Spin a Wicked Web (5 page)

"Yes"

"Do they know who did it?" she asked.

"I don't think so."

"Are you going to try and figure it out?" Beside me, her legs
scissored along nearly twice as fast as mine, her steps short and
quick like a bird's.

I stopped cold, and she drew up a few paces ahead and turned
back.

"Huh uh," I said. "I'm not figuring out anything. This is a police
matter, and I happen to know the police in question, and they are
quite good at their job. There's no need for me to get involved."

She tipped her head to one side.

"No need at all," I repeated. My hand crept up to my recently
shorn head, and I ended by rubbing my neck. The last time I'd tried to "figure it out"-and at Ruth's instigation, I might add-things
had gotten a little out of hand in the danger department. "And I'm
glad of it, too."

Ruth smiled. "If you say so, dear."

As I WALKED INTO our backyard, Meghan was latching the door of
the chicken pen behind her. When she saw me, she turned and
held up one small, perfect blue-green egg.

"It's still warm," she said.

I took it from her, holding it gently in my palm. "Molly or
Emma?"

Two of our hens were Easter egg chickens, and they laid that
unusual color. They hadn't been producing long enough for us to
be able to recognize who laid what.

"Molly, I think. Erin says her eggs are a little bluer, and Emma's
are a little more greenish. Apparently she can tell already."

Erin was Meghan's eleven-year-old daughter. She was at math
camp during the day for the next two weeks, practicing up on
being a genius, but she had become the resident expert on the individual idiosyncrasies of our laying hens.

Brodie, Erin's old Pembroke Welsh corgi, had taken to sitting
outside the chicken pen, guarding them from harm whenever she was gone. Now his fox-like face swung my way, and he gave a low
woof in acknowledgement of my presence. But he was on the job,
and didn't leave his self-imposed post to receive his usual ear
scritchin's.

"How was the funeral?" Meghan asked.

I grimaced. "Good, I guess. If you can characterize a funeral
that way." I dreaded telling her about Ariel.

"I think you can." Her gaze took in my casual clothes. "When
did you change?"

"I dropped by before going over to CRAG. You were with a
client." Like me, Meghan worked at home. Her massage room
and a tiny office were tucked into a front corner on the main
floor, out of the way of our normal household traffic. She wore
her warm-weather working togs: soft cotton knit shorts and a
sleeveless T-shirt.

"CRAG. Of course that's where you've been." She stopped herself before adding, "Again."

"I've got some bad news," I said.

She crossed her arms. "What?"

"You know Ariel Skylark?"

"I've met her. Lots of attitude, needs to eat a burger?"

The latter statement was something, coming from Meghan who
stood at just five feet and barely tipped the scale to a hundred
pounds. Add dark glossy curls, a tiny turned-up nose and cupid
lips, and she looked more like a wood sprite than a single mother,
former lawyer, and currently much-in-demand massage therapist.

I chewed gently on my lower lip and nodded. "That's her." I
took a breath. "She was murdered."

Her gray eyes widened, filled with a combination of kindness,
concern, and bewilderment. Consternation flooded her voice.
"How did you hear about it?"

I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. "You're not
going to believe it."

"Not going to believe what?" Her tone was flat. She had an inkling of what was coming.

"I found her." I opened my eyes to find Meghan had closed
hers, and had added the telling gesture of pinching the bridge of
her nose between thumb and forefinger. Meghan may have hated
me finding dead bodies even more than I did.

I plunged on. "After the funeral reception I went over to the coop for my spinning lesson with Ruth."

Meghan dropped her hand and rolled her eyes at this further
evidence of my recent obsession with fiber.

"Anyway, no one was there when I arrived. The front door was
open, and I thought someone was working in the studio and had
forgotten to lock it. I went inside, but no one was there. At least
not downstairs. Upstairs in the studio spaces, I found Ariel. She
was..." The screen my efficient brain had erected fell away, and
my mind's eye filled with the image of Ariel Skylark lying on her
back, lips blue, tongue slightly protruding. The tangible violence
surrounding the scene. I took another deep breath and forced myself to swallow the lump in my throat. "She was strangled, Meghan.
Strangled with my yarn."

Startled, she asked, "What do you mean, your yarn?"

"It was the first skein of yarn I'd completed spinning. Just a plain,
off-white yarn, full of slubs and kind of weird looking, but I could
have made a hat out of it, or something. I mean, I'm not saying a hat is more important than, well, you know, it's just, it was my first
skein, and I'd just finished it a couple days ago, and now it's a... "
Another dry swallow. "... a murder weapon."

Meghan sank down on the bench by the picnic table. "Sophie
Mae?"

"Yeah?"

"Why is it that you, of all people, managed to find Ariel?"

I shrugged. "Just unlucky, I guess."

She sighed.

"What?" I asked.

"You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"

"What kind of a question is that?"

"Like what you did when Philip Heaven died."

"Ruth said something to that effect, too," I said. "I don't know
why everyone thinks I'm going to wade into a murder investigation. Last time cured me of that."

My housemate didn't look convinced. "That'd be a lot easier to
believe if I didn't know how much fun you have when you're poking and snooping."
"

I do not!"

"Uh-huh"

"No one else was looking into those other deaths, and somebody needed to find out what really happened. But believe me,
Barr and Robin are all over this case."

"Okay. Good," she said. "I have two more clients, and then I
have to go pick up Erin. Let's not make a big deal about this tonight, okay?"

"Right. I don't think she ever met Ariel, so we can downplay it
however much you want." I gave her the egg I'd been holding. "I'm going over to Barr's, make him dinner tonight, so I might be home
late anyway."

She grinned. "I won't wait up."

Meghan went inside the house. I moved to inspect the squash
vines to see if the milk solution I'd applied to the powdery mildew
on the leaves had been effective. It looked like it had stopped the
unsightly white fungus in its tracks.

Fun? She actually thought I had fun investigating Walter's, and
then Philip's deaths? Well, okay. Maybe unraveling a puzzle was ...
interesting. At least it wasn't boring. And I was two for two, so I
must have been pretty good at it.

Right?

Of course, making Barr dinner came with a not-so-hidden agenda.
I was determined to find out what he'd been pussyfooting around
for the last few days. His procrastination had no doubt blown the
whole thing out of proportion in my mind, and it would probably
turn out to be something totally, laughably boring.

At least I hoped so. What's that Chinese curse? May you live in
interesting times?

I also wanted to know whether I needed to worry about the
fact that my yarn had been the murder weapon. Did Robin actually consider me a suspect?

Barr lived on the edge of town in a small, two-bedroom house,
with a spacious yard surrounded by a cedar picket fence. It looked
like something right out of a storybook or a song. Blousy antique
roses tumbled from the trellis that arched over the front walk, neglected but persistent. Their fragrance, intensified by the warm
afternoon sun, curled along the light breeze. On the front porch I
inhaled the sweet scent deep into my lungs as I fished in my pocket
for my key.

I felt numb, spaced-out, like I'd taken too much cold medicine.
The specter of Ariel sprawled on the floor of the co-op haunted
the darker recesses of my mind. My subconscious kept dropping a
thick veil over my recent experience, making it seem like it had
happened months or years ago. Then boom!-I'd remember the
whole thing in vivid detail.

My attention veered to the sound of the key chain jangling in
my hand. House keys, truck keys, co-op keys, and the key to Barr's
house. If this became my home, that last one would be my house
key: a painfully obvious yet unsettling thought. I'd continue to
rent Meghan's basement as I did now, and work there nearly every
day. Barr spent less time on the job than he used to since the addition of a second detective to the force, but he was still gone a lot.
Even if I moved, I'd spend almost the same amount of time with
Meghan and Erin that I did now.

At least that's what I kept telling myself. But would it work out
that way, really? They were my family. The thought of leaving
them made my throat ache. On the other hand, Barr and I had
been talking about taking this next step for months now. I was the
one who continued to drag my feet.

It wasn't that I didn't love him. I did. Not a single question
about it.

But I was deeply content living with my best friend and her
precocious child. It's different living with females, and the three of
us had been together long enough that we'd pretty much worked out the bugs. If I moved in with Barr, I could still maintain the
family unit I'd built up with Meghan and Erin. Couldn't I?

In the middle of Barr's living room, I turned in a full circle,
taking in the contents and their arrangement with eyes tuned to
how my own belongings might fit in. My attention snagged on the
coffee table. Mine, a wrought-iron-and-tile affair, graced our living room at home; it fit there, and it didn't make sense to bring it
over here. It wouldn't go with anything of Barr's anyway.

I sighed. None of my stuff would look good with his. I liked
metal and bright colors. He liked wood, the chunkier the better,
and muted browns and greens in horrible prints. The sofa was
plaid, for heaven's sake.

Oh, but that coffee table would have to go. It was made out of
some huge spool, like something a monstrous cable had once been
wrapped around. Someone had attempted to sand it a little, but
you still couldn't set a drink on it without balancing it between the
grooves of the wood grain. And it had been shellacked, slathered
with a thick coat of clear goo that had dried unevenly, so long ago
that the areas where it had been applied the thickest were beginning to yellow.

Gross.

I'd asked him where he got it. He said a friend had given it to
him. I asked if the friend lived nearby. He said no. I asked if he
loved the table. I was, of course, being facetious.

But he said yes.

Which wasn't the answer I'd been hoping for, believe me. Not
even as a dirt-poor college student would I have wanted such a
piece.

I wandered through the rest of the house, trying to figure out
if I could squeeze into the place. Thank goodness, I didn't have
much. And I could leave most of it with Meghan, so she wouldn't
have to get anything new just because I bailed on her. The thought
left a sour taste behind. But no matter how little I might bring,
this wee house would be awfully crowded.

Meghan's house was so nice. Four bedrooms, three levels, right
downtown, so you could walk almost anywhere you needed to go.
I pushed that thought aside. Barr owned this house. He wanted
me to move in with him. If I did decide to make that leap, the two
of us would have to make do in this tiny space. And really, how
much time would we be spending here, I reminded myself for the
umpteenth time. Maybe down the line we'd get a different place, a
little bigger, a little closer to town.