, proving he was his own man, cast a quick glance at the sheriff’s departing back. Then he leaned into the microphone and in the measured tones of someone trying to sound like an elder statesman said, “We want, and we shall have, answers.”

  But he was his own man only up to a point. At another look from Sheriff Haynes, he scurried after him into the courthouse.

  “They know something we don’t,” Ardis said. “I don’t like that and I don’t like where this is going.”

  “We don’t know where it’s going yet,” I pointed out.

  “True.”

  “But we probably won’t like it when it gets there.”

  “Even truer. Come on,” she said. “Let’s go hug a little on Mel and Sally Ann.”

  We didn’t like what we found when we got to the café, either.

  • • •

  It was barely four o’clock in the afternoon, and that hardly seemed possible. The sun should have set. Blue Plum should have rolled up its streets. Shadows should be creeping in on sneaking, fur feet.

  Mel’s was open, though, and when I opened the door, the familiar scents of cinnamon, herbs, and coffee met us. There was a decent crowd inside. People talked and laughed. A short line waited to place orders at the counter. Half a dozen sat on the old church pew opposite the counter waiting for tables. The sheriff might have told people Blue Plum Preserves was over and to go home, but it looked as though an awful lot of them had only made it as far as Mel’s.

  Mel was in the kitchen chopping onions. Her staff moved around her, calling orders, slapping burgers and sandwiches on the spitting grill, setting up salads, carrying loaded plates out, and clattering empty ones into the sink and dishwasher. Mel stood in her own bubble at the butcher block table, the kitchen’s swirl and hubbub sliding past. Only her spiked hair looked alert and in touch. Maybe she needed heaps of onions for soup the next day. Maybe they made a good cover story. She backhanded a tear from her cheek and went on chopping.

  I called her name from the doorway. The chef’s knife in her right hand stilled. Without raising her eyes from the onions, she held her left hand up, palm out, stopping my words, stopping hers.

  “She’s not talking and she won’t quit chopping,” a waitress whispered.

  “What do you think?” I asked as the waitress slipped past me. “Is she okay?”

  “As long as she’s cooking. Don’t worry. I’ll stay with her.”

  “Where’s Sally Ann?”

  “Gone home. Dan took her. She was all tore up.”

  “Mel, honey,” Ardis said from over my shoulder, “come by the house later. Anytime. I’ll be there.”

  At that Mel did look up. She opened her mouth to answer, but someone else spoke first.

  “Official business,” a familiar and officious voice said behind me. “Pardon me.” Clod Dunbar moved past me, muttering not quite under his breath about nosy knitters. “You reported a theft, Mel?”

  Mel stabbed her knife into the heart of a giant Vidalia. “Yesterday, Dunbar. I reported it yesterday and now you’re too damn late.”

  Chapter 14

  Ardis threw together a salad and I brought the fixings for my new favorite homemade fast food—black bean and spinach burritos—spicy, warm, and melting in thirty minutes. But only four of us sat around the trestle table in Ardis’ kitchen that evening for the impromptu supper party, slash debriefing, slash planning session, with the sound of the baseball game Ardis’ father was watching in the other room as background music.

  Ardis and I sat on one side of the table. Ernestine and Thea Green, the town librarian, sat on the other. Ernestine had changed out of her long skirt and mob cap into her Miss Marple tweeds, the better for stimulating her little gray cells, she said, mixing her Christie characters. Thea had come straight from the library. She’d shed her jacket and a silk scarf before sitting, slipped out of pinching low heels, and settled with a small groan and then a sigh of relief. When Ardis put a glass of wine in her hand, the transformation was complete; Thea’s face relaxed and she smiled.

  “You’d think after twenty years in a job,” Ardis said, “you’d know enough to wear shoes that let you live through the day.”

  Thea took a reviving sip. “You’d think after knowing me for twenty years, you’d also know my feet are happy to martyr themselves so that I look fabulous. This is an awfully small powwow,” she said, taking another sip of wine. “That’s good, because it leaves more for fabulous me and my feet, but why so few?”

  “We’re the core group,” I said.

  Ardis nodded. “The pith of the posse.”

  I’d swung by the Cat one more time, on my way over, to see if Geneva had changed her mind about coming with me. She wasn’t waiting for me on the porch. I’d put my nose to the front windows and the window in the kitchen door, but didn’t see her shadowy form anywhere. The crime scene tape stretched across both doors was more upsetting than I’d expected it would be.

  John had given his regrets when Ardis invited him. He was the primary caregiver for his ninety-year-old brother, whom John candidly described as “meaner than snakes.” He said he didn’t feel right or comfortable leaving his brother most of the day and then the evening. He promised to type up everything he remembered telling the deputy who’d interviewed him and e-mail it to me.

  We hadn’t expected Debbie to jump at the chance to make the long trip back into town on short notice. She and her sheep lived a fair numb
er of twisty miles up a river valley heading toward the mountains. Ardis called to invite her anyway, unfortunately forgetting that Debbie might not have heard what happened. She hadn’t. Ardis didn’t go into detail, but Debbie took the news hard, considering she had no particular fondness for Reva Louise. Debbie was sweet and sensitive that way, which always struck me as an odd contrast to the levelheaded strength she needed to run her farm. She said she’d call first thing Monday morning, before making the trip in for work, to make sure the shop was reopened. Ardis assured her it darn well better be.

  “Just in case, though, hon,” Ardis said, “if you’re calling early Monday morning, make that call to Kath, why don’t you?”

  Before we’d left the café, Ardis had slipped a note to one of the waitresses to give to Mel, inviting her to drop by anytime that evening. So far she hadn’t. Joe Dunbar was . . . wherever Joe would go of an evening. Clod Dunbar had not been invited.

  “But you’ve got to hand it to him,” Ardis said in her retelling of Clod’s arrival in the onion-filled café kitchen, “he didn’t so much as flinch when Mel stuck that knife in.”

  “Oh my.” Ernestine’s wineglass stopped halfway to her mouth. “Into the Vidalia, I hope?” It was hard to tell from the look in her eyes if she really hoped it was the Vidalia or not.

  “Okay, I’ll admit it,” I said. “Deputy Dunbar is cool in a tense situation. But how much of that tension does he create in the first place? Who approaches a woman who’s just lost her sister—approaches her in her place of business when it’s busy—and doesn’t at least make reference to her loss or apologize for intruding on her business and her grief? Much less that he or someone else in a uniform should have responded to her theft report twenty-four hours earlier?”

  “Who approaches Mel at all when she has a big knife in her hand?” Thea asked.