Knot the Usual Suspects (19 page)

While the others spaced themselves along the bridge and got busy tying their squares to the balustrades, I held up my square as though I was looking it over. “We were getting worried about you guys,” I said quietly. “Are the others on their way?”

“I did not wait to find out.”

She took her arm from my shoulders and floated around so that she was between me and the square. It was close quarters and her serious face worried me. I lowered the square and took out my phone.

“I rushed here to tell you important news,” she said.

“What?”

“I rushed here to tell you important news.”

“Don't play around, Geneva.” I saw Joe looking at me. I held my phone up for him to see and put it back to my ear. “What is it? What's happened?”

“Ardent could not see or hear me.”

“That's—”

“I thought she was being rude and ignoring me whenever I said anything. Then I realized that she did not hear me and did not know I was there.”

“That's—”

“And then I got bored because all the yarn they were strewing around just . . . sat. Really. But here is
something more interesting than sedentary patches of yarn. Do you remember our discussion about yin and yang?” She repeated her over- and underarm movements of the other day.

“Yes.”

“Here is another example. Ardis did not know I was there, and then her old-as-dirt daddy and John's creaky cranky brother were not there.”

“What?”

“She did not see me. Then she did not see them. Poof.” She illustrated the poof with her hands. “Both of them. Gone.”

“T
rouble?” Joe appeared as Geneva poofed her hands again, and I jumped. He was lucky I didn't scream. “Is that Ardis?” he asked.

I nodded and held a finger up to him, then spoke quietly into the phone, looking at Geneva. A calm voice would have been optimal, but I didn't quite get there. “Tell me what happened,” I said. “Are Abby and John there? Where's Darla?” Unfortunately for my less-than-stellar acting skills, while I peppered Geneva with those questions, my phone buzzed. I took it from my ear and looked at it. Joe looked at it, too.

“If I am reading your screen correctly,” Geneva said, peering at it more closely than either of us, “
that
is Ardis.”

I looked at Joe and shrugged. “No wonder she wasn't answering my questions,” I said. “We got disconnected.” I pushed the
TALK
button. “Ardis?”

While Ardis was being incoherent on my phone, Joe got a call. It was John. Joe seemed to be getting some sense out of John—sense that had him slipping his
backpack off, taking out his flashlight and checking the batteries, putting the pack back on, and saying, “We'll be there in five.”

“Kath? Are you there?”

I hadn't been paying attention to Ardis. “I am. What's going on? Hold on a sec, will you? Don't hang up.”

Joe had gone and spoken to Zach on the footbridge. Now the two of them were walking back toward me. Wanda had stopped working and followed them. Ernestine didn't seem to have noticed that anything else was going on. She continued working on a square at the other end of the bridge. The misty shadow next to her was Geneva, who'd lost interest in me when I stopped talking to her.

“Hold on, Ardis,” I said, again, then muffled the phone against my chest.

“Zach and I are going to give John and Ardis a hand,” Joe said. “They've, uh . . .” He rubbed his temples. “They lost Hank and Ambrose. The two of them took off. Or Ambrose took off with Hank. They don't know.” He held his hand up. To stop questions? He didn't need to—I didn't know where to begin asking questions. No wonder Ardis hadn't been coherent.

“Darla's not there,” Joe said. “She got a call from work before this happened. Abby, Ardis, and John are okay, just confused about how they could lose the old guys so thoroughly. Zach and I'll go see what we can do.”

“We can come, too,” Wanda said. “More feet on the ground, isn't that what they say? And the sooner we locate them, the better. How long have they been gone?”

Joe held up his hand again. “Thanks, Wanda. What you say makes sense, but give us half an hour.”

“And a lost half hour could make all the difference,” she said.

“It's what Ardis and John want.”

“Call Cole if you don't find them soon,” I said.

“Yep.”

“And call me when you know what's going on. Let's skip meeting up back at the shop. Unless we hear that you need our help, we'll finish up here and call it a night.”

They waved and took off into the dark. Geneva had floated back to my side and she waved after them.

“But let's not just call it a night,” she said. “We should call it a strange and eventful night. And here are two more events you might like to know about. Ardis is squawking against your breast and Ernestine has lost her crochet, hook and all, over the side of the bridge.”

Sure enough, Ernestine was peering over the bridge railing and Ardis was obviously still on the line. I put the phone back to my ear. “Ardis? Ardis, Joe's on his way.” I wasn't sure she heard me.

“—don't think Ambrose will hurt him,” she was saying. “The two of them were getting along so well. But neither of them is competent to be out, and I'll never forgive myself if anything happens to Daddy or to Ambrose if Daddy's taken something into his head and dragged Ambrose along. But we don't think Ambrose will hurt him.” She was slower and clearer by then, so I could follow her, but I got the feeling she'd been talking nonstop since we'd connected.

“Stay on the line, Ardis. I want to know what's happening. We'll keep talking, okay? Here's what we're doing. We're going to finish up bombing the bridge with the materials we have—” I looked at Wanda.

“I finished my square,” she said. “If you don't need me to look for the old me, then I'll see you at Mel's in the morning.”

“Wanda's going home,” I told Ardis. “We'll plan to use the squares you have another time. Maybe even tomorrow night. Where are you, anyway?”

“The other side of the library. John knitted what looks like several acres of oobleck from the Dr. Seuss book as a surprise for Thea, and we were spreading it around on the grass in front.”

While Ardis talked, I went back up onto the footbridge with Ernestine. She stared over the railing, her hands on her hips. Geneva hovered beside her, hands on her hips, too.

“Thea's going to love the oobleck, Ardis,” I said. “Ernestine will, too. I need to give her a hand, now.”

“Right over the side they went,” Ernestine said. “And I don't think I can get down there and make it back up.”

“Did you hear that, Ardis? She lost her square and crochet hook over the side of the bridge.” “Lost” set Ardis off again.

“How could we lose two grown men? We thought we could
find
them,” she streamed into my ear. “John and Abby and I, we all thought we could. I mean, how hard can it
be
to find two gimpy old men who think they're out for a night in a town the size of a bath mat?”

I let Ardis talk and got the flashlight from my backpack. I gave it to Ernestine and asked her to shine it where the hook and scissors fell.

“The square will be easy enough to get,” she said, “but the crochet hook and my scissors might be harder to find in the reeds.”

I looked at Geneva, raising my eyebrows in invitation. She folded her hands primly at her waist and made no move to come with me.

“Try to avoid stepping on copperheads while you're down there trailing through the mud,” she said helpfully, “and try not to worry the dear ducks and ducklings by crashing about.”

“And we didn't want to worry anyone,” Ardis was saying in my ear. “We didn't want to alarm the rest of you or start a ruckus, especially with Ambrose the way he is—”

I went down the steps at the far end of the bridge and made a wide circuit around the bushes planted along the bridge's rock foundation. The embankment didn't look too steep, but there were plenty of weeds and reeds between me and the area lit by the flashlight. The tall growth petered out farther along to my left and grass ran down to the bank and the gurgling creek. I decided to go that way and then walk along the water's edge to get where I needed to be. And to avoid worrying the copperheads or stepping on ducks in the dark. Although maybe copperheads preferred the water's edge, too. I didn't know.

“You're sure you need the hook and scissors back?” I called to Ernestine.

“I think I see the hook,” she said.

“They are her favorites,” Geneva said.

“Thank you, Kath,” Ernestine called.

I waved back when she waved one of the crocheted squares, and gingerly picked my way to the water.

“Is Joe there yet?” I asked Ardis.

“He, Zach, Abby, and John have spread out to look. I'm staying put in case the old reprobates follow their own trail back this way.”

The closer I got to the footbridge, walking along the creek bank, the narrower the bank became. And there were two or three narrow trails leading into the tall reeds and weeds. Not as narrow as snakes.

“Vernon and I used to sit on that creek bank in the moonlight,” Ardis said. “Until Daddy caught us one night. But the creek looks real pretty these days, don't you think?”

“Oh yeah.”

The town parks department had been working with a University of Tennessee naturalist to rehabilitate the creek, after years of it being straightened and channeled and run through culverts. It certainly looked good and natural, and now that I could smell the mud, I thought that must be very natural, too—but I was beginning to appreciate Thea's feelings toward a natural creek environment.

Ernestine's square was caught on cockleburs—cockleburs that were now caught in my socks and my sleeves. I pulled the square free and tucked it under my arm, no doubt transferring cockleburs there, too. We'd assumed the crochet hook and scissors had fallen nearby, but what Ernestine thought was the hook, and was shining the light on, turned out to be a bicycle spoke.

“John says the hardest part about looking after Ambrose is that he's unpredictable,” Ardis said.

“Unpredictable can be scary.”

“Boy howdy.”

Ardis kept talking. I made listening noises and kept looking. Had the square caught a breeze and fluttered when it fell? Not that there was much of a breeze, and the crochet wasn't like a piece of paper or even
lightweight cotton. But the hook and scissors wouldn't have fluttered at all. They would have dropped straight down, and I was a yard or so out from the bridge. I turned around and inched my way back toward it, parting the reeds and weeds, and studying the ground as I went. I was beginning to think I should have given Ernestine the phone and brought the flashlight down with me.

“Shine the light straight down,” I called. I'd seen something, but the light wasn't quite strong enough.

“John also says Ambrose has that very strong antagonism that some lawyers develop toward the police,” Ardis was saying. “He blamed them for some of the cases he lost.”

“Did you lose two squares down here, Ernestine?”

Had I lost my mind, coming down here? It was hard to tell. It was hard to tell what I saw, too. But there was something under the graceful arch of the footbridge, in the dark, not quite hidden by the reeds. I moved closer. Striped or striped by shadows . . . but if it wasn't a crocheted square . . . was it . . . striped . . . socks?

“Ambrose got in trouble for kicking a deputy in the shin after losing one of the cases.”

“Ardis—”

“Well, if he reacted like that when he was compos mentis, now that his cogs are slipping you can see why we didn't want to call the police if we didn't have to, can't you?”

“We have to call them now, Ardis. I need to hang up and call the police now.”

B
ut I couldn't hang up from Ardis until I told her it wasn't her daddy dead under the bridge. Or Ambrose.

“Gladys Weems, Ardis,” I whispered into the phone. “Oh my God, I think it's Pokey's little old mother in her blue vest.”

“And you're sure she's—”

“No, I need to check. And I need to call nine-one-one—”

“Kath, you need to stop, breathe, and listen to me. Are you doing that?”

“I'm standing here breathing, but that's not good enough—”

“Kath, I didn't take Red Cross CPR training for nothing. First thing, tell one of the others to make the call. Tell someone specifically. Assign it so you know it's done.”

“There's only Ernestine left.”

“Then tell her.”

Ernestine had already caught on that something wasn't right, but hadn't heard the muffled details. I gave the two
most important details now—a body, under the bridge. When she heard them, Ernestine dropped the flashlight into the reeds at my feet. Geneva swirled down next to me while Ernestine made the call. Then, with Geneva beside me, I picked up the dropped flashlight and shone it on Gladys.

“I'm going to see if there's anything I can do for her,” I said to Ardis.

“No, stop. The next thing you're supposed to do is make sure the scene is safe. Or . . . maybe that was supposed to come first. Now I'm confused.”

“I'm going now.”

I started forward, Geneva still beside me, but stopped and whispered to her, “You can't, by any chance, tell from here if she's gone, can you?”

“I am sorry, no.”

Gladys hadn't moved in the minutes I dithered. I'd seen no rise and fall of breath. There were also no broken reeds near her, nothing to indicate that she'd reached the low space under the end of the bridge from this side. She must have walked or crawled in from the other side.

She lay facedown, her feet in their striped socks toward me, her arms over her head, as though . . . maybe someone had dragged her. I couldn't see her face, and was glad of that. Given her position and location, even with my flashlight I wasn't sure I would see breaths. Especially shallow or dying breaths. I crouched and crab-walked sideways, awkwardly, farther under the bridge to get nearer to her head, to get close enough to feel for a pulse in her neck.

But getting my fingertips on a blood vessel in her
throat wasn't going to be easy, maybe even impossible. A narrow length of crochet, in brighter stripes than her socks, was wrapped around and around her neck, around and around and twisted, twisted, twisted tight at her nape with a large crochet hook.

So instead of laying my fingertips on the side of Gladys' neck to feel for the beat of her heart, I sucked in a breath and made myself touch the crochet. I didn't understand or like the eerie jolt of someone else's emotions running through me—but if I couldn't feel her pulse or her breath, then maybe I could sense her dying emotions. I brushed my fingers against the crochet—didn't want to, but felt I should, felt . . . laughter? Derision. Disdain. Horrified surprise.

I must have whimpered into the phone. Ardis asked several times what I saw, but I didn't answer. Geneva swirled against me, as though to push me away from the body. She couldn't physically push, but her billowing was just as effective. I scooted backward, away from her and to get out of the dark under that bridge, but then Geneva suddenly swirled around behind me, blocking my way out—unless I wanted to move straight through her, and that I did not want to do.

“Her socks,” Geneva said in a low voice. “Touch them, too. Go on. See what you feel. Do it before the police get here.”

If a siren wailed in the distance, I didn't hear it. I only heard Geneva urging me over and over to touch Gladys' socks. I didn't want to do that any more than I'd wanted to pass through Geneva's misty form.

“The deaths might be connected,” Geneva said. “You have a gift. Use it.”

I touched the socks . . . but I didn't so much feel anything as . . . heard . . . “quack.”

I sat back on my heels. “What the . . .”

“What?” Geneva asked. “What is that silly look on your face?”

“What is it?” Ardis squawked from the phone. “Kath! What's going on?”

“Did you hear that?” I wasn't sure who I was asking—Geneva, Ardis, or myself.

“Hear what?” Geneva asked.

“Quack.”

“Shame on you,” she said. “This is no time for lame duck impressions. I am affronted on behalf of the deceased.”

“No, no, it's what I heard. Didn't you?”

She swirled around me once, making a noise ruder than a quack, and disappeared.

“Who are you talking to?” Ardis asked. “Is Gladys alive?”

“No. No, she's not. It was Geneva.”

“She's there?”

“She was. She's gone.”

“If she's gone,” a voice I didn't know said behind me, “then there's nothing more you can do for her, so come on out of there.”

I didn't know that voice behind me, but I recognized its nasal birthplace—Chicago. “Ardis, I think Al Rogalla is here,” I whispered into the phone.

“Then watch your back,” she said.

“He's
at
my back.”

“Okay,” she said, “then here's what you do. Turn around, look him in the eye, mention Hugh's name, and
see what he does. It's the element of surprise and might be revealing.”

Mentioning a murdered guy to someone Ardis didn't trust wasn't the kind of surprise I wanted to spring in the dark, under a bridge, near another newly murdered person. Under the circumstances, just being near the guy Ardis didn't trust would have given me the heebie-jeebies, but before my nerves had a chance to dance that particular jig, the first wave of police arrived in the form of Shorty Munroe.

“Deputy Munroe's here now,” I whispered into the phone. “But, Ardis, we need to find your daddy and Ambrose, fast, because—”

“Because there's a maniac on the loose. Tell Shorty, Kath. Tell him and whoever else arrives. Oh my land, and now I'll worry about John, Joe, and the kiddos out there, too.”

“You should hang up in case they're trying to call you.”

“And so you can concentrate. Call me when you know something,” she said, and disconnected.

“What are you doing here, Rogalla?” Shorty said. “You know better than to contaminate a possible crime scene. And who've you got treed under the bridge there? Oh, hey, Ms. Rutledge. You're not with this guy, are you? Did you call this in?”

I acknowledged Shorty's “hey,” and then we heard Ernestine hailing him from the bridge.

“Yoo-hoo, Deputy Munroe. I made the call. Kath found the body.”

“Hoo boy,” Shorty said. “Cole's going to love this. You come on out, too, Ms. Rutledge.”

Before making my way out into the glare of his high-powered flashlight, and before my nerves had a chance to run screaming, I quickly brushed my fingertips across Gladys' sock again. The “quack” that time was just as clear—and just as bizarre. I'd never “heard” anything through my fingertips before. But the quack reminded me of the first time I'd seen Gladys. Outside the courthouse, with Clod holding her by the arm, and she'd whomped him in the stomach with her handbag and called him a quack.
Quack?

“Ms. Rutledge, are you all right?” Shorty was on his hands and knees.

“Kind of rocky, Shorty, but I'm okay.”

“Well, you go on out while I see what we've got here.”

I crawled past him. I liked Shorty. While Clod's entire persona appeared to be starched, pressed, and at attention, Shorty always looked as though he'd just stifled a massive yawn, and his uniform as though it was still taking a nap. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and made me think of an overworked pencil pusher—more like an accountant than the guy in running shorts who watched me crawl out from under the bridge and get to my feet.

“Are you Al Rogalla?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Joe had said Al Rogalla—accountant and volunteer fireman— was a nice guy. But he wasn't so nice that he made any more of an introduction of himself than “yeah,” and he didn't ask me who I was in return. Maybe he didn't feel it was the time or place for that kind of polite exchange. He wasn't as tall as Joe or Clod, though easily a head taller than Shorty. Shorty's
nickname hadn't taken any imagination. That he had a couple of inches on me wasn't saying much.

Now that I wasn't alone in the dark under a bridge with Al Rogalla, I decided it
was
the time to take Ardis' advice and spring the name Hugh McPhee on him. And while we were there within scream's reach of an armed sheriff's deputy, I decided to up the percentage. “You and Hugh McPhee had a meeting with the Register of Deeds Tuesday afternoon, didn't you? And another meeting with Rachel Meeks at the bank after that?”

“Yeah.” Neither his face nor his monosyllable revealed a thing. He did shift slightly from one foot to the other; otherwise nothing.

We heard Shorty speak into the radio at his shoulder. It was possible that Rogalla, from his years as a volunteer fireman, could interpret the answering burst of static. I couldn't. Shorty spoke again, then crawled back out. When he stood he wiped his hand down his face, but he didn't bother to brush the dirt from his knees.

“You look lonely out here by yourself,” Rogalla said to Shorty. “Everyone else at the poker game?”

“Backup's on the way. What
are
you doing here, Rogalla?”

“I was out for a run and caught it on the radio.” A small box clipped to his waistband buzzed to prove his point.

“And you got here before me? All I had to do was walk out the back door.” Shorty hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the courthouse.

“I run fast. You should try it.”

The gibe didn't bother Shorty. I pictured it landing
somewhere on his rumpled khaki and brown and getting lost in the wrinkles. He scratched the back of his neck. “Where'd you run tonight? Were you in the park before you heard the radio?”

“Before? No. I ran the usual loop. Out Depot to Old Stage Road and around to Spring Street. I was crossing the tracks at Fox when I heard the radio.”

“Okay. You can clear out, Rogalla. Ms. Rutledge, we're going to have to take a statement. Would you like to wait up there on the bridge with Ms. O'Dell?”

“I'd like to walk Ms. O'Dell home,” I said. “But first I need to—”

“I'll walk her home,” Rogalla cut in.

“You are being rude and staring at him as though you expect him to sprout horns,” Geneva called down from the bridge.

“Ernestine, is that all right with you?” I asked.

“If it doesn't put him to too much trouble,” she said. “Deputy, I don't think there's anything I can add to your report except that if you find a crochet hook and a pair of scissors down there, they're probably mine.”

“
Crochet
hook,” Shorty said as though the piece of a puzzle had fallen into place. “When did you lose it?”

“Shortly before Kath made her discovery. I dropped them and she kindly went to find them for me and found—who did you find, dear? Do we know?”

I looked at Shorty and he shook his head.

“It's unconfirmed, Ernestine.”

“We might need to keep Ms. O'Dell here to answer a few questions, too,” Shorty said quietly.

I shook
my
head and pointed toward the bridge, toward Gladys, toward the crochet hook twisted in the
strip around her neck. I was interested to see that my finger shook slightly. “It's not Ernestine's hook,” I said. “She never uses one that big.”

“Old woman?” Shorty said, sounding skeptical. “Bad eyesight, right? My grandmother uses one that big. Heck, my wife does.”

“Ernestine doesn't,” I said firmly. “She was with me all evening. Gladys was dead when I found her.”

“All right if I take her home, then?” Rogalla asked. “Your call, Shorty.”

“Go on.”

Shorty and I watched Al Rogalla climb the bank in a few long-legged steps. On the bridge, he bent his head to hear something Ernestine said. Geneva bent to hear it, too. Then Rogalla took Ernestine's backpack on one shoulder and her on his arm.

“See you in the morning, Ernestine,” I called. “Thanks, um, Al.” He said nothing in return.

“You could walk
me
home,” Geneva said, floating down from the bridge and hovering beside me. “Now that your art project has blown up in your face.”

“Excuse me, Shorty, my phone.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “Okay if I answer it?”

“No details,” he said.

“I'll just go over here.” I put a few feet between us. Geneva followed. “What did Ernestine say to Rogalla up there?” I asked her.

“She asked where he bought his running shorts. Will you take me home now?”

While I tried to explain why I couldn't walk her home then and there, Shorty's backup arrived. Shorty shooed me up to the bridge, which was fine with me. I sat on the
steps, glad I was at least a little removed from the usual controlled commotion of a crime scene. I didn't want to see them putting Gladys on a stretcher. I didn't want to see Clod, either. It wasn't until I was thinking how strange it was to know what consisted of “usual” at a crime scene that I realized this one was usual, except for a conspicuous absence.

“The sheriff is here,” I whispered to Geneva, “but wonder of wonders, Deputy Dunbar isn't.”

“Because someone probably walked him home,” she shouted back.

There was no point in telling her,
again
, that she could easily find her way back to the Weaver's Cat without me. And there was no point in
re-
repeating that if she stopped moaning about it, she might hear something pertinent to the case. She'd already declared me impertinent and was sulking in a heap on the step below me. Her sulk and Clod's absence—including the absence of his invariably snarky questions and comments—lent my small space in this wretched night a brief sense of calm. False calm, of course, because the word “absence” triggered a barrage of thoughts starting with a guilty one about Tammie. She hadn't shown up at the bridge and we, at least I, hadn't heard anything from her. I tried calling her again. No answer. That could mean nothing, or it could mean I should tell Shorty and—and what a
dolt
. I hadn't told Shorty about Hank and Ambrose. That they were still missing, I was sure. If they'd been found, Ardis, John, Joe—or all three—would have called to let me know.