by Ann Yost
Helena glanced without interest at Larry then glared at me. “Does it ever stop snowing around here?”
I nodded. “During the months with no ‘R’ in the spelling.” She blinked.
“You mean the summer. What do you do for entertainment then?”
“Black flies,” I said. “Snow is better. Trust me. How’s Lydia?”
The television host blinked at me. “Who?”
“The woman Serena Waterfall pushed off the stage.”
“She wasn’t pushed.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “She lost her balance and fell. You know how it is with these overweight women,” proving he didn’t know what he was talking about. Lydia Saralampi is tall and willowy. The only thing fat about her is her thick, wheat-colored hair. And her long, enhanced eyelashes. Helena, naturally, was more clued in.
“She was interacting with Harry. That’s why she didn’t see the edge of the stage. He has that effect on women. Serena saw her stumble and she tried to catch her.”
“Without success, I gather.”
Helena shrugged. “Not much you can do about gravity.”
“You don’t think Serena was jealous?”
Vincent looked at me. “Hell, no. Harry and Serena are just friends.”
“I understood they used to be married.”
“Is that right?” Vincent sounded uninterested.
“Ancient history,” Helena said.
I wondered if I’d be jealous of Jace even if I hadn’t been married to him in twenty years and I figured I would.
“I’ll just go check on things,” I said.
Lydia looked like a soap opera heroine the way she was draped on an antique chaise lounge in the Greenroom. She wore a gauzy chartreuse blouse with the first three buttons undone and her braid had been released so that her long, thick, fair hair billowed around the high cheekbones of her face. Tapered, manicured fingers wrapped themselves possessively around Harry Dent’s square, masculine wrist. They reminded me of snakes slithering among the rocks.
Harry looked up at me, an amused expression in his eyes. It was as if he were inviting me into the ridiculous situation. I looked away.
“Hello, Hatti,” Lydia said, in a melting voice, her eyelashes fluttering, “it’s wonderful to see you. How exciting it is to have these guests in town.” As she spoke, she drew Harry’s captive hand up to her cheek and caressed it.
“Elli said you hurt your head.”
Lydia’s laugh trilled. “Dear Elli. Always so tactless. I didn’t hurt my head. I was pushed off the stage, bumped my head and got a concussion. I’m starting to recover though. If someone could just take me home,” she said, smiling at Harry and squeezing his hand.
“Of course, of course. I think just to be on the safe side though, we should have a doctor check you out. I’ll drive you over to Frog Creek to see Doc Laitimaki.”
“He’s still in Lake Worth,” she said, her grip tightening on Harry’s fingers. “Anyway, I don’t need a doctor. Just a strong shoulder to lean on.” She smiled up at Harry.
“Sonya can take a look, then,” I said, offering the midwife’s services. During her short time in Red Jacket, my friend had gotten used to handling all sorts of medical crises.
Lydia shot me a sly look. “I heard Sonya went on a road trip with your boyfriend.”
It was a typical snarky comment from the woman and I pressed my lips together to keep from responding. After a few seconds, I smiled at her.
“Are you referring to Max Guthrie? He’s a great guy, isn’t he? It was nice of him to drive her to the airport. But, as far as Harry here, he has to stick around for videotaping. I can take you home.”
“Wait, what about my cookie jars? They were made in Finland during the war.”
I picked up a ceramic rooster and checked the writing underneath which read made in China.
Seth Virtunan materialized suddenly to tell me Elli needed me in the Greenroom.
“I will take care of Miss Saralampi,” he said, flashing her a warm smile.
“It’s Mrs.,” She corrected him but I noticed she released Harry’s hand. Harry said a hasty goodbye to Lydia and followed me into the Greenroom where I found Elli, Aunt Ianthe, Miss Irene, Mrs. Moilanen and Serena standing in a semi-circle in front of the mirror. I joined them.
“She’s gone,” Aunt Ianthe said to me. Her face was bereft. “Maud, I mean. She has left the mirror.”
I stared at the glass in the antique, free-standing mirror.
“How can you tell?”
“I felt her vibes,” Serena explained. “Earlier, I mean. Then there was that unfortunate gunshot and, well, some things were said. Maud took offense. It is really unfortunate. Such a bad omen.”
“Most likely Maud took exception to all the activity at the theater,” Harry said, “And she’s moved, temporarily, to greener pastures.
It was a good opening for Miss Irene and she seized it.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” she said. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”
“Amen,” said Aunt Ianthe.
“Maybe,” I suggested, “she went on vacation. She probably needed one after being stuck in the mirror for more than a hundred years.”
“I believe you’re right then,” Aunt Ianthe said. “Everyone needs a fresh start sometimes.”
The older ladies began to leave the room and Harry accompanied them. I waited for Serena who put her face in her hands.
“This was my fault,” she said, softly. “If I hadn’t been distracted by that Chicken person, I’d have kept a closer eye on Helena. She has no respect for spirits.”
“I don’t think there’s any real harm done,” I said, feeling an obscure need to comfort her.
“Women always flirt with Harry. That’s just the way it is. That Lydia wasn’t a real threat. Not like you.” Her eyes were watery as she gazed at me. “He likes you, you know. It’s because you’re funny. And authentic. And pretty, of course.”
“Oh, no, no.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself? Don’t worry. He’s fair game. We’re no longer married. It’s just that,” her voice trailed off.
It was just that she still loved him. I didn’t think she needed me to make that point.
We were all out on the stage when the front door slammed open and we could see an outline of a man in the back of the house. It was a classic scene out of the old west with the local sheriff making a dramatic entrance. If, that is, the local sheriff had been shaped like an egg. He waddled up the carpeted aisle, his fists attached to the center of his body where his waistline should have been. Behind him, Waino was forced to take baby steps.
Horace A. Clump, demonstrably lazy, penurious and mean-spirited has, nevertheless, been re-elected sheriff in Copper County more than a dozen times which may prove the cantankerousness of Keweenaw voters or it may indicate the lack of interest in the job or it may mean nothing at all.
He doesn’t appear to approve of anyone (with the possible exception of his wife and grown daughters) but he is especially acrimonious toward me. He’d had a contentious relationship with Pops and my involvement in the last murder case in Red Jacket had him raging. He climbed the stage steps and made a beeline toward me.
I braced myself for what I knew was coming.
“What in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks makes you think that corpse was killed with a knittin’ needle?”
Chapter 12
I was paralyzed by a combination of humiliation and fear. Why had I opened my big mouth in front of Waino? What if Clump made the same jump as his deputy and figured that Sofi had killed Cricket Koski? I scrambled to find some kind of answer that would distract the sheriff.
“It was just a guess,” I said. “A shot in the dark.” I winced. That probably wasn’t a good image to use, either. “The weapon could have been anything from an ice pick to, uh, uh, nail-gun to an awl.”
“A owl?”
Help came from an unexpected source.
“A nail-gun’s my i
dea,” Waino said, coming up next to the sheriff. “Or one of them skewers.”
Clump was unmoved. His beady eyes remained on me, his mind on its original track.
“You sold any of those double-points, lately?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Actually, quite a few packages.” It was a cheering thought. The more people who owned needles, the harder it would be to pin this thing on Sofi. I hoped. “Our expanded knitting circle is working on socks this winter.”
Clump’s stare turned into an uncomprehending glare.
“You see, sheriff,” Aunt Ianthe said, helpfully, “you cannot make a tube shape with straight needles.” She smiled, graciously, at both the sheriff and Waino, as if she were welcoming them to an afternoon tea party. “So we use a set of double-pointed needles, that is needles with points on either end so that the stitches can be knit in a circle.”
Aunt Ianthe took his silence for confusion. She produced her knitting bag and from it she extracted her work-in-progress.
“See how the stitches are arranged in a circle? Not only can you make a tube, you avoid seaming.”
“Avoid seeming what?”
“While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Miss Irene beamed at the sheriff after delivering the words from Corinthians. He stared at her for a long minute. They were about the same height.
“Never mind about that,” he yelled, “I wanna know how in the Sam Hill that hole got into that corpse’s chest and I wanna know why.”
“Not an unreasonable request.” Harry Dent’s voice was pitched for my ears only but I couldn’t summon a smile.
“Well,” Aunt Ianthe said, in an instructing voice, “I should tell you that it is also possible to make socks using two identical circular needles. It’s rather a new method. You line the shafts up next to each other only pointing in opposite directions.”
“Like earthworms,” Waino put in. The sheriff craned his non-neck to look up at the deputy who was a head taller.
“What are you talkin’ about boy?”
“It’s the way they have sex. I can remember cause I took biology twice.” He grinned at me. He paused. “And because it’s about sex.”
“Never mind about the damned worms,” Clump stormed. His face flushed the color of eggplant. He looked as if he were about to blow. “I wanna know all the folks that had access to these two-pointed needles.”
“Well, Horace,” Aunt Ianthe put in, “Hatti told you the entire Ladies Aide and the Martha Circle are working on socks for Fibber McGee’s Closet this winter. Children go through their socks so fast! We’re calling it Toasty Toes! Anyway, we wanted to try out the new striped yarn for toe-up and toe-down patterns. They are turning into works of art, if I do say so myself.” She paused, noticed his glare, and continued. “All of us have sets of DPNs.”
“Mine are bamboo,” Mrs. Moilanen said. As the holder of the most powerful position at St. Heikki’s Finnish Lutheran, Mrs. Moilanen was well aware of her own importance. When she spoke, people listened and she could see no reason to exclude the sheriff from her followers. “Some folks – I won’t name any names – still use aluminum needles but, trust me, the stitches hold much better on the bamboo.”
“You know, sheriff,” Aunt Ianthe said, “I’m surprised Agatha Christie didn’t use DPNs in Murder on the Orient Express. They would have done the job and been a lot less messy than a knife.”
I closed my eyes and waited for Clump to fly into a million pieces but I had underestimated him. He nodded at my great aunt and asked, in a deceptively mild voice, whether Charlie was a knitter, too.
Aunt Ianthe’s smile covered her entire face.
“How kind of you to ask, sheriff. Yes, Irene and I are teaching her the skills. She has her own little knitting bag.”
“And her own set of needles?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
I managed to suppress a groan.
“She keep that knittin’ stuff out at her father’s cabin?”
“I believe she takes it back and forth from Sofi’s home to the cabin.” My aunt’s voice trailed off as she began to understand what he was getting at.
“Funny thing,” Clump said, in what clearly a fake chatty tone, “deputy here says he found a knittin’ basket at the Dollar Lake cabin and it was full of those little two-pointed needles. Two dozen of ’em.”
Waino mouthed I’m sorry over Clump’s head but the damage was done. I’d suggested the weapon and they’d found one at the apparent scene of the crime. Geez Louise, not one. They’d found two dozen. I knew my cheeks were burning but I tried to keep my face expressionless.
“Tell your sis I wanna see her,” Clump said.
“She’s sick. She has the flu.”
“Most likely got chilled when she was out in the snow Saturday night.”
I stared at him.
“She was only outside long enough to cross the street from the Leaping Deer to her house.”
The small beady eyes narrowed in satisfaction. I’d been too quick to answer. Too defensive.
“Are you lying to the law?” He kept his voice soft. “Or did I hit on something you don’t know? Tell me this, Missy. Did your sis go home before or after you blew the horns and threw the confetti?”
I frowned, unsure what he was getting at.
“We didn’t have any horns, or hats or confetti.”
“You sure about that?”
All of a sudden, I wasn’t. We’d been eating popcorn balls and Elli poured glasses of wine and handed each of us a little baggie filled with the funny papers cut into little squares. Sonya had laughed and said it would make more work for Elli in the morning but we wound up flinging the confetti anyway.
Sonya had been right. It had made a mess.
“Why do you want to know?”
Clump shrugged. “Just tying up loose ends. “Deputy here found some bits of colored paper iced into the snow out to the cabin. Right next to boot prints. Ladies size six.”
The words took away my breath. I tried to marshal arguments about why that hadn’t been our confetti and how the boot prints couldn’t have belonged to my sister but my mind was whirling. Before I could speak, the front door of the theater opened again. This time it was Patty Ojanpaa from Patty’s Pasties. It was time for lunch and Elli, always innately polite, invited the sheriff and Waino to partake.
“Hell, yeah,” Clump said. But before he waddled over to the table to join the others in claiming a beef-and-vegetable pasty, he had a private word with me.
“Here’s what I think. Teljo and your sis had plans to get back together and this here barmaid got in the way. Now I don’t know if he done it by himself or if she was an accomplice but I aim to find out. And, if you know what’s good for you, missy, you’ll stay out of my way.”
My mind was roiling as Clump turned his attention to lunch. Lars and Sofi needed someone in their corner who knew what she was doing. In the earlier murders I’d had help from Sofi, Elli and Sonya, not to mention Max Guthrie and Jace.
This time, there was only me and I felt horribly and woefully inadequate. After a moment I became aware of Harry Dent’s presence nearby. His tone was soft and there was no hint of amusement.
“I can help you, you know. I was a detective. Think you can trust me?”
“I don’t know.” He chuckled.
“Are you always that honest?”
“Probably. It’s less virtue than 528 hours of Sunday school instruction.”
This time he laughed aloud.
“The offer’s there. Think about it.”
When lunch was over and the sheriff and Waino (and Patty) had left, Vincent called for a status report. He then read a statement he had prepared.
“Mrs. Paikkonen,” he said, butchering the pronunciation of her name, “continues to work on a translation of the Finnish letter. We will get a report from her tonight. In the meantime, we ha
ve to up our game, people. I want you to spend the afternoon ransacking the attics of this town. Tonight we will hold a show-and-tell of treasures from the 1940s. Seth has agreed to research the extraordinary relationship between Upper Michigan and the Third Reich. The rest of you need to find relevant object d’arts!”
Waino popped his head back into the theater.
“Big storm’s coming up. You folks better get back up to the B and B unless you want to sleep in the theater tonight.”
I found Harry Dent next to me as we exited the theater.
“I think I’d like to take you up on your offer,” I said. “Maybe we could just talk over this case.”
“I won’t pry,” he assured me. “But I’ll be happy to give you the benefit of my experience.”
It would be a relief to share some of this frightening responsibility. I imagined Miss Irene’s light high voice with a line from the New Testament.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
Chapter 13
Calumet Street, in case I haven’t mentioned this before, is the highest vantage point in town. The rest of Red Jacket, a lattice of numbered streets (east-west) and those named for trees (north-south) lies on a slight incline. Main Street, at the base of the hill, sits atop seven abandoned mining chambers which are no-doubt filled with water. Doomsayers have suggested that someday the ground will give way and the downtown blocks will collapse in on themselves like a dying star. Mostly, though, we don’t think about that.
Anyway, Elli’s Bed and Breakfast, by far the largest and most opulent structure in town, consists of forty-six rooms. My family’s Queen Anne Victorian is much smaller but dates back nearly that far. Both dwellings were conceived by the same architect and both boast wrap-around porches, front and back staircases, quirky rooflines and, in our case, a round tower bathroom with a witch’s hat roof.
The Maki Funeral Home, to the west of the Queen Anne, looks like something from a different planet. It is generally thought (but seldom expressed) that its creator was either terminally depressed or prescient about the structure’s eventual use. It looks like a house of death. Constructed of dark brick that has blackened over the years, with slitted windows that would have been useful for archers during the War of the Roses, a dark, covered entrance and a roof of thick shingles that curls over the eaves like a lazy python, the place always makes me think of a predator lying in wait.