Knit Fast, Die Young

by Mary Kruger

  The urgency in Josh’s voice made Ari stop walking. He was standing tense, alert, frowning as he listened to the caller on the phone. Dread filled Ari. Had someone else been hurt?

  At that moment Josh snapped his phone shut. “I have to go.”

  “What is it? Is someone hurt?”

  “No.” He pulled up his hood, hesitated, and then turned to her. “You might as well know. They found the coat.”

  Chapter 6

  Ari watched Josh walk out the door of Barn B after he had told her about Felicia’s coat feeling oddly abandoned. Before her the barn stretched cavernous, with most of the vendors gone, and the Sheep to Shawl pen empty. Except for Annie Walker, still tucked into her corner, the few people left were clustered in the middle of the barn near a vendor’s table. Diane was nowhere in sight. Sighing, Ari began to walk to her table. Halfway there, though, she changed direction. The last thing she wanted right now was to be alone.

  “Mind if I join you?” she said, pulling a chair over to the group of women. She wasn’t surprised to see Debbie Patrino there, or a disgruntled Beth Marley, sitting a bit apart from the others.

  “Sure.” Debbie moved to make room for her. “Have they been rough on you?”

  Ari shook her head. She wasn’t about to tell them what her real role in the investigation was. “No, not bad. Nancy, what are you doing here?” she asked the young woman sitting beyond Debbie. “You weren’t in here before. And Rosalia? You don’t have anything to do with this, do you?”

  Nancy Moniz, a local spinner who had come to the festival to sell fleeces, grimaced. “They want to ask us both some more questions.”

  “What? But neither of you knew Felicia, did you?”

  “I didn’t, but I can’t prove where I was when she was killed.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Out in my van calling my son. I couldn’t hear a thing in here, with the rain on the roof.”

  “And I was a customer,” Rosalia Sylvia said, looking up from the sock she was knitting. Like Nancy, she was a local. Ari didn’t know her very well, but she couldn’t imagine that Rosalia had killed Felicia. But then, she couldn’t imagine that anyone here was a murderer.

  “Yes, I remember seeing you at my table,” Ari said. “Why are you still here?”

  “I was between buildings when everything happened,” she said. “Of course no one noticed me.”

  “So we’re both stuck,” Nancy said.

  Ari looked at her. “They can check your cell phone records for the call, can’t they?”

  “Yes, for what that’s worth. I didn’t reach him, so he can’t back me up. The little brat. He was supposed to stay home today and study. He flunked his last history test, can you imagine? I could kill him.” She stopped abruptly. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Of course not,” Ari said. “Everyone says things like that at one time or another.”

  Nancy sighed. “True. Anyway, I decided to bring in more fleeces. Then I heard the sirens and saw the ambulance, so I decided to leave them there.”

  Ari sighed. The fleeces would have given Nancy an alibi of sorts, since it would be hard to kill someone with arms filled with unprocessed wool. Without them, she had no proof of where she had been. “They would have made you noticeable.”

  “With everything that was happening? I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s just as well I didn’t bring them in.” She glanced toward the bins. “I’m not going to sell any now.”

  “None of us will sell anything now,” a voice behind Ari said.

  Ari turned to see the woman who had lent her the afghan earlier. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t remember your name.”

  “It’s okay. There was a lot going on this morning. I’m Lauren Dubrowski.”

  Ari took the hand Lauren held out. “Nice to meet you. Let me guess. You can’t account for your time, either.”

  “No. I had to go to the bathroom. The man behind me watched the table for me.”

  “I’ve never seen a place where so many people left the tables where they’re selling things,” Ari said. Especially at the time when Felicia had been killed, she added to herself.

  “Why don’t you bring your stuff over and sit with us?” Debbie asked her. “We’re calling ourselves the Suspects Club.”

  “Humph.” This was from Beth, but other than that she made no sound.

  “All right. I’ll go get my knitting. I might as well keep busy,” Ari said, and got up.

  Ari put her printed designs into a folder and packed her samples into sweater bags. She’d have liked to bring the samples to her car, but the police weren’t letting anyone out.

  Ari glanced at the far corner, where Annie still sat alone. Putting her things down, Ari walked over to her. “Hi, Annie. How are you doing?”

  “How do you think?” Annie said, not looking up.

  “This is hard on everyone. Have you been interviewed yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh. Let me guess. You can’t prove where you were, right?”

  “I was here.” Annie’s glare was fierce. “Not that anyone noticed me. They put me in a crappy spot back here. People couldn’t see me because the spinners were in the way.”

  “Oh,” Ari said, a bit taken aback. Annie had been much friendlier this morning. “A lot of people have to stay for similar reasons.”

  “Yeah.” Annie threw the yarn over her needle without first picking up a stitch. Ari frowned. It would create a hole in the work. Looking closer, though, Ari saw that the yarn over was deliberate, a part of a lacy design. “That’s pretty. What are you using?”

  “An angora and wool blend.” Annie worked in silence for a moment, as if Ari wasn’t even there, and then stopped to count her stitches. She was using a circular needle, Ari noted, probably because the shawl was too big to fit onto two regular needles.

  “Is it a shawl?”

  “Yes.” Annie turned her work, began knitting the next row, and then, somewhat reluctantly, held it up. It was pretty, Ari thought. The center of the triangular design was made up of lacy shells with a scalloped border.

  “That’s really nice,” Ari said. “Did you design it?”

  “Designs by Annie,” she said as she had this morning, but with a hint of a smile.

  “Oh, how stupid of me,” Ari said with just a bit of sarcasm.

  That brought a full-blown smile from Annie, who finally looked up. “Sorry.” She laid the shawl down in her lap. “But this whole thing sucks. My only contact with Felicia was positive. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “None of us do. Why don’t you join us? At least you’ll have company.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on. We’re all part of the Suspects Club.”

  Annie glared at her. “That’s not funny!”

  “Sometimes if you don’t laugh, you cry,” Ari said after a moment, regretting the invitation. Annie’s prickly character wouldn’t cheer anyone up. “Well, all right, then. Maybe we’ll talk later.”

  “Wait!” Annie called as Ari began to walk away.

  Ari turned. “What is it?”

  Annie bit her lip, and then began stuffing her work into a tapestry bag. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Okay,” Ari said, wondering why Annie had refused in the first place.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude,” Annie said as she reached Ari. “This has me upset.”

  “We’re all upset,” Ari said, more gently than she had planned. But then, something about Annie drew that out of her. Somehow she looked fragile. “Why don’t you go over, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Annie looked uncertainly toward the group. “Do you think they’ll mind?”

  Ari blinked in surprise. “Why would they mind?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re nice people. Mostly,” she added. “Go on. I’ll be right there.”

  “All right,” Annie said, and Ari headed back to her own table. She felt infinitely older than Annie, though sh
e knew the woman couldn’t be that much younger than her.

  Ari had just bent down for her knitting bag when Diane showed up. “Where have you been?” Ari asked, straightening.

  “In the state police van, being questioned.”

  “How did it go?”

  “I don’t have a connection with Felicia, so that helps. But, boy, did they grill me about where I was and what I saw.” She grimaced. “Pretty expensive cigarette.”

  “I told you to quit smoking.”

  “Yeah, yeah, little Miss Perfect. Joe’s gonna freak when he hears I was questioned.”

  Ari stared at her. “Haven’t you told him?”

  “No, not yet. I don’t want him to worry until he absolutely has to.”

  “You’re innocent, Di.”

  “So? That doesn’t always mean anything. I swear, Ari, if that cop of yours had questioned me—”

  “Well, he didn’t. I’m on the hot spot, too, you know. So are they.” She gestured toward the other women. “Debbie’s calling us the Suspects Club.”

  “She would. What’s wrong with her, Ari? She’s acting weird.”

  “I know. So is Beth.”

  “I mean, the police’ll suspect her just on her actions.”

  “I know, but I don’t know her, Di. She might be like this all the time.”

  “Yeah.” As Ari had done earlier, Diane glanced around the barn. “Is this all that’s left of everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re a motley crew, aren’t they?”

  Ari nodded, though she really hadn’t given the others a good look until now. There was short, plump Beth Marley in her expensive but dowdy-looking black coat. There was Debbie, tall and thin with red hair spilling over her shoulders, who was once again pacing back and forth with manic energy and gesturing as she talked. Nancy Moniz sat near the others on a folding chair in front of a spinning wheel, but she was ignoring the wheel as she gazed down at her complicated-looking digital camera, apparently viewing pictures she had taken that day.

  “You know Nancy,” Ari said to Diane, gesturing at the woman with the camera. She’d noticed that Nancy had recently dyed her hair ash blond, to cover the gray hair that was coming in even though she was only around Ari’s age. “She was out getting more fleeces when Felicia was killed.”

  “I wish I had room for as many sheep as she does,” Diane commented. “But jeez, what about Rosalia? Why is she here?” Rosalia wore a heavy Icelandic sweater, Ari noticed, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She sat at the front of the table.

  “She was a customer, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Ari said. “She doesn’t have any connection to Felicia that I know of. And that’s Annie Walker sitting next to her. She’s the dealer from Buffalo.”

  “So that’s everyone?”

  “Except for you and me. The Suspects Club.”

  “Oh, come on, Ari. We didn’t kill Felicia.”

  “As I said, the Suspects Club.”

  Diane stared at her. “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “You think one of them—”

  “Killed Felicia? Yes.”

  “Ari, the murderer could be gone already.”

  “I’m sure the police checked to see if a car left at the right time.”

  “If they can’t figure out where we were, how would they know that?”

  Ari shrugged. It was true. How many people would have paid attention to a car leaving the fairgrounds after Felicia’s death? “If someone did leave, it meant leaving her things behind.”

  “Unless the killer’s a customer.”

  Ari shuddered at the thought of what that would mean to the investigation, and to them. “Don’t even think it. No, Di, I think the murderer is here in this barn.”

  Barn C, not used for the festival, was small, set back from the lane and nestled between Barn B and Barn D, where the sheep pens were. What little light there was came from a small cobwebbed window in the back wall and the open front door. It gave faint illumination to a gloomy, grimy interior, a small central space surrounded by low railings. Another door, this one closed, was set in the side wall. A faint, earthy aroma hinting at the barn’s former occupants permeated everything. Except for the white-suited crime-scene technicians searching each pen and dusting for fingerprints, the barn was empty. And while it was bare of any equipment, there was one item that had caught everyone’s attention. Hanging on the back wall was a black cashmere coat.

  “The main door was locked,” Briggs said. He stood just inside the door, along with Charlie and Josh, watching the technicians work. “Apparently the wool festival people didn’t need this barn. Not surprising it got overlooked.”

  “Any thoughts why Felicia left her coat here?” Charlie asked.

  Briggs nodded. “There’s dried mud near the hem. From all reports Mrs. Barr was neat and well dressed. I can’t imagine she’d want her coat to be dirty.”

  “So she took it off to clean it, and she hung it there to make it easier,” Josh said, and frowned. “Why here, though, and how did she get in if the door was locked?”

  Briggs shook his head. “The trooper who found it asked the manager for a key to get in. As to why here? Maybe she was lured here.”

  Josh studied the barn again. In the dim light, he couldn’t see any signs of a struggle. The barn floor was made of hard-packed earth, embedded with ancient wisps of straw that looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed since the barn was built. This building hadn’t been used for a while. “Why wasn’t this barn used for the festival?”

  “They didn’t need it. The three barns were enough. Also it was too small for shearing sheep.”

  “I wonder if anyone else asked for the key.”

  Charlie looked at him. “You’re thinking this is where the stabbing took place?”

  “Maybe,” Josh said. “Look at the location. It’s just on the other side of Barn B and it’s set back, but it’s also not far from where Felicia collapsed. I’d say this is it.”

  “I agree,” Briggs said, and Charlie nodded. “I doubt we’ll get any evidence, though, except for the coat.”

  “There’s no blue yarn,” Josh said, shaking his head. “Either the murderer picked up any stray pieces or she didn’t know there was a strand on Felicia’s sweater.”

  “Probably the latter.”

  “Probably.” Josh looked closer at the coat, careful not to touch it. Close up, he could see several strands of light hair on it, as well as the bits of lint that a black coat would attract. He crouched down to study the dried mud, glancing first at the floor and frowning. There were signs, if faint, that something had disturbed the dirt of the floor near the coat. It was very slightly lighter in color, and smoother, as if something had been brushed across it. The hem of the coat maybe? Looking up, he saw that there was, indeed, a slight coating of dust at the bottom of the coat. He filed that observation away for future study, and turned his attention to the patch of dried mud on the coat. It was small, but if Felicia had been as meticulous as everyone said, she certainly would have wanted to clean it off. This barn might have seemed as good a place as any to her, except for one thing. How had she gotten in?

  Still crouching, Josh glanced down the aisle formed by the low railings toward the side door and frowned. From this angle he could see any disturbances that had been made in the dirt floor. There were marks from the troopers’ boots, but, more important, he could see tiny indentations as well.

  “Detective Briggs,” he said, and rose. “Come here a minute.”

  “What is it?” Briggs came to stand by his side.

  “Those marks in the dirt.” Josh pointed. “Couldn’t they have been made by a heel? Mrs. Barr was wearing high-heeled boots.”

  Briggs crouched down as Josh had, first hitching up his pant legs to preserve their crease. He studied the marks for a moment and then looked at the side door. “Is that door locked?” he demanded of the trooper who stood guard there.

  “Yes,
sir,” the trooper said. “We couldn’t open it.”

  “From outside or in here?”

  “In here, sir.”

  “Damn it,” Briggs said, and Josh had a very good idea of what he was thinking. The troopers could very well have destroyed important evidence. “Go out and try it from there.”

  “Yes, sir,” the trooper said, and went out.

  “If those are heel marks, that explains where they came in,” Briggs said, more to himself than anything.

  “There are other marks, too,” Josh said. “Someone else was here.”

  That made the others look at him, but before they could speak, there was a rattling at the door. The door-knob turned ineffectually. “Locked,” Briggs said, just as the door was suddenly wrenched open.

  “Stuck,” Charlie answered, without any inflection.

  “Did you try that door yourself? Don’t come in,” he added as the trooper began to move.

  “Yes sir. I did try it. It wouldn’t budge. Where the front door was locked we thought—”

  “Never mind.” Briggs turned sharply away. “Take a look at those marks over there,” he said to one of the technicians.

  “Yes sir.” The technician approached the marks carefully, squatting down to study them. “About three quarters of an inch square,” he said after a moment, “with one side rounded. Less than a quarter of an inch deep. I’d have to measure.” He angled his head. “The farthest the marks go is about two feet from the door. See how the dirt’s built up over here?” He looked up at Briggs, indicating the floor in back of him. “It’s lower here, and it looks softer.”

  “What do you think the marks are?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but I’d say they’re from heels of a woman’s shoes.”

  “Anything else?”

  The technician studied the floor again, his lips pursed. “There’s some lines that look like they came from the sole of a shoe.”

  “Size?” Briggs demanded.

  “Hard to tell without measuring, but they’re pretty big. I’d say a large woman or a small man.”