While My Pretty One Knits (22 page)

When Lucy got to the shop, she tied Tink on the porch and went inside. Maggie and Dana were sitting in the front room, Maggie on the love seat and Dana in an armchair. They greeted her and Lucy took a seat.

“How are you doing today, Lucy?” Dana asked with concern. “You were a real hero last night.”

Lucy had to think for a moment, then realized Dana was talking about the way she’d knocked the gun out of Cara’s hand with the yarn swift.

“My martial arts moves are a little rusty, so I had to make do.”

“It was fast thinking…and very brave,” Maggie said. She glanced at Lucy for a moment. At the time, neither of them had realized the danger they’d been in, everything had been happening so quickly, but this morning it was starting to sink in.

“Where did Cara get that gun anyway? I’m not sure the police ever told me,” Lucy asked Maggie.

“It was in her parents’ house,” Maggie explained. “Her family is quite well off. They have a big old house near the bluff. Her father kept a gun around for protection. I’m not sure she even knows how to shoot it, but still…”

“I’m glad we didn’t wait to find out,” Lucy finished for her.

The front door flew open. Suzanne ran in, holding a copy of the newspaper. “I thought I’d find you here. Thank God you’re both okay…” She quickly hugged Maggie, then turned to Lucy, smothering her against her ample chest for a second. “I couldn’t believe it. Cara Newhouse?” She dropped into an armchair and shrugged off her coat. “In a million years, could you ever imagine that?”

“Cara confessed to everything,” Maggie said bleakly. “There’s no question.”

“How did it happen? I mean, how did she and Amanda even get together in the first place?” Suzanne asked.

“She told me she was in town, visiting her family while she was writing her first book,
Live, Laugh, Knit
,” Maggie explained. “She was having trouble with the book and needed help. She said she wanted to come to me, but felt embarrassed. So she went to Amanda’s shop instead. She pretended to be a novice knitter and asked Amanda all her questions.”

Lucy had not heard all of Maggie’s conversation with Cara, so she was interested in this part of the story. “So how did she end up hiring Amanda as a ghost writer?”

“Cara didn’t really say.” Maggie sighed. Lucy could tell it was hard for Maggie to talk about this. “I guess at some point she saw that Amanda was talented and had so much knowledge, she could be more useful to her than just as a problem-solving source. She did tell me that Amanda got good money out of their deal and had signed some kind of agreement with the publisher.”

“But that agreement was only as a fact-checker,” Lucy added. “Detective Reyes told me last night that Cara and Amanda had another agreement, a private one, which was basically a deal where Amanda wrote the books and created all the designs. The police found evidence of that on the computer, once they knew what they were looking for.”

“And Cara got all the glory,” Suzanne finished for her.

“Exactly,” Dana nodded. “But when Cara’s star began to rise, all due to Amanda’s talent and knowledge, Amanda must have gotten peeved. Was that it?”

“Yes, she was jealous, pure and simple. Amanda’s Achilles’ heel,” Maggie replied. “It was eating Amanda up inside to see Cara getting all the praise and attention from her hard work.”

“Anybody would have felt the same. I mean, it wasn’t really fair,” Suzanne shrugged. “Did she try to blackmail Cara? Is that why she killed her?”

“No, it wasn’t blackmail. At least that’s what Cara told the police,” Dana said. She looked at Maggie. “Is that what she told you?”

“Cara claimed it all came to a head with the TV-show offer. Amanda insisted that Cara share the spotlight and prepared herself to come out of the shadows. That’s why she had that expensive makeover and bought new clothes….” Maggie’s voice trailed off. She took a breath and looked up at her friends again. “Amanda made Cara agree that they would announce their partnership at the Black Sheep, at her book signing event. Can you imagine that?”

“That’s why Amanda came here the night before,” Lucy said, “to check if the stage was set for her big debut.”

“Exactly,” Dana agreed. “She was going to be the first one here.”

“She also made Cara promise they would do the TV show audition together,” Maggie added. “But Cara wasn’t taking any chances and probably called off the TV crew for the day. That’s why they didn’t show.”

“So she agreed to share the spotlight with Amanda, then decided she couldn’t stand the idea? Is that what happened?” Suzanne asked.

“More or less,” Maggie replied with a sigh. “I’m not sure if she went to the Knitting Nest that morning intending to kill Amanda. She told me they’d agreed to meet there, so they could come to the Black Sheep together. Cara claimed she only wanted to talk Amanda out of going public but Amanda was impossible to deal with.”

“Cara told the police pretty much the same thing,” Dana added. “She tried to persuade Amanda to stay under wraps a bit longer. She even offered her more money. But Amanda got very angry. They struggled. The dogs got upset and Tink leaped at her. But she managed to push them off, too.”

“That’s when she probably kicked Tink,” Lucy said.

“Probably,” Dana agreed. “That made Amanda even more upset. She turned to check on her dog and Cara grabbed the first thing she saw—the hat block—and knocked her over the head. She told the police she didn’t mean to kill her. But once Amanda was clearly dead, it seemed easy to make it look like a robbery. And she was thrilled to get her hands on the computer that held all the evidence of their relationship. So she grabbed it, then searched the office files to find anything else that might incriminate her.”

“What about when Maggie came to the shop that morning? Was Cara still there?” Suzanne asked.

Lucy had forgotten about that. Cara was probably in a panic when she heard Maggie knocking. “Yes,” Maggie said, looking very interested. “Did Jack hear that part of the confession?”

“Cara saw you, but you didn’t see her, of course. She told the police she was worried at first that you’d seen her car. But once it was apparent you hadn’t seen anyone at the Nest, she…she tried to turn the incident to her advantage,” Dana summed up quickly.

Maggie stared at her. She didn’t speak for a moment. “She tried to frame me for the murder, you mean,” she said flatly.

Lucy’s heart went out to Maggie. She could see how the betrayal stung.

“Cara had been lying when she told us she wasn’t aware of any rivalry between me and Amanda. I guess I was a perfect suspect,” Maggie said sadly. “It was easy for her to set me up, planting that hat block in the shop.”

“Then the police got interested in Peter Goran and he looked even more likely to be the killer,” Dana added. “So Cara figured out a way to plant the computer in his van. She called and asked to buy the spinning wheel from Amanda’s shop. When he delivered it to her house and carried it upstairs to set it up for her, she must have snuck outside and hidden the computer in his van.”

“Wow, I really thought he did it,” Suzanne admitted.

“We were all willing to pin Peter,” Dana agreed. “The police picked him out over Maggie, too. They were under pressure to arrest somebody.”

“Cara would have gotten away with it. If Lucy had never found the CD with the manuscript,” Maggie pointed out. Maggie sighed again. “What a waste. I still don’t understand. She had talent. Why did she do such a thing?”

“Maybe Cara didn’t have enough confidence in her own ideas,” Dana offered. “Or enough knowledge. Maybe she didn’t want to work that hard. Or was pushed too far, too fast, and had to deliver. It seems she was terrified of being exposed as a fraud. Avoiding shame and humiliation are powerful motivators.”

“Enough to make a person commit murder?” Maggie asked bleakly.

No one replied. Maggie shook her head. “Well, I was fooled. Taken in by her totally. I guess that makes me pretty gullible, right?”

“Oh, Maggie, don’t say that.” Suzanne leaned over and patted Maggie’s shoulder. “I know you loved that girl. But she was…a bit of a psycho. She tricked you. She tricked all of us. But that wasn’t your fault. It doesn’t mean you aren’t a great teacher.”

“Suzanne’s right. Think of how many people have come to this shop and been turned on to knitting and encouraged to express themselves. That’s a great gift to the world, Maggie,” Dana told her.

“If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have all met here,” Lucy reminded her. “We wouldn’t have knitting night.”

Maggie nodded. She wiped her eyes and nose with a tissue and stuck it back in her pocket. “What would I do without knitting night?” She glanced at Dana. “I’d need some real therapy, I guess,” she quipped.

“Knitting is cheaper.” Dana delivered the information with a grin.

“Especially if you get the yarn for free,” Maggie countered. “Which reminds me, the police say they’re going to return all that stock from the Knitting Nest next week. Which I practically did get for free. Sitting in the police station the other night, staring at those horrible green walls, I had an idea about what to do with it.”

“What’s that?” Lucy asked.

“I’m going to save most of it for our community services projects. Like those friendships shawls we knitted for the nursing home at Christmas?”

“What a great idea, Maggie,” Lucy said.

“That is a nice idea,” Dana agreed. “It is about time we started a new project like that. We ought to dedicate the contribution to Amanda Goran,” she suggested.

“We should do that, definitely,” Maggie nodded, looking solemn for a moment. “Poor Amanda. We didn’t know her nearly as well as we thought. Maybe if she’d been publicly acknowledged for those books and designs, she would have been a different person.”

“You might be right. No way of knowing now, unfortunately,” Dana said quietly.

“Well, your good name is cleared, Maggie,” Suzanne piped up. “You’re not the black sheep in Plum Harbor anymore,” she gently teased.

Maggie smiled self-consciously. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think there’s more than a touch of the black sheep in all of you.” She glanced at each of her friends in turn. “Snooping into crime scenes, gathering juicy gossip, analyzing criminal minds…Most of all, doing whatever it took to get me off the hook.”

They laughed at Maggie’s dramatic descriptions, but it was mostly true, Lucy realized. Knowingly or unknowingly, they’d all worked together to find Amanda’s murderer and prove Maggie’s innocence.

“Maybe that’s what we should call our knitting group officially from now on, the Black Sheep,” Dana suggested.

“I like it,” Suzanne said, seconding the motion.

“May I see a show of hands?” Maggie asked. “All in favor?”

“Wait…Phoebe’s not here,” Lucy pointed out.

As if on cue, the shop door flew open. Phoebe marched in, her clothes wrinkled and disheveled, her peacoat crookedly buttoned. Her hair, with its streak of magenta against the pitch black, was partly gathered in an elastic, the rest hanging out down her back and shoulders. She looked seriously out of whack. Even for Phoebe.

“Why didn’t somebody call me? You guys…you could have been killed or something. And
that
Cara. I always knew there was something off with that babe. Too plastic to be true, know what I mean?”

Lucy did know what Phoebe meant yet had never quite put her finger on it.

Maggie walked over and calmly slipped her arm around Phoebe’s shoulder. “We’re all right, Phoebe. Don’t worry. We definitely would have let you know if something serious had happened. Sit down and take a breath…”

“We’re just taking a vote on a new name for our group,” Dana explained, patting Phoebe’s hand.

“And I never got to tell you guys about my date last night. With the vet,” Lucy added in a tantalizing tone.

“Oh man, I have to hear this.” Phoebe sat down, looking a bit calmer.

“Okay, Lucy. Spill it,” Suzanne urged her. “We old married ladies love a hot date story. With a doctor, no less…but I’m supposed to show a house at eleven.”

“Just a minute. We can’t just sit here without working on something.” Maggie sat back, positively shocked. “Before Lucy spills the beans, I’m going to show you a gorgeous lace stitch I found in a spring pattern book. It’s just exquisite…”

Maggie seemed energized again, casting aside her sadness over Cara and Amanda. She riffled through the pile of pattern books and papers on the tea table, then pulled out a sheet.

“Here it is. We can start right now. I already pulled out the right yarn and needles…”

Lucy took a pair of extrafine needles and some silky purple yarn that Maggie handed around in a basket. She sat back and smiled.

As Bette might say, it had been a bumpy night all right, but this flock of beloved black sheep had come through intact…their friendship even stronger.

Who could ever imagine they’d solve a murder case together? Who could predict what new adventures—in knitting and in life—awaited?