Yarn to Go

by Betty Hechtman

  “Among other things,” Olivia said under her breath. She picked up the needle holding the rows of lacy purple stitches and checked them over before taking the other needle and beginning on the next row. I was amazed at how effortless she made it seem.

  When Bree saw that Olivia had started to knit, she picked up her work, but her manner was totally different. She fretted about the yarn, grumbling that it seemed to keep changing colors and textures, and held up the portion she’d already done in front of Kris. “Is this the way it’s supposed to look?” Poor Bree wasn’t doing well at all at making something one of a kind.

  The large red plastic needles slipped out of Scott’s hand and hit the table with a loud noise, making the whole group jump. “Sorry,” he muttered, retrieving them and beginning to knit. As soon as he did the tension around his eyes began to soften. I know it was a sexist thought, but it still seemed strange to see this conservative business-type man with his close-cropped hair, pressed khakis and oxford cloth shirt knitting with those huge needles. For a moment he seemed peaceful, then he set down his work and looked around the group. “Have any of you seen any news media around here?” He didn’t wait for them to answer. “If you do and they ask you any questions about who is here, don’t mention me. Don’t even mention there is a man in your group.”

  “Scott, your secret is safe with us,” Lucinda said. She picked up her knitting with gusto. Her individual plan called for her to make a swatch with alternating stitches of knits and purls before she started her actual project. She showed off what she’d already done. The first thing I noticed was that both sides of her work looked the same.

  Sissy seemed to have completely lost herself in her kit. She’d done several rows in the golden yellow yarn and was poring over the directions as she picked up the metal hook with a rather sharp point.

  “What’s that?” I said. Sissy looked up, but before she could answer her mother had stepped in.

  “It’s a cable hook,” Melissa said to me before turning toward Kris. “I’m sure your intentions were good, but my daughter and I really should have had the same project. Neither of us have done cables, but if we were working together, I could help her.”

  “Mother,” Sissy said in a tired tone. “I can figure this out myself. And when I do, I’ll show you how to make cables.” Sissy had a triumphant little smile.

  “I can learn to make cables on my own. I was knitting when you couldn’t even hold a spoon,” Melissa said, her eyes flaring. Kris got Melissa to pick up her two colors of yarn and go back to working on her houndstooth scarf.

  “I’m glad to see some things are going along as usual,” I said to Kris as we both watched the mother and daughter try to tend to their own knitting.

  “Casey, do you need any help?” Kris asked. Oops, I’d been caught. I’d been preoccupied with watching the others and hadn’t even taken the pair of bamboo needles out of the bag. Now on the spot, I took out the needles and started to work on my swatch. The others might be able to knit and do something else, like talk, but for me it was a totally engrossing activity. And hardly relaxing. As I began to poke the right needle through the loop on the other needle, my shoulders immediately tensed. Or maybe they were tense to begin with after what had happened with Edie.

  Just as I got halfway through the row, the door to the room opened and Kevin St. John walked in accompanied by another man. They stepped to the head of the table and stopped next to Kris as she moved aside.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your session,” the manager said to the group. The expression on his round face was at odds with his words. I don’t think he was sorry at all. It was just another example of Kevin St. John displaying his authority. “This is Lieutenant Theodore Borgnine of the Cadbury by the Sea PD. He’d like to talk to you.”

  Lieutenant Borgnine reminded me of a bulldog. He had almost no neck on a fireplug-shaped body. His short, stubby graying fringe hinted at the full head of hair he must have had once. In place of a uniform, he wore a pair of gray slacks and a herringbone sports jacket that seemed a little misshapen. It was pretty clear he wasn’t interested in being a fashion plate.

  “I want you to know that we have the situation under control. Sorry, but we’ve had to close off the whole Sand and Sea building.” I cringed as he said it. So far I’d managed to keep that information from my group. He seemed immune to their looks of discomfort as he continued. “As soon as we’re finished with our investigation, we’ll be opening it up so you can access your rooms.” He surveyed the faces around the table. “I will be wanting to talk to each of you separately. And I have to ask something else of all of you. I see a number of you are from out of town, and I’m sure the shock of what’s happened to one of your group has made some of you want to change your plans and return home immediately. But I’m requesting you all stay put for the entire weekend.”

  It wasn’t so much what he said but how he said it. The emphasis on certain words made it clear that while he said he was making a request, he was really ordering everyone not to leave. It was probably something they taught at police school. “Ms. Feldstein, we’ll start with you.”

  This wasn’t our first meeting. He’d been the one to investigate my aunt’s accident. As I followed them to the door, I looked back at Kris and she gave me a reassuring nod that all would be well in my absence.

  Kevin walked out with us but left us at the fork in the road and went back to the Lodge building. Surprisingly, it seemed like business as usual on the grounds. A group of birders were heading toward the walkway through the dunes. A family hiked up the hill toward one of the residence buildings that wasn’t blocked off. The black cat was walking behind them.

  “Is he yours?” I asked. They didn’t seem aware of who I was referring to at first. Then the woman saw the cat.

  She shook her head and said that he looked like a stray. As they walked on, the cat wandered off into the brush. I’d never had a pet. My parents blamed it on the fact we lived in the Hancock building and had no yard. The downtown Chicago high rise probably wasn’t the best place for a pet, but I still had always wanted one. I wondered if the cat was hungry.

  Lieutenant Borgnine seemed impatient with my concern about the cat and urged me on to a meeting room near the entrance to Vista Del Mar. There were a bunch of chairs with desks on the arms and a table in the front. No fireplace or anything to make it cozy. I shivered partly from the chilly air inside and partly from the thought of being questioned.

  He gestured for me to take a seat as he leaned against the front table, holding on to his position of authority. He took out a pad and paper and asked for my name and address more as a formality.

  “So, Ms. Feldstein,” he said as he scribbled it down, “still baking for the Blue Door? The wife thinks your apple pie is the best. And still doing the muffins?” It was more of a statement than a question. Here I was all tensed up to be grilled about Edie and he was discussing my baking. What was that about?

  “Those muffins with the berries are the best.”

  “Oh, you mean the Merry Berries,” I said, and his expression darkened.

  “No, I mean the ones with the berries in them. No cutesy names in Cadbury. We call things what they are.” Lieutenant Borgnine held his pen poised to write. “So, you’ve taken over your aunt’s retreat business?”

  “Have you gotten any leads on her accident?” I said. He seemed surprised by the question and not happy with it.

  “It’s an open case. We’re still looking for the driver,” he said curtly.

  “But what if it wasn’t an accident?” I said. I was about to bring up my evidence, but he cut me off.

  “I understand you’re still upset about your aunt. But you have to leave it to the professionals. Now let’s get down to Edie Spaghazzi.” He wanted to know everything I knew about Edie, but mostly who might want to kill her.

  I mentioned she was a no-show at breakfast and tha
t I’d tried to call her but had gotten her voice mail. “Did you find her cell phone?” I asked.

  Lieutenant Borgnine did a double take. “I’m the one asking the questions. How about you just tell me about Mrs. Spaghazzi,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, sort of giving up. He started writing as I explained I’d really just met Edie. He pushed me to tell him more about her personality and if I thought she had any enemies. I started to shrug off the question about enemies, but I hesitated for a split second. Lieutenant Eagle Eyes picked up on the change in my expression and pressed me until I explained. “Like I said, I didn’t know her very well, but she seemed to stick her foot in her mouth a lot. I don’t think she meant any harm.”

  “But what you’re not saying is even if she didn’t mean any harm, she stepped on a few toes.”

  I nodded in agreement with his statement. He asked for specifics, but offhand I couldn’t remember any. “Sorry, but everything is a bit of a jumble in my mind right now.” He didn’t seem happy with my vague answer and started to ask about my dealings with her.

  “Like I said, I barely knew her,” I said. I explained I was simply tying up the loose ends of my aunt’s business with this retreat, which I suspected he already knew courtesy of Kevin St. John.

  Then his questions began to make me uneasy. “This retreat you’re running has to do with knitting, right?” I nodded. “And there were knitting needles stuck in the victim’s chest.” He looked at me intently. “Do you have any idea where they came from?”

  I said they were probably Edie’s, but he just looked at me and said, “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Lots of people have knitting needles. Just go look at Cadbury Yarn. They have all kinds. Or in the gift shop.” I explained that the owner of local yarn store had left supplies for sale there. “Gwen Selwyn said when guests saw the retreat people knitting, it seemed to make them want to knit, too.”

  “Like some kind of virus,” Lieutenant Borgnine said.

  “Not exactly. It’s supposed to be enjoyable and relaxing.”

  “Let’s just get down to it,” he said. “Who in your group has those steel double-pointed needles?”

  “You think it was someone in my group?” I said. I was surprised and defensive and said it couldn’t possibly be one of them. They all seemed so nice. He rolled his eyes.

  “Sometimes something happens to nice people and suddenly they’re not so nice.” He looked at me. “What about you? Do you have some of those sharp needles?”

  “Are you kidding? I barely know how to knit,” I said, trying to avoid a direct answer. But he was good and picked up on it.

  “So, you’re saying you don’t have any needles like that?” he said. Something in his voice made me uneasy.

  “You don’t honestly think that I—”

  “Just answer the question,” he said, interrupting.

  What I did next did not please him. I’d learned something when I’d done temp work at the detective agency. As much as Lieutenant Borgnine was trying to assert his authority, I wasn’t really under any obligation to answer his question or stay there.

  “That’s really all I have to say,” I said, getting out of the chair and heading for the door.

  9

  “DON’T YOU SEE? THEY THINK ONE OF US DID IT,” Bree squealed. I’d just walked back into the meeting room and told Kris that Lieutenant Borgnine was waiting to talk to her. As Kris headed to the door, she stopped when she got close and dropped her voice.

  “I did the best I could to keep them knitting and calm, but I’m afraid the natives are freaking out.” Kris looked back as Bree continued.

  “What if it is one of us?” Bree looked around at the group. “And then one by one we start disappearing. Like that Agatha Christie story.” She jumped up. “I don’t care what that police guy says. I’m leaving.” She made a rush toward the door Kris had just gone out of.

  “If you leave, it’s going to make you look guilty,” Scott said. The sound of a male voice startled us. “If I were a cop and one of this group bolted, I’d chase after her.”

  Bree looked stricken. “What would my boys do if I went to jail?” She started to cry. All the commotion made Olivia stop thinking about whatever seemed to be continually on her mind and she went over to Bree to comfort her, though with a few prickly comments.

  They all wanted to know what Lieutenant Borgnine had asked me and seemed apprehensive about their own turn with him. Even Lucinda seemed worried.

  “Do you think he’s checked up on us already?” she said, rocking her head with concern. “Tag doesn’t know, but I have a few outstanding parking tickets.” Poor Lucinda. Tag would definitely throw a fit about unpaid parking tickets. In his detail-oriented world, you never left anything like that hanging.

  “Isn’t Tag your husband?” Scott said. “If my wife had a few parking tickets I wouldn’t have a conniption fit.”

  “You don’t know Tag,” Lucinda said. Scott still seemed confused, and Lucinda tried to explain that Tag had been an engineer, and everything he did had to be perfect, just so. Every i dotted and t crossed.

  Olivia had gone back to working on her knitting. She seemed to go off in her own world again and looked lost in her stitches.

  “Didn’t Edie say something about a romantic story with you two on the cover of the menu at your restaurant?” Melissa said. “Something about high school sweethearts who reconnected?”

  I heard Lucinda suck in her breath. No way did she want it out there to anyone besides me that their ending wasn’t totally happily ever after. “Forget I mentioned anything,” Lucinda said.

  “So are you going to tell us what that cop asked you?” Sissy said, seeming agitated. “I’d like to know what to expect.” She stopped and swallowed.

  “I think we should be questioned together,” her mother said. “Sissy, you’re likely to say the wrong thing.”

  Sissy flashed her eyes. “Me say the wrong thing? You wrote the book on that. When you came to school with me in third grade, didn’t I tell you not to say that I hated math? And what did you say, first thing? ‘Miss Quinn, my daughter hates math.’”

  “You’re not going to bring that up again,” Melissa said. She looked at the rest of group and rolled her eyes. “So, I made a mistake. It was how many years ago?”

  Lucinda interrupted before their fuss could escalate. “You know, Casey did some work at a detective agency. She can probably wrap this case up before the cops figure it out.”

  It was my turn to suck in my breath, and suddenly I regretted that I hadn’t been more specific about my duties to Lucinda. I’d just been a temp and was either a detective’s assistant or an assistant detective, depending on your point of view. Most of my work had been tracking down people on the phone. In the month I’d worked there, I’d gotten quite good at getting information on people. But the closest thing to actual detective work I’d done was taking over a surveillance when one of the PIs had a toothache. It hadn’t turned out well. Just my luck I’d been dressed in a bright red top that day. The subject had noticed me sitting in the car and took off out the back door.

  I didn’t think that qualified me to figure out what happened to Edie. I was about to try to tone down what Lucinda had said, but Bree jumped in. “If you’re going to investigate Edie’s murder, you have to realize it wasn’t me. I don’t think it was any of us.”

  “But who else is there? Who even knew Edie besides us?” Melissa said. She nudged Olivia and urged her to join the discussion.

  “To start with, there was a guy sitting at the table with me last night. I saw him talking to her when she went to get her dinner,” Scott said.

  “What were they talking about?” Bree asked.

  Scott shrugged and blew out his breath. “Probably nothing important. I forgot that Edie picked up people wherever she went. You all know how I met Edie,” he said. “She found me in
the yarn department of a craft store. She figured out right away what was going on. I tried to act like I was just playing with the yarn. I tossed the skeins I was holding back into the bin they came from like I was playing basketball. But then she saw the needles I was holding. Edie wasn’t one to mince words. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re a closet knitter aren’t you?’ Right away she told me about this retreat and said it was just what I needed.”

  “Didn’t you say you went to her house to knit?” I asked.

  “Hey, I see where you’re going. No, I didn’t have something going on with her. I only went there a few times.”

  Kris came back in the room and saw that the only one knitting was Olivia.

  “How was it?” I asked, and she shrugged.

  “He wanted to know what I saw and what I knew about the group.” She looked around at everyone. “He asked me to send Scott in.”

  Reluctantly, the one male member of the group got up and headed toward the door. “You didn’t see any media people around, did you?” he asked Kris.

  She shook her head and he left.

  And so it went. When Scott came back, Bree went to talk to Lieutenant Borgnine. Lucinda went after her, and no matter what any of us could say, Melissa and Sissy went together. I’m sure Lieutenant Borgnine was thrilled about that. Olivia was the last one to go.

  By then the group had realized they’d missed lunch. Lucinda called Tag and talked him into having the cook whip up some treats.

  Just as Olivia returned from talking to Lieutenant Borgnine, Tag arrived with the food. The Blue Door was known for using as much local food as possible. Tag had brought thin-crust gourmet pizzas with fresh mozzarella cheese, tomatoes they grew behind the restaurant, garlic from Gilroy, artichoke hearts from Castorville and olives from Paso Robles. I knew the vegetables in the chopped salad came from a local farmer’s market that sold produce grown in the Salinas Valley and the dressing was made with olive oil from a boutique grower in Carmel Valley. He’d brought a selection of fruit—raspberries from Watsonville, strawberries from Oxnard, grapes from Delano—and a selection of cheeses from a small producer in Point Reyes Station.