Spin a Wicked Web (15 page)

Oh, yes, I was addicted. I definitely needed to start shopping
for a wheel of my own.

La Conner was located fifty miles northwest of Cadyville. When I
left at 7:00 a.m., the air still held the sweetness of dew caressed by
the early sun. Sipping coffee from a travel mug, I admired the increasingly pastoral view as I drove north on Interstate 5. At exit
221, I ditched the main highway and headed west through Conway and Stanwood on a series of roads that wound through lush
farmland.

For twenty-five years, spring tourists had descended upon La
Conner and the surrounding towns of Stanwood and Mount Vernon for the annual tulip festival. Buses took folks out to admire
the profusion of multicolored blooms in the fields, where they
could ooh and aah like spectators at a fireworks show, take pictures to their hearts' content, and buy more bulbs and tulipthemed geegaws than you could shake a stick at.

It was a lot of fun, granted, but I was glad the festival was over
for the year and I'd only have to navigate the usual summer
crowds.

Meandering through the bucolic June morning, I reviewed what
I knew about Ariel so far. She was a bad artist, but didn't seem to know it. She was too lazy to get the training she needed to improve.
Didn't want to deal with college because the expectations were too
high, and she'd have to take classes she didn't like in order to get a
degree in something she did like. She mooched money from her
roommate. Jake Beagle had either a fatherly or carnal interest in her,
though there was no evidence she'd been interested in him one way
or the other. She wanted to marry money, but she had an affair with
the husband of someone she knew.

Scott Popper was at least twenty years older than she was. I
mean, that's not the worst thing in the world, but it made no sense
in this situation. He wasn't rich, and his wife could have broken
Ariel in half if she'd found out.

That thought gave me pause. Chris really could have, physically, strangled Ariel. And she admitted that she knew about the
affair. It was a good thing both Ruth and Irene could vouch for
her.

What would I have done in Chris' situation?

I frowned at a field of alfalfa and shook my head. I wouldn't
want a man who didn't choose to be with me. Maybe Chris had
also been unwilling to fight for Scott. Had it been the first time
he'd had an affair? And never mind what Ariel got out of the affair-what about Scott? What the heck was wrong with him, to
even get involved with her in the first place? Was it simply because
she was so pretty?

Maybe. Men could be awfully stupid about physical beauty.

So I thought and drove and drove and thought. Traffic was
light, and I made the trip in good time. In La Conner, I stopped at
the Wild Radish Cafe and treated myself to breakfast. Then I went
for a walk along the waterfront. Visible across the water was Fi- dalgo Island, home of the Swinomish Indian tribe. Gulls swooped
and called, cormorants lurked, and the occasional seal frolicked in
the Swinomish Channel.

Looking at my watch, I found I'd managed to waste the whole
morning. How decadent!

At a waterfront restaurant I snarfed a quick cup of clam chowder, anxious to meet Ariel's brother and his family. I got back in
my pickup and gave up my early bird parking spot. The town was
already filling up with day-trippers from Seattle.

AN UNEXPECTED THRILL OF excitement fluttered through my solar
plexus at the thought of learning more about Ariel from people
who really knew her. No one I'd talked to so far had been all that
close to her. The picture I'd developed was largely one-sided, and
less than flattering. Maybe she was kind to animals. Maybe she
mentored troubled teens. Maybe she helped out on the tulip farm
every year without fail.

I mean, it was possible, right?

A few miles southeast of town, a brightly painted sign advertising Kaminski Tulip Farm hovered over a mailbox covered with
stencils of tulips. The arrow at the bottom pointed down a recently
graveled drive, toward a house easily visible across the fields. It was
white with dark-blue trim, and a big covered porch wrapped
around from the eastern-facing front door to the south side of the
house. A windbreak of tall poplars, straight and precise as the pickets of a giant fence, marched along to the north. As I drove closer, I saw the impressive vegetable garden sprawled to the south, separated from the porch by a narrow strip of emerald green lawn.

It was an oasis in the brown dirt of the newly harvested fields,
but in the spring, floating in the sea of daffodils and tulips of every
color imaginable, the tidy and welcoming farmhouse would fade
into the background.

My tires crunched up the driveway, and a huge German shepherd came barreling around the corner from the direction of what
looked like a barn. Fitting the idea of Ariel into this rural background was beyond difficult. Maybe the family had originally
lived in town. Perhaps Rocky was the anomaly, not his sister.

I parked behind a dark blue Suburban, opened my door and
reached to pet the dog. He promptly raised his hackles and
growled low in his throat. I jerked my hand back. Froze. Tried not
to look him in the eye. Of course, I can't hide my emotions from
humans, so I don't know why I thought I could hide them from a
dog. He advanced slowly, a continual rumble issuing from deep in
his chest.

"Tut! Tut, you leave her alone. Get in here." The speaker stood
in the shadow of the front porch.

At first I thought she was saying, "tut, tut," bad doggie, but
soon realized Tut was the monster's name. He obeyed with alacrity, bounding up the steps to the porch, tail wagging, seemingly
the embodiment of man's best friend.

The woman stepped into the light and waved at me. "Don't
you worry, he's all right. Come on in!"

I grabbed the gift basket and ventured up the walkway, noting
the neat rows of white alyssum, yellow daisies, and purple allium
that lined each side of the flagstones. Enormous baskets of fuchsias hung over the porch railing. Half a dozen bird feeders swung from
giant iron hooks driven into the ground around the yard. The beneficiaries of this abundance flitted in from the poplars. Beneath the
feeders, Oregon juncos and varied thrush grubbed at the fallout.
The shouts of children playing carried from behind the house.

"I'm Sophie Mae Reynolds," I said. Tut watched me, but his
gently waving tail signaled more of a welcome. "Are you Gabrielle
Kaminski?"

The woman came down the porch steps. "That's me. Everyone
calls me Gabi."

She was in her late twenties, buxom, with light brown hair drawn
back into a simple pony tail. The sunlight glinted off the smoothness of it. My hand ran through my own short mop when I saw it.
Gabi had brown eyes and a sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks
and nose. Her lips were surprisingly pink against her tan, and they
parted to reveal a slight overbite. She was taller than me, and gave
the impression of bulk, mostly because of her chest.

A farmer's wife who looked like a farmer's wife ought to.

I held out the basket of soaps and preserves to her. "I'm Ariel's
friend." A slight exaggeration. "I called yesterday about bringing
her art up from Cadyville?"

She took the basket and smiled broadly. "Oh, look at all these
goodies! That is just so nice of you."

"It's from everyone at the co-op," I said, exaggerating again.

"Well, you just tell everyone thanks, then. It's such a sweet thing
to do." She turned back toward the door, still talking. "Now, I've
got iced tea brewed, or there's cider from last fall. Or would you
rather have a cup of coffee? I can warm some up from-oh, that's
silly. I might as well make us up a fresh pot, don't you think?"

"Cider sounds delicious," I said.

I followed her inside. To the left, toys littered the living room.
Straight ahead, a spacious kitchen in yellow and white. A basket of
peas dominated the middle of the trestle table, and another large
basket of produce sat on the counter: beets, Swiss chard, and a few
early cherry tomatoes among the greens and onions. Though I'd
traveled north, there was more sun and fewer trees here; a microclimate that allowed a longer growing season.

I pointed. "All that from your garden?"

She nodded as she poured out cloudy amber liquid and returned the chunky stoneware pitcher to the refrigerator. Ice cubes
hissed and cracked as she handed the glass to me. I breathed in the
sweet tang of apples before taking a sip of the cold homemade
cider.

"Hope you don't mind if I shell some peas while we talk," she
said. "We're having them for dinner, and it takes awhile to work
through a big pile, you know?"

"I'll help." I sat down at the kitchen table and reached for a
handful of pods.

She smiled, revealing more of the overbite. "Thanks! Just toss
the empties in this pail."

"Ariel's artwork is in my pickup," I said.

"Rocky'll unload it later."

"Is he at work?" I asked, a little disappointed.

She nodded. "Putting a new transmission in Ollie Swenson's
old Le Baron."

I'd told Gabi when I hoped to arrive, and received the impression Rocky would be there, too. But I didn't want to ask how long
he'd be. I could stay for a while. After all, I was on vacation. In the meantime, Gabi seemed quite willing to talk to me, and she had a
pile of peas to shell.

I pressed a pod between the pad of my thumb and the side of
my forefinger. It opened with a popping sound. "Gabi, I'm so sorry
about what happened to Ariel."

"Thanks" Her tone was light.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She didn't seem all
that broken up over her sister-in-law's death.

She glanced up at me without raising her head from where her
hands worked rapidly over her dishtowel-draped lap. "Were you a
close friend of hers?" Ping! A handful of peas bounced into the
stainless steel bowl.

"Not what I'd call close, no," I said. "I only recently joined the
co-op, and we hadn't had a chance to get to know one another
very well. She seemed like a nice girl, though."

I was telling the truth. Until I'd heard about her mooching and
affairs, Ariel had seemed like a perfectly nice girl, if a bit of an airhead who lacked empathy.

Gabi smiled uncertainly. She probably wondered why some
woman who barely knew her sister-in-law had driven to La Conner
to offer her sympathies. Her hands never slowed, though, and the
bowl of shelled peas began to fill. The German shepherd wandered
into the kitchen, black toenails clicking on the vinyl floor. I eyed
him, still leery.

"Don't worry about Tut," Gabi said. "He's territorial-that's why
we got him-but once he knows you're okay, everything's fine."

Still, I didn't plan on making any sudden moves. I glanced at
my watch. "Does Rocky come home for lunch?"

"Oh, he'll show up pretty soon. He's out in the shop."

"I thought he was putting in a transmission," I said.

"Sure. He's a mechanic. No way could we make it on what the
flowers bring in. So he has a shop around the back where locals
bring anything with four wheels-and some things with two-for
him to work on. Would you like to see it?"

"Yes, I would."
"

I thought Rocky'd see you're here and come into the house,
but he gets so involved he may not have noticed. I don't usually
bother him while he's working, but he's been out there long
enough. Let's go."

We got up, leaving the peas, and went out the back door. Three
boys raced around the yard, yelling. One of them was waving a
stick at the other two, but no one seemed to be in actual danger.

"All of those yours?" I asked.

"Only two." She pointed. "That one's Evan, and that one's
"
Noah. They're both six. Evan is seven minutes older."

I bet they're a handful."