Knot the Usual Suspects (6 page)

G
eneva and Argyle were waiting for me in the kitchen at the Weaver's Cat the next morning. Argyle held no grudges over sleep interrupted by bagpipes. He accepted a rub between the ears and a helping of fish-flavored crunchy things with his usual good grace and shedding fur. Geneva looked grumpy and seemed to expect an apology.

“It wasn't me playing the pipes after midnight, Geneva, but I'm sorry they bothered you. Do you really hate them that much?”

“I hid under your desk with Argyle and we yowled to drown them out. I believe several dogs in the neighborhood joined us. The yowling was cathartic, but that does not mean I would like the fiend to repeat his performance again tonight.”

“Have you ever heard bagpipes in real life?”

“As opposed to in real death? You are particularly insensitive this morning.”

“That
was
insensitive, and I'm sorry. I just wondered if anyone around here played them in your time.”

“Such a villain would have been ridden out of town on a rail.”

*   *   *

Ardis was waiting for me in the front room, looking about as sleep-deprived and grumpy as her great-great-aunt.

“I'm trying to put a good face on it,” she said, “because I dearly love the pipes. But you and I both know that I also dearly love my sleep, and this morning when I looked in the mirror I had a hard time convincing myself that I wasn't hungover. It's my eyes, Kath. Look at my eyes.” She leaned toward me and almost fell off the tall stool.

I immediately went to Mel's and bought a large coffee for her.

*   *   *

Clod Dunbar was waiting for me when I got back from Mel's. He and Ardis weren't exchanging small talk when I came in. Small talk wasn't Clod's strong suit, and Ardis hadn't had enough sleep to bait him into engaging in it. I gave Ardis the cup of coffee and stood beside her. She took a sip, gauging the brew's temperature, then took a long swallow.

“Ah, Coleridge,” she said. “Now that caffeine has propped open my eyelids, good morning.” She breathed in the coffee's aroma and took another swallow. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence two days in a row? Are you here to tell us that the mad piper will pipe no more? That would be a kind thing for you to say and music to my ears. Especially as you tracked mud in through our front door.”

Clod didn't look over his shoulder or check the soles
of his shoes. Instead he cleared his throat. His harrumph was out of uniform, though.
He
wore his khaki and brown, and held his Smokey the Bear hat at attention in the crook of his arm, but the harrumph was . . .

“Something's happened,” I said quietly, trying to read it on his face. “What?”

His voice was out of uniform, too. He spoke to Ardis. “It's Hugh, Ms. Buchanan. I'm sorry. He's dead.”

I took the cup of coffee from Ardis before she crumpled.

“I need to get back there,” Clod said, talking to me now, “but I didn't think she should hear about it from some—”

“Where?” I asked.

“I'm not authorized to—”

“Back where?” Ardis asked. “Where did it happen?”

“Ms. Buchanan, ma'am,” Clod said, “we don't need to go into that now.”

I couldn't see his feet, but I got the impression he shuffled them. If he did, it was another chink in his professional starch and Ardis noticed, too. The chink must have given her strength. She stood up.

“
What
happened to Hugh, Coleridge? Tell me how and when and where.”

Expressionless, Clod looked from her to me and back to her. “Unofficial. Off the record. We are investigating. Do not repeat this.” He looked at each of us again. We nodded. “He was found a short while ago. His body was obscured by the reeds alongside the creek behind the courthouse.”

“And the rest?” Ardis asked.

“Probably sometime last night, and not an accident.
Those are best guesses only. Again, unofficial and please do not repeat any of this.”

“Why are you suddenly trusting us with unofficial information?” I asked.

He answered my question, but looked only at Ardis. “Because we might need your help, Ms. Buchanan. We found something in his, his . . . we found your name on a piece of paper in a book in some kind of purse around his waist. Not a purse. I know that's not what it's called. But it's part of the getup he was wearing.”

“Getup?” Ardis mouthed the question.

I asked it out loud. “What getup? What are you talking about?”

“A kilt,” Clod said, “and . . .” He stopped, maybe at a loss for the right words to describe the rest of Hugh's “getup.” Or he might have faltered because he saw the look on Ardis' face.

“A kilt and
what
?” she asked.

“A kilt and
nothing
,” Geneva whispered in my ear. She suddenly hovered at my other shoulder, making me a sandwich between a ghost and her great-great-niece. “I have heard about those ‘getups' and what they leave out.”

I put my hand up to hide my mouth and pretended to rub my nose. “Hush,” I said quietly in Geneva's direction.

“I would like to know what a self-respecting great-great-niece of mine was doing consorting with the likes of a risqué man like
that
. I am scandalized.” She made a rude noise in my ear and disappeared.

“Regalia,”
Clod said too loudly, as though he'd suddenly remembered the correct answer to a stumper and
he'd expected a buzzer to sound, or a fourth-grade teacher's ruler to smack a desk. “Regalia,” he repeated. “Socks, tassels, that, that hairy . . .” Vocabulary failed him again, and his hands took over trying to describe what he'd called a purse earlier, and where it hung below Hugh's waist. He turned red and crossed his arms when Ardis looked at him over her glasses, eyebrows raised.

“Perhaps you're talking about a spermin,” Ardis said.

“Sporran,” I said.

“
Anyway,
” Clod said, “it looks like McPhee was the ass—the um, the individual reportedly playing bagpipes in the middle of the night.”

“Reportedly? You didn't hear them?” Clod lived around the corner from me—half a block closer to downtown.

“They were reported because they were heard,” Ardis said. “I heard them. I reported them. Do not use legalese or dismissive language with me.”

“I'm sorry, Ms. Buchanan. And I am truly sorry about Hugh. I know you thought highly of him. Now, because we found your name in his . . . with him . . . someone will be contacting you later today to make a statement. In the meantime—”

“A statement about what?” Ardis asked.

“Whatever it is that you know about—”

“But I don't know anything about Hugh,” she said. “Not really. Until yesterday, I hadn't seen him or heard anything about him in years. I took him to lunch, we chatted, and that's the sad sum total of what I know about Hugh.”

“You can explain that when you speak with the officer. In the meantime, what I want to know is—”

“Finding her name in his
sporran
doesn't prove that she knows anything,” I said.

“I know that.”
He might have briefly ground his teeth. “Thank you, Ms. Rutledge,” he said, teeth still gritted. “Ms. Buchanan, please, answer this one question—what did Hugh tell you about being in town for Half-baked Blue Plum?”

Silence followed his question. A silence louder than the clodhopping boots of ten thousand deputies. A silence into which Clod put his metaphorical foot one clomp further.

“What?” he asked, looking genuinely perplexed. “Half-baked—that's what everyone calls it, isn't it?”

“No, Coleridge, it isn't.” Ardis used the tone of voice she'd perfected through her years of smacking desks with rulers. She'd told me she reserved it for answering questions that tested her patience and the validity of the phrase “there are no stupid questions.” “Many people love the craft fair,” she told him now. “Many of the craftspeople depend on their sales from weekend fairs like this one for the extras others of us take for granted—music or dance lessons for the children or grandchildren, for instance.”

“I meant no disrespect.”

“Of course you didn't. Ten has a booth at the fair this year,” Ardis said, calling Joe by his childhood nickname for Tennyson, something she and very few others could get away with. “Did you know that? Flies, lures, and watercolors.”

“I didn't know.”

“Kumihimo braiding, too,” I said. “He's really good at it and it's cool.”

Clod gave me a look.

“It is. And it's not just a booth. He's in charge of all the booths this year. It's a big responsibility and a heck of a lot of work. You should stop by this weekend and check it out. Stop and say hey. I know he'd appreciate it.”

“Coleridge will no doubt be on duty all weekend,” Ardis said, “busy working on this terrible case. And that brings me back to your question, Coleridge. You asked what Hugh told me about being in town for Handmade Blue Plum?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Doesn't it fall into the category of hearsay evidence?”

“It might be helpful to the investigation.”

“Hunh.”

“Ms. Buchanan, what did he say?”

“Not a blessed thing.”

*   *   *

“Do you think he believed you?” I asked after Clod left.

“Possibly not.”

“Are you okay? Do you need to take some time?”

“No, hon.”

“I'm sorry about Hugh. He was . . . he seemed . . .”

Ardis nodded. “That's it exactly. We really don't know anything about Hugh beyond ‘was' and ‘seemed.' I only knew him ‘when' and you didn't know him at all. And I wasted the time I spent with him over lunch yesterday wagging my own chin. Catching him up on people I
do
know something about.”

“
Did
Hugh say anything to you about being here for Handmade Blue Plum?”

“Do you think I would
lie
to Deputy Coleridge Blake
Dunbar?” A glint of humor kindled in her eyes, then flickered out. She bounced the eraser end of a pencil on the counter as she became thoughtful. “No, he didn't. It's hard to remember if he said much of anything at all.” She bounced the pencil a time or two more. “So, what is it about the fair, or what's going to be
at
the fair, that's interesting enough to bring Hugh McPhee back to town after all these years?”

“Or
who's
going to be there.
If
Deputy Dunbar is right—because we don't know why Cole thinks Hugh
did
say something to you about being here for Handmade. Asking you implies that he knows Hugh did come for the fair, but that he isn't sure
why
he came for the fair. But what if he just thinks that's why Hugh was here? What if he's assuming?”

“But why would he ask me if he didn't know for sure?” Ardis let the pencil bounce one more time and then tossed it in the air. “Did I just say that? Did I just assume that because Cole believes something and says it out loud, then it's true?”

The pencil had flown as far as the mannequin and stuck in the gray cowl like a dart. I went around the counter and carefully pulled it out. Ardis put out her hand for it. I didn't give it back. She put her hands flat on the counter.

“You're right, Kath. You're right, and we don't know if Cole is right. I'll tell you what we do know, though. And knowing this brings me to a place of calm.” She took a deep breath in and let it out. Then she held out her hand again. “Please give me the pencil.” I did. She flipped the notebook open and saw my
dabbling in detective work
note from the day before. “Cole's joke isn't really funny
anymore, and yesterday morning seems like a long time ago.” She turned the page. “We know the police at least
think
Hugh was here for the fair. That gives us another clue to work with.” She poised the pencil over the page, then swiveled it in her fingers and pointed it at me. “Because we
are
going to find who killed him.”

I nodded and watched as she jotted her own note. “You said that gives us another clue. What else have we got?”

“The slip of paper with my name. Why was it in his sporran?”

“Oh, right. How did I forget that?”

“You were distracted by Cole's pantomime—and its location—as he searched for the right word,” Ardis said.

“Disturbed by it anyway.”

“Also, what book did Hugh have in his sporran? Is it significant? Or was the slip of paper with my name on it merely a bookmark in a random book?”

“Lost in a random universe?”

“That has a lonely, existential sound to it.” She made several more notes with slashing underlines, and then grew still. “I think Hugh was lonely. And now he's lost forever.” She put the pencil down and stared at her hands.

“Ardis, I hate to say it, but maybe we should cancel the yarn bombing.”

“No.”

“Sneaking around so late at night, though? Out of caution, shouldn't we at least consider postponing it?”

“No. We're going to have a dozen people. We're working in groups. No one is going solo. It's perfect the way we've planned it.”

“Postpone it out of respect for Hugh, then?”

“I asked him if he wanted to join us and he said yes. We need to do if
for
Hugh.”

“Okay. I was just checking.” I nudged her with my shoulder. “Here's another clue—the bagpipes and the midnight concert. When was the last time something like that happened in Blue Plum?”

“And his whole ‘getup,' as Coleridge so ineptly called it. The kilt, the sporran, the pipes—that's not your typical east Tennessee ‘getup.'”

“Not
upper
east, anyway. All the way west, over there in Knoxville, maybe. Or out in the hinterlands in Nashville or Memphis. Do we know where he's been living?”