Chapter 32
Paislee peered out her front window of Cashmere Crush, the view blurred by the frosted glass, though she could make out the red from her geraniums, and the dark yellow of her marigolds in the flower boxes.
Maybe her vision was blurred due to tears of sadness combined with relief. Billy Connal dead, Tabitha behind bars, and Isla to be at rest.
Drawing in a deep breath and exhaling it, she released all of the pent-up energy she’d been carrying for the past week.
With a lighter step, she returned to her counter by the register and perched on a stool, streaming music on her laptop. Knitting the fisherman’s sweater, she sang along with Calvin Harris, letting her fingers fly. For the first time since she’d started this project, she connected with it—the clack of her wooden needles, the smooth texture of the wool, the rib stitch pattern, all came together.
“Hey!”
Paislee’s head swung up from her knitting, completely startled when her grandfather arrived via the back door. She smacked her hand to her chest in surprise. “Hiya!”
Grandpa spread his arms out to his sides. “Did ye forget I was comin’?”
“I was lost in this sweater,” she admitted.
He’d rolled up the sleeves on a flannel shirt that he’d put over a plain gray T-shirt and his usual khakis, and didn’t appear at all fatigued from the mile walk. Could it be he really was in better shape than her? She saw some changes in her future.
“Busy morning?” He ambled around the counter.
She shoved the project beneath the register on a shelf.
“Billy’s dead,” she said. She stood and stretched her back, then reached for the box of sage merino wool to stock the shelves.
“Dead?” Grandpa said loudly, then shook his head as if he’d heard wrong.
“Aye.” She picked up two skeins, making sure they were priced, and filled the empty space. “I have a call in to the detective, but he’s busy.”
“How?” Grandpa shuffled toward her, his boot heels clomping on the polished cement of her floor.
“I dinnae ken—I talked to Amelia a couple hours ago.” The only time the detective chatted her up was when he wanted something. “Tabitha’s in jail.”
“Tabitha?” Grandpa sank down on a hard-backed chair with a confused expression. “Can you be more specific, lass? A detail or two tae jog the memory?”
Right. She hadn’t told Grandpa about her suspicions that Tabitha had murdered Isla, so she explained, ending with, “And Saturday after the festival, Lydia and I went tae Tabitha’s flat—I’d called the detective and he wasnae concerned about Billy being drunk. Before we picked up our Chinese food?”
He scratched his silver beard.
Tears filled her eyes as it hit her that Billy had actually died and she swiped them away. She’d been right to worry for Billy despite being wrong about Gerald. “We shouldnae have left, but Tabitha showed up with a bag from the pharmacy, and Billy told me he’d had bad fish. And I’d been wrong about Gerald, so . . .” she sniffed.
Grandpa gave her arm an awkward pat. “Dinnae cry, now. You did what ye could. More than most, tae be sure.”
“Aye.” She wondered what had happened, and if her warning about Tabitha could have saved Billy, or if she’d already been too late. Paislee chose two more skeins from the box, checked for price tags, then slid them on the shelf.
“What’s that?” Grandpa asked. “On yer hand?”
Thinking it might be a spider or something, she flapped her hand back and forth. “What?” She stopped but saw a fleck of sage green on her finger. How odd!
Picking up another skein, she brought it to the counter for a closer view. She flicked the yarn and a smudge came loose under her thumbnail.
What was going on?
“Is it s’posed tae do that?” Grandpa asked, off the stool to peer over her shoulders. His black glasses slid down his nose.
“Naw.” Paislee lifted the entire box of yarn to the counter and dug through the twenty other skeins. They all flaked. “I cannae believe it.” It wasn’t like Flora at all to have poor quality. “This yarn hasnae been fixed.”
“What does that mean?”
“I cannae sell them like this.” She got the four she’d put on the shelf and tossed them in the box. “I’ll have tae ask Flora what happened.”
“I meant, what does fixed mean?”
“Dyes are set with a fixing agent, in order tae keep their color. While Jerry McFadden uses chemical dyes, Flora uses all-natural ingredients. She fixes them with minerals, copper or tin. But tae achieve colors like this, she’d have tae use chrome.”
Grandpa leaned back, his elbow near the register. “That’s the poison stuff you were telling me aboot earlier.”
“Aye.” She brushed loose sage flakes from her hand into the box. “Chrome is more toxic than the rest, but sometimes creates a better sheen. Usually she’s so particular about her product.” It was a good thing Paislee hadn’t sold it after all.
Paislee took the scissors from her drawer and scraped at the wool with the flat side. Underneath was grayish beige, the same shade as what Baxter the dog had absconded with out of Isla’s flat that morning.
How had Flora ended up with it?
“Oh no.” She remembered the detective asking her if she’d bought stolen yarn.
“Ye have tae speak plainly, lass. I cannae read yer mind.” Grandpa tapped his temple.
“I have tae see Flora and return this yarn.” Isla had said that she had quality merino wool she would sell at a discount—yarn she’d stolen from Roderick Vierra.
Had Isla also contacted Flora to buy the yarn? Who knew who else?
Perhaps Flora was cutting corners because of Donnan’s medical expenses since the stroke.
“Isnae it ruined? Ye should ask for yer money back.”
“I’ll talk to her and ask her to make the order again. I think she bought this from Isla’s stolen stash.”
Grandpa stepped back in surprise. “Ah. You can tell?”
“This yarn was never treated, and that would change how the dye reacts to each strand.” She hated to be right about this, but she knew her yarn. “I feel bad for her, I really do, but this yarn isnae the place tae cut corners.”
“Not when your reputation is on the line,” Grandpa agreed. “Want company?”
“I can handle this, Grandpa. She only lives ten minutes away. I’ll be back shortly.” She clicked her tongue behind her teeth. “I wish she would have talked tae me first!”
“She probably saw that it was quality wool, as ye say, and thought she was gettin’ a bargain. Nothing wrong with that.”
She scooped up the yarn and dropped it in the box. “There is if I cannae sell it.”
Grandpa grunted. “Ye have a point.”
“Let me check the yellow she brought in that day, too—”
“Let me help ye.” Grandpa retrieved the ladder and opened it so she could reach the taller shelves.
“I’ve never had a problem before.” Paislee examined the other six colors she carried of Flora’s yarn—only the sage was flaking. She climbed down the ladder. Maybe the yarn had needed more time to dry?
“That’s manageable then,” Grandpa said.
“It had to be the batch she got from Isla.” She recalled all the yarn Flora had sold on Saturday and truly felt awful for the poor woman. There would be complaints.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” Paislee grabbed her purse and the box, loading it in the back of the Sentra. She missed her Juke, which had more room. She’d get it back sometime this week, if all went well.
She started the car and texted Lydia about Billy’s death. Her friend called back, but Paislee didn’t answer. She was already on the road and the Sentra’s hands-free hadn’t been set up.
Paislee, after driving through a few older neighborhoods, reached a more rural area where the houses were on bigger lots and not packed so tightly together. No fences, just open fields of wildflowers between homes.
Taking a right down a long dirt driveway, she approached Flora and Donnan’s brown bungalow with an attached garage. She’d only been here once, years before Donnan’s stroke, when she’d been invited to see Flora’s yarn-dying operation in her industrial-sized kitchen, where she created her large pots of dyes and mordants.
There were neighbors on either side—but the lots were large and backed up against a park, making the place relatively private.
She parked behind Flora’s white Volvo and got out. She suddenly felt like she should have called ahead. It could be between them, and nobody else needed to know—so long as Flora didn’t use the stolen yarn. Did Donnan even know?
Paislee loaded her purse on top of the box and stepped past the Volvo.
She recalled the relief on Flora’s face the night Paislee’d handed her the check. There was no shame in that. She’d been flat broke a few times herself.
Paislee climbed the four wooden steps to the porch, rested the box on her hip, and knocked. Something metal rattled inside the house. Flora peeked out the curtain.
Paislee waved, shifting the box to the other hip as she admired the flowers in the front garden.
Her heart froze in her chest.
There, not ten feet away, below the windshield’s early afternoon glare from the sunshade on Flora’s white Volvo, bright silver with a long eyehole on the driver’s side, was a smashed front bumper. Silver flashed in the white. The Juke’s silver paint?