Died in the Wool

by Mary Kruger

  Joe Camacho was another matter. Since the farm had been in his family for generations, his motive was stronger than Diane’s. Josh kept coming back to where Edith was killed. Why had it been in that particular place? Certainly Joe could have taken Diane’s key and gotten in there, but would Edith Perry have gone along with him, or trusted him enough to let him get close enough to strangle her? It seemed doubtful. It was even more doubtful since Diane said that Joe had been there all morning. Yet Josh would have to look closely at him. There were too many connections to this farm in the case, particularly the yarn.

  That left him back where he’d started, with no likely suspects and no idea what had happened. He was missing something, though, something that had been said or not said, or something that he’d seen. The question was, what?

  Restless, dissatisfied, he turned, taking in the view of the farm: the old house, the barn and other outbuildings, the fields stretching in both directions. This time he looked harder at the long, low shed that extended from the back of the house, its door ajar. It was so crowded and cluttered that Josh wandered over to look in, out of sheer curiosity and amusement. It didn’t seem as if the Camachos had ever thrown anything away. Crammed inside were old furniture and equipment, bits of metal he couldn’t identify, an old rocking horse with rusted springs. He would never have expected to see such things, but someone obviously thought them worth saving. He pondered that as he looked past the doorway into the dimness, seeing bricks and open bags of cement mix, a trowel crusted with mortar, various and sundry tools, and a pile of wood.

  That caught his attention. Scraps of wood, painted and unpainted; long, wide boards and short, narrow sticks; old laths and discarded window fittings. He now knew what he’d seen and noted without being aware of it. The solution to Edith’s murder might very well be found in the shed.

  eight

  IT WAS QUIET IN ARIADNE’S WEB again on Tuesday morning, the first day in the week the shop was open. Edith’s wake had been last night, and today was her funeral. Later on, customers were sure to come in to tell her about it, Ari thought, but for now she was alone. She hoped Diane would call her as well, but she doubted it. For some reason Diane was keeping very quiet about what Josh had wanted on her farm on Saturday, even to Ari. That bothered Ari more than anything that had happened after Edith’s death.

  Forcing her mind away from that worry, she clicked the computer’s mouse to bring up a screen, and regarded it with a frown. The disk Kaitlyn had left her last weekend contained all of the work she’d done on the web page, which she’d shown Ari with great eagerness.

  “See, I found a graphic with balls of yarn for the background. Isn’t it great?” she’d said.

  “Yes. I like the pastel shades. I like the logo, too.” Ari ran the cursor over the logo on the page. It depicted a spider hanging from a web, holding a pair of knitting needles from which trailed another ball of yarn. Above the logo was the headline: “Designs by Ari,” with a smaller headline below reading, “Ariadne Evans, Professional Designer.”

  “I do, too. The spiderweb’s made of yarn. That’s what makes it work.” Kaitlyn smiled. “It’ll make your site stand out from all the others.”

  Ari looked at her. “There are that many?”

  “A lot of people are selling their designs on the Internet. I like the picture of you, too.”

  Ari looked with disfavor at the photo below the logo. In it she modeled one of her designs, an oatmeal-colored tunic with colorful autumn leaves splashed across the front of it. Knitted in seed stitch, it had a wide neck edged only with a row of single crochet stitches, and long, loose sleeves. It was one of her favorite sweaters, but seeing herself on the screen made her uncomfortable. “I still don’t see the purpose of it, Kait.”

  “It makes everything more personal. Isn’t it great that it lines up with the logo? I had to use tables to do it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ari said, without the slightest idea of what Kaitlyn was talking about.

  “Now, look, down here is a link to the patterns.” Kaitlyn clicked on the line of text, and after a moment another screen came up. This one had a background of stockinette stitch in pale gray, and on it were displayed the names of Ari’s designs: “October,” “Pastel Cables,” “Christmas Belles.” Only the caption “October” had a picture above it, the one of Ari. “I’ll be adding the other photos to it soon. A customer can click on either the name or the picture to get to the pattern.” As she spoke, Kaitlyn moved the cursor to the picture, and yet another screen came up, this one with a larger view of the sweater, with a description underneath. Instructions on how to buy the pattern were below that. “See? You’re set up to take credit cards already, or a customer can pay by check.”

  “Is it safe?”

  Kaitlyn stared at her. “Ari, haven’t you ever bought anything online?”

  “No. I don’t trust it.”

  “It’s perfectly safe. We’re going to use secure technology. No one can see anyone else’s personal information.”

  “Oh,” Ari said, mystified, and watched as Kaitlyn took her through the steps of buying either a pattern or a full kit, which included yarn. There was a page for name and address, another for method of payment, still another for shipping, and then a final page, which confirmed the purchase. It seemed involved to Ari, but Kait had assured her that it would work.

  “Once the order is in, the customer gets an e-mail confirming it, and you get an e-mail with the order,” Kaitlyn went on.

  “Which I then have to ship out.”

  “Yes, the charge goes through as usual, and you’ll have to keep track of inventory as usual. Eventually, you should e-mail patterns as attachments.”

  Ari sat back. She was impressed, if a little mystified. Even though she used the computer for keeping records and for designing her projects, anything else was foreign to her. “I don’t know, Kaitlyn,” she said slowly. “Oh, not the website. You’ve done a great job with it. The design is beautiful.”

  Kaitlyn preened. “Thank you. I’ve worked hard on it.”

  “I appreciate it. But to sell this way, instead of helping a customer find what’s right for her—I don’t know.”

  “You’ll have enough designs that people can pick what they want. It’ll be almost as good as freelancing your designs. No, better, because people will know they’re yours.” Kaitlyn’s eyes glittered. “You could have your own line. The Ariadne Evans line.”

  Ari laughed. Kaitlyn’s ambition was not unusual, but her fervor was. “Yes, well, let’s see if I get any customers before we go that far.”

  “You will,” Kaitlyn said confidently. “Now, we should think about promotion….”

  Promotion, Ari thought after Kaitlyn had gone out a little while later, leaning back with her elbows on the arms of her comfortable, old-fashioned desk chair with her fingertips pressed together. Advertisement. There were ways to get her name out to people on the web that wouldn’t cost her a penny, Kaitlyn had told her. It all sounded like a lot of work, and so foreign to what she did. Ari was resigned to the behind-the-scenes work that came with owning a business, and she’d done her fair share of promoting her work. What she liked best, though, was design, as well as the daily contact with people who enjoyed the same things she did. Life was changing, she thought and, for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she shivered.

  The ringing of the phone startled her out of her reverie. Darned thing, she thought, and picked up. “Ariadne’s Web.”

  “Mrs. Evans, this is Deborah Flaherty.”

  Ari snapped to attention. Mrs. Flaherty was the principal of Megan’s school. “Is Megan all right?” she demanded.

  “Yes, she’s not hurt.”

  “Hurt!”

  “Mrs. Evans, we have a problem.”

  Ari stood with her hand to her throat. “What kind of problem?”

  “Megan has been involved in a fight.”

  “A fight? Megan? That doesn’t sound like her.”

  “No, it doesn’t, which i
s why I’m so concerned. I’d appreciate it if you could come in.”

  “But I don’t have anyone to cover the shop,” she began, and then stopped. Megan was more important. “I’ll be right there,” she said, and fairly flew out of the door, flipping the sign to CLOSED. Damn, of all days for her not to have taken her car, she thought as she strode toward her house. Maybe she should give up her habit of walking whenever she could.

  “Ari,” a voice called, and she looked sharply at the street. She had been vaguely aware that a car was cruising beside her, but hadn’t paid attention to it. “Is something wrong?”

  “Josh.” She put her hand to her hair, looked away, and then back. “I can’t talk. I have to go.”

  Josh leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in. I’ll drive you.”

  Again Ari looked distractedly down the street, and then ran to the car. “Thanks. I’m all discombobulated,” she said as she climbed in.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “It’s Megan.”

  “Is she all right?” he asked, as sharply as she had a few minutes ago.

  “I think so, but I have to get to the school.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  She gave him a quick, distracted smile. Who said there was never a cop around when you needed one? “No, just to my house, please, so I can get my own car. I’ve never been in a police car before.”

  “Yeah. Listen, Ari, when you have the chance, we have to talk.”

  “Okay,” she said, pulling on the door handle as Josh stopped in front of her house. Nothing mattered now, not her shop, not whatever was happening in the murder investigation. Megan was the only important thing.

  A few minutes later, Ari was sitting in the principal’s office at Megan’s school with Mrs. Flaherty looking gravely at her. Megan was in the outer office, and the face she’d turned up to Ari was filled with a mixture of misery and guilty defiance. Ari had time only to put her hand on her daughter’s head before Mrs. Flaherty called her in.

  “They won’t say what started it,” Mrs. Flaherty said from behind her desk. It was a position Ari had been in herself many times, but not on Megan’s behalf. “What everyone does say is that Megan swung at Jacob first.”

  “Jacob Pina?” Ari said in disbelief. “He has to be three inches taller than she is.”

  “Regardless, that is what Mrs. Dyer saw.”

  Why did every principal speak in the same stilted, formal way? Ari wondered. “What did happen?”

  “The children were lined up waiting to go back inside from recess,” Mrs. Flaherty explained. “Mrs. Dyer didn’t see anything out of the ordinary until Megan suddenly turned and swung at Jacob and hit his ear.” Jacob, of course, had started blubbering almost immediately. At least, that was Ari’s interpretation. Jacob was the sort who blubbered.

  “What did he have to say?” she asked with assumed calmness.

  “He claims he didn’t do anything.”

  “Claims?”

  “No one saw him.”

  Which meant that Mrs. Flaherty likely had the same doubts she did, Ari thought. “Then he said something. Mrs. Flaherty, you know as well as I do that Jacob’s been a troublemaker since kindergarten.”

  “Apparently not in this case.”

  “Oh, come on! He’s always done things when no one’s looking and gotten away with them. Once he grabbed Megan’s snack when he’d finished his, and when she tried to get it back, the teacher thought she was taking his.”

  “Well—”

  “And another time he threw spitballs at Shannon Souza, but no one saw that, either.”

  “Mrs. Evans, in both cases the teacher disciplined him.”

  “As well as Megan and Shannon.”

  “Well—”

  “He must have started it somehow.”

  Mrs. Flaherty folded her hands on her desk and gazed at Ari. “Mrs. Evans, I know no parent likes to think their child can act out like this.”

  “Megan doesn’t.”

  “This isn’t the first time Megan’s misbehaved.”

  That rocked Ari. “What?”

  “Megan didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” Ari said, stunned, but understanding Megan’s reasons, too. When Ari was young she’d never told her mother when she’d gotten into trouble at school. Eileen had always found out, of course, which had made the resultant discipline that much worse. For the first time, Ari sympathized with her mother. “What has she done?”

  “Talking in class, several times. Not doing her work when she was supposed to. Bothering the other children when they were working. At first she got warnings, but Mrs. Dyer had to put her name on the board. You know that she puts a child’s name on the board with checkmarks for each breach of discipline, and when there are three checks, the child has detention.”

  “But Megan never has.”

  “No, having her name on the board seemed to settle her down,” Mrs. Flaherty agreed. “But she did get sent to me yesterday.”

  “What? Why?”

  “For talking back to Mrs. Dyer.”

  “Megan?” Ari’s voice rose in disbelief.

  “Mrs. Evans, we were all as surprised as you are. Megan’s always been a well-behaved little girl. This pattern is troubling.” Mrs. Flaherty’s gaze was almost pitying. “Of course, she’s been under a lot of stress lately.”

  “Yes. The divorce upset her.”

  “I meant, what happened in your shop.”

  That rocked her again. In her concern for Megan, she’d forgotten the events of the past days. “I’ve tried to keep that from her.”

  “Children know these things. Even if you haven’t shown that you’re upset, she senses it.”

  Something occurred to Ari. “Has there been a lot of talk about it in school?”

  “Among the teachers, of course.”

  “I meant among the kids. Children know these things,” Ari mimicked, which earned her a frown.

  “Be that as it may.” Mrs. Flaherty tapped together some papers that were on her desk, while Ari marveled again that someone actually spoke in such a way. “We do have a problem.”

  Ari nodded. “What do you suggest I do?”

  “I’m sending her home for the day. Of course, this is not a reward for her.”

  Ari wanted to roll her eyes. “Megan likes school.”

  Mrs. Flaherty nodded. “I’m going to make an appointment for Megan with the school counselor.”

  “What will she do?” Ari asked, surprised by the fierce surge of protectiveness she felt.

  “She’ll talk to Megan. The best way to deal with children of this age is to have them draw pictures to express their feelings.” Mrs. Flaherty rose. “We’ll find out whatever’s wrong.”

  Ari stood up, too, wanting nothing more than to leave this office and get to Megan. Her feelings were so mixed and muddled that she couldn’t figure them out. “Thank you,” she said, and went out.

  In the outer office, Megan sat forward on a chair, with Jacob across from her. He was blubbering again, this time to his mother, who shot Ari a venomous look. All Ari’s attention, though, was on Megan, who was stiff, her eyes on the floor. Poor kid, she thought. Why hadn’t she realized that Megan was so affected by what had happened?

  Someone had brought her things to the office. Ari helped her get into her jacket and picked up her backpack. “Lots of homework tonight?” she asked as they walked out.

  Megan nodded, her gaze still down. Acting by instinct, Ari dropped the backpack and went down on one knee, doing what she wished she’d done when she’d first saw Megan, before going into Mrs. Flaherty’s office. She pulled her close. “Oh, honey,” she said as Megan started crying, and rocked her back and forth, murmuring soothing nonsense.

  After a while Megan calmed down, and Ari rose to her feet, reaching for the backpack. “Come on, kiddo,” she said, holding out her hand. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”

  The phone was ringing as Ari and Megan walked into the house sometime later
. “Oh, heck,” Ari said, lunging at it before whoever it was could hang up. Megan, head down, walked past her and put her backpack onto the counter, and it was only then that it occurred to Ari that she could have let the answering machine pick up. Too late now. She’d get rid of whoever it was, and then go take care of her daughter.

  “Ari?” Diane’s voice came over the receiver.

  Ari straightened. Diane’s voice sounded strained. “Di, what is it?”

  “That detective of yours.”

  “He’s not my detective,” Ari protested.

  “Huh.”

  “He’s not.”

  “You had lunch with him the other day.”

  “Yes, but he only wanted to ask me some questions.”

  “At the bandstand?” Diane said skeptically. “I know he’s cuter than Ted—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Di!”

  “Well, he is.”

  “All right, yes, he is, but he’s still just a cop and I’m still just a suspect.”

  “Even after what Ronnie Dean said?”

  “There’s still this small amount of time when I could have done it, and you know I could conceivably have reason to.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re working together, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I know you, Ari.”

  “Damn,” Ari said after a minute.

  “Strong language for you.”

  “No one’s supposed to know. He could get in trouble.”

  “So could you,” Diane pointed out.

  “You’re my friend.”

  “Yeah,” Diane said, with more skepticism than Ari had ever heard from her. “Anything I tell you will go back to him.”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “No?”

  “Viking honor,” Ari said.

  Diane laughed. “God, I haven’t heard that since high school!”

  “Did I ever go back on my word?” Ari demanded. “Did you?”

  “No,” Diane said finally.

  “What did he want Saturday? You never did tell me.”

  “No, my lawyer doesn’t want me to talk. But, Ari, I can’t keep things from you.”