A Pattern for Murder (The Bait & Stitch Cozy Mystery Series, Book 1)

by Ann Yost

  Chakra was still attached to the door and Miss Thyra was standing where I'd left her, her hand on the switches on the wall. She asked a question which I had to lip-read to hear.

  "Is it over, then?" I nodded. "Is he dead?" I nodded, again. She flipped the switches off. The sudden silence was deafening. She disappeared onto the landing and came back with the comforter from my old bed. She placed it around me then moved to Chakra. I watched her pull a hairpin out of her tight bun and work the mechanism on the handcuffs.

  "You saved my life," I said, finally. "The light and the foghorn caused him to lose his balance and fall. What made you think of it?"

  "You use what is at hand," Miss Thyra said, her attention on the lock she was picking. "The difficult part was deciding when to use it. Too early and it might have been useless. Too late, and," she shrugged and left the thought unfinished but I knew. Too late and I'd have already been plucked off the tower like the unlucky Itsy-Bitsy spider.

  "I tried to stab him with the pointed end of a compass." I thought it might be better if I told them everything. Just in case Miss Thyra felt guilty for another death. "I didn't make contact but I think he was a little thrown off. It really was a joint effort."

  "A joint effort of more than just the three of us," Miss Thyra said. "God helps those who help themselves." She smiled, and, for the first time in days, she looked happy. "It says so in the Moomins." She looked at me. "Henrikki, I think we should use your little wireless telephone to call the police."

  The cellphone in my pocket was as drenched as I, so I used Chakra's phone. Mrs. Touleheto responded after only eight rings.

  "Good evening," she said, cheerily. "What can I do you for?"

  "Hi, Mrs. Too. It's Hatti."

  "Oh my land. Well, bless my stars."

  "Why are you blessing your stars?"

  "Catastrophe! Are you sitting down?"

  My heart started to race. "Yes. What is it? My parents? Sofi?"

  "Waino," she said. "I ran into Hilda Aho this morning down at Jokinen's Bakery in Hancock. She said Waino is smitten with the goalie on the Nimrods hockey team."

  "A boy?"

  "No, no, the girl's hockey team. He's been helping coach them this summer. The trouble is she's only a freshman so she'll be around for a while."

  "She's fourteen? Waino is interested in a girl who's fourteen?"

  "She may have been held back a year. He was, you know."

  "It's all right, Mrs. Too. Waino and I are just friends. I'm married, you know."

  "That hardly counts, Henrikki. You can't have a baby with a husband who is living somewhere else."

  "How true. Well, I called for Ellwood and the sheriff. We've got another body out at the lighthouse."

  "That is certainly very careless of you, Hatti," she said. "There's simply no more room at the morgue. In any case, I got a call from Riitta Lemppi some time ago. They're all on their way out there. Even Doc Kukka. But you had better call Arvo Maki. There's no way they can get a body into the Corvette."

  The first pair of booted footsteps sounded on the circular stairs right after I hung up. Suddenly the little watch room was full of people, one of whom scooped me up, blankets and all.

  "Hatti," Max said, his face an odd color. "Are you all right?"

  I couldn't help grinning. My superhero had finally turned up. I sighed, reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck and he brushed his lips against my cheek.

  "I'm taking you downstairs," he said, roughly.

  Downstairs? To the bedrooms? My heart gave a little jump.

  "I need to talk to her," Ellwood said.

  "Not," Max said, "until she's had some coffee."

  The words might not be out of Prince Charming's playbook but they worked for me. I grinned at him.

  "You know me so well."

  Sometime later, coffee cups in hand, Miss Thyra, Chakra and I got through our entire story. We had to tell it several times as Sheriff Clump did not immediately grasp some of the details. He couldn't, for example, understand why Miss Thyra had moved Alex Martin's body on Sunday morning or why Erik Sundback had moved it back.

  Riitta and Tom sat next to each other on a bench, chosen, I suspected, because it allowed them to touch from shoulder to hip. It looked as if they were friends. I hoped it was more.

  "Erik seemed like such a good guy," Arvo said. "A great guy. He devoted hundreds of hours to the lighthouse project. I don't know what we would have done without him, in fact. He handled all the paperwork. All the finances."

  "A prince among men," Max murmured in a voice that only I could hear.

  "I think the temptation was just too much," I said to Arvo. "He as much as told us that. He had his eye on a big new fifty-foot yacht and there was all that money just sitting there with no one paying any attention to it. I suppose he was justified in thinking Alex Martin wasn't interested since he'd never shown any interest in his mother or her fortune during the past twenty years."

  "You said the trust officer was informed that Martin was told about the will and its provisions last fall," Ellwood said. "Do you think that was true?"

  "I think Erik told them it was true. I think he produced paperwork to that effect. I don't think he actually contacted Alex. If he had done so, Alex would have shown up on the Keweenaw a lot sooner."

  "Five million dollars plus a lighthouse is a lot of property," Tom Kukka said, "but not worth a man's life. It's too bad he ever came back at all."

  "Except," Riitta pointed out, "that he found out about Danny. And Danny found out about him."

  "So that's it, then," Clump said. "The lawyer's the one that did the deed. He kilt the old lady, too. The deaf one."

  "And Captain Jack," Chakra reminded him. "Hatti and I found his body down in the cistern in the cellar."

  "Criminently," Clump said. He looked at Arvo. "That's two bodies down at the morgue and two more here. Good thing you brought the meat wagon and whatnot."

  Chapter 38

  Ten days later, on another Saturday night, we gathered again at the lighthouse. This time it was essentially a family party, an attempt to banish ghosts, to launch a reset for the Painted Rock Retirement Home, to welcome back my globetrotting parents and, most importantly of all, to celebrate an engagement.

  "You'd never know this was the same place," I said to Chakra as we strolled along the shoreline, admiring the slowly setting sun, the mild ripples on the lake, the slight, fresh breeze and the fact that we were no longer in the clutches of a murderer.

  We both gazed out at the island.

  "It looks so forlorn," she said.

  "It isn't. Not really. Agate Island is just waiting for the next child who wants to explore its hills and caves, to collect rocks and shells and to lie on the grass and daydream." I swallowed hard then added, "I'm sorry about Alex."

  Her eyes were red but she nodded.

  "I'm sorry, too. In any case, it's time to move on. I've decided to go back to California, but not to Hollywood. I like teaching yoga and meditation and self-defense. I may even keep my name."

  "May I make a suggestion? Look up Finn once you get there."

  She grinned. "Maybe I'll do that. As I recall, he had a great sense of humor. What about you, Hatti? Are you going to stay here?"

  "I think so. Everybody's excited about the yarn shop, especially Aunt Ianthe, Miss Irene and Miss Thyra."

  "Watch out. Pretty soon they'll start calling you Miss Hatti. What about your husband? Has he gotten in touch? He must have read about this in the paper or online."

  I stared out at the lake. Tonight the waves were gentle. They reminded me of lacy-edged doilies.

  "I called him," I said, unsure of why I was telling Chakra. I hadn't told anyone else. "His office manager told me he's in South America working with a small tribe on a land-and-water issue. No Wifi. No internet. No television, apparently." I hesitated. "The thing is, he didn't go alone. He's hired somebody new since I was in D.C. A recent law school grad. A Native American." I took in a deep breat
h. "The woman I spoke with had been my friend. She said this new employee has a big crush on Jace. I guess that's not surprising."

  Chakra looked at me.

  "What was the problem between you, two, anyway?"

  "I told you, I don't know."

  "You must have some idea. Was it ethnicity? Is that why you feel threatened by this new lawyer?"

  I made a face. "I don't even know if the problem had anything to do with me. Jace had a tough childhood, unemployed, alcoholic, single mother, a much younger troublesome half-brother, life on a Canadian rez where they were never really accepted. Did I tell you he never even met my family? We met and eloped and moved to D.C. Probably not the best way to start a stable married life."

  "You can't just drift, you know, Hatti. I don't say stalk him the way I did with Alex, but you have to resolve this one way or the other if you want to be free of it. If you want to move on."

  She looked over at the dock where two people were silhouetted against the sunset. One of them was Max Guthrie, who was leaning against the railing with his arms crossed over his chest. Next to him, and half-hidden, was a woman facing the other way, looking out at the lake. She had her arms crossed, too. They appeared both intimate and hostile and I squinted into the lowering sun.

  "That's Sonya," I said, with a start. "Normally she and Max give each other a wide berth."

  "Hatti," Chakra said, with concern in her voice, "how interested are you in Max?"

  "I like him. Why?"

  She shrugged. "That doesn't exactly look like a neutral scene. Do those two have any history?"

  "I doubt it. They're both newcomers and, from everything I've seen in the last few months, Sonya's the only woman on the Keweenaw who doesn't start drooling when he saunters into a room."

  "Just watch your step, okay? I'd hate for you to get hurt again. I've got to get home. I want to make an early start in the morning. Walk me to my car?"

  We hugged good-bye and I watched her drive off through the pines in the slanting rays of the sun and then I trudged around the house and back to the lawn. Riitta, standing by a makeshift lemonade stand, waved to me and I made my way toward her, pausing briefly to speak with my parents, the pastor and his wife, the Hakalas and Laplanders, Arvo and Pauline Maki and Mrs. Moilanen who were seated in a circle of webbed lawn chairs. Sofi, her daughter, Charlie, Elli and Danny Thorne, along with Barb Hakala and Astrid Laplander were lighting sparklers for the younger Laplander girls and the Sorensens's grandchildren and Aunt Ianthe, Miss Irene and Miss Thyra were on the porch playing a game of canasta, with Tom Kukka as their fourth.

  Riitta handed me a glass of cold lemonade and we sat in a couple of lawn chairs on the side of the yard.

  "This is loaded with sugar but it's to die for. Have I thanked you enough for what you did for me?"

  I took a long swallow and licked my lips.

  "More than enough. The lemonade hits the spot."

  "C'mon, Hatti. If you hadn't taken charge of the investigation, Tom would still be in jail. Sheriff Clump would have accepted his fake confession and that would be that. Thanks to you, I'm happier than I have any right to be." She looked over at the front porch and, as if he felt her eyes on him, Tom looked up and grinned at her.

  "That's a guy in love," I said, feeling a pang of self-pity.

  "We both are. I'd have married him, anyway, but, oh, Hatti, I'm just so thrilled I'll be able to give him a family."

  "Have you told anyone else yet?" She shook her head.

  "I asked him not to mention it to the ladies. They wouldn't approve of us, you know, anticipating the wedding vows."

  "Tell me the truth," I said. "You never planned to marry Erik Sundback did you?"

  "I considered it," she said, honestly. "He was so helpful with the lighthouse and he's older. It wouldn't matter to him if we didn't have children. But I'd abandoned the idea before I found out about the baby and, luckily, before I found out he was the murderer. There was some quality in him that I didn't trust. Something similar to that streak in Alex. I have no problem with masculine strength but this was something different, a selfishness that bordered on cruelty. You know, Alex could have forgiven Erik. He could have accepted Erik's offer to pay back the money and four people who are dead would still be alive."

  "How's Danny taking the fact of being a multi-millionaire?"

  "Surprisingly well. He's investing it until he finishes college and then he wants to do something useful with it like starting a foundation to promote economic growth and education in the UP. He'll use Alex's money responsibly, and that's all I can ask."

  "He had a good role model growing up," I said.

  "The best," Riitta agreed. "There is no one more unselfish than Tom Kukka."

  "I meant you," I said. "Tom's a dear but you're a saint."

  "He is a dear, isn't he," she said, ignoring the compliment to herself. "He's just about perfect."

  "Henrikki!" My Aunt Ianthe was yelling at me from her seat at the canasta table on the front porch. "When are you going to open the yarn store then? Irene and Thyra and I want to buy yarn to make a layette for Riitta and Tom!"

  Riitta made a face at me.

  "I'd trust him with my life," she said, "just not with my secrets."

  "And Henrikki," my aunt continued, in a voice that reached everyone in the lighthouse yard, "we will need yarn for lots of layette sets. Your biological clock is ticking, too. Now that Jack is gone, maybe you could get back with your other husband."

  "Forgiveness is mine, saith the Lord," Miss Irene said. "And there is a time for every purpose under heaven."

  Riitta laughed at me.

  "What's a little humiliation if you're happy?" And then her smile dimmed. "Are you happy, Hatti?"

  I put aside the twinge of doubt about whether or not to stay on the Keweenaw and the regret about my short-lived marriage. We only had today. I'd learned that when I was up on the tower hanging on by my fingernails. We only had today and today I was with the people I loved most in the place I loved most.

  "Yes," I said, honestly, "I am happy. And I'm home."

  The End

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  Here's an excerpt from

  A DOUBLE POINTED MURDER

  The Bait & Stitch Cozy Mystery Series

  Book Two

  ...or jump to...

  Hatti's Favorite Oven-Baked Pancake

  ~

  The girl with the hole in her chest was no Jane Doe. She was not only known to me, she was a relation.

  If you count adultery as one of the ties that bind.

  Cricket Koski, a barmaid from the Black Fly Roadhouse down in Chassell, had been the catalyst in my sister's divorce three years earlier, a breach that was only now beginning to heal. I shook my head. I was pretty sure, like ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure, that the reconciliation between my sister Sofi and her ex, Lars, would not survive the discovery of the 'Insect' in Lars's bed. The fact that Cricket was dead would not make that much difference to my sister.

  I should probably point out that I'm not a cop or even a private detective but I've had a year of law school and, even more importantly, I'm available. Up here on the remote witch's finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula, that's a big deal. So when Lars called me from his jail cell, of course I came.

  The barmaid was about my age (twenty-eight) and, as far as I knew, had lived as innocuous a life as my own. (Although, in my own defense, my professional life had experienced a slight uptick recently when I took over the ope
ration of pops's bait shop and added knitting supplies. My personal life was, of course, a more dismal story.) But the point was, that I could think of no reason for anyone to want to turn Cricket Koski into a shish kebab. Anyone other than my sister.

  "Weird wound."

  I jumped. I'd completely forgotten that my presence at the Frog Creek morgue at zero-dark-hundred was thanks to Waino Aho, the sheriff's deputy with whom I'd experienced my first kiss fifteen years earlier during Vacation Bible School at St. Heikki's. I gazed up at the handsome, if vacant, Nordic features then back at the perfect shape of the aperture underneath the victim's perky left breast. The surrounding skin was smooth and the wound was bloodless.

  "A wormhole," Waino said.

  I knew he wasn't referring to the hypothetical, topological feature that would be (if it exists) a shortcut through time and space. When Waino said "wormhole" he was referring to the orifice in a piece of fruit created by a burrowing maggot.

  "A nail-gun coulda did it."

  "Maybe. Or a skewer."

  His eyes widened. "A what?"

  "One of those long, metal things that people roast marshmallows on."

  "I use a birch stick."

  I nodded. Birch sticks come in very handy up here in Northern Michigan, especially as vihta in the sauna.

  "Something long and thin," I said, following my own train of thought. The truth slammed into me with the force of a felled tree. Triumph at my extraordinary deductive powers caused my voice to shake. "A tool with a long shaft, tapered at the end, and made out of the same carbon fiber composite that is used in stealth fighter jets and formula one racing cars."

  Waino stared at me, uncomprehendingly, as I paused for dramatic effect.

  "A knitting needle," I said. "A size-five, double-pointed knitting needle like the ones we use on mittens and socks."

  His blue eyes met mine and my childhood buddy's sudden mental leap made my heart plummet.

  "If she was kilt with a knittin' needle, Hatti," he said, "your sister musta did it, then."

  ~

  To purchase

  A Double Pointed Murder