by Molly Macrae
I pulled a glove off and dabbed a fingertip against the book. Nothing. I put all my fingertips on it. Nothing again. I put the glove back on and picked up the book. It turned out to be a household account book, kept between January 1874 and September 1875. I heard the absence of flipping from Zach and glanced over.
“Why’d you poke it?” he asked. “Did you think it would bite?”
“You can never be too careful. Have you found anything interesting?”
“To me? No.”
Zach slid his drawer closed. I put the account book back in my drawer and thought about making a note for John about it. I patted my pockets. No paper. I turned to Zach. No Zach. But I heard quiet steps behind me, down one of the rows of metal shelves.
“Zach?”
“Yo.”
“Be careful what you touch.”
“Not an idiot.”
“Neither am I.” I checked the time again, opened the second drawer.
Then I heard an exultant cry from Zach. “Wicked.”
“What’d you find?”
“No idea,” he said, carrying his treasure toward me cradled in his gloved hands. “It’s like a miniature bed of nails. What do you think it is?”
I knew what it was. And what it could be. A perfectly wicked murder weapon.
Chapter 16
“That’s a flax hackle, Zach.”
Zach looked skeptical, as though I’d pawned a Dr. Seuss rhyme off on him. What he held was a heavy board, six inches wide and a foot long, about an inch thick, with four or five dozen six-inch-long sharp spikes sticking up out of it in even rows—exactly like a miniature bed of nails.
“A hackle is what you use to comb the last pieces of straw from flax when you’re processing it. Sometimes they’re called heckles.” I tried to get a closer look at the spikes without being too obvious. I couldn’t see any signs of . . . of recent use or hasty cleaning. “Where did you find it?”
“Back there.”
“Show me.”
I followed him along the row of metal shelves, looking at his back, wondering if he had any idea what he carried. Except that it wasn’t this one, couldn’t have been. Zach stopped and shrugged his shoulder at an empty space on the middle shelf of the unit along the wall. The space was large enough for several hackles, and the last time I’d looked, when Phillip and I had talked about involving the students in the flax processing, there had been two.
“I didn’t hurt it,” Zach said.
“Did I say you did?” I retorted, and immediately felt bad. “Sorry, Zach. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“Why’s it such a big deal?” He put the hackle on the shelf and peeled off the cotton gloves.
“It isn’t such a big deal.” That statement could not have sounded like anything but a patronizing lie. Of course his touching one of the hackles wasn’t a big deal. But that someone else had helped him- or herself to the other hackle was a humongously huge deal. Because I was sure that’s what had happened, and I was also sure that the other hackle had been used to kill Phillip. It had to be. But if Clod and his buddies knew that, and if they had the murder weapon, then why weren’t they crawling all over the storage room looking for more evidence? Or had they already crawled?
I glanced around. I didn’t see any evidence of cops crawling around, but I wasn’t really sure what such evidence would look like. Nadine wouldn’t have let them leave fingerprint dust everywhere.
But that brought up another question. If Phillip’s murder was some kind of inside job, why was the site still open?
Oh, right. The answer to that and most of my questions was that they already had their murderer. Grace. “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?” Zach asked.
“Did I say that out loud? I was thinking about how sorry I am that the flax production part of Hands on History has been axed.”
Cool Zach actually winced at the word “axed,” and didn’t ask any more questions. Just as well. We needed to get out of the storage room. There wasn’t a chance in a million that a villain with another hackle lurked in a corner, but the less we disturbed anything else in there, the better. Even if the professionals from the sheriff’s department didn’t have plans to crawl all over it. One more thing, though. I went to the accession file and looked for the records for flax hackles. As I thought—the site owned two, both listed in storage.
“Come on, Zach. Time we were out of here. I need to check in on the quilting, and it’s almost time for lunch. What are your plans for the afternoon?” He might not have any more questions, but I swept him ahead of me with my own. “Are you bored with the dig, or is Mr. Hicks going to let you continue helping out there?”
“I’m not bored with the excavation,” he said, sounding offended. “Jerry had to take off for a while, that’s all. He’ll be back after lunch and I’m going back, too.”
“And are you coming back to the education room now?”
“That’s where lunch is.”
Which answered my question as clearly as a “yes.” He walked back with me, and when we got there, the other students were putting away the quilt project for the day. Under Spivey direction, they tidied away the scraps and needles and threads, talking and laughing as they did so, no one casting sulky or heavy glances toward the twins. The twins, though, gave an in-tandem jump when they looked up and saw me in the doorway. Why did that make me suspicious?
“Shipshape,” Mercy said when I went over to thank them. “That’s the way we’re leaving things.”
“Back in the morning, though,” said Shirley. “Making excellent progress.”
“Um, good. That’s great,” I said. “Say, did anyone call you late last night or early this morning and tell you that we didn’t need volunteers for the program after all? I’m only asking because I’m trying to track down an odd message some of the volunteers got.” And because it would be just like the Spiveys to ignore the message if someone had called them.
“No,” Shirley said.
“Huh. Well, I guess that’s good, then. The morning wouldn’t have gone as well without you. Thanks, and we’ll see you again tomorrow.”
They turned to get the Plague Quilt, safe and secret in its muslin, from the table behind them. One of the teens—Carmen—offered to take it to the car for them. They thanked her, but said no. They saw me watching, and I must have been too close to the quilt for their liking. Shirley carefully took the quilt, Mercy grabbed their pocketbooks, and they scuttled.
Interesting that they hadn’t received the cancellation phone call. But their names weren’t on the original roster of volunteers. So who had access to the roster besides Nadine? Grace. And Grace also had access to the hackle. But Grace was already in jail when the calls were made. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the way this was going at all. I needed to find out a number of things, but first on the list was whether Ernestine had been allowed to see Grace at the jail.
* * *
Geneva heard the back door at the Weaver’s Cat “baa” when I arrived, and she swirled into the kitchen to meet me—in high-excitement mode.
“Quick!” she said, whirling around me. “Run out there yelling ‘Stop action.’ You do not want to miss a single minute!”
“Out where? Why?” Her excitement caught me by the throat. I jerked back around to look out the door, saw nothing. “Where? Miss what?” I turned back, my heart racing.
Joe stood in the kitchen door. “I don’t know. Miss Connection?”
“Mistimed,” Geneva moaned. “Now I will lose you to canoodling and common misbehaving.”
“Miss Understood,” I said, trying for a laugh. But there were those darn tight throat muscles again. And since when had Joe and I ever scandalized Geneva, or anyone else, in the shop with any amount of “canoodling”?
“How’d the program go this morning?” Joe nuzzled my ear.
&nbs
p; Geneva said, “Eep,” and turned her back on us. Then peeked over her shoulder. Romance in the presence of a ghost—anything in the presence of a ghost—posed problems I’d never dreamed I would encounter.
“The program went well, mostly thanks to Shirley and Mercy.”
“Mystifying.”
“That about sums it up. Who knew, but they’re good with the teenagers and have a knack for quilting. More than a knack—they’re artists. Is that something that’s generally known? Have you seen their quilted skirts?”
“I’ve seen their yoga pants.”
“Gah.”
“Ernestine’s out front.”
“As I was trying to tell you,” Geneva said with a sniff, “before you fell for his rakish ways.”
* * *
Ardis and Debbie sat on the high stools behind the sales counter admiring Ernestine as she modeled her Aunt Bee outfit. She looked perfect, turned out in a paisley shirtwaist dress in shades of lavender, a string of pearls, stockings, and sturdy, low-heeled shoes. With her usual attention to detail, she’d worn hose with seams up the back. She completed the Mayberry impression by carrying a large pocketbook on one arm, which she held at her waist. She twiddled a wave with her fingers when she saw Rakish Joe and me.
“How’d the quilting go?” Debbie asked. She organized most of the classes we held at the Cat. If she could spend more time away from her sheep, she would have loved to teach all of them, too.
“Surprisingly well.”
“How so?”
“Tell you later.” I shouldn’t have added the interest-piquing adjective and hoped I wouldn’t regret it. I hadn’t told Debbie or Ardis about the twins’ helping with Hands on History and didn’t feel like introducing that freighted subject yet. Debbie was her usual sunny self, though, and didn’t look for any subtext in my comment.
The bell over the front door jingled. A couple of regular customers came in and Debbie hopped off her stool.
“It’s about time for you to take off, isn’t it?” I asked her. “Why don’t you go on? I can get this.”
“You’ll want to hear Ernestine’s report, and I can stay a little longer.” The customers waved and went into the next room. Debbie followed.
“Are your fly-tying boys finished?” Ardis asked Joe.
To Ardis, anyone who’d been in her third- or fourth-grade classroom was still a boy, a girl, or a hon. She was referring to the weekly session Joe led, mostly attended by men who came in during an early lunch hour. They used the TGIF workroom on the second floor, and gathered around one of the oak worktables with their dubbing needles, hooks, bobbins, loop spinners, scissors, fur, feathers, and fly-tying vises. Ardis thought they looked cute, arriving with their toolboxes full of gadgets and gizmos. She got a kick out of watching them test the weight and feel of fluffy and sparkly yarns, and she loved listening to them discus the merits of one eye-killing color of frothy marabou over another for attracting the wily fish they went after.
“Phooey on the fly-tying fellowship,” Geneva groused. “Aunt Bee is going to tell us how she infiltrated the hoosegow.”
“Did you get in to see Grace?” I asked Ernestine.
“I did, although I had to wait for Cole to leave. I sat outside on that shady bench at the courthouse knitting baby hats. I finished a pale peach hat and started another one in lilac that looks pretty next to my dress.” She put her pocketbook on the counter and brought out the hats.
“You finished both?” I was definitely the slowest knitter in Friday’s Fast and Furious. Before I’d taken over running the Weaver’s Cat—before I’d joined TGIF—the group had set a goal to knit one thousand hats for preemies and hospitalized infants by the end of the year. Thank goodness there were enough knitting whizzes in the group to make up for my dawdling needles.
“It was a lovely morning,” Ernestine said modestly, “and I thought Cole must have a lot of paperwork.”
“He was out at the Homeplace before nine,” I said. “They found the sec—” I stopped and looked for Geneva. She sat on the sales counter in front of the cash register, kicking her heels and watching Ernestine, her eyes wide. This might not be the best time to mention the second skeleton, either. “He was already there when I got there. I think he went out kind of early,” I ended clumsily.
“Which is what I found out when I got tired of waiting and went inside,” Ernestine said. “I was glad I didn’t run into him, in any case. And the sweet young deputy behind the desk let me go back to see Grace immediately. After I said I was her grandmother. I apologized to Grace for impersonating a loved one.”
Geneva moved closer to Ernestine, looking askance at Joe, who’d snorted. “What happened next?” she asked. “Did you inveigle your way into her good graces? Ha! Did you hear my wonderful joke? Good gracious—Grace’s good graces!” She rocked on the counter, slapping her thigh. But when no one else laughed—because no one heard her joke but me—she drew her knees up, sinking her chin onto her crossed arms. “What is the sound of one ghost laughing?” she asked forlornly. “Dead silence.”
Sometimes her solitude was heartbreaking. I tried to signal her, using one of the signs we’d come up with for when I couldn’t speak to her. Putting a hand on my heart meant that I promised I’d talk to her, or fill her in, later. But now she’d sunk so far into her doldrums that she didn’t see me. Even though I tried catching her eye and put my hand to my heart, and even thumped it several times, she didn’t notice. Neither did Ernestine, whose thick lenses helped only so much. And Joe had wandered over to a display of the new purple and black marabou we’d ordered on his recommendation—apparently bass went gaga over anything purple and black. Ardis, however, did notice.
“Hon?”
“Thinking,” I said. “Just thinking.” I drummed my fingers on my chest a few more times to prove it.
“About Ernestine’s question?”
I stopped drumming. “No. Sorry. About something else. What was your question, Ernestine?”
“When Cole told you they’d arrested Grace, and told you about the weapon, did he say they’d found the weapon, or that Grace had told them where they could find it?”
“Wow. Ernestine, that’s a great question, and it parallels something I think I discovered this morning.”
“What did you discover?” Ardis asked, almost as wide-eyed as Geneva had been.
“Can we please let Aunt Bee finish?” Geneva said. Being sunk in the doldrums didn’t keep her from being impatient. Or bossy.
“Let me answer Ernestine’s question first, Ardis, and then let’s hear the rest of what she has to report. We don’t want to lose track of details.”
“Rapid developments and ramifications?” Ardis did an abrupt switch from wide-eyed to serious. “Excellent. I’ll take notes.”
“Good idea.” I turned to Ernestine. She smiled and touched her hair, and I saw that she’d swept it back in the signature Aunt Bee hairstyle. “You look perfect, Ernestine.” She gave a half curtsy. “Okay, so you asked if Cole said they’d found the weapon? I don’t think so.” I drummed my fingertips on the counter—actually thinking, this time. “No, I don’t think he said that. Why?”
“Grace is clear on that point. She says she doesn’t know what the weapon is and that she didn’t tell the deputies what it is. What she did tell them is advice supposedly dating from centuries past, the sort of half-serious advice you might read in an almanac, and it’s this—If you need to hide or get rid of something, throw it in the retting pond. Apparently they smell atrocious. But she says she didn’t tell the deputies the weapon is in the retting pond, and she didn’t tell them where they would find it. She says she only told them where to look. She didn’t give them a fact, she gave them a possibility, and facts and possibilities aren’t the same thing. Nuances are sometimes lost on thick skulls, though, don’t you think? Begging your pardon for the slur on Cole’s skull, Joe.”
“Not a problem.”
“How’s Grace holding up?” Ardis asked. “And what’s your impression of her?”
“I think she’s very brave. She’s frightened, but she’s a strong young woman. She’s holding up better than I would in those circumstances, I’m sure of that. I took her a care package with packets of nuts for stamina, some of Mel’s chocolate cookies for something to look forward to, and a book of crossword puzzles to keep her mind occupied.”
“You’re a peach, Ernestine. You didn’t happen to . . .” I looked around hopefully.
“We all need something to look forward to,” Ernestine said. “There’s a plate of cookies behind the counter with Ardis.”
“Which I have virtuously left untouched,” Ardis said.
“Anything else to report, Ernestine?”
“Only that I agree with you. Grace is likable, and I believe she did still love Phillip.”
“But that’s not enough to get her off,” Ardis said.
We heard a sob. Scratch that. I heard a sob. Geneva was crying and using her sleeve to blot the ghostly tears that must be running down her cheeks.
“Love stories are the saddest stories in the world,” she said through her snuffles. “I can hardly bear to hear any more about the poor hopeless thing’s plight. Except—” She sat up and leaned toward me. “It would be far more exciting if Aunt Bee could spring the lovelorn lass from the calaboose. Won’t you please send her back to try? Or put your burglar beau to good use? Send him in to sneak her out under dark of night.”
“No,” I said. I waited a couple of beats, then added, “No, you’re right, Ardis. That isn’t enough to get her off.”
“She shouldn’t have,” Ernestine said with sudden vehemence.
“What do you mean?” I asked. The only other time I’d seen her that worked up was the first time I met her and the Spivey twins had tried to bully their way past her. “She shouldn’t have what?”