On Pins and Needles

by Elizabeth Craig

  “Are you feeling any better?” asked Beatrice as they climbed into Meadow’s van.

  Miss Sissy muttered almost indistinguishably, “Can’t feel tongue.”

  “Got it. Well then, I’m thinking you must be feeling better if you can’t feel any pain,” said Beatrice.

  Meadow dropped Beatrice by her car and then headed off to take Miss Sissy home, car loudly making noise. While Beatrice was getting in, she saw Ramsay walking up on the sidewalk and raised a hand to wave.

  “You just missed your wife,” said Beatrice to Ramsay with a smile.

  “A lucky escape,” he said with a laugh. “I’m kidding—sort of. She’s been a woman on a mission lately and when she’s focused on something, she’s not easy to live with.”

  Beatrice said, “At least what she’s focused on is the same as you, right? Figuring out who’s behind these crimes. Oh, and did you hear her car?”

  “Don’t tell me that you’re also hallucinating the funny noises,” said Ramsay, rolling his eyes. “Every time she insists that there’s something wrong with the van, I’ll check it to find it’s working perfectly. And no, I didn’t hear any noises as she left.”

  “Well, I can vouch for her that it’s definitely there,” said Beatrice with a chuckle. “She’s not making it up. Maybe you should run it by a garage.”

  “What? And pay them three hundred dollars for the car to behave perfectly? No thank you. Meadow’s van is far too crafty for that. But back to what we were talking about: figuring out the crimes. I’m curious to hear what you’ve found out,” said Ramsay.

  “Well, we just decided that people who are under stress react very differently than how they normally do,” said Beatrice wryly.

  Ramsay chuckled. “That sounds like the sort of thing you needed to say to calm Meadow down. She hates it when people she knows are duplicitous in any way.”

  Beatrice nodded. “It’s tough when you’ve known people as long as Meadow has. These are folks she’s grown up with or known their parents. She has expectations that they’ll follow a particular pattern of behavior. For me, it’s a different story. I’ve only recently met everyone and I have the expectation that everyone in town has the ability to surprise me.”

  “What are your thoughts on the people connected with the case?” asked Ramsay, glancing around to make sure no one was in range to overhear them.

  “Meadow and I did think that Gene was behaving sort of oddly.”

  “In what way?” asked Ramsay, looking innocent. He was obviously going to make her spell it out and work for any information that she received.

  “Well, it sounded like he was almost hanging out at Devlin’s house. At least, he was spotted there by Arnold Tremont,” said Beatrice. “If his purpose wasn’t to murder Devlin, I’m not sure what it was. And for him to be pulled over on the side of the road like that? It just seems like an odd thing to have done that’s all. It didn’t sound as if he was visiting anyone on the street or that he had any architectural reasons to be there. He was very awkward the entire conversation.”

  “And he should have felt awkward,” said Ramsay. He chuckled. “Apparently, he’s been following Goldie around like a lovesick puppy. We had to pull that information out of him, of course. He’s been very cagey about it. He definitely wins the prize for not being forthright.”

  “What? Like Gene is stalking Goldie?” asked Beatrice, making a face.

  “I don’t know if she’d call it stalking. If she did, I’d be sure to do something about it. That’s the last problem we need to have in Dappled Hills. Goldie seems to be sort of touched by it, oddly,” said Ramsay.

  “By having Gene follow her around?” asked Beatrice.

  “That’s right. I guess it’s not stalking if it has her blessing,” said Ramsay with a shrug.

  Beatrice said, “What did Gene say?”

  “That he was on the scene because he’d been tailing Goldie in the hopes of serendipitously running into her,” said Ramsay, rolling his eyes. “Apparently, he wasn’t able to find a good excuse to speak with her and he wanted it to be natural. I felt like I was talking to someone who was romantically stunted. It was like having a conversation with a middle school boy.”

  Beatrice frowned. “But earlier he was sitting in her office with a bucket of fried chicken. That was hardly accidental.”

  Ramsay chuckled. “Well, he probably used the excuse that he’d heard she’d had a traumatic evening yesterday. That he wanted to bring her lunch to cheer her up.”

  “That certainly sounds likely,” said Beatrice dryly. “All right, so to recap. He following Goldie’s car, I’m assuming at a discreet distance. Considering that most of Goldie’s work involves downtown businesses, maybe Gene was hoping he could run into her at the pharmacy or Bub’s Grocery, or the ice cream shop or something. Goldie ran quickly by Devlin’s house to ask him about something regarding downtown Dappled Hills. Devlin didn’t answer the door.”

  Ramsay said, “Right. But remember, Devlin might not have been deceased at that time. He was likely simply working outside and didn’t hear her. We don’t have a very firm time for when he died.”

  “But the pavers were in the side yard. Devlin wouldn’t have been able to miss her if she was standing there knocking at his door,” said Beatrice with a frown.

  “Devlin was something of an overachiever yesterday, apparently, and was also working in his back yard. Weeding and whatnot. What’s more, he had earbuds in his ears and the music, when we found him, was cranked up way past the recommended decibel level,” said Ramsay.

  “So he might not have been able to hear someone approaching,” said Beatrice slowly.

  “Exactly. Nor might he have been paying attention at all.”

  Beatrice said with a sigh, “He’d alluded to the fact that this project of his was a way to keep himself distracted from thinking about Annabelle and her death. So you’re right—he might have been totally absorbed in what he was doing.”

  “Even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have heard anything over that music,” said Ramsay.

  Beatrice continued, “So Goldie leaves, upon getting no response from Devlin. Gene tags along somewhere behind her in his car. While they’re there, they see Arnold Tremont. At any rate, he sees them. He’s trying to contact Devlin, allegedly to use him to sell the house. He receives no response.”

  Ramsay nods. “It’s sort of like Grand Central Station over at Devlin’s house.”

  “Then Goldie swings back by on her way back to the office. This time she spots Devlin in the side yard and thinks at first that he’s just taking a nap. And Gene was apparently not still following her at this point?” asked Beatrice.

  “That’s right. Because he engineered another ‘serendipitous’ meeting at the previous location. They had a coffee together and it was mission accomplished for him,” said Ramsay. He rubbed his temples as if they hurt. “Well, I should be getting along. You take care, all right? I don’t think Wyatt would be happy if anything happened to you.”

  Beatrice said, “I’ll be careful. Thanks for the update!”

  Beatrice stopped by the grocery store on the way back home. She’d gotten used to the store’s limited options, but imagined that Annabelle had not in the short time she’d been in Dappled Hills. Beatrice remembered when she’d first moved to town and found that there weren’t any ready-to-eat meals in the deli section . . . or, actually, much of a deli section at all. She’d been widowed for a good number of years in Atlanta and after Piper had left for college, she’d gotten in the habit of not doing much cooking. Moving back to Dappled Hills had forced her to pick it back up.

  But today when she went into the grocery store, she saw some new items. She lifted her eyebrows. Smoked salmon? Fancy crackers?”

  Bert, who was one of the regular employees, saw her eyeing the smoked salmon. He barked out a laugh. “You look surprised to see that here.”

  “I’m stunned—and delighted! What fresh magic is this?” asked Beatrice, picking up a packa
ge and reading the label in wonder.

  Bert said, “That rich lady was in here giving the boss an earful about not stocking stuff she liked. She said she wasn’t used to having all the food she was used to when she lived in Atlanta. Then she wrote out a list of all the things she wanted to see in the store. For half a minute, I thought she was going to buy the place to have it exactly the way she wanted it.”

  Beatrice nodded. “So this is all Annabelle Tremont’s doings. If we all buy these things, does that mean that you’ll continue stocking them?”

  Bert said, “Sure. Whatever sells, you know. Boss just didn’t want to take a risk earlier, stocking stuff and then nobody buying it.”

  Beatrice made a point to go through the entire store (considering its size, this was an easy task) and purchasing anything that she recognized as being new or even vaguely exotic. She might not have been a friend of Annabelle’s, but she had to admit that she had some good ideas. No wonder Goldie had decided to try to partner with her in her efforts to improve the town.

  When she got home, she saw that she’d beaten Wyatt back from the church. Beatrice decided to set up a whole smorgasbord for supper. She lightly cooked the fresh asparagus she’d bought with some olive oil and Parmesan cheese, mixed quinoa with spinach and grape tomatoes, and laid out the smoked salmon and crackers.

  Wyatt’s eyes lit up when he walked through the door. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is that smoked salmon I see?”

  “Yes, and you won’t believe where I got it,” said Beatrice.

  “Did you drive to Asheville or Charlotte for it?” asked Wyatt, looking bemused as he gazed at the feast in front of him.

  “Believe it or not, no. Bub’s Grocery had it in stock,” said Beatrice with a grin when Wyatt’s face displayed shock and disbelief.

  “Our Bub’s?” he asked, as if there were a chain of Bub’s Groceries that contained much better selections than their own.

  “That’s right. Apparently, Annabelle had been going over there and complaining about the food that was kept in stock. That resulted in some amazing options today. But we all have to buy them so that they’ll continue to stock them.” Beatrice gestured for Wyatt to sit down and he did.

  Wyatt blessed the meal and then they started. Beatrice closed her eyes after taking a bite of the salmon. “I could get used to this.”

  Wyatt asked, “How did things go today?”

  Beatrice said, “It was an interesting day. Meadow is bound and determined for us to figure out who did it . . . yesterday. So we didn’t spare any time on that mission. We talked to people all day.”

  Wyatt said, “Sounds like a busy day.”

  “It was. And to top it all off, we even managed to take Miss Sissy to the dentist to see about a toothache,” said Beatrice. “That was apparently the mysterious reason that she had you come over on Sunday afternoon. If she’d just told you what was wrong, we could have gotten her to a dentist yesterday. Instead, she put it off, and she was pretty uncomfortable today.”

  Wyatt groaned. “There’s nothing worse than a toothache. I guess maybe she was in denial about it or just hoping it would go away on its own.”

  “That’s the thing about teeth. The toothache never seems to get better until you do something about it,” said Beatrice. “Anyway, that’s the recap of the day.”

  Wyatt grinned at her. “Now I feel as though my day was less-productive. All I managed to do was to sit in on the prayer breakfast, draw up a draft for the sermon, and then visit a few folks at the retirement home.”

  “Sounds plenty busy to me,” said Beatrice.

  They finished up their meal and then cleaned up together with Noo-noo hovering closely nearby, hoping for a few scraps. But it had been such a good meal, eclectic though it was, that there wasn’t anything left over. Beatrice filled one of the corgi’s rubber Kongs with kibbles and peanut butter and the little dog worked on it for the next hour while Wyatt read David Copperfield and Beatrice pulled out the fabric from the brown paper bag. She frowned at it, trying to picture it as something other than just a flat piece of brown fabric with birds perched on green vines. She knew she didn’t have time for a quilt before December, not in addition to the one she was already working on. A pillow? The problem with making a pillow out of the fabric was that it might not match or even complement the other colors in the quilter’s room. The last thing she wanted was to make the project stand out like a sore thumb.

  Wyatt said, “You know, this book has really grown on me. At first I think I wasn’t just completely invested in the character, but he’s such a cheerful little guy, when all this terrible stuff is happening to him. And Mr. Micawber is wonderful.”

  Beatrice grunted at him absently and then, realizing she hadn’t really been listening, said, “Sorry. I guess I’m caught up in my own head right now.”

  “Something wrong?” Wyatt asked.

  “Oh, it’s the paper bag project thing. I’m trying to figure out what to make with it so that it will be a decent Christmas present for a guild member,” said Beatrice.

  Wyatt said, “You told me that you’d found out what it was, but you didn’t tell me what it was.”

  “Sorry,” Beatrice said again. “I’ve been so absentminded with these deaths that I feel like I’m walking around in a cloud. It was pretty basic—it’s sort of like a secret Santa. Everyone put some fabric in a brown bag, Posy keeps track of who has what, and the quilter who opens the bag has to make something while using the fabric.”

  “And gives it to the quilter as a Christmas present?” asked Wyatt.

  “That’s right.”

  Wyatt said, “But Christmas is months away. You don’t have to worry about the fabric tonight, do you?”

  “I don’t, but the problem is that it takes me a while to set everything up. For one thing, I don’t even know what to make with this fabric. It doesn’t have to be a quilt,” said Beatrice. She glared at the fabric as if it was its fault for being particularly difficult and uninspiring.

  Wyatt considered the fabric. “Couldn’t you always do something small, like a potholder or something?”

  Beatrice said, “I definitely could and it would save me a lot of time and hassle. I’m working on a quilt already—the one that’s a bookshelf pattern with lots of different titles in different fabrics. I thought I might give it to Piper as a Christmas present since she’s always enjoyed reading so much. Making something small or easy probably would work out better for me. The problem is that I don’t want to be the only one bringing in potholders when other members are bringing in quilts. I want to do something cute with it.” She tilted her head to one side. “Or maybe make something useful with it.”

  “Tote bag?” asked Wyatt. “It seems like that would be useful for a quilter. I know you’re always carrying a bunch of stuff back and forth from guild meetings and shows.”

  Beatrice nodded, looking at the fabric. “You know, I can actually see this as a tote bag. And it would be useful and cute at the same time.” She got up and gave Wyatt a hug. “Thanks. And I’m glad you’re enjoying David Copperfield, by the way. I don’t think I even answered you back before.”

  “It was an inspired recommendation,” he said, pulling her in close.

  The next morning, Wyatt was reading over his notes for Annabelle’s funeral while Beatrice made them a pot of black coffee. They’d both woken up a little groggy from a hard sleep, but the pot she made was definitely overkill. The coffee was so strong that both of them had to choke it down, despite loading it up with cream and sugar.

  “That coffee is practically a solid,” said Beatrice, making a face. “Now I’m not sure that I even have an appetite for breakfast. I just ate six ounces of coffee.”

  “We should probably make a stab at it, although I’m not starving, myself. It’s going to be a long time until we have the chance to eat again,” said Wyatt.

  Beatrice said, “Remind me again what the plan is for after the service?”

  “Reception honoring Annabelle at
The Willows restaurant downtown,” said Wyatt automatically. He glanced at the clock. “Don’t you want to attend the service with Meadow? You’ll be there too early if you go with me.”

  Beatrice said, “I forgot to tell you that she texted me last night right before I was going to bed. She’d forgotten that she had something she had to do right before the service, so would have to go straight there. It’s fine—I don’t mind being there early.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  AN HOUR LATER, THEY were at the cemetery for the graveside service. The sun was shining, but fortunately the section of the cemetery they were in was a heavily shaded one. Arnold was there when they arrived, despite the fact they were early, but then, he’d always been as hyper-punctual as Annabelle had been.

  Beatrice walked up to him. Arnold’s face was serious, and he reached out to give her a hug as if he’d needed one. Beatrice gave him a squeeze in return. “I’m so sorry, Arnold. I know how much you cared about Annabelle.”

  He nodded, momentarily choked up. “Thanks for that, Beatrice. I’m glad you’re here.”

  He and Wyatt started going over the arrangements one last time and Beatrice walked away to leave them to it as other people started to arrive. Apparently, Arnold had asked Wyatt for names of choir members and musicians the church used for special musical services at Christmas and Easter. A florist was there also, putting the finishing touches on some elaborate arrangements. These were nothing like the usual sprays that were at most of the services Beatrice had attended. One had daylilies in rusty oranges with trailing ivy and other seasonal foliage that Beatrice couldn’t identify.

  Beatrice watched from a nearby bench as a soloist arrived along with several musicians bearing wind instruments and books of music. There was a light breeze that blew and kept her cool.

  A few minutes later, cars started pulling up. Beatrice was curious to see if Annabelle’s family would be there. Annabelle had been such a private person that she didn’t even know if she had much family at all. Instead, all she saw were people from Dappled Hills. It was a full fifteen minutes before she saw a couple that she’d been acquainted with in the arts community in Atlanta. The husband gave her a quick smile as he spotted her and Beatrice walked over to talk briefly to them. As she’d suspected, they were there to support Arnold and hadn’t been particularly close to Annabelle.