A Tangled Yarn, page 7
“I want to stop in my room first,” a man in a gray sweatshirt said as he tried to squeeze around Kevin. The manager stuck out an arm to thwart his move.
“No,” Kevin said, too quickly—it sounded panicky. He took a breath and tried to compose himself, then turned so he was speaking to everyone. “That’s just not possible right now. There will be no stopping in any guest rooms before the workshops.” His voice was slow and steady now and I could see that his smile was fake. A real smile was mouth and eyes—his was all mouth, and his eyes had a frantic expression.
“What’s going on?” a woman carrying a computer bag asked. She had actually managed to get around Kevin. He sped up and got in front of her.
“Everything will be explained shortly. Now, if you will all stick to this path and go to your meeting rooms.” He stepped aside and let the crowd begin to pass. He’d positioned himself so they couldn’t divert to the path on the other side of the Lodge that passed directly in front of the Sand and Sea building.
I backtracked through the Lodge and came out on the driveway side, noting that the cab was gone. I took the path that Kevin St. John had ordered the guests not to use, hoping to get to our meeting room in time to give Wanda and Crystal a heads-up before the group arrived.
I had turned my jog into a run when an obstacle appeared in my way and I screeched to a halt. The obstacle was in the form of a man who looked like a bulldog and had the disposition to go with it. His salt-and-pepper hair was getting sparse, and it appeared he’d taken his clothing advice from Columbo. Only he wore a rumpled herringbone tweed sport jacket instead of a raincoat.
“Ms. Feldstein. I see you decided it was okay to leave the scene of a crime.”
“Please don’t blame Dane—I mean Officer Mangano. He did his best to keep us there.”
There was a glint in the lieutenant’s eye. “He’s been duly dealt with.” Borgnine put his hand on my arm, apparently thinking I might sprint off. He began to rub his temple with his free hand. Inwardly, I groaned. More than once I’d heard that dealing with me gave him an instant headache.
“If you could talk to me first, I really have to get somewhere.”
He gave me a displeased look. “Justice is never in a hurry.” He glanced around the area, and I noticed that there was yellow tape across the door of the Sand and Sea building. “I guess we can talk over here.” He led me onto the small porch by the entrance.
I paid no attention to the surroundings—I was more concerned that he was still holding my arm.
“So tell me about your relationship with the victim,” he said.
“Relationship with Don Porter?” I said, surprised. “I didn’t know him. I barely even met him.” I was measuring my words. My goal was to tell him as little as possible. “I just encountered the housekeeper calling for help. While she went to the Lodge to call 911, I went to the victim to see if I could do anything, and then Officer Mangano arrived.”
“I know that you seem to have a talent for noticing things,” he said. “What can you tell me about Don Porter?”
He had definitely caught me off guard. Had he almost given me a compliment on my investigative talents, or was this some kind of trick? Whatever. I didn’t really care. I just wanted to be done with this conversation and get back to trying to salvage my retreat.
“He’s a— I mean, he was a travel writer. He was in Peru just before he came here.” I almost bit my tongue, afraid he’d ask how I knew that.
“What about your group of retreat people? Any of them know Mr. Porter?”
Oh, no, I thought, he’s going to want to question them all. “I don’t think any of them do,” I said, “but how about you let me ask around. They’d be more likely to say something in passing to me, rather than feeling like they’re being interrogated by one of your people.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. And no investigating on your own. We’re done with that, right?”
“Believe me, I have enough stuff going on. I don’t have any time to be doing your job.” The words were out before I could stop them, and he glared at me.
“Doing my job? Ha! It was just beginner’s luck that you found the killers a few times.”
“How about five times, but who’s counting?” I said.
“Didn’t anyone tell you that it isn’t good to gloat?” He scribbled something on his pad. “By the way, where were you last night?”
“Here. I went to the Roast and Toast.” He seemed almost disappointed with my answer.
“So, then you’re not claiming you were at the Blue Door baking?” I shook my head, and he made a tsk sound. I asked him what the problem was. “I didn’t see any of your muffins at Maggie’s this morning.”
“I get it. You were hoping to catch me in a lie.” I examined his face and saw that I was right. “I didn’t know you were a fan. But actually there were some. My new Breakfast Delight muffins.” The new name was impromptu, but I liked it. “You probably didn’t see them because they were in the refrigerated section and they look a little different.” And then as an afterthought I added, “And they aren’t sweet.”
“Oh, those,” he said. “The wife had one. She said it was like breakfast in a paper cup. You’re calling those muffins?”
“But did she like it?” I asked.
He waved his hands around, trying to make his comment vague. “Yeah, she did. I might have had one, too. Her idea.”
“And?” I said, sounding more concerned than I would have liked.
“It was okay.” He seemed to be avoiding talking about something and yet wanted to talk about it at the same time. “The wife has put the kibosh on me having apple fritters at the doughnut shop. She said those breakfast things of yours were what I should be eating instead. Too bad you can’t make one with apples, and maybe a little brown sugar. My mornings get off on the wrong foot without that sweet apple taste.” Then he put up his hands. “We’re getting off the subject here. Anything else you want to tell me about the victim?”
I tried to think of something to add so he’d think I gave him something and let me go. All of a sudden it registered what had happened in the Lodge with the cabbie. Why would Don Porter have ordered a cab to take him to the airport when he had more workshops to do? Not only that, but it had been ordered in advance. I decided not to share that with Lieutenant Borgnine since it might seem like I was playing detective.
“Well, I did hear some people talking, saying this was a perfect spot for a murder,” I said.
“Really, Ms. Feldstein? That’s supposed to be helpful? They’re a bunch of writers.”
Kevin St. John rushed by on the path, and his gaze fell on me first. “I got them all to go to their workshops. Including your people. Now it’s up to you to deal with them. Don’t let them get hysterical and make a problem. There is still so much to take care of.” He turned to the cop in the rumpled jacket. “Can you please move your vehicles so they’re out of sight.”
Lieutenant Borgnine had started massaging both temples now. “I give the orders around here.”
• • •
When I finally got to our meeting room, the retreaters were already there. Wanda and Crystal were at the front of the room and had begun the workshop. I tried to stay in the background as Wanda talked. But even so I saw Lucinda look at me and put up her hands as if to say, “What’s going on?”
“I know we have all different skill levels of knitters here. And there are some of you who have never picked up a pair of needles or a hook before you came here, so we came up with something that would work for all of you.” Wanda started to take the finished pieces out of her tote and set them on the tablet arms of a couple of empty chairs, draping the rest over the backs of the chairs. “I call this Four for One.” She held up two small squares. “This one is knit and this one is crochet,” she said. “All four of the projects are based on the same idea. They aren’t very glamorous, but they’re great first projects when you’re just learning and fun projects when you already know the ropes.”
She took out a pair of knitting needles, demonstrated casting on four stitches and then knit the first row. “This is where it gets interesting.” She knit two stitches and looped the yarn over the needle before knitting the other two stitches. She quickly did a few more rows, repeating the pattern of stitches, and then held the sample up. It was a tiny triangle. “If you want to make a square project, at a certain point you start decreasing a stitch per row.” She grabbed a small blue square off the adjacent chair and held it up, explaining that it was a knitted washcloth and a bigger version could be a baby blanket. Then she showed off two triangles and modeled the smaller one as a head scarf and the larger one as a small shawl. “This is the same pattern as the square but you only increase the stitches.”
“And now for the crochet version,” Crystal said, stepping in. She took out a crochet hook and another skein of the cotton yarn. The technique was a little different, but the idea was the same—the triangle was made by increasing stitches, and it was turned into a square by decreasing stitches.
Crystal couldn’t contain herself and added, “In case you’re concerned, you won’t end up with cookie-cutter projects. You’ll pick out what you want to make, the yarn you want to use and the size hook or needles. So whatever you choose to make, it will be unique. For the more advanced, we can show you how to add edging or beads. Of course, we’ll help anyone who needs it.”
This was where I stepped in. “This afternoon I’ve arranged for us to go into the main part of Cadbury for an event at Cadbury Yarn.” I was going to talk the outing up more, but it seemed as if once I was in front of the group, everyone remembered they’d been herded to the meeting room with no explanation. Questions about what was going on came from all over the room.
“They were all asking about it when they came in,” Wanda said, dropping her voice to keep it just between the two of us. “We didn’t know what to say or how to explain why the room wasn’t set up.” There had been so much to deal with that I hadn’t noticed that the fireplace hadn’t been lit and the coffee and tea service hadn’t been brought in.
I saw Madeleine peeking in the door. I didn’t want her to hear about Don in the group. “I’ll explain everything in a minute,” I said to the retreaters. “In the meantime, Crystal can tell you about everything that will be happening at Cadbury Yarn.” I stepped aside quickly and Crystal launched into a pitch about what would be available at the yarn shop.
Madeleine was still in the doorway, and I looped my arm with hers and took her outside. I saw that her golf cart was parked on the path and realized that if Lieutenant Borgnine had done as Kevin St. John had asked and moved the police cars so that they were hidden from sight, she probably had no inkling that anything had happened. The paramedics had no doubt left a long time ago when they realized their services couldn’t help the victim.
“I’m so sorry for being late,” she said. “I hope you can fill me in on what I missed. I never did see what the program was this time,” she said, prattling on. I waited for her to finish. It wasn’t just my being polite—I was stalling, not knowing how to tell her about her new friend.
“Maybe you better sit down,” I said, indicating a bench outside the Cypress building. My expression must have revealed that I wasn’t just trying to make her comfortable, because suddenly her face clouded.
“Oh, dear. That’s not a good sign.” She sat and gripped the armrest.
“There’s been an incident. The police are here investigating it now,” I began. I wanted to somehow soften the blow, but I wasn’t sure how to do it, and I had a room full of people waiting for an explanation. “It’s Don Porter,” I said, and she gasped.
“What? Did he get hurt? He’s not—” She stopped as if she couldn’t bear to say the word dead.
I nodded sadly. “I’m sorry to say he is.”
“A heart attack?” she said, almost hopefully.
“No. It appears that he was shot.” It was a little blunt, but no matter how I tried to sugarcoat it, we were still going to end up at the same place. Her immediate thought was suicide, but I shook my head. I explained that he’d been shot in the chest.
“But who would do that?” Then she began to get unraveled. “Have you talked to the police?”
“Yes, I spoke with Lieutenant Borgnine a little while ago.” I heard her suck in her breath with such force it made an eerie sound in her throat.
“You didn’t tell him that I knew Don Porter, did you?”
“I didn’t tell him much of anything, and I didn’t mention you at all.”
“Thank heavens,” she said, slumping forward. “You can’t say anything to any of the police. They can’t know I have any connection with him. Then there will be no reason for them to want to speak to me or think of me as a suspect.”
Her response surprised me, to say the least. “Why all the secrecy?” I asked.
“No one can know that I took up with him on the plane. I’d never hear the end of it from my sister if she knew I’d been talking to a stranger on a plane and then he ended up dead. She’s already saying she thinks I’ve lost it. If she thought I was a suspect or even being questioned by Lieutenant Borgnine, who knows what she would do.”
Madeleine seemed to have forgotten that she was the older sister, and besides, at seventy-something she shouldn’t have to be answering to anybody, anyway. But I didn’t feel it was my place to bring it up.
She grabbed my arm. “Please, Casey, you have to do something. This has to be wrapped up quickly. The longer the investigation goes on, the more chance somebody will put me together with him. Can’t you use your detective skills to figure it out?”
I promised I would do the best I could, which seemed to cheer her up. Even so, she was worried about staying at the workshop. I told her about the afternoon trip, and she said she would catch up with the group there. Then she headed back to her golf cart and I went inside to face the group.
“I’m sure you all noticed that you might have not been able to get back to your rooms after breakfast.”
“Might not be able to,” Rayanne said, repeating my words. “That’s an understatement. We were told we could not go to our rooms. Not that I was that anxious to go back to our little cell,” she said, “but we did pay to have access to it for the entire weekend. What happened, some kind of plumbing issue?”
There was more grumbling as I tried to continue. Lucinda and the early birds tried to calm the group, now that Rayanne had managed to stir everyone up. It didn’t help that DeeDee kept nodding along with what her friend said. They really did deserve the moniker of Difficult Duo. That was it—I wasn’t going to skirt around the issue or soften it. I would do it like taking off an adhesive bandage—quick, to get it over with.
“There’s been an incident. One of the workshop leaders from the writers’ conference here this weekend died. Well, more accurately, he appears to have been killed.” As I was talking I was trying to think of something reassuring to say. The best I could do was to tell them that most murders happened between people who knew each other. “So, I really don’t think you need to be concerned that there is a killer on the loose.”
“Where did it happen?” Rayanne demanded.
I tried to ignore her interruption and spoke to all of them. “Don Porter’s room was on the first floor of the Sand and Sea building.” When I finished, a roar erupted as it became clear that the crime scene was near where they were all staying. The atmosphere was an odd mixture of excitement at being close to where something happened and dread about the same thing.
I saw the Difficult Duo talking to each other. They seemed to have come to some kind of decision, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was, since they’d been threatening it since they’d arrived. This, they would say, was the final straw.
I looked over the crowd, as if not speaking to anyone in particular. “Just a little reminder if all this has spooked you and you want to leave. The cops will probably insist everyone stay put. But even if they don’t, I’m sure they would view it with a suspicious eye if anyone was in a hurry to leave.”
“Then we’re stuck here,” the woman in the cat T-shirt said. She’d changed shirts, and this one had a big cat face on the front of it and the cat’s backside on the back of the shirt. “And no cell service. We can’t even call for help. Was he just the first? Are we going to start disappearing one at a time?” she said.
“Don’t be silly. That’s the plot from an Agatha Christie novel,” Dolly said. “We’re not stuck on an island the way they were.” She looked around at the group. “Did anyone else but me notice that while the bodies stacked up in that book and were left to stay where they died, Agatha never brought up the stench they would have created?”
Crystal came up next to me and got their attention. “We can’t start on the Four for One until this afternoon, but we can make the finger crochet friendship bracelets I promised.” She was smiling, but I could tell she was upset that her plan for the weekend was getting dumped.
“Sure,” I said, glad to step aside. She quickly circulated around the room, handing out small skeins of the off-white cotton yarn. She did a bit of a pep talk, assuring the retreaters that finger crochet was easier than arm knitting. “I had planned to demonstrate a number of different crochet stitches using your finger as a hook, but I understand that we need to move on, so I settled on just the one needed for the friendship bracelet.” She put a handful of wooden beads in piles on the counter where the coffee and tea would have been and told them all to choose two and hang on to them. Next to the beads, she put out a bunch of small pieces of wire folded in half, explaining that the wire would be used to put the beads on the yarn.
There were no grumbles this time, probably because the retreaters were happier working with yarn than dealing with the fact that there’d been a murder. Trying to show solidarity, I joined in and pulled out a length of the yarn as Crystal told the group to make a slipknot, leaving a long tail. Wanda demonstrated Crystal’s instructions and then moved around the group so everyone could get a closer look.
