Spinning in Her Grave

by Molly Macrae

  “Neither Dan nor his boat was at home. Where would he go to fish?”

  “With a boat like that? Boone Lake or Watauga,” Ardis said. “I wonder if we can get Joe to—”

  “Get Joe to what?” the man himself asked.

  “Find a fisherman,” said Ardis. “Or anyone who saw him this morning. You heard about the fire at the Snapp place?”

  “I came by to see for myself that Kath has risen like a phoenix from the ashes. And to let you know the café’s having a special on flame-roasted stuffed peppers to take advantage of the excitement. Mel’s telling folks it’s to celebrate your survival, though, because it sounds less grasping and commercial. You look good. No worse for the wear?”

  “No, a little smoke and panic never hurt. It might have made my hair curlier.”

  He studied my hair. “It looks nice.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Cole’s telling everyone you saved his life.”

  “That’s an exaggeration.” Telling everyone? I hoped that was an exaggeration, too.

  “Maybe. He’s happy about it, anyway, so thanks.”

  “Any news about the Tent of Wonders?”

  A Joe Dunbar–patented single-shoulder shrug for answer.

  “Are you tied up at the café all day?”

  “No, thought I’d go fishing. Maybe start at Boone.”

  “In your red canoe?” I asked. We’d had a sort of date in his canoe. Nice canoe. Nice sort of date. Up to a point.

  “It’s a lot of water to cover,” Joe said. “Cole’s lending me his johnboat. Less flashy than Dan’s, but it’ll do.”

  Ardis rapped her knuckles on the counter. “You can play double agent, Ten Dunbar, but only so long as you deliver information to each party in an equitable manner. Now tell me, are you working on our back door early- warning system?”

  “I’ll have something for you soon. Bye.” He smiled and ambled out the front door.

  “Did his accent just get stronger?” I asked. “It sounded like he said ‘baa.’”

  Ardis didn’t answer. She swept past me, zipped around the corner, and was gone. And Shirley and Mercy came in.

  “How does Ardis know the Spiveys are here before they even get through the door?” Debbie whispered as she slipped past me to ring up a customer cooing over skeins of wool for a baby sweater.

  “Her Spivey senses tingle.”

  The twins were back in sync; their outfits matched. They marched, in sync, up to the counter to tell me they were glad I was alive.

  “And to forgive you for your insensitivity to our maternal—ow—to Mercy’s maternal plight.” That was Shirley, then, standing to the left of Mercy’s elbow. “We realize that asking insensitive questions, as you do and as we are sure you will continue to do, is a necessary part of an investigation.”

  “We also realize that your plate is full, what with a murder and avoiding being murdered yourself,” Mercy said. “And while we appreciate your offer to help find Angela, we think she’ll be safer if you don’t.”

  “We’ll do it ourselves,” said Shirley.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What you suggested,” Mercy said. “Visit area hangouts. Bars and whatnot. Ask around. We’ll keep you posted.”

  They turned and marched out. Women on a mission. I wished them well.

  • • •

  After the Spiveys left, I felt entitled to do my own disappearing act. Argyle was curled like a skein of cat wool near the great wheel in the front window, but I hadn’t seen Geneva. I didn’t want her to overhear a more colorful version of the fire, in case she overreacted—all over the shop. Ardis did her post-Spivey reappearing act and I dashed up to the study. I didn’t see Geneva in the room and or in the cupboard—her room. But not seeing her didn’t mean she wasn’t there. I wished she could explain the mechanism, explain why sometimes she was visible and other times not. She said she didn’t know, that it was most likely something to do with my end of things. That didn’t explain why she sometimes appeared out of thin air when I called her.

  I called her then, with no luck. Sighing, I turned to go back down, and nearly walked through her.

  “You are lucky to be alive!” she stormed.

  “Yes, I am and I’m glad you care.”

  She had her ghostly hands on her ghostly hips and was swelling in preparation for more yelling when I noticed something.

  “Did you know you sound an awful lot like Ardis when you’re all fired up? You might look like her, too, if I could see you more in focus.”

  I hadn’t expected to deflect her tirade, but the comment had that effect. Geneva drew back, closed her mouth, and stared at me. Meekly, she followed me downstairs and floated over to balance on top of the great wheel. Argyle said, “Mrrph,” but Geneva didn’t say another word.

  • • •

  Ardis didn’t mind hearing about the twins the way she minded being anywhere in their vicinity, so I told her about their plan for finding Angie.

  “May their mother- and aunt-love give them strength,” she said. “Do you think she took up with Dan again?”

  I told her I liked that idea better than the one I’d had last night about a near-desperate real estate agent knocking off a new rival. Then I told her about looking for signs of Angie at the house, with no conclusions drawn. “Even if we don’t think Angie would pull a trigger, though, what if she provided the kick in the pants that Dan needed?”

  “She might not know she provided it,” Ardis said. “Isn’t that an awful thought? Angie’s pattern in love and life is full of trouble, hon. I don’t know how effective Mercy and Shirley will be, or how much they have to answer for Angie being the way she is, but right now I’m glad she’s got them on her side. And I pray they find her alive and ready to cut their warp threads.”

  • • •

  “Is this a bad time?” Sally Ann was in front of me at the counter. Her thin shoulders were hunched inside the flannel shirt she’d worn the night before. I took a step back.

  “Sally Ann, no, not at all. Um, bad time for what?” I looked around. What had I forgotten now? Apparently it was a bad time for my brain. Debbie had straightened out the cash register twice in the last half hour because of mistakes I’d made. Ardis thought I might be suffering from delayed shock and she’d gone to get me a glass of ice water and a cup of hot tea. She came back with them as Sally Ann was explaining.

  “You said I could come over for a one-on-one lesson, but maybe it is a bad time or you didn’t mean it. But this is about the only time I could get here. I can’t stay off work too many more days.”

  Ardis looked at the clock. Three. That gave us another hour of Debbie’s time. She leaned her elbow on the counter like a barmaid and asked, “What’s your pleasure?”

  Sally Ann loosened up and laughed at what she thought was a joke. Little did she know; our fibers and fabrics and notions were every bit as addictive as bottles behind a bar. Once entangled in the web of our wares and wools, she would never be the same.

  “Spinning?” Sally Ann asked. “I like the idea of it being something different from what Mama taught Reva Louise.”

  “Then this is the perfect time,” Ardis said. “Debbie’s here and she’s our resident expert. We’ll go find her and you two can use TGIF’s workroom. Kath, honey, you drink your ice water, then drink your tea. It’s peppermint. And don’t operate any heavy equipment while I’m gone.”

  At some point during the afternoon, Geneva had moved from the top of the spinning wheel to a corner of the window, but otherwise she hadn’t moved or made a peep. When Ardis left with Sally Ann, she floated over so that she was taking up the narrow space between me and the counter.

  “I want you to know,” she said, “that if I were your business manager, I would let you operate heavy equipment anytime you want.” She floated back to the window and must have felt happier for having gotten that off her chest, because she sat on top of the spinning wheel again, kicking her heels and enjoying the sun
streaming in.

  J. Scott chose that moment to reel in. He’d obviously spent time at a bottle-purveying type of bar, because he was quite drunk. And angry. I wanted to say, Sir, you are both pissed and pissed. Please remove yourself. Instead I reached for the phone.

  “No,” he said. “No need to call the consflabularly. I am perfly safe and within my rights to be in a public knitting place of businesses.”

  I was angry, too. “You had no right to be in my private study. You had no right to look through cupboards. I know you were up there. What were you doing?”

  “Up there in the ratfers?” He tilted his head back and had to pull it level again with both hands. “Is that your airy, aerie eagle’s nest? The door was open, if I’m not m’staken, so don’t accuse me of tresspesspiss. Old buildings are my business.”

  “Oh yeah. Right. And you were just taking a professional snoop. “

  “Fessional and business inrest. ’Cept my busisinesses turned against me and they’re amok. The wretched murk, the m-m-mercantile is infested with fleas. Hoppin’ like hotcakes and you can’t sell hotcakes like they wanna sell hotcakes if the place makes you itch. I myself am eaten into inches of my life.” He stopped to scratch his shins, which didn’t help his stability.

  “Bug bomb to lil’ smithereens the lil’ vermin might work but now’s too late. My business cards are smithereens. The deal’s sunk. An’ I’m drink. Drunk. Someone else can kill ’em.”

  “Kill who?”

  “Misser and missus Flea an all their lil’ flealets. I gotta go.”

  “Wait. What was the mercantile deal?”

  “Shhhh.” He tried to put his finger to his lips but gave up. “A secret so I dint tell you she wanted a nook to cook her own.”

  “Who? Will you try to focus for a minute, please, and make sense?”

  “Reva Evil Louise. She sounded like sense. She talked a good hotcake an’ led me on a merry menu path. But dint have a griddle to rub together for a down-home payment, an’ now she’s dead an’ your ’steemed mayor says pig plays are nevermore an’ so am I. I came to smell you. To tell you good-bye. But I do smell you and I did. Up there.” He waved at the ceiling without trying to look up again. “Dead mouse. I only caught a squiff of it. Unmistapleable. Definitely something dead. Unless you lied when I asked you about the drains. Reva Eva Lee lied. You all lie in Blue Lump. Good riddance, I say. I will turn around slowly so as not to vomit and be gone with me.”

  He did turn slowly but only so far. He stopped when he was facing the window. And he stared at Geneva. She waved at him.

  Chapter 29

  J. Scott didn’t scream or say anything that sounded like “ghost.” It’s possible he saw nothing more distinct than a collection of dust motes or a cloud of gnats. He saw something, though, because Geneva decided to float around him in a wide circle and he followed, his eyes on her the entire time. Ardis came back and saw J. Scott’s half of that weird dance.

  “What the heck?”

  “Drunk,” I said. “Possibly on gin.”

  “And never on gin agin,” J. Scott said. Geneva followed him as he reeled for the door. We let him wrestle with it and go. Geneva waved good-bye and came to perch on the shoulder of the mannequin that stood near the counter. Debbie had dressed it in a new seed-stitch wrap that shaded through a range of summery yellows and oranges. Geneva added a touch of summer rain to the look.

  “You should have called the police,” Ardis said.

  “I had her back in case of rough stuff,” Geneva countered. “We were fine on our own.”

  “You’re right,” I said, covering both their comments. “But I’ll call them now. Prescott’s a danger to himself on foot and everyone else if he gets in a car. Besides, he called Blue Plum ‘Blue Lump.’”

  “Then he deserves to be locked up,” Ardis said.

  I made the call then drummed my fingers on the counter. “There might’ve been some sense in his nonsense, though. Maybe. About the clearest thing he said was that he smelled the drains. You smelled something last week, remember?”

  Ardis tool a few inconclusive sniffs in different directions. “Nothing now. We’ll get Joe to take a look. What else did Prescott say? I can see the gears up there in your head trying to turn, but they’re not getting very far.”

  “They’re probably slipping in puddles of gin. I need coffee to sober up after that. His thoughts were definitely following a drunkard’s path. Let me see if I can lay the gibberish out straight before it evaporates. Along with his fumes. He said he was snooping up in the study out of professional interest in old buildings. I can believe that. Then he said the mercantile is infested with fleas. Could that be right?”

  “It happens in some of these old buildings when they’re unoccupied except by rats and mice.”

  “Ugh.”

  “That’s what flea bombs and rat traps were invented for. What else?”

  “The mercantile deal. I think Reva Louise was trying to finagle a way to open a restaurant. Maybe a breakfast place? He kept talking about hotcakes. But he said she lied to him, possibly about a down payment. Did I tell you there was restaurant equipment in the loom house? And remember the theft Mel reported? Joe said it was a box of recipes. Except he wasn’t supposed to talk about it, so I shouldn’t have told you . . . and I just thought of something. There was a box at the back of a drawer in a filing cabinet in the loom house. Wow, what if she ‘borrowed’ Mel’s recipe box?”

  “Would Reva Louise do that to Mel?” Ardis asked. “And could she pull off a business deal like that? She didn’t have any money.”

  “Maybe the box wasn’t Mel’s recipes. Maybe it was full of embezzled or stolen cash. But it doesn’t matter if Reva Louise could pull it off or not. Prescott thought she could and he’s feeling Reva Louise-ly screwed.”

  “Enough to kill her?”

  “How about if there was a better reason to kill her? What if Reva Louise and Dan were in on the mercantile deal as a couple and Prescott found out that Dan would have plenty of money if Reva Louise was out of the picture?”

  “I’ve heard crazier schemes,” Ardis said. “But I haven’t heard anything about Dan Snapp that lets me believe he’s really interested in owning his own business. I’d rather believe that Prescott, ham actor that he is, is suffering from Macbeth syndrome, wandering around getting crazier with remorse for a deed most foul. Did he happen to say anything about trying to kill you this morning by setting fire to the loom house?”

  “No.”

  “Shame.”

  “Yeah.” But as much as I disliked Prescott, I did believe in his love for old buildings, and I couldn’t see him setting fire to one. “Sally Ann didn’t say anything about the fire when she came in.”

  “Maybe she hasn’t heard,” Ardis said.

  “And it’s the center of my universe right now, but not everybody’s.” Although the Spiveys had heard and stopped by. “How’s Sally Ann doing with the spinning?”

  “I wouldn’t say she’s a natural. Debbie’s going to send her home with a whorl and some roving to practice. She was sticking to it and that’s what it takes.”

  • • •

  My car wasn’t in the parking lot. That’s how out of it I was. I forgot that I’d walked over after showering and changing clothes. Just as well. If I was that out of it, driving even the short distance home would have been dangerous. I wasn’t so out of it, though, that ideas didn’t keep spinning in my head.

  Two blocks from home, I looked ahead to the next corner and saw a nondescript pickup at the stop sign. Nondescript vehicles. How had the person who lit the fire gotten there and gotten away? That was a good question. And how had that person known where to find yet more gasoline at that gasoline-ridden place?

  I looked ahead and the pickup was still at the stop sign. Or maybe it was another nondescript pickup with another guy behind the wheel. Another. Maybe there was another person we hadn’t considered. Someone other than Dan Snapp, Angie, or Prescott. Who?

  Th
e pickup was still there with the guy. The creepy guy watching me. I slowed, reached for my phone, thought about crossing the street. Maybe I should take a picture of the truck. Or the creepy guy. I was practically not walking at all I was going so slowly. Then the creepy guy waved.

  “Hey, how about that beer?” Creepy Clod.

  • • •

  We went for pizza. I’d been serious when I’d said make mine a whiskey, but Clod being Clod hadn’t believed it. He had beer. I had ice water. I saw the symbolism. Then I saw the Spiveys. The twins, goggle-eyed, skirted our table and didn’t stay to chat. A not insignificant point in Clod’s favor.

  “What kind of pizza do you like?” he asked.

  “The spinach and mushroom sounds good.”

  “After a day like we had? We’ll have the gut buster,” he told the waitress.

  I could have stood up for myself, but after a day like the one I’d had, I didn’t feel much like causing a scene.

  “Did you know Shorty’s a volunteer firefighter?” Clod asked. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Wouldn’t matter who went back behind that shack.”

  “Loom house.”

  “Whatever. Wouldn’t matter who hosed down its backside and checked for hot spots. The cow parsnip back there is up to your keister with no way around it. Up to your armpits, probably, and Shorty’s, too.” He thought that was pretty funny.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Oooh yeah,” he said. “Cow parsnip? You have no idea.”

  He was right—I had no idea at all—because I didn’t know what he was talking about and wasn’t about to ask. He carried most of the conversation, at the same time eating most of the pizza. That was fine with me. His topics, the gut buster, and the fact of our being out together were all out of my comfort zone.

  When I did get a question in edgewise, I tried to steer it toward asking about the drunk and disorderly Prescott. I wanted to know if he’d been picked up. Clod cut me off with a long story he thought was a thigh slapper about “picking up a puking drunk” when he was a rookie. The story was way too long. And vivid. To counterbalance it, my next question was short.