Spin a Wicked Web (19 page)

Noah and Evan hurtled past me and down the stairs, calling,
"Hi!" and "Hello!" over each other. And then, from the kitchen I
heard, "Hey Mom, can we have pancakes?"

I turned to see Rocky come out of his and Gabi's bedroom. He
paused when he saw me, surprised.

"Good morning," I said, trying to sound cheery.

"Uh, morning." He walked down the hall barefoot, carrying a
pair of tube socks in his hand. "Everything all right?"

Meaning, why are you still here?

"Oh, sure. Time just got away from us last night, talking yarn
and stuff, and Gabi offered to let me stay." His face remained impassive. "So, I took her up on it," I finished in a more subdued
tone.

"I see. Well, I hope you slept well." He didn't wait to find out if,
in fact, I had slept well, but walked past me and down the stairs
without another word.

Maybe he resented my spending the night in his sister's bed. I
had to admit it was a little weird.

I strode down the hallway to the bathroom where I splashed
water on my face, brushed my teeth and futzed a little with my
hair. It looked like I'd just rolled out of bed, which I had, but it always looked like that now, so there wasn't much help for it. I
grabbed my bag and followed in Rocky's footsteps.

In the living room, I paused. Even with the gluttony of fiber
caressing and fondling the evening before, we'd never looked at
the wonderful stuff spilling out of the basket by Gabi's spinning
wheel. The rattle of pans and clamor of voices carried out from
the kitchen. I tiptoed over to the basket, went down on one knee,
and plunged both hands into the beautiful fluffy goodness.

I just wanted a quick hit, and would have stopped there, but
when I separated the batts and slivers waiting their turn on the
wheel, I saw the familiar sunset pastels of my new favorite fiber.

It wasn't mine, of course. It was Gabi's. But it was the same
hand-painted bamboo Ruth had left for me when she brought her
wheel over to the house. The same delicious softness that had
soothed my soul in the middle of the night and made me completely forget about Barr, Hannah, and Ariel et al. And right next
to it, another batt with Thea Hawke's label attached, this one an
ethereal mixture of blue and green and pink.

Gently, I ran my fingertips over it and smiled. Something tickled my memory. Hadn't I seen this color combination before?

"What are you doing?"

My head jerked up and I saw Gabi, looking disheveled and
tired, standing in the doorway to the living room.

"I, uh, never got a chance to look at what's in here," I said. "Sorry.
Didn't mean to presume."

Gabi flushed. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap. I guess I'm
a little cranky this morning-not used to late nights, especially not
involving wine."

Standing, I said, "Oh, gosh, that's okay. I sure appreciate you
putting me up for the night, but I'll go ahead and get out of your
hair."

I was dying to see what Ariel had written in that book.

A book I was essentially stealing. Not good. If there was anything important in there, I'd bungled things. Would it be admissible in court? Maybe I should put it back. But then no one would
know what was in it, important or not. Could Barr and Robin get
a warrant for an old journal? Unlikely. I couldn't think of another
way to see what Ariel had written. Swallowing my doubt, I decided
to take the chance.

I pointed to the basket. "Isn't Thea's stuff great? I just finished
spinning a few ounces of it. Amazing."

Gabi frowned.

"The pastel bamboo."

She came over and stood beside me, and I reached down and
pulled the batt out, to show her what I was talking about.

"Oh, that. Yes, it's pretty, isn't it? I think I got it online."

"Uh oh. Don't tell me that. I could develop a serious Internet
shopping illness for this kind of stuff," I said.

"Every once in awhile I can't help but order something." She
bent her head. "Pretty self-indulgent, I know."

I handed her the batt. "Good for you."

She stroked it a couple times, as if it were a baby animal, and
returned it to the basket. "What would you like for breakfast?"

"Oh, no. Nothing for me. I can't impose on your wonderful
hospitality anymore. Besides, I have to get back."

"Are you sure?" But she couldn't quite hide her relief.

"I'm sure." I stripped off the sweatshirt and handed it to her,
then went over and leaned into the kitchen.

The twins sat at the table, slurping their orange juice and making play plans for their day. Beside them Rocky listened with a half-smile and sipped coffee from a mug advertising the Skagit
Valley Tulip Festival from six years before.

"Goodbye," I said. "And thanks for everything."

"Bye!" the twins said in unison.

"You drive safe now, Sophie Mae," Rocky said. "And thank you
for bringing up the pictures."

"I'm glad I could help. I'll be thinking about you."

He inclined his head in acknowledgment.

As I turned to pull the door closed behind me, I saw Gabi pop
a couple of aspirin in her mouth and chase them with a swallow of
coffee.

I wanted to go home, actually feeling a little homesick. Maybe it
was silly to feel that way after just one night, but the atmosphere at
the Kaminskis in the cold light of day made me miss my morning
routine with Meghan and Erin. And if I missed it after one pleasant evening out of town, how much would I miss it if I moved?
Would it be so bad, not moving in with Barr?

He'd understand.

Wouldn't he?

But homesick or not, I was starving, not to mention intensely
curious. I stopped at the Calico Cupboard Bakery in La Conner,
mouth watering the second I hit the doorway. A serving of their
famous bread pudding and large cup of coffee in hand, I sat at a
little table by the window and dug the handwritten book I'd found
in Ariel's room out of my bag.

It smelled like old library books do, the ones in the back room
that no one ever checks out. Musty and dusty. I took a bite of pudding and opened it to the first page.

I hadn't dared to hope, sure that would jinx it, but there it was,
right in front of me. An honest-to-Pete diary. Ha! Elation hit my
bloodstream at the same time as the caffeine, and I had to keep
from grinning to myself so the locals wouldn't think they had a
raving lunatic in their midst.

Ten pages later, I sighed. It was the most boring diary I'd ever
seen. Oh sure, there were things in it that were telling. She recorded every single thing she ate, complete with calorie content.
She also wrote down whenever anyone said anything about her
weight, good or bad. I remembered wondering what her last meal
had been before she was killed; now I tried and couldn't remember ever seeing her eat. Maybe she hadn't had a last meal at all.

She also kept track of things that the other students did and
said at school, musing on the reactions they engendered in other
people. It was as if she were creating a roadmap of behavior, with
a particular effect as the goal. Her writing voice was cold, almost
mercenary. As I read on I was struck by the lack of information
about Ariel's own feelings, which I found odd given the usual
teenaged girl's abundance of angst about everything from a broken fingernail to world hunger.

I munched and sipped and read on, skimming a lot of the content. But when I reached the final entry, I swallowed and slowly
returned my cup to the table.

Today I lost a button on my shirt, and I caught Mr. Blankenship looking at the side of my boob. At first I was embar rassed, but then he seemed more embarrassed than me. So I
let him do it some more. He didn't turn away. He kept looking. And that was when I realized that all those girls with the
fancy clothes and snotty attitudes weren't going to get their
way. They're too scary. But if you're not scary, if you smile and
are nice to men, they start getting all stupid and let you do
anything. I read once boys think about sex every seventeen
seconds and that men think about it almost that much. When
Mr. Blankenship was looking down my shirt I finally got it.
And now I'm going to get whatever I want.

The rest of the pages in the book were torn out. A part of me
was glad I couldn't read them. I sat and looked out the window at
the tourist traffic beginning to parade down the street outside of
the bakery. Sadness mingled with distaste as I digested what Ariel
had written about the discovery of her sexual power.

It could be a dangerous thing, to intentionally manipulate with
that power. I hoped it hadn't burned her, as she apparently brandished it, no doubt awkwardly, in her teen years.

And then later? As a young woman, somewhat more refined
and practiced? Had it been the reason she'd been murdered?

THINGS HAD CERTAINLY BECOME complicated, I mused as I maneuvered along the country lanes leading back to the interstate.
Had Ariel killed Scott Popper? I mean, she was the murder victim,
right? It was ridiculous to think that she might have actually killed
a policeman.

Even if she'd somehow caused his car crash, what good did
knowing that do? As Gabi had pointed out, it hardly mattered
what Ariel might have once done, now that she was dead.

Unless ... did Chris Popper know more about her husband's
death than she had let on? Did she think Ariel killed him? That
could be a significantly stronger motive than an affair.

But no matter how strong the motive, Chris had an alibi. My
brain hurt. Nothing was making any sense. Instead of having too
little information, I suddenly had more than I could fit together,
as if someone had added a few extra pieces from another box to
the jigsaw puzzle.

I opened my window and inhaled the morning breeze. A high
haze of cloud cover cast a veil between the sharp summer sunlight
and the verdant greenery below. Soon it would burn off, and the
ambient temperature would again begin to rise. Above, hawks circled and dove, hunting the small things that crept in the fields on
either side of the county road.

Ahead, a sign warned that I was approaching a four-way stop.
Bowers Road.

The road Ariel's high school friend lived on.

I sighed. Even if there were a few sections from another puzzle
box thrown in, I obviously didn't have all the pieces of the original
jigsaw, either. However much I wanted to return to my own happy
home, how could I resist making this slight detour? I tossed a mental coin and turned west. Three miles later, I turned around and
went back, crossing my original path and tried east. I had no idea
what Lindsey Drucker's address was, or even whether her name
was still the same; Gabi had said she was married. This was a stupid way to try and find her.

Almost ready to turn around again and give up, I saw it: Drucker
& Sandstrom. The names were spelled out in reflective letters on the
mailbox in front of a sprawling, single-level house painted dark
green with wine-colored trim. A long, low barn surrounded by a series of paddocks and pasture indicated that they kept livestock, but I
didn't see any horses or cows. Then the driveway curved, and I saw
alpacas clustered and dotting one of the large fields. Recently
sheared, they looked like teddy bears crossed with oversized poodles.
There must have been a hundred of them, in shades varying from
cream to brown, with a few gray and black ones thrown in.

The woman who answered the door had short red hair and
wore navy shorts with a plain white cotton T-shirt. The expectant
look on her smooth tan face invited me to introduce myself.

"Hi. Are you Lindsey Drucker?" I asked.

"Yes"

"I'm Sophie Mae Reynolds. I knew Ariel Skylark."

She tipped her head to one side, considering. "I see." Without
another word she stepped back and opened the door for me.

Inside, sunlight streamed through the windows that made up the
back wall of the main living space, and through a large skylight
overhead. At least I thought it was the main living space, because
it looked more like an artist's studio. A huge loom dominated one
side of the room, with an elaborate rug in progress. The interlocking geometric design in red, cream and light brown was reminiscent of traditional Native American art, but somehow possessed a
modern flair. Three easels took up the other half of the room, each
displaying a landscape painting in a different stage of completion.