Dyer Consequences

by Maggie Sefton

  “Oh, what a mess.” Glancing to the large loom in the corner of the room, Kelly didn’t see any obvious damage. Neither did she see any bottles or liquids poured on the floors or over the yarns. “At least they didn’t pour wine over it.” She tiptoed around the pile and through the doorway into the next room, trying not to step on the gorgeous fibers.

  This time, she saw no discernible pile. Instead, skeins of yarns and knitted garments were scattered everywhere, covering the floor entirely. At least a foot deep in yarns. The baskets and bins lining these walls gaped at her—empty. She could see through the arched doorway ahead into the main room and the library table—the gathering place. The table and floors were now filled with books, which the vandals had swept from the shelves.

  She tried to step carefully through the foot-deep blanket of yarn covering the floor. “This will take days for them to sort through. You and Mimi both have insurance, don’t you?”

  Pete didn’t answer, because Mimi burst through the front door into the foyer, her coat open and red knitted scarf dangling. She came to a halt. “Oh, no!” she wailed, hands to her face. “Look at this . . . it’s . . . it’s awful!”

  “I don’t think the yarns are hurt, Mimi, just thrown on the floor,” Kelly offered, picking up several fluffy bundles of sherbet colors.

  “Why would anyone do this?” Mimi said as she bent to pick up skeins that littered the foyer. “I never have understood vandals. Pete, did they hurt the café?”

  Pete nodded dolefully and Mimi sucked in her breath, hand to her mouth. “Ohhhh, noooo! What did they do?”

  “Threw food and wine all over the place,” Kelly said. “It’s a mess. Spaghetti sauce, wine, beer, smeared over everything. It’s nasty.”

  “Yeah,” Pete said, releasing a discouraged sigh as he turned toward the café. “I’d better go and call that insurance agent. I’ll see you later.”

  “Ohhhh, Kelly, this will take forever to clean up.” Mimi shook her head, staring balefully as she surveyed the rooms. “Oh, look at all the books on the floor. And patterns, too. I hope they’re not torn.”

  Rosa charged through the door then, and her eyes popped wide at the scene. “Madre de Dios,” she said softly, scanning the wreckage. “This is terrible!”

  Kelly started clearing a path through the yarns, picking up skeins and tossing them into the corners, creating a walkway. “How’d they get in, Mimi? Did they break the lock on the front door?” she asked, as she watched Rosa start clearing another pathway.

  Mimi checked the heavy walnut door. “No, they didn’t,” she said, peering at the door handle and lock. “There’re no marks. Oh, my word, was the door left unlocked?”

  “No way, Mimi,” Rosa protested, her arms filled with bunches of fat cotton chenille. “We always lock that door. And Connie was working at closing last night, and she’s a bear about that, remember? Her house was broken into once.”

  “Well, the back door to the café was okay, too,” Kelly added. “No signs of a break-in. And Pete always locks that front door when he leaves in the afternoon. I know, because I searched for a way to get inside the shop one night when I left my bag here with my cell phone. All those doors were locked tight.”

  Mimi let go of the front door, and it closed with a solid thud. She stood, staring out into the shop, both hands at her breast now. “Ohhhh, no . . .” she whispered. “Tracy has been staying late working with the dyes. Could she have forgotten to lock the door when she left last night?”

  Rosa looked surprised. “I don’t think so. Tracy stayed late on Wednesday and Thursday nights, too, and she remembered to lock the doors. I showed her how to do it. Why would she forget on Friday?”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Mimi said, worrying her lower lip. “Tracy’s such a conscientious girl. I can’t imagine it slipping her mind.”

  Kelly pondered for a second. “I noticed the lights on late last night when Steve brought me home after dinner. I didn’t think anything of it because I knew Tracy was probably downstairs and up to her arms in the dye tubs again. She’s gone crazy for it. You’ve got a devoted pupil, Mimi. But I agree with Rosa, I can’t see Tracy forgetting something as important as locking the door. She impresses me as being very careful.”

  Rosa started arranging the chenille yarns inside the antique cabinet where they’d been previously displayed. “Speaking of downstairs, I’d better go check the basement to see if they trashed it as well.” She started picking her way through the room, clearing a path as she did.

  “Please, God, not the basement,” Mimi prayed as she closed her eyes. “All those bags of fleece and dyed yarns . . . I don’t want to think about what they could do down there.”

  Following Rosa’s lead, Kelly started filling empty yarn bins and shelves. Sorting could come later. Right now, they had to find the floor again. “Maybe they didn’t even get to the basement, Mimi. It was hard enough for us to get around down there when we were working over the tubs.” She pictured the rabbit warren of rooms below.

  “Lord, I hope so,” Mimi said, stuffing springy balls of eyelash yarn into the antique cabinet. “I hope they found what little money we had in the cash box and ran off—”

  A muffled scream cut through the air, silencing Mimi. She stared at Kelly, mouth open. “Oh, my God! Was that Rosa?”

  “I think it was,” Kelly said, dumping the rest of the yarn onto the floor. This time she stomped through the fibers, not caring what she stepped on, as she hurried toward the back of the shop and the basement stairway.

  “What happened?” Mimi cried out as she followed behind Kelly.

  Racing through the hallway, Kelly rounded the corner and charged down the steps. Pete was already ahead of her.

  “Rosa, are you all right?” Pete yelled as he disappeared into the maze of rooms below.

  “Madre de Dios, no! Please, no!” Rosa’s voice cried from the back room.

  Kelly raced after Pete, her heart in her throat. Bursting into the tub room, she stopped short, almost tripping over a metal rod on the floor. The air was sucked out of Kelly’s lungs in an instant. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

  Rosa stood weeping, her face in her hands, shoulders heaving. Pete was leaning over the laundry tub. A woman’s body hung over the tub. Her face and chest were submerged in the dark blue dye water. The woman’s blonde hair floated on the water, spread out in a fan around her submerged head. Blonde, no more. Now the hair was blue, as were the woman’s arms, which floated beside her. Dark blue. Aztec Blue. Tracy Putnam’s favorite color.

  Kelly felt sick to her stomach. She barely heard Mimi’s piercing scream behind her.

  Six

  Steam wafted off Kelly’s mug of coffee as she stood in the middle of the driveway’s melting slush. Mimi and Pete stood beside her, sipping her home-brewed coffee from an assortment of travel mugs. Kelly and her friends were huddled together outside the knitting shop as they had been most of the morning—watching Fort Connor police officers and investigators run in and out of the building, carrying bags, carrying cameras, conferring with one another.

  Kelly and the others had watched sadly as the medics arrived and carried Tracy Putnam’s sheet-shrouded body to the ambulance. Mimi and Rosa wept softly. Kelly recalled a similar scene last summer, when she and her friend Megan had discovered Allison Dubois dead in her apartment. That same tight feeling was in Kelly’s gut now.

  A young police officer—no more than a kid, Kelly thought—had questioned each of them separately, writing their answers on a small notepad. After that, the investigating detective in charge, Lieutenant Morrison, wanted to question them all again individually. Kelly offered her cottage as a place for interviews, hoping to soften the crusty Morrison. She still sensed he hadn’t forgiven her for solving her aunt Helen’s murder before he did last spring.

  Watching Rosa come down the steps now, Kelly figured that Morrison would call her last.

  “Oooo, that man is so, so... gruff,” Rosa said as she joined them,
accepting a coffee mug from Pete.

  “Don’t let Lieutenant Morrison scare you, Rosa. He’s not mean, just intimidating,” Kelly said. “What did he ask?”

  “He wanted me to tell him everything I remembered when I went downstairs and found... Tracy.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to remember all that. I’m trying to forget.” She shuddered.

  Mimi squeezed Rosa’s shoulders. “I know, Rosa. I’m trying to forget, too.”

  “Why would those guys kill Tracy?” Pete asked as he stared at the clusters of uniformed officers and investigators who continued to stream into and out of the building. “I mean, if all they wanted to do was grab money and trash the place, they could have just locked her in the basement.”

  Kelly spotted Burt emerge from the shop’s front door, engrossed in conversation with his old partner, Dan. Burt had arrived within minutes of Mimi’s phone call this morning, right after the police, and had shadowed his old partner ever since.

  “I don’t know, Pete,” Kelly mused out loud. “Maybe they panicked.” She remembered the metal rod she’d spied on the basement floor earlier. Did they hit Tracy, meaning to just knock her out? Is that what happened? Did she accidentally fall into the dye tub?

  “Ms. Flynn, could you come in, please?” Lieutenant Morrison called from the cottage doorway.

  “You bet,” Kelly replied brightly as she crossed the muddy path her walkway had become and raced up the front steps. “Mind if I refresh my coffee before we start, Lieutenant?” she said as she held up her mug and headed for the kitchen.

  Morrison nodded, then perched on the edge of her black leather sofa. “I wouldn’t mind a cup myself. Black.”

  “The only civilized way to drink it,” Kelly replied, hiding her smile as she filled another mug. If this was Morrison’s way of smoothing over their earlier relationship, it worked for her.

  “How well did you know Tracy Putnam?” Morrison asked as he accepted the mug.

  Kelly took a deep drink before answering. “Not too well. I just met her about a week ago when my friend Jennifer introduced us at the shop.”

  Morrison scribbled in his notepad. “Did you see her after that? Or have a chance to speak with her?”

  “Actually, I saw Tracy several times after that. We were in the same class Mimi taught on dyeing fibers, and Tracy started coming to the shop every afternoon to work on her projects.” Kelly gave him a sad smile. “She loved working with fibers and creating colors.”

  “Did she ever share any details of her personal life? Mention any friends or coworkers?”

  Kelly shook her head. “I’m afraid not. We only talked about the yarns or the shop. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to learn more about her.” She sipped her coffee while Morrison scribbled away. “Let me ask you a question, Lieutenant. Why would those guys stop trashing the shop and café and kill our friend downstairs? That doesn’t sound like random vandalism to me.”

  Morrison looked up from his notepad. “It’s still early in our investigation, but it appears Ms. Putnam’s death may have been the result of a burglary gone bad.”

  A “burglary gone bad.” She’d heard that reason once before and from Morrison himself. When her aunt Helen was strangled in the cottage nearly a year ago, police had chalked it up to a burglary gone bad, a tragic accident. In Aunt Helen’s case, however, Kelly had gone on to prove her aunt’s death was no accident but deliberate murder.

  “Do you think they panicked? I mean, it makes no sense to kill Tracy if they’re only trashing the place.”

  “That’s one possibility,” Morrison replied, clearly unwilling to provide more details.

  Kelly continued to probe anyway. “What if they were high on drugs or something? Maybe that’s what happened.”

  Morrison eyed her over his coffee mug. “Believe me, Ms. Flynn, we’re looking into every possibility. Now, why don’t you tell me about these instances of vandalism you’ve experienced recently.”

  Kelly heard the tone of finality in Morrison’s voice. He wasn’t about to speculate on Tracy’s death. She also knew Morrison’s investigative style. He would make her repeat everything she’d told the officer earlier when she was questioned.

  “It started right before Christmas. My tires were slashed when I was inside the shop at a party. Then in January, red paint was thrown on my house, then my windshield was smashed.”

  “And you never heard or saw anyone when these incidents occurred?”

  “Nope. I was away from home each time.” Kelly drained her coffee.

  Morrison flipped through his notepad. “But you told Officer Grebs that you were home for this last incident when paint was thrown on your garage. And you still didn’t hear anything?”

  Kelly recognized Morrison’s skeptical tone, so she leveled her gaze and dropped her voice. She might have left corporate behavior behind, but it hadn’t left her. “No, Lieutenant, I did not. However, my dog started barking in the middle of the night, so I got up and checked outside. I saw nothing, and I heard nothing. The lights had gone on, but I’ve noticed that animals can set them off. So I thought Carl had heard a fox or a raccoon. But I did see a guy hiding in the trees at the edge of my backyard one morning. He ran off when I spotted him.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “Not really. He was wearing a dark hooded jacket and pants and took off like a rocket when I yelled at him.” Kelly headed for the kitchen and more coffee.

  Morrison scribbled again. “Tell me, Ms. Flynn, have you had any altercations with other people these last few months? Any sharp or violent disagreements or incidents where you might have made enemies?” He peered over his mug at her before drinking.

  Kelly took her time pouring the black stream into her mug as four faces suddenly flashed before her eyes. Enemies? Oh, yeah. She shook them away then took a large drink of coffee.

  “I’m an accountant, Lieutenant. We try not to make enemies. We just do their accounts.”

  “So, there’s no one you’ve met in Fort Connor who might hold a grudge against you or harbor a strong dislike for any reason?” He set his mug aside and rose.

  "Well . . . I wouldn’t say that exactly,” Kelly admitted with a wry smile as she strolled back into the living room.

  Morrison’s bushy eyebrows arched. “Nor would I, Ms. Flynn. If memory serves me, I recall you’ve played a role in helping police investigate several murders. Consequently, you’ve been in situations that have brought you into conflict with other people. In fact, there are four people either in jail right now or awaiting trial because of you.”

  Kelly’s smile disappeared. Morrison was right. If not for her, those people would have gotten away with murder. And they would be free today. “You’re exaggerating, Lieutenant. I simply helped the process along, that’s all.”

  Morrison smiled slightly. “All the same, Ms. Flynn. There are some people in town who probably don’t think of you too fondly.”

  Kelly stared through the dining room windows at the snow-covered golf course while she sipped her coffee. She didn’t like the picture Morrison painted, so she shook it away as well. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. I still think it was a bunch of violent scumbags looking for trouble that damaged my place. And that’s how they found the shop.” She started to pace the small living room. “If it was someone who hated me personally, then they would have no reason to trash the shop. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Morrison shoved his notepad into the front pocket of his gray suit and headed to the front door. “You’re probably right, Ms. Flynn, but we plan to look into every angle.”

  Kelly followed Morrison, who was obviously eager to leave and escape any further discussion. She was about to ask him another question anyway when he turned in the open doorway and fixed her with a level gaze.

  “Take care of yourself, Ms. Flynn. And try to stay out of trouble, okay?”

  Kelly couldn’t resist being her usual contrarian self. She grinned. “I’ll do my best, Lieutenant. But I make n
o promises.”

  “I figured as much,” Morrison said before he strode down the steps.

  Kelly spied her friends still standing in the slushy driveway, huddled around Burt and deep in conversation. She headed their way.

  “Hey, Burt, I wondered when you’d be free to fill us in,” Kelly said as she joined them. “Morrison just told me they think it was a burglary gone bad and that Tracy’s death was accidental. What can you tell us?”

  Burt zipped his jacket snug to his neck as the breeze ruffled his gray hair. “That’s exactly what Dan told me a while ago. They think the vandalism was unplanned. A hasty crime of opportunity. The shop was all lit up and unlocked in a secluded setting. They were probably looking for money or anything valuable. Mimi’s cash box was emptied, and they broke into both registers and grabbed whatever cash was there. All three were dusted for prints. They’ll check, just in case there’s someone with a record of burglary and assault.”

  His expression saddened. “Tracy’s death was probably a tragic accident. They must have surprised her downstairs, and maybe she started screaming. Who knows? Anyway, Dan thinks she was hit on the head to knock her out. Tracy must have slumped into the tub and drowned while they went back to trashing the upstairs.”

  “How awful . . .” Mimi whispered, pulling a wad of tissues from her pocket to wipe her eyes.

  Pete shook his head sadly. “Much too young to die.”

  “I want to see those guys caught and sent to jail!” Rosa’s dark eyes sparked.

  “Believe me, folks, the police will catch the guys who did this. I can promise you that,” Burt said with an emphatic nod. “Meanwhile, Mimi, you and Pete have to get an alarm system installed as soon as possible. You’ve got to have some security in place or none of us will sleep at night.”