Silence of the Lamb's Wool (A Yarn Retreat Mystery) Read online

  Maggie was behind the counter talking to a customer when I came in. The smell of freshly ground coffee alone was enough to give me a boost.

  “Hey, Casey, are you here for one of my cappuccinos?” She handed a paper cup of coffee to the customer and got ready to take my order. As always she was smiling and friendly, dressed in a red bandanna-print top over a pair of work-quality jeans. A red scarf complemented her big hairstyle.

  As long as I was there, a cappuccino seemed like a good idea. I’d never gotten to drink the coffee I’d picked up before the yarn washing. I really tried to insist on paying, but Maggie absolutely wouldn’t hear of it.

  Lunchtime wasn’t a busy time at the coffee place and most of the tables were empty. There was just a couple in the corner with their backs toward me.

  When Maggie had finished making the foam-covered drink, I hung around the counter instead of taking it to one of the tables.

  I launched into talking about Nicole without any preamble. When I said I didn’t think she’d killed herself, Maggie looked surprised, and then seemed to let out a heavy sigh.

  “That’s a relief,” she said, reminding me that the poisoned coffee had been in one of the Coffee Shop’s paper cups. The look of relief lasted only a moment before the reality of the situation sank in. “Maybe that’s not any better. Are you saying you think somebody used a cup of my coffee as a murder weapon?”

  “I probably wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but yes. If she didn’t put the insecticide in the coffee, then somebody else did.”

  Maggie’s eyes darted back and forth and she was obviously thinking about something.

  “What?” I asked.

  She shook her head and the tails of the red scarf caught the breeze and fluttered. “I was trying to remember who came in that morning. It was Tuesday, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded and she suddenly looked stricken. “But the cops said the only fingerprints on the cup were Nicole’s and mine.” She looked straight at me with worry in her dark eyes. “You don’t think I killed her?”

  “No way, and don’t worry, the cops aren’t going to come knocking at your door. As far as I’ve heard they are still looking at it as a suicide.” Poor Maggie seemed distraught and regretted letting the cops take her fingerprints.

  “I was trying to be helpful.”

  I finally admitted that I was doing my own investigation on the qt. “I’ve heard rumblings that Nicole might have been blackmailing somebody. Do you have any idea what she might have known?”

  Maggie poured some hot water over a chamomile tea bag. She glanced around furtively. “You won’t tell anybody, will you? It’s not a good advertisement of my wares, but your news on top of two double espressos I had this morning has left my nerves a little frayed.” She pulled out the tea bag and snapped a cover on the drink and let out a sigh of relief. “I feel better knowing you’re on the case.” She did the thing with her eyes again and I knew she was thinking. “Nicole asked a lot of questions recently. I thought she was just curious about the history of Cadbury.” Maggie stopped to think for a moment. “Blackmail seems kind of serious, but then it was obvious she had expensive taste and while I am sure the Delacorte sisters appreciate Will’s hard work, I doubt they pay him that much.”

  “The Delacorte sisters decide about raises?” I asked, surprised. “Kevin St. John gives the impression that he is practically king of Vista Del Mar. I figured he handled the employees.”

  “When I said ‘sisters,’ I really meant Cora. Madeleine is like a rubber stamp for anything her sister does.” Maggie let out a sigh. “The sisters were never supposed to end up with Vista Del Mar. It was never meant to be part of the family estate, but belonged solely to Edmund. His intention was to pass it on to his children. Though it turned out he only had one son.” I was amazed at the detailed information Maggie had on Edmund’s will, but then she was known as Information Central.

  “He had a son? Why isn’t he in charge of Vista Del Mar?”

  Maggie’s cheerful expression dimmed. “It was a sad business. Barely a year after Edmund passed from an infection, his wife and son were killed in a car crash. The sisters were listed as next in line to inherit, but their mother, Antonia Delacorte, took over handling Vista Del Mar. She’s the one who hired Kevin St. John. She died two years ago and then the sisters took it over and inherited everything in the Delacorte estate. Kevin has a lot of autonomy, but they still own the place.”

  I realized what she said was true. The sisters, or Cora, had been the one to offer my aunt a deal on the rooms. Kevin St. John hadn’t been able to change it, which was one of the reasons I thought he was so anxious to take over my retreat business. Maggie looked at the couple in the corner.

  “I think everything is going to change when Cora marries him.” I followed her gaze and was surprised to see the couple at the table was Burton Fiore and his daughter. Maggie had lowered her voice. “I hope Cora hasn’t lost her head. She has no experience in the love department. Her mother screened any suitors and no one was ever good enough.”

  We’d gotten far off the subject of blackmail and I brought it up again. I mentioned seeing Burton Fiore in Nicole’s shop and the episode with the envelope. Maggie glanced in his direction a few times.

  “Casey, I think you might be seeing plots where there aren’t any. He could have been in there to buy a gift for his beloved. He probably thinks of her as an antique and so thought he should buy her one.”

  I didn’t bring up the disappearing envelope again. I had begun to wonder if I’d seen it at all. Maybe it was just some kind of reflection on the glass. I did bring up Nicole’s trip to Bhutan and Maggie seemed surprised.

  “How’d I miss out on that bit of news?” She considered it for a moment. “An exotic trip like that? It does sound like Nicole must have come into some money. Maybe you’re right about blackmail.” The Coffee Shop proprietor started going through any damaging information Nicole might have known.

  “There’s the usual stuff that goes on. Who is having an affair with whom, but I can’t imagine anyone paying money to keep it quiet.” We got into an animated conversation and without realizing it, had raised our voices.

  “Could there be something about the bank building she used for a shop?”

  Maggie didn’t think so. “It had been closed for years before she rented it.”

  When I looked up, Burton and Ronny were gone and I remembered I had to get back for the afternoon session. I thanked Maggie and tried to pay her again. She just laughed and pushed the money back at me and said she was looking forward to the next day’s muffins. “It’s always a surprise what kind you bring.”

  The sun was already disappearing behind a layer of fog that was drifting in. That was the thing I’d noticed about fog: It always seemed to be on the move.

  I walked down the street toward The Bank, anxious to get the carders now and head back to Vista Del Mar. I let myself in the front door. With the sun making a hasty departure, the light inside was dim. My first thought had been to not bother with the lights, and just go to the area behind the partition where Will said I’d find the carders. But as I moved deeper into the store, it got darker and I accepted I needed the lights. As soon as I flipped them on and looked around the cavernous interior, my breath caught. Somebody had been in there. Everything seemed askew again and this time it couldn’t have been Nicole.

  I immediately checked the back door and it seemed locked, not that it meant anything. Dane had pointed out it took minimal skill to open the lock without a key. I considered calling Will but remembered that there was no cell service. I would tell him later and let him decide what he wanted to do.

  I noticed that the stack of blue ledgers near the fireplace had fallen over and my first thought was to pick them up. One fell open as I tried to straighten them. It was just an empty binder. They all seemed to be. My next stop was the box of moldy clothes in the b
ack cubicle. It was just as I’d left it. I debated about going through it and taking out the items I’d found mixed in with the clothes, but since it seemed like whoever was going through the place was ignoring it, I decided to leave it be. I also realized that if I ever needed to hide anything, a box of moldy clothes was the way to go.

  I wondered what whoever had been in there was looking for. I checked the desk but all the drawers seemed to be shut. I was about to move on when I inadvertently knocked a catalog off the desktop. I jumped when I heard a rumbling sound, until I realized the catalog had just hit a paper shredder and made it come to life.

  As I picked up the catalog, I noticed a sheet of paper stuck in the machine. I pulled it out and looked it over. It seemed to be a list of names, but what struck me the most was that so many of them seemed to have been written with a fountain pen. I thought back to the now-empty ledgers and figured out the sheet must have come from one of them. Curious, I opened the bin on the shredder and saw that it was full almost to the top. I saw enough tidbits of fountain pen ink on the strips of shredded paper to figure it all came from the ledgers. I considered what to do with the half sheet. Something told me to hang on to it, so I buried it in the box of moldy clothes. I started to walk away from the box, but on second thought decided to take it with me.

  I was really out of time. I needed to find those carders and get going. Just as Will had said, they were in a container on the other side of the partition. As I leaned down to get them, my messenger bag fell forward and I regretted not securing it as the papers I’d jammed into it fell out. I went to retrieve the program folder and a scrap of paper fluttered out.

  I picked it up and felt a shiver as I read the message on it.

  Mind your own business or else.

  19

  I pulled my car into the alley behind The Bank and loaded the bin of carders and box of moldy clothes into the trunk, trying not to think of the threatening note. The retreat had to go on. I stopped at home long enough to put the box of moldy clothes in the converted garage and pack up the fresh cookies. Then I rushed across the street and dropped them off, along with the bin of carders, in the meeting room. I did a quick check of the cleaned wool hanging on the drying racks and was glad to see the sun seemed to have done its work before it disappeared in the fog.

  Next stop was finding Lucinda. She was the only person I could tell about the note. My friend had already finished lunch and was sitting with some other women in the area called the fire circle. The fire pit was empty and the women had made their own little knitting circle. They all had their jackets zipped and didn’t seem to mind sitting out in the bracing air. When I saw how relaxed Lucinda looked, I hated to interrupt.

  If ever I needed an advertisement for the benefits of the retreats, all I had to do was show a picture of her when she’d arrived and one a day or so later. All the tension had gone out of her body. Her shoulders were relaxed, and her squarish-shaped face looked peaceful. Probably the complete opposite to how I appeared as I rushed into the group. They all glanced up and before I could say anything, Lucinda had picked up her things and joined me. She led me away from the others like she was taking me to a table in her restaurant.

  “Who had access to your bag?” Lucinda asked when I told her about the note. I waited until we were out of earshot of the group.

  “It’s more like who didn’t?” I mentioned the bag had been on the ground during the entire time we’d been washing the wool. I’d taken it with me when Kevin St. John made us temporarily adjourn and then dropped it on the ground again when we came back.

  “Did you look inside it during the break?” Lucinda asked. I knew where she was going. If I had and the threatening note hadn’t been there, we could narrow down the time it was placed there. I tried to think back, but couldn’t remember

  “I was so busy with the wool washing, I never thought of my bag,” I said. Lucinda had taken me to a bench on the boardwalk that was relatively private. A few people walked by on their way to the beach, but if they heard anything we were saying, it was only a word or two. “The whole group of retreaters certainly must have seen my bag lying there. Wanda, and even Will and Kevin St. John,” I said. Then I remembered that other people had passed by on the path as we were out there.

  “Maybe there’s a clue in the note,” Lucinda said, looking at the messenger bag. I fumbled through the bag and pulled out the purple folder. I opened the folder and showed her the sheet of paper in the front.

  “‘Mind your own business or else,’” she said, reading the note out loud. “Too bad we’re not handwriting experts. There’s no way to tell who did it,” she said finally.

  “But don’t you see what it means?” I said. It was really a rhetorical question and I continued without waiting for an answer. “It means I’m right about something.” It was true that the note wasn’t that specific, but maybe that was deliberate. “Maybe whatever Nicole knew, they wanted it to die with her.”

  “What are you going to do?” Lucinda asked.

  “I’m not going to drop the ball,” I said. Lucinda seemed worried and mentioned the “or else” part of the note.

  “If what you’re thinking is correct, someone has already killed once to keep it under wraps. They might try again.” She fingered the black-and-white pattern of her knitting. “Maybe you should talk to Lieutenant Borgnine,” she said.

  I tried not to roll my eyes at her comment. “The note was too vague. Unless I have actual proof, he’d just nod and smile and push me out the door,” I said. I closed the folder and slid it back in the bag. The motion knocked out a strip of paper and it fluttered to the ground. I rushed to retrieve it before the wind picked it up. “The last thing I want to do is litter this beautiful place.”

  I unfurled the strip to see what it was, preparing to crumple it up and drop it into the trash can.

  I saw that it was a receipt, but the store wasn’t familiar. It was only as I glanced down and saw the items purchased that it made sense. But when I got to the date of purchase, it seemed odd.

  “It’s for the salad spinners Wanda used to extract the excess water out of the wool fleece.” I pointed to the last line. “But these were bought last week. Last week Nicole was alive and all set to run the wool-to-yarn workshop. Why would Wanda have bought five salad spinners?”

  Lucinda’s eyes widened. “Unless she already knew something was going to happen to Nicole.” I folded up the receipt and put it in an inner pocket.

  “I could show that to Lieutenant Borgnine,” I said. Then I thought it through and imagined his response if I did.

  “You need something to help you unwind,” Lucinda said. I hadn’t realized it, but I clearly looked rather frazzled. She had me wait for her while she went back to retrieve her things and then we walked up to the café.

  Since lunch had just ended in the dining hall, no one was looking for food or drinks and the new shop in the Lodge building was deserted. We found a table by the window and as soon as we were situated, Lucinda took a plastic bag out of her retreat tote. “Look what Olivia made up with the bag of supplies you gave her.”

  I looked inside and found a pair of plastic knitting needles with some stitches already cast on one of them from a small ball of yarn. A half sheet of paper listed brief instructions on how many rows to do to make a square. The title on the top called it the Win-Win. It was the perfect-size project to keep tucked with you. It was easy enough to be calming and in the end there would be a square to send off to her to be made into a blanket for a needy person.

  “It’s pretty amazing to see how she’s changed,” Lucinda said. “I like this happier version of her a lot better than the person she was on the last retreat.” Lucinda pushed the kit on me and urged me to take it and do a few minutes of mindful knitting so I would calm down. In the meantime she took out her own work, a black-and-white-patterned scarf. It was hard to imagine that not long ago she hadn’t
even known how to purl.

  Jane stopped next to Lucinda’s chair to admire her work. “Even Tag will be impressed,” my friend said. “And it isn’t even hard.”

  “Maybe I should take up knitting,” the counter girl said. She looked at my square and asked if I could show her how to make one. I agreed to do it after the retreat and then she asked if we wanted to order something.

  Lucinda ended up getting a latte, but I said I was coffeed out and mentioned stopping at the Coffee Shop. “I had hoped that Maggie might help me figure out who really bought the coffee that Nicole drank.”

  Jane seemed confused and I said I was questioning if Nicole had really killed herself. Jane still didn’t seem to understand and I let it go. The few minutes of knitting helped a little, but I decided what I really needed was a few minutes on the beach before the start of the afternoon session of the retreat.

  Lucinda understood and I left her sipping her latte and happily working on her intricate pattern. I took the boardwalk and when I passed where the path through the dunes joined it, I instinctively looked up at the plant-covered hills of sand. I hadn’t been up there since we’d found Nicole. Nobody had, since I’d heard that the area around the bench was still off-limits.

  I reached the archway that marked the end of the boardwalk and the Vista Del Mar grounds and was about to cross the street that wound along the coast when a police car zipped by. It pulled to the side of the road up ahead with an abrupt squeak. The door opened and Dane got out. He crossed the street on a diagonal, which brought him next to me.

  “Is something wrong?” I said, gesturing toward the cruiser. He cracked a friendly smile.

  “Nope, all quiet in Cadbury for the moment. I saw you and pulled over. Where are you headed?”

  I mentioned the beach and a few minutes away from all the retreaters. “So, you’re saying you want to be alone?” He sounded disappointed. I was about to nod, but I thought of the note in the folder. What harm would there be running it past Dane?