Dyeing Wishes (10 page)

Debbie, looking refreshed from her nap, scooped the cat into her arms. “Kath is the one you want to talk to,” she said. “This guy can stay here and help me take care of customers. Why don’t you two go up to the study, Kath? That way you’ll have complete privacy.”

I looked at our visitor. She needed calming more than she needed a three-flight climb to the attic in her heels. “The kitchen should be quiet. I’ll make tea.”

Geneva loomed over my shoulder as I filled the kettle at the sink. “I’m glad your subconscious doesn’t talk to you the way hers does. She’s making me nervous.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the woman. She’d pulled herself together and stood at the kitchen table, arms crossed. She looked like an aggressive young executive, but maybe that was the way she held herself together in times of crisis. Or maybe it was her lacquered, unnaturally bronze hair and her lethally pointy shoes. I was glad she hadn’t kicked the cat.

“I’m Kath Rutledge, by the way.”

“I know who you are.”

“Oh. You didn’t seem to know when you came in.”

“And then your coworker identified you.” The woman made no move to sit and didn’t tell me her name.

“She’s a tough one,” Geneva said. ““Why don’t you soften her up by offering cute sandwiches or tea cakes?”

“Because there aren’t any,” I said.

“Excuse me?” The woman asked.

“Er, I’m sorry there isn’t anything to offer you with the tea. Will you excuse me for a moment? My phone’s ringing.”

Her eyes didn’t quite believe that. There hadn’t been a peep from a phone.

“Um, it’s vibrating.” I turned my back and blushing face away from the guest and the ghost, pulled the silent and twitchless phone from my pocket, and pretended to check the display before putting it to my ear. “Geneva, hi. No, it’s not a good time to talk.” I kept my voice low, getting into the role, eyes on the floor as though listening. “Sure, sure, let’s get together later and compare notes. Sounds good.”

“Pssst.”

I looked up. Geneva hovered six inches from my nose.

“Aren’t I a genius for inventing telephone communication with the dead?” she asked.

“Pure dead genius. I’m hanging up now.” I pocketed the phone and turned back to the woman. “Sorry to keep
you waiting. I’ll just get the tea and you can tell me why you’re here.”

“I turned the kettle off,” she said. “I don’t like tea. I’m going to say what I came to say and then I don’t have any more time to waste. I’m needed at the office.”

“You don’t want to sit?”

“No.”

She wasn’t growing on me.

She looked around the kitchen, taking in the well-worn cupboards and counters, the bundles of dyestuff hanging from hooks, and the wall covered with exuberant projects from our beginners’ classes. I particularly liked the swarm of Tshirts pinned to the bulletin board that a Girl Scout troop tie-dyed with Kool-Aid. From the lift of her lip, Ms. Executive Suit didn’t agree.

“I had you figured wrong,” she said, giving me the same critical going-over she’d given the kitchen. “I thought you were some kind of private detective.”

“Who are you?”

“Carolyn Proffitt. I work at Victory Paper. I was Shannon Goforth’s assistant.”

“Oh my gosh. I am so sorry for your loss. Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”

“How do you picture sitting down being of any help to me?”

“You’re right, it couldn’t be. Of course.”

“I came here to tell you the facts. Will Embree killed Terry Widener two years ago. The police have always known that. And now they know Shannon was afraid of him. He was calling her and it scared her.”

“How do they know that?”

“Because I told them.”

“How did you know? Did she tell you?”

“I heard her pleading. I heard her tears. I heard her say ‘I’m afraid.’”

“You overheard her talking on the phone?”

“To him!”

“But did she tell you it was Will Embree? Did he have a phone with him out there in the woods? I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

She hesitated, then slammed again. “I’ve told the police, and the only other thing I’m telling you is that it will kill Shannon’s mother if you stir up a bunch of nastiness.
She
knows he killed her.
I
know he killed her.
The police
know he killed her, and…” She ran out of breath at that point and burst into tears.

“Sweetheart,” Geneva said in a pretty decent imitation of Sam Spade, “you need to work on your grilling technique.”

C
arolyn Proffitt’s visit left me feeling subdued but not cowed. I scrounged in a drawer for a notepad and wrote her name and the little she’d told me about herself, then added three bullet points:
phone calls
;
fear
;
motive for visit—altruistic?
I looked at the list, wrote
facts
across the bottom, and slipped the paper in my pocket. While I scribbled, Geneva bubbled with excitement over her new role.

“I will be a wonderful grilling coach,” she said. “I’ll rush right up to our detective office and sit down at our detective desk and I will try to remember all the best
Dragnet
episodes for you to study. Joe Friday is extremely competent. He is always interested in facts, too, and I think even you will be able to learn something from him.”

Debbie had put some happy tunes on the CD player while I was away. They were more innocuous than happy, but at least not slow or somber. Turning on the background music was another thing I should have done before unlocking the door. Absentmindedly, I pulled the paper back out of my pocket and added a note to include the ceiling fans and music in my shop-opening routine. Debbie looked up from winding some of the Icelandic wool into balls. The only customer in sight was an older man leafing through a binder of sweater patterns.

“Everything okay?” Debbie asked. “Where’s…?”

“Everything’s fine. She went out the back door.” Nodding at the customer, I added, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

Hearing my voice, the man turned and smiled. He was older than I’d first thought. His thinning hair was so white it was almost invisible, and he was almost as thin himself. The skin on his face and the backs of his hands was taking on that delicate, papery look of beyond seventy. His wrinkles and age spots pushed him past eighty. He was upright and clear-eyed, though, and his white beard and moustache were clipped with precision.

“You’re Mr. Berry, aren’t you?” I asked. “You are! Oh, I haven’t seen you in years.”

“Kath. Look at you. Ivy’s little sprout. The world changed in the blink of an eye, didn’t it? You’re all grown up and Ivy’s gone, but I see she lives on in your smile and bright eyes.”

“And Granny always warned me about your smooth tongue.”

“She broke my heart.” He shook his head and I could believe she had. “I was on my boat when I got the news,” he said. “I am so sorry. After your grandfather died, if I’d had my way, she would have come away on that boat with me. Did you know that?”

I thought of the times she’d mentioned him in passing and clucked her tongue. “I’m not sure she ever thought you were serious.”

“I might have been, if I’d thought there ever really was a chance. She was happy enough going out for the occasional meal, a contra dance now and then, an evening stroll. But she wasn’t about to leave her pots and kettles of dyes or the Weaver’s Cat for two or three months at a time to sail with an old coot. And I wasn’t about to give up my boat. Besides, she said she had all the yarn she needed in her life and didn’t need one
more.” He laughed and I knew I was supposed to laugh, too, because I remembered hearing Granny say it and chuckling afterward.

“Ah,” he said, “you don’t know the joke, though, do you?”

As I shook my head, the camel bells jingled and half a dozen chattering women flocked in.

“Your hands are full now,” he said, “but will you have supper with me Thursday night?”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. Shall we say seven, then, at Mel’s? I’ll bore you with the legend of Yarn Berry and we’ll lift a glass of Mel’s best house red to Ivy.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“I will, too.

“So who are you buying all this beautiful Icelandic wool for?” Debbie asked as she put the balls of oatmeal, toast, and coffee-colored yarn in a bag for him. “Here you are talking about Ivy and making a date with Kath. Do you have another lady friend stowed somewhere on that boat of yours?”

Her questions and remarks clunked as they fell into our otherwise gentle exchange, but Mr. Berry showed no sign he took offense.

“I’m going to knit a sweater for my brother,” he said. “He’s even older than I am and has trouble keeping warm. Keeping warm and keeping friends are two things I find to be increasingly important these days. It was good to see you, Kath. See you Thursday.”

“Remove foot from mouth,” Debbie muttered when he’d gone. “I know better than to make assumptions. Or to make dumb comments if I do make assumptions. Ivy and Ardis have told me often enough.”

“You’ve never met Mr. Berry?”

“Heard of him but never met him. That’s one of the
problems with being part-time. I’ll go see if I can help those women in the other room.”

She was unhappy with herself, but there was no time to talk her out of it. A tour bus had arrived, docking at the curb like a cruise ship on wheels. Passengers debarked, ready to raid shops up and down Main and on all the side streets as well. The bus moved off to park behind the courthouse and we stayed busy the rest of the morning, so I didn’t have a chance to tell Debbie what Carolyn Proffitt had said. By the time Ardis arrived to take Debbie’s place shortly before one o’clock, Debbie was in a hurry to get home, so I let her go.

That afternoon, in between customers, I did tell Ardis, and I showed her my notes.

“I like your suspicious mind,” she said, “also your attention to the details of opening the shop, but questioning motives sounds like a good way to open an investigation.”

“But maybe Carolyn just rubbed me the wrong way. First she was bullying, then she was crying, but maybe she’s right. Maybe she talked to Bonny. Maybe Bonny’s reconsidered and doesn’t want anything stirred up.”

“Kath, honey, do you have any idea how many projects our customers start in any given week? A month? In a year? And what percentage of those projects do you think end up being finished? Think of all the space in drawers and at the backs of cupboards and on the top shelves of closets that is relegated to the likes of ‘You Can Crochet This Tonight’ or ‘Easy Sweater in a Weekend’ or ‘Heirloom Embroidered Christmas Stocking for Your First Grandbaby.’ I have no doubt we could clothe the starving children of India with the yarn and floss gathering dust and moth eggs in the forgotten and ignored corners of Blue Plum. But, Kath, honey, know this: You will not find a single UFO in Bonny’s house. Bonny
finishes what she starts. She does not give up. She does not let go. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You lost me at UFO.”

“Unfinished object,” Ardis said. “Bonny hasn’t got a one. And she isn’t going to consider the investigation into Shannon’s death finished until she has answers to those questions furrowing your brow. I’m sure they’ve occurred to her, too. She’s no dummy.”

“Tell me about Bonny.”

“Do know the house up on Fox with the elaborate gingerbread, the one they call the Showboat Gothic?”

“That’s Bonny’s? I love that place. It’s like woodwork embroidery.”

“That’s the one. Bonny and Calvin started out in one of those rural subdivisions. Dogwood Acres, I think. Then Bonny came into some money. They bought the place on Fox, planning to turn it into a B and B. Things didn’t go according to plan, though, and now Bonny’s there all alone.”

“Poor thing, she’s having it rough. First she loses her husband and now her daughter? How long ago did Calvin die?”

“Worse than that,” Ardis said. “He ran off with the interior designer they hired to renovate the place.”

“Brother.”

“And of course that’s another reason Bonny isn’t going to let this rest until she has her answers. Shannon was her entire focus after Calvin took off.”

“I’m going to have to be careful when I talk to her again. Poor thing.” The “poor thing” could apply to both of us; I wasn’t looking forward to disturbing a grieving mother, even if she
had
asked me to find out what had happened. It seemed an awful lot like poking an angry mother bear with a stick. Maybe I should take Geneva up on her offer of Joe Friday lessons.