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  Spin a Wicked Web

  Cricket Mcrae

  Things are getting serious between Sophie Mae and Detective Ambrose. But there's another love in her life – spinning. Pursuing her newfound passion is great fun… until fellow co-op member Ariel is found strangled to death with Sophie Mae's first skein of yarn.

  Every male in Cadyville noticed Ariel. Young, pretty, and a pro at wielding her sexual powers, she preyed on married men. Was the murder victim truly a gold digger in hot pants? Or a troubled girl who lost her parents at the age of sixteen? Can Sophie Mae unravel the truth and solve this tightly-knitted murder mystery?

  Cricket McRae

  Spin a Wicked Web

  The third book in the Home Crafting Mysteries series, 2009

  For G.G., Grandma, and Mom: three generations of creative women who came before

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to everyone who lends their aid, support, and expertise to my books. Among them are my agent, Jacky Sach, and the extraordinary team at Midnight Ink, including Barbara Moore, Lisa Novak, Donna Burch, Courtney Huber, my hardworking publicist Courtney Kish, and the editor who so gently and effectively keeps me in line, Connie Hill. Then there are the cheerleaders who keep me going, among them Kevin (who puts up with me on a daily basis), my parents Ed and Rochelle, my writing buddies Mark and Bob, and my gal pals Mindy, Jody, and Jane. There are so many others; please know how much I appreciate all your kind words and encouragement. Finally, thanks to Jeanette Degoede for information on tulip farms, and to Chris from the Fiber Attic, who taught me how to spin all those years ago-and let me borrow her wheel until I got my own.

  ONE

  "WE HAVE TO TALK."

  Ah, those four magical words. They strike dread into the most manly of hearts, and as a woman, it was an interesting experience to be on the receiving end. Interesting, but not particularly pleasant.

  "Okay." I buckled my seat belt. "Talk"

  Barr flipped his turn signal, carefully checked both ways, and turned right onto Highway 2.

  "There's something I have to tell you, Sophie Mae."

  Oh, for heaven's sake, enough with the preamble. I began to regret the super spicy Thai curry I'd had for dinner in Monroe. Barr knew I loved Thai food. Had he been buttering me up?

  "Lord love a duck. Will you just say it, whatever it is?"

  He nodded. Paused. Opened his mouth to speak.

  A flashing cacophony bore down on us from behind. I twisted around to see what was going on as Barr quickly pulled to the side of the road. The screaming sirens and blaring horn nearly deafened us as they passed, and I put my palms over my ears like a little kid. One after another, emergency vehicles raced by: an ambulance, a fire truck, and a Sheriff's vehicle, all nose to tail and heading toward Cadyville at engine roaring speed.

  As soon as they were past, Barr floored it. His personal car, a normally sedate white Camry, left rubber on the shoulder of the highway, and we trailed closely behind the emergency entourage.

  "What are you doing?" I shouted over the din.

  "Finding out what's going on. Whatever it is, it's not good."

  A thrill ran through me. I watched, wide-eyed, as Barr maneuvered around traffic at high speed. I grabbed the oh-my-God handle over the door and tried not to grin. I probably should have been scared, but it was kind of fun.

  Even if he was avoiding the issue-which I knew darn well he was. What had he been going to tell me?

  We veered around a BMW, and the driver honked. Barr ignored him. A mile later we rounded a curve and discovered the reason for all the emergency equipment. My urge to grin quickly dissipated. Ahead, a car had left the road and traveled fifty feet before crashing head-on into a telephone pole. Dark smoke rose from the vehicle, and uniformed personnel ran toward it.

  We parked behind the Sheriff's SUV. Then I saw the light bar on top of the wrecked car. The logo on the side.

  I turned to Barr. "Oh, my God."

  His door was open, and he was halfway out of the car, looking grim. "It's one of ours," he said and took off toward the gathering knot of people.

  I scrambled out and down the shallow ditch embankment, falling behind as the slick soles of my flip-flops slid around on the long grass. More grass poked at my bare legs and grabbed at my summer skirt. Finally, I hit brown dirt and could run.

  Panting, I came up behind Barr, but he held his arm out, preventing my further approach. A cloud of chemicals whooshed from an extinguisher as a fireman emptied it over the engine compartment. As the billowing smoke lessened, the pungent tang joined the acrid scents of burning rubber and hot metal. I peered around Barr. The driver's door was open to show part of a man's shiny black boot, but when I tried to get a better look, he turned my shoulder and walked me away from the scene.

  "Who is it?" I asked, breathless. "Why aren't they trying to get him out?"

  He stopped and closed his eyes. When he opened them, I knew it was really, really bad.

  "It's Scott," he said. "He's dead."

  "Oh, no." And again, "Oh, no. Who'll tell Chris?" I knew Scott Popper's wife better than I knew him. We were both members of the Cadyville Regional Artists' Co-op, or CRAG, a somewhat recent addition to our little town's growing artsy-fartsy scene.

  Barr nodded toward a rapidly approaching pickup. It skidded to a stop on the highway, and Chris got out. She stared toward the wrecked patrol car, hand over her mouth.

  He said, "She has a scanner."

  Together, we hurried back across the field to Officer Popper's wife.

  ***

  "Slow down. It isn't a race," Ruth Black said. "Spinning yarn is about process as much as result."

  I reduced the speed with which I was pumping the treadle on the spinning wheel. "Sorry. I guess I'm bleeding off some nervous energy.

  "Oh, I don't doubt it, after what happened to Scott Popper last evening. But that's the beauty of it," she said. "I find spinning allows me to let go of all the other stuff in my life for a while."

  That must have been why she did it so much. And why I was rapidly becoming obsessed with spinning fiber into yarn. Today, Ruth was teaching me how to take the two spools of single-ply wool yarn I'd gradually managed to create over the last three weeks, and spin them together to create a two-ply yarn. A short and spry seventy, Ruth wore her crop of white hair spiked to within an inch of its life. She leaned close, head bent as she watched me work. Her claim to fame at CRAG was fiber art. I'd always known she was an inveterate knitter but had only realized since joining the co-op that she was also an expert in spinning, weaving, felting, and crochet.

  "Now, see how your yarn is getting too much twist in it? When you ply the yarns together, you need to make sure the wheel is spinning the opposite direction from the one you used to spin the singles. The first way gives it an S twist. The second utilizes a Z twist so the yarn unspins just slightly as the two strands twine together."

  "Um. Okay." I stopped the wheel and tried it the other way. "This is hard after spinning in the other direction all this time."

  "You'll get used to it."

  We were watching the retail shop on the ground floor of CRAG. It was ten in the morning, and upstairs the supply area and co-op studio spaces were still empty.

  Ruth had invited me to join a couple of months earlier. I'd protested that the handmade soap and toiletries I manufactured for my business, Winding Road Bath Products, hardly counted as art, but the other members insisted they did. In truth, they needed as many participants as possible to generate momentum for the coop, and I was happy to take part. It was Chris Popper who had bought the old library and renovated it into a place for artists of all kinds to make and sell their creations, and she'd been quite enthusiastic about adding me to their roster.

>   The screen door opened, signaling a possible customer, and Ruth and I both half-stood to see over the cashier's counter. Instead of customers, three of the core members of the co-op entered. First through the door was Irene Nelson. Mousy. There was just no other word for Irene. Thin hair, colorless eyes, nondescript features, wearing beige on beige on beige. I had yet to hear her say more than a dozen words in a row, though I saw her nearly every time I came to the co-op. Her sculptures were what I thought of as "menopause art"-lots of chunky naked women shown in varying positions of prayer and/or power. We are women, hear us sing.

  Dr. Jake Beagle loomed behind her. Tall, broad, and coarsefeatured, he looked more like a lumberjack of old than an MD who specialized in family medicine, but I suspected Jake's real passion lay in the nature photography he considered a hobby. He was certainly talented. But art didn't often pay the bills, and though I didn't really know her, his beautiful second wife, Felicia, looked expensive.

  Trailing behind Jake was Ariel Skylark: blonde, small-boned, tan and supple as only a twenty-three-year-old can be. She had big brown eyes, pillowy lips, and a bizarre winsomeness that men seemed to find irresistible. Her oversized canvases, all of which sported untidy splotches of black and white and red paint, took up most of one wall of the co-op.

  The only missing member of the core group was Chris. Barr and I had managed to get her home the evening before, and Jake had come over, as both friend and doctor. He said he'd prescribe something to help her sleep, but she'd refused to call anyone to stay with her.

  The screen creaked open again, and Irene's twenty-something son, Zak, entered last. His Doc Martens thudding on the wooden floor, he was all elbows and knees ranging under long, stringy dark hair and an intriguing arrangement of hoops pierced his lips and nostrils. He managed to look bored and uncomfortable at the same time.

  As everyone gathered in front of the counter, Zak and Jake both seemed hyperaware of their spatial relationship to Ariel, situating themselves near her, but not touching. Irene watched her son's antics with a look of unadulterated disgust. I was surprised that he didn't seem to notice. Ariel did though, and smiled broadly at Irene, who turned quickly away.

  "I just checked in on Chris," Jake said.

  "How is she?" I asked.

  "Holding up. It's hard."

  "She knows we're all here for her," Irene said.

  Ariel waved her hand in the air. "Oh, she'll be fine. My parents died when I was sixteen, and I'm okay."

  We all stared at her.

  "What? I'm just saying, people get over stuff, you know? It doesn't help anyone to make it into a big deal."

  "Time is indeed a great healer," Ruth said, ever the diplomat.

  Wow. I mean, some people called me insensitive and tactless, but those people had apparently never met Miss Ariel Skylark.

  "Sophie Mae, watch your tension," Ruth said, and I turned my attention back to my yarn.

  TWO

  SCOTT POPPER LOOKED GOOD dead.

  I mean, he looked good when he was alive, too, but the nice folks at Crane's Funeral Home really did a fantastic job. Crashing his car into a telephone pole at high speed could hardly have been kind to his face, but two days later here he was, open casket and all, looking just as handsome as ever.

  And only a bit less animated than usual.

  Now, that was mean. I'd spent little time around Scott, and even that in fairly large groups. That wasn't really enough to form a studied opinion regarding someone's social skills. Maybe he wasn't always as dull as he'd been in my presence. Maybe he was just shy. Even if they don't always deserve it, I do try to give the dead the benefit of the doubt.

  In the pew beside me, Barr's attention flicked from face to face, ever watchful, more out of habit than for any other reason. Scott lay in peaceful repose at the front of the church. Low music seeped out of speakers hidden behind tapestries in the apse of St. Luke's Catholic Church, the droning organ underscoring whispered voices and the rustle of clothing as people settled into their seats. Summer was only two days old, and the warm June air smelled of greenery and Murphy's Oil Soap. I eyed the gleaming wood pews. It must take hours to wipe them all down.

  I sighed inwardly. This probably wasn't the best time to ask Barr what he'd been going to tell me before Scott's accident. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, admiring how he looked in his dress uniform while trying not to look obvious. I loved how his chestnut-colored hair was streaked gray at the temples, how his slightly hooked nose looked in profile, how his dark brown eyes could be warm and inviting when he looked at me, but hard as obsidian when the occasion called for it.

  He frequently darted looks at Scott in the glossy walnut casket, then jerked his gaze away as if it were painful to look upon the dead for long. His eyes rested on Scott's wife, and the muscles of his jaw slackened; he'd been clenching his teeth. Raw pity flashed across his face for a moment, then was gone, replaced with his usual mask of easy-going stoicism.

  I touched his arm. He squeezed my hand in return.

  Chris was a decorative blacksmith. You probably don't have to be a big-boned, muscular gal in order to form the elaborate metal pieces that she created, but it couldn't hurt. Nearing six feet in height, with shoulders like a linebacker, her exposed arms rippled with muscles. She wore a simple black sheath to her husband's funeral, and her straight, peanut-butter-blonde hair hung lank on either side of her wide cheekbones, framing an expressionless face that was notable more for its precise symmetry than for classic beauty. Her blue eyes stared forward, unseeing.

  Remembering how I'd felt when I'd attended my own husband's funeral almost six years previously, I could understand the confused numbness that must have swamped her. My heart ached with empathy. At least with Mike's lymphoma, I'd had a little time-far too little, but still-to prepare for his death. But dying in a car accident is a sneak robbery, an unexpected blow to those left behind for which there is no preparation. Suddenly, the rest of Chris Popper's life looked different than she ever could have imagined.

  She was surrounded by Ruth Black, Irene and Zak Nelson and Jake Beagle. Jake's wife, Felicia, perfectly coifed and dressed to the nines, stood a little ways away, talking with Ruth's ninety-year-old Uncle Thaddeus.

  But someone was missing. "That disrespectful little wench," I whispered.

  Barr glanced over at me. "Who?"

  "Ariel. Ariel Skylark. From the co-op. Tiny, blonde, sticks blobs of paint on great big canvases, then calls it modern art? She's not here."

  He shook his head. "Sorry. Have I met her?"

  "I guess not." I was pretty sure any man who met Ariel remembered the occasion.

  Her absence was conspicuous, though. CRAG was closed for the funeral, so there was no need for anyone to mind the store. It was downright rude of her not to show up.

  The door to the street slammed shut. Daylight winked out save the dim glimmer of the stained glass windows arching above. The last viewers turned away from the coffin and found seats on the aisle as the funeral director quietly lowered the coffin lid. The priest appeared, and the funeral began.

  ***

  When we walked out of the church my dark linen suit smelled so smoky I felt like I'd been in a casino bar. Father Donegan had not stinted with the incense, and if the idea was for the rising tendrils to raise Scott's soul up to heaven, he was already well ensconced. Barr, a closet Catholic, had explained some of the service to me. I had to admit, I really liked the ritual aspect of it. My parents being dyed-in-the-wool, intellectual agnostics, I hadn't grown up with any formal religious training. I could see how it might be nice in situations like these.

  I sniffed my sleeve and wrinkled my nose. "What's in that stuff, anyway?"

  "I never thought to wonder. Frankincense and myrrh?" Barr guessed.

  "I think that might just be for Christmastime. Gifts of the three wise men, and all that."

  "Mm hmm."

  "You okay?"

  "What? Oh. Sure. Yeah. I'm fine." He watched a squirrel
in a yard across the street snake onto a tree branch and then down the chain to raid a rustic wooden birdfeeder.

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. Of course he was upset about his friend's sudden death. But there was something more. I waited.

  He took a deep breath, then turned his attention to me. Brown eyes, intelligent and discerning, met mine. "If I say this, promise not to make it into something."

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Was he finally going to tell me why "we have to talk"?

  "Just promise," he said.

  I took a deep breath. "Okay."

  "I was just thinking how odd it was for Scott to die in a car crash."

  Oh. Not about me. Go figure.

  "Because he was a cop?" I asked.

  "Well, that, for one. He had a lot of formal training for sure. But he was also an amateur racer. Stock cars."

  "Really? I had no idea."

  "Almost every Sunday he was out at the fairgrounds speedway, racing with his buddies."

  "So he knew a ton about cars. And driving."

  "Yes. Both." "

  "Do you think the crash was something besides an accident?" I asked.

  His head swung back and forth. "No, no. Don't do that. You said you wouldn't make it into anything if I told you what I was thinking."

  I shrugged. "Okay. You're the detective, and he was your friend."

  He reached over and tousled my hair. I ducked away from his hand, nearly twisting my ankle in my brand-new three-inch heels, and he grinned. I still wasn't quite used to my short bob, after having hair down to my waist for most of my adult life.

  I need to get going," he said.

  "You're not going to the reception?"