Knot the Usual Suspects (23 page)

“Are you all right?”

I looked at the man who asked—Pokey Weems, sadly watching his wife push her way through the crowd.

“Please forgive her,” he said. “She wanted so much for this to be a happy, successful weekend.” He hadn't looked at me, hadn't taken his concerned eyes off Olive. I should have offered my condolences, but he sighed and followed in her wake.

My phone rang then. Joe with a lead on the memorial tribute.

“Al Rogalla,” he said. “Not verified.”

“He has a booth.”

“He isn't registered for one.”

I told him about seeing Al and Rachel at the booth with the knotted monkey's fist ornaments, and Rachel's fleet and limpless feet.

“I don't remember her name on a booth, either,” Joe said. “If you're still looking for the twins, someone saw them down the hall, checking on classrooms for tomorrow.”

“I'll take a look.”

*   *   *

The pea-green walls made the school hallway timeless—it could be any school, anywhere—and it was a relief to
hear nothing but my footsteps after the roar of the crafting crowd in the gym. I didn't find the Spiveys in the first few rooms along the corridor, but according to the map, some of the classes would be held in the art room around the corner and down the next hallway. Mercy's cologne wasn't evident, but it might have met its match in eau de school floor wax.

There were three trophy cases around the corner and I stopped to look at them. Three seemed like a lot, but they held trophies going back decades. I didn't need to read dates on the labels or yellowed newspaper articles—the stratigraphic layers of dust in the cases were clue enough. The progressively more faded team photographs, and the style of uniforms and safety equipment, told the story, too. I looked for a trophy or an article or some kind of ballyhoo over Hugh McPhee's amazing and long-standing record in each of the cases, but didn't find anything. I did find a big trophy with Al Rogalla's name. And was tickled to recognize two young Dunbars in a couple of the pictures—Clod on the football team and Joe on the cross-country team. The difference in sports suited the brothers.

I found the art room. No Spiveys lurked within, but I tested my bloodhound skills and sniffed the air. A trace of Mercy lingered there—not enough to bay about, though. Instead I was nosy and looked at the materials and kits laid out for a needle felting demonstration. While I was examining one of the kits, and thinking Debbie could put some together for us to sell at the Cat, someone ran past the room, going farther down the hall. I went to the door and heard the running feet stop around the next corner.

Another sound came from that direction—a door being rattled? Rattled, but not opened, because then the steps came back toward me, slower. Slower and quietly and . . . carefully? Creeping?

Craven amateur sleuth that I was, I shrank back into the art room, plastered myself to the wall, and closed my eyes. If Geneva were with me, she would have called me pathetic. And she would've been right, too, doggone it. So I steeled myself to open my eyes and act like a—like I didn't know what—like a proud member of the TGIF crime-fighting posse.

And then those furtive steps crept into the room with me.

“A
re you about to hurl?” Zach asked. “Because if you are, I'll move.”

I opened my eyes. Nothing but concern showed on his face. For me, or possibly for his shoes. “Was that you running down the hall? If you ran down, why did you come creeping back?”

“Thought I heard someone.” He pointed over his shoulder in the direction he'd come from. We listened. He shrugged, then gave one of his quick smiles. “You looked like you'd stepped in what I left on the floor in front of the cafeteria. You want to see?”

We walked down the hall and around the corner to the cafeteria. On the floor, like a doormat, lay a knitted puddle of OMG—old moldy gravy.

“Abby wanted me to put it in the kitchen in front of the sink,” Zach said, “but the doors are locked.”

“Best yarn bomb ever.” I took out my phone to get a picture. And heard footsteps again, farther down the hall. I held myself together this time. And told myself I was being strong because I was there for Zach's sake,
and not because he'd moved so that he stood between me and the approaching feet.

Feet that belonged to Al Rogalla. He saw Zach first. “Hey, are you supposed to be back here? Oh, hi. Do you know this kid?”

“We're working on a project.”

“Well, you shouldn't be wandering around the school.”

“Like you?” I could hear Geneva, in my mind's ear, exclaiming, “You are rude!” Even if only in my mind, she was right. I had no good reason to be rude to the man, especially if I wanted him to answer questions. “Sorry. I saw the monkey's fist ornaments at your booth. Really cute. Where'd you learn to make them?”

“It's not my booth.” He looked at the knitting on the floor. “Nice vomit,” he said, and walked away.

“You should practice your technique,” Zach said.

“Yup.”

I didn't stay for the memorial tribute. I finally crossed paths with Shirley and Mercy and they told me it was scheduled for five o'clock.

“I notice your chagrin,” Mercy said. “Other plans?”

“Not to worry,” said Shirley. “We'll be your eyes and ears.”

“Full report later,” Mercy said.

I gulped and left.

*   *   *

The posse gathered in the TGIF workroom later that afternoon. I was last to arrive and found them at one of the oak worktables instead of the circle of comfy chairs where we usually sat and knitted. No one was knitting now, and I took that as a measure of how urgent they felt the situation had become with Gladys' death. Everyone
but Joe had made it to the meeting. Geneva was there, too, still hovering at Ardis' side. She was somber, too, only raising a hand in greeting, then putting a finger to her lips. They'd rolled the whiteboard in. Ardis nodded her approval when I closed the door and took the seat they'd left for me at the head of the table.

“John suggested the table,” Ardis said, “to put us on a more serious footing.”

“I like the closed-door policy, too,” Mel said. “It'll keep out that law enforcement riffraff that's wandered in a time or two. And I get the feeling our secret plans weren't so secret after all.”

“Me, too. How's Ambrose?” I asked John.

“He put a hole in the screen door with his cane when I got him home. Then he slept like a baby and mended the screen when he got up. I think the evening did him some good.”

“Daddy, too,” Ardis said. “He thinks he and mother were out dancing last night at Pokey's roadhouse.”

“Pokey closed that roadhouse twenty years ago,” Thea said.

“And Daddy hasn't been there in thirty, but he wants to go at the weekend for the live music.”

“Let's get started,” I said.

“And let's finish it, too,” Ernestine said, “so we can put a stop to this terrible business.” She slapped her hand on the table. “Oh.” She put both hands in her lap. “We should sit at the table more often. That was very satisfying.”

“What's first, then,” Ardis asked, “a recap of the questions from the last meeting, or reports?”

“Reports,” I said. “They'll answer some of the questions.”

“And add more,” said John. “It's worked for us before; let's hope it does again.”

I went first and told them about the connection between the two murders—that Gladys had seen something in the park that night—and how we knew. “We think she saw the murderer if not the actual murder,” I said. “We can't be sure, of course, but it fits, and we know she didn't want to go to the police.” I hesitated before using Aaron's name, but decided to go ahead.

“Another person who might not be comfortable going to the police,” Ernestine said. “And such a nice young man, too. I hope you warned him not to let anyone else think he knows what Gladys saw.”

“I think he's taking the possibility of danger seriously,” I said.

“And he's a Carlin,” Ardis said, “so he knows how to disappear. But this question of trust in the police brings up an interesting wrinkle. Cole Dunbar's been suspended.”

Ernestine and I had heard that at breakfast, but it was news to the others. Reactions ranged from Thea's mouth hanging open to John's fingertips tapping the table as though they were recording the thoughts running through his head.

“Coffee,” Mel said. “I need coffee to process that.” She'd set the refreshments up on the Welsh dresser, the way we usually did, but brought it all over to the table now. “Help yourselves,” she said. “It's nothing but marble pound cake. If I'd known you were going to drop that bomb, I'd have brought rum cake. And possibly left the cake out altogether.” She poured a cup of coffee and drank half of it. “Okay. Cole's suspended. Why?”

“He wouldn't say.” Ardis crumpled a napkin and
dropped it on the table. “When he came to pick up the list and timetable this afternoon, I gave him every opportunity. I haven't offered that man so much sympathy or so many chances to come clean since he was a boy and put a bar of soap in Dee Dee Williams' sandwich and refused to admit it.” She crumpled another napkin. “Dee Dee was a snotty thing and deserved it.”

“Are we guessing why?” Mel asked.

“No,” said John. “That doesn't sound safe or smart. Or kind. It might be a personal matter.”

“Best left under a rock?” Mel said. “Fine with me. He was in uniform this morning. When did it happen?”

“Maybe it had
just
happened,” I said. “Nasty surprises like that get sprung on you sometimes.” Nasty surprises like a phone call telling you your job's been eliminated, which was what had happened to me. The shared experience of a sucker punch like that should have made me more sympathetic toward Clod. But there was a difference in our situations. My boss had cried when she told me the news and had made it clear it wasn't my fault. Clod's boss seemed to think something
was
his fault.

“He doesn't seem to be paying much attention to being suspended,” Ernestine said. “He asked for that timetable and list of names.”

“Darla doesn't, either. She was there giving him an update on Hugh's truck this morning. I wonder if she'll tell us anything about the suspension.” I made a note to call her. “It's probably hard to step away from a case like this. Cole was pretty psyched about Hugh being in town.”

“Speaking of the truck—” Ardis put the envelope with Joe's pictures on the table. “Score one for our team. Joe found the truck first. Did you find out where, Kath?”

“Score zip for my team,” I said.

“Oh, poor baby,” said Thea. “You're not scoring any these days?” She smiled and moved her chair out of reach of my foot—too close to Mel. “Ow. Okay, let's see the pictures.”

They passed the pictures around and I went to the whiteboard. Geneva followed me. Filling up the board's clean expanse with questions, facts, and theories always seemed to help me. Geneva usually left the room when we got it out. Knowing now how much she missed drawing, I could understand. I picked up the marker and drew a tiny ghost in a corner of the board.

“That looks nothing like me. Please erase it.”

I rubbed it out and looked at her.

“She isn't wearing her braided bracelet.”

I took my phone out and looked at it as though I was checking to see who was calling, then put it to my ear. “I know.”

“I didn't notice that until now. Some detective. Some great-great-aunt. Not so great at anything. I will be in my small room. It's like a coffin. That's something I did notice.”

“I'll come talk to you later,” I said, but I wasn't sure she heard me.

“Are you making notes up there, Kath?” John asked.

“Yeah.” I slipped the phone back in my pocket. “Columns, then notes. Columns with all the names we've had floating around. Ardis and I started a list Thursday morning.”

“That was yesterday,” Mel said.

“Yow. Doesn't seem possible.” I wrote
Hugh McPhee
in the upper left corner, and next to that
Gladys Weems
.
“Ardis, will you read the other names from the list? It's in my notebook.” I wrote them across the top of the board as she read—“Olive Weems, Sheriff Haynes, Cole Dunbar, Al Rogalla, Rachel Meeks.” For good measure, I added Tammie Fain and Wanda Vance.

“Does anyone know who the Register of Deeds is?” Ardis asked.

“Lois Poteet,” Ernestine said. “Why?”

“I'll let Kath tell you,” Ardis said. “It's her report. I'm still skeptical, but . . .” She let the thought hang while I started to write
Lois Poteet
on the board. I got as far as
Lois Pot
, stopped, and turned around.

“Oh boy—with everything else going on last night, I forgot that I heard something else, and this one's a doozy.”

“We haven't heard the first part of your report yet,” Mel said, “but go ahead and lay the doozy news on us.”

“Hugh and Rachel were briefly married.”

That was an even more impressive bomb than the news of Clod's suspension. No finger tapped, no hand reached for the coffee.

“None of you knew that?” I asked.

“Did you hear this from the same source?” Ardis asked. “The
Spivey
vine?”

“Is
that
where you heard about the meetings at the bank and the courthouse?” Thea asked. “And you wanted to rearrange the teams to follow up on
Spivey
information?”

“The meetings have been confirmed,” I said. “What Ardis and Thea are talking about is something the twins told me Thursday afternoon—that Hugh and Al Rogalla, on
Tuesday afternoon
, met with Lois Poteet at the
courthouse and then with Rachel at the bank. At the bridge last night, I asked Al, and he confirmed it.”

“And I can now confirm the marriage, through the wonders of online public access records,” Mel said, holding up her smartphone.

“Did Al tell you why they met with Lois and Rachel?” Ardis asked.

“No.”

“Any more reports from Spivey Central?” Thea asked. “Because I'd like to go next. I clearly need to redeem myself, both for doubting the Spivey Fount of All Knowledge and for last night's duck disaster. I have more background information on Hugh. Although the fact that I totally missed the marriage blows my mind.”

“Forget your mind,” Mel said. “Will the shoes recover?”

“That jury is still out. Okay, here are my notes, raw and in order of discovery, not in timeline form.” She settled a pair of reading glasses on the end of her nose. “Age, fifty-three; graduated from UT Knoxville 1983; English major, history minor; junior year abroad, Edinburgh University, Scotland; graduate studies at Edinburgh, attaining a doctorate in Scottish studies and fluency in Gaelic; learned to play the bagpipes, too, in case you didn't notice. An interesting aside—he was one of the injured in the Sheffield Soccer Riots of 1989. Suffered a head injury but made a full recovery. He returned stateside, bounced from job to job, ended up back at UT Knoxville working in the math library, there not being much of a job market at American universities for someone with his expertise. He's been at the library for fifteen years.”

“In Knoxville,” Ardis said, “and never came back here.”

“At least not with the kind of splash he did this time,”
Thea said. “And maybe not ever. He wasn't hiding over there. He just quietly faded into the background. Except when he's playing the bagpipes. Hard to fade into anything when you're blowing them and dressed to the teeth. The guy whose funeral he played for—Walter Jeffries—was a colleague at UT. Hugh was somewhat active in an online Gaelic society. Not into other social media, though.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“I think that's darn good for one night.” Thea folded her glasses and set them on the table. “I will now sit back with a keen ear for further points of online inquiry, and fortify myself for tonight's foray.” She refilled her coffee and took a slice of pound cake.

“Good job, Thea.”

“Of course.”

“How does it change things, if we know Rachel and Hugh were married?” Ardis asked.

“That's one of our new questions,” John said, “with a whole cascade of questions below it. Are there any other reports before we jump to those?”

“A few observations from Handmade,” I said. “They might give some direction to the new questions, but I'll try to keep them objective. Rachel was there. She wasn't limping—and as an aside, Joe was beginning to ask her questions last night, working his way toward the bank meeting, when she twisted her ankle and went home. He didn't see it happen. She said it wasn't bad.”

“But she called me this morning and said she was staying off it,” Mel said.

“And I really didn't see anything wrong this afternoon.”

“Did you talk to her?” Ernestine asked