Knot the Usual Suspects (17 page)

“You should warn people before turning around suddenly like that,” Geneva said. “You frightened me nearly deader than I am. ‘Boo' isn't a good joke word for someone like you, but it is a good warning word. Remember that for next time, please. What are you staring at out there, anyway?” She knelt in the sink and looked out the window. She could have floated through it for a better look, but floating out into the dark on her own wasn't something she was likely to do. I left her to the puzzle out the window and turned to watch Joe unveil the yarn bomb tags he'd made for us.

He took his backpack off, unzipped the smaller of two front compartments, and took out four flat black packets. “A dozen tags for each team.”

“Nice touch with the black envelopes,” Thea said. “They match our chic special ops outfits.”

“Nothing but good old construction paper,” he said. “The tags are cotton canvas, three inches by three, big enough to read, but still small enough to be unobtrusive. The edges are pinked to avoid raveling and they're perforated for easy attachment with yarn or thread. Or you can staple them if you brought a stapler. Duct tape'll work, too, but it won't look as good, unless you've got a flair for duct tape.” He handed the envelopes to Thea, then took a single square of canvas from his shirt pocket and handed that to her. “There's what they look like.”

Thea cradled the tag in her hand, then looked at Joe. “How'd you do it?”

“Came up with the design. Made fabric transfers. Easy enough.”

“Easy enough for you. Thank you. This is perfect. I knew you'd come through.”

Joe snorted.

“Well, after Ardis said you would. It's a quote from Albert Einstein,” she said to us. “It says, ‘Creativity is contagious, pass it on.' And below that he added, ‘First Annual Blue Plum Yarn Bomb.' This is great. Our yarn bombing is going to explode all over Blue Plum and it's going to blow people's minds. The whole thing is going to be excellent.” She stopped to catch her breath before rushing on. “Okay, each team gets a dozen tags. Each team is equipped with black garbage bags. Make each installation as quickly and quietly as possible, attach your tag, move on to the
next target—boom, boom, boom—just like that. All teams should meet at the footbridge no later than midnight. Ardis would like to take a few minutes there to remember the life of Hugh McPhee. He had plans to join us tonight, and as you probably know, he was tragically killed two nights ago.”

There were murmurs, nods, and a few bowed heads.

“We'll bomb the footbridge as a group,” Thea said, “and afterwards, we'll creep back here to the Weaver's Cat. That's still right, isn't it, Kath?”

“Everyone's invited.”

“We'll have a quick celebratory nosh of refreshments,” Thea said, “courtesy of Mel's on Main. In the morning, anyone who can be up and competent at eight will meet at Mel's for an après-bombing breakfast and debriefing. Joe is our official event photographer. Are you really going to be out there taking pictures before eight?” she asked him.

“The pictures and I will be at Mel's.”

“Good,” Thea said. “Now, final instructions. There are four teams. Assignments have been made. For safety's sake, please stay with your team. Look out for each other. Younger members, see that our older members make it over uneven ground. Watch out for broken pavement. Heaven knows we have enough of that around town.”

“Thank you,” Ernestine said.

“We'll communicate between teams by phone. Am I leaving anything out, Kath?”

“Timetables and team assignments?”

“Right. Each of you gets a copy of the timetable. You may keep them, but please don't share them outside the bomb squad and don't lose them. On them are the basic
instructions we've just gone over, main targets, teams responsible for them, and approximate installation time—very approximate—and you'll need to factor in time for the targets you've been planning in secret. Also on the timetables are team rosters and phone numbers. Teams are as follows—”

Darla raised her hand and waved. “Why are you handing out the entire game plan with names and numbers? It makes it all not really secret. Which is what we're aiming for, right?”

Thea opened her mouth and shut it on an un-librarian-like word. She scooped up her stack of timetables and shoved them back in her backpack. “The curse of the anal librarian; I'm too thorough for my own good. Okay, hold it, hold it, rethinking . . .”

“Read the phone numbers out and we'll save them in our phones,” Rachel said. “That makes sense, doesn't it?”

“Right,” Thea said. “Phones out.” There was minor shuffling and some digging as we located our phones. Thea went through the list of phone numbers—twice in most cases—and with an increasing edge to her voice. When Wanda asked her to repeat John's number for the third time, I interrupted.

“I think we're good enough, Thea. Some of us have all the numbers and all of us have some of them.” I checked the time. “We aren't going to be calling back and forth much, anyway, and we're getting behind schedule.”

“
And,
” Geneva said, “the natives are getting restless in the alley.”

“Four teams, then,” Thea said. “They are Knit, Purl, Hook, and Needle. Team Knit is Kath, Ernestine, and Tammie. Team Knit, you are responsible for freestanding
signs—meaning stop signs, other street signs, business signs, et cetera. Team Purl is Joe, Zach, and Rachel. Team Purl is responsible for trees. Please don't break your necks if you climb up into them. Team Hook is Wanda and yours truly—a small team, but excellent. We will do a strafing run on streetlights in the two-block area around the courthouse. Team Needle is Ardis, Abby, and John. Team Needle will bomb bike racks and benches. Darla, because John might be somewhat tied up with Ambrose, do you mind joining Team Needle? And will you give Ardis and John the gist of the pre-bomb pep talk?”

“I'll be happy to.”

“Good. Any questions?” Heads shook as Thea looked around the kitchen. “Comments before we take off?”

“Bomb's away?” Ernestine said. “It seems appropriate.”

“Thank you, Ernestine,” Thea said. “I couldn't have put it better myself. Three key words to keep in mind for our cause—quick, quiet, and creative. And here we go; bombs away!”

A chill trickled down my back as Geneva put her arm around my shoulders. “Good news,” she said. “Watching the shenanigans of the ancient hooligans outside our kitchen window made me realize how dangerous this yarn explosion you've dreamed up might be. Snakes or no snakes, I think it is best that I come with you, after all.”

Joe held the back door open. With suppressed excitement, the rest of the bomb squad grabbed garbage bags of yarn bomb ordnance and trooped out. Geneva didn't bother with the door. Shouting, “Bombs away,” she shimmered straight through the wall.

“A
rdie? Ardie, girl, when are they bringing my beer?”

I knew that voice—Hank Broyles, Ardis' ninety-three-year-old daddy. He was across the alley, sitting in his wheelchair, with Geneva floating next to him. Ardis, John, and a crooked old man who must be Ambrose were there, too, waiting for the bomb squad as we spilled out the back door of the Weaver's Cat.

“Hank's sitter fell through,” Joe told me as I locked the door behind us. “Ardis got him in the wheelchair by telling him they were going out for a beer. She apologized profusely.”

“Eh. No big deal. What's one more with this crowd? Holy cow.” I surveyed the milling group below. “We probably should've rethought bombing the courthouse as a mob.”

“Where we lack inconspicuousness, we'll shine in . . . um . . .”

“Being chaotic?”

“Being colorful,” Joe said. “In every sense of the word.”

“Teams to the courthouse!” Tammie shouted.

“To the courthouse
silently
,” Thea shouted back, except her shout had a husky quality that gave it the illusion of being a whisper. “Honed through years of shushing library patrons,” she said when I complimented her on the skill. “I'm ace at shushing. Wanda? Let's go.”

Thea and her Team Needle disappeared down the alley in the direction of the courthouse. After Ambrose shook his cane at them, Team Purl—consisting of Joe, Zach, and Rachel—headed for the courthouse, too. Tammie jogged in place, anxious for Team Knit to be on its way. I was beginning to see where her grandchildren got their barely controlled energy. She looked ready to take off running without us. Ernestine came to the rescue by latching onto Tammie's arm.

“Isn't this exciting?” Ernestine said. “Thank you, dear. I'm not quite as blind as a bat, but I appreciate your help getting down this dim alley.” Behind Tammie's back, Ernestine gave me a wink much exaggerated by her thick lenses.

“Ardie?” Hank quavered. “Are you sure this place is even open?”

“Danged if you aren't right, Daddy,” Ardis said. “Let's get out of here. John? Ambrose? Are you coming? Well, hello there, Kath. And Darla and Abby and Ernestine and Tammie. Why, it's a regular party.”

“Let me get that.” Darla took the wheelchair from Ardis and started the general movement down the alley.

Geneva popped up in front of me. “Her old-as-dirt daddy thinks he is in a beer garden,” she said. “I will stick with him and the darling Deputy Darla. It will be the whole package—a family outing, a crackerjack crime
investigation, and superior police protection. I will let you know if I find any clues. I will miss nothing with my eagle eyes.”

I used our sign for “good,” but she missed it in her hurry to join Darla and Hank.

“Once we get him moving, he'll enjoy himself,” Ardis said, falling in step beside me. She didn't remark on Geneva's presence.

“How's John making out with Ambrose?” I watched the two old men walking ahead of us. Neither had ever been tall, but until he'd become bent, Ambrose would have looked down on John. If the stories were accurate, he looked down on John in more ways than one. John was still able to hold himself like the ex–navy man he was, though, and Ambrose walked with a drunken gait . . . “Ambrose hasn't been drinking, has he?”

“John says his legs are going. John is far more patient than I could be with that ungrateful old galoot. He got a walker for Ambrose, but Ambrose refuses to use it. Won't hear of a wheelchair.”

“He probably likes shaking his cane too much.”

“Fussing might be his only joy in life these days. It might be the only joy he ever had. I thank my stars Daddy's a cheerful old soul. I am sorry to slow us down tonight, though.”

“Don't even worry about it. I know we're claiming a higher purpose, opening minds to art and creativity, but isn't our real main goal to have fun?”

Up ahead, Ambrose whacked a garbage can with his cane. “Crazy fool son of a—” The rest of what he said was lost in a muffled garble.

“His upper plate falls down,” Ardis said. “Cuts off half
of what he says. John says he doesn't like to repeat himself. And of course he refuses to get it fixed.”

“Oh dear. Well, if Ambrose doesn't bring some kind of fun to this, I don't know who or what will.”

Ambrose continued swinging his cane as they walked, and John put a hand on his shoulder. Ambrose flinched, but John held his course, keeping his hand where it was. A few yards farther along, Ambrose shifted his cane to the other hand and slung his arm around John's shoulders. Down the alley they went, a couple of ancient buddies out for a night on the town.

We neared the cross street and heard Hank cackling at something Darla said as they went around the corner toward Main. I heard Geneva cackling, too, but again, Ardis said nothing. At Main Street we cut diagonally across the intersection. Darla hopped on the back of the wheelchair and rode it down the slight incline to the opposite curb. Abby ran alongside giggling and Hank and his great-aunt Geneva cackled as they went.

As planned, someone had draped strips of knitting over the floodlights aimed at the face of the courthouse. Activity around the columns and on the steps was still obvious, but we at least had the illusion of working in secret. Ernestine and Tammie had made good time, despite Ernestine's ploy to slow them down. They were already tying a knitted “necktie” on a column. Ambrose held a garbage bag open while John pulled a strip of knitting from it and worked on wrapping the central stair rail in a striped spiral.

“You go on up there and do a pillar, Ardis,” Darla said when we caught up. “Abby and Hank and I have plans for bombing the pillory.”

“Bomb, bomb, bomb,” Geneva sang, “bomb-bara Ann.”

“Haunted Beach Boys,” I said as Ardis and I climbed the courthouse stairs to join the others, “sung by a goofball of a ghost.”

“Beg pardon?”

I turned to her and held up a hand, stopping her on the step below mine. We were almost eye to eye.

“What is it, hon?”

I took her left hand and looked at her wrist. “Push your sleeve up?” Her eyes were only curious, not clouded by guile. She wasn't wearing the bracelet I'd braided and dyed for her with Granny's recipe. “Where is it? Did it break?”

She pulled her hand back and pulled her sleeve down. “Geneva's here?” She drew her shoulders in. “Didn't she say she wasn't coming?”

“Ghosts,” I said with a shrug. “First it's no and then it's yes. What they'll do you cannot guess. As she would say, that's haunted humor.”

“Don't tell her I took it off, will you, Kath? I don't want to hurt her feelings.” Her eyes showed nothing but guilt now as she glanced left and right. “She isn't—”

“She's with Hank and Darla. What's wrong, Ardis?”

“I was afraid,” she whispered, “so I took it off. I was afraid to wear it out here tonight, in case . . . Kath, honest to God, if I saw Hugh's ghost in the park, if I saw him die, the way you saw that happen to Geneva out there at the Holston Home Place, I would not be able to stand it. It'll be bad enough when Daddy dies, but to see murder? I'd go out of my mind.” She put shaking hands to her lips.

“Hey, hey, Ardis. Don't think about it. It's okay.”

“But you and Geneva are strong.”

“No, we're not. We just made it through a hard experience. Besides, do you want to know why she had to think twice about coming with us? It's because she's afraid of ghosts, too.”

Ardis laughed, then covered her mouth again.

“She's counting on Darla to protect her,” I added.

Ardis spluttered some more. “From things seen and unseen. Well, anyway, don't tell her I took the bracelet off. We're on the wrong feet these days, and she's bound to take it the wrong way. And now we'd better get up there and get busy with a column or Thea will fire us.”

“Do you know how to tie a tie?” I asked as we climbed the rest of the steps.

“I've been working on something better.” She opened her garbage bag and started pulling out a length of something hot pink and so fluffy it was frothy. “The other pillars are going to look like stuffy men with their neckties. This one”—she handed me an end of the pink froth—“is going to have a feather boa.” She'd knitted yards of marabou to make her boa, enough to circle the pillar twice before knotting it.

“Looks great,” Thea said, coming over to admire it. “But it should've been me who thought of that. I'm the one with class around here.” She cocked a hip and put a finger to her cheek.

It was then I noticed. “You're wearing heels? In the dark? Through the park? After giving specific instructions about what and what not to wear?”

“They're black.”

“They're heels, Thea. Toeless.”

“And I am unapologetically fashionable. Besides, I didn't say anything about type or style of footwear. You
already know I don't do ewe poo. I also don't do duck muck. You can go run along back there through the park. I am not leaving paved areas, and that makes my heels perfectly fine.”

“They're fine and you're a nut. Although yes, a certifiably fashionable nut.”

“Thank you.” She curtsied. “What are you doing to the column now, Ardis?”

“Adding the pièce de résistance.” She took a crocheted red bundle from her bag and held it so we couldn't see what it was. “Duct tape, please? Two six-inch pieces folded back on themselves so they're a double-sided loop will do nicely.”

She took the pieces as I handed them to her, pressing them to the pillar above the boa and about a foot apart.

“Ready?” She shook out the red crochet and smoothed it. Then she pressed it to the tape on the pillar and stood back. Two scarlet lips pouted at us above the hot pink feather boa.

“We are
excellent
,” Thea said. “Come see what Zach the wonder boy made. Then we need to break up this party and move on.”

The narrow brown band Zach had been knitting had metamorphosed into the iconic Groucho Marx glasses, eyebrows, and nose. Rachel and Joe were behind the column stitching it in place. Zach was stuffing the nose with batting to give it the correct protuberance. Below the nose was a black bow tie and a white wing collar.

“Genius, Zach.”

He gave me his quick smile, then grabbed the garbage bags at the base of the column and moved in his patented teenage slouch to join his teammates.

“Thea, do you mind if we rearrange the teams a bit?” Ardis had Darla at her disposal for casual information gathering, but the way the teams were set up, neither of us had easy access to Rachel. “Can we ask Tammie and Rachel to switch places?”

“Mmm, not without ruffling feathers—Tammie's to be exact. She asked to be on your team.”

“Really? When? And why?”

“I didn't ask. To hazard a guess, she likes the A-list. You own the shop.”

“Huh. What about Rachel and Darla changing teams?”

“Mmm, not without prompting questions—mine to be exact. What's up?”

I told her about the purported bank meeting between Rachel, Hugh, and Al Rogalla, but didn't mention the Spiveys as my source of information.

“It seems like there'd be an ethics line she wouldn't—or shouldn't—cross to tell you anything. On the other hand, if business or real estate was involved, there might be a public aspect to it with records available. In any case, you're too late. There goes Team Purl, slinking off into the night.”

She was right; loping Joe, slouching Zach, and upright Rachel were on their way down the stairs—off to bomb Main Street's benches and bike racks. Ardis had rejoined her team, too, and Ernestine and Tammie were putting the finishing touches on crocheted leaves and flower petals they'd made sprout from uprights of the center stair rail.

“You know, you could let the investigation take a back burner for a few hours, Kath, and just enjoy the bombing.”
Thea grinned. “Don't you love this? How often do you get to say something like ‘sit back and enjoy the bombing' in Blue Plum? See you at the footbridge at midnight. And if you trip over a vital clue while you're traipsing through the park, pick it up and bring it with you.”

Before joining Ernestine and Tammie, I took a chance and called Joe. He didn't mind contributing ideas and concrete actions to help our investigations along, but interrogating witnesses tended to be beyond his comfort range.

“You don't need to ask her specific questions,” I said. “Just lead the conversation around to Hugh.”

“Already done.”

“You're one in a million.”

“Not me. Zach. He said he wanted to know more about Hugh so he'd be in the proper state of mind for Ardis' memorial at the footbridge.”

“Do you think that's true, or is he playing boy genius?” Zach asking a question to satisfy his state of mind was one thing. But he knew about our occasional detecting. He'd been present when we uncovered the truth about a previous murder. And he was bright, independent, and more curious than any cat I'd known.

“I'll keep an eye on him,” Joe said.

“And—”

“And I'll ask Rachel when she last spoke to Hugh.”

“And be careful, because you're at least one in a thousand.” I disconnected and pushed a tickling strand of hair behind my ear. Or I thought it was the hair that annoyed me. It might have been a niggling strand of dread.

*   *   *

“When was the last time you strolled down the middle of Main Street?” Tammie asked. “I tell you what. This'll be something to tell the grandkids.”

“She isn't strolling,” I muttered to Ernestine, “she's standing. She's standing while we're over here stitching. And it isn't like downtown Blue Plum is devoid of life at this time of night. Someone is bound to see her.”