Lie of the Needle (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (10 page)

The door to the store opened, and it wasn’t a wave of customers, but a tsunami in the form of PJ Avery.

I quickly made a fresh pot of coffee.

“Saw Martha outside,” she said, in her abrupt way of speaking. “Putting up flyers all over town. Advertising for Cyril Mackey like he’s a missing cat.”

“Oh, dear.”

PJ had recently come into a sizable inheritance, but it hadn’t changed her lifestyle much. She still worked at the newspaper every day, and her wardrobe was still retro Army Navy store. A pack of cigarettes poked out of the pocket of her safari jacket.

“You should quit smoking, young lady.”

“Oh, gimme a break. You’re not my mother.”

“I know,” I said, my smile fading as I wished for the hundredth time that I could somehow fill that gaping hole in her life.

“Hey, Daisy, it’s cool. Lighten up. I’ll quit when I’m ready.” She looked over at the counter where the coffeepot hissed as it brewed.

“Before you ask, no, there are no treats today.”

She shrugged. “That sucks. Anyways, thought you’d want to know something. That photographer, Alex Roos? He called me the day before he died to say he was working on ‘something big.’ Said he could use my help.”

“Really? Did you let Detective Serrano know this?”

“Yeah, but that’s all I could tell him. Roos and I never met up, so Serrano didn’t seem too interested.”

“Never mind about him.” I poured us both some coffee. “
I’m
interested.”

“Did some digging into the dude’s background. Turns out he’s actually from this area originally and was some kind of radical photojournalist, back in the day.”

PJ paced up and down in front of the Welsh dresser. Cyril would have said she had ants in her pants. I’d learned that I couldn’t watch her when she did this or I’d get slightly seasick.

“Pretty badass, actually. He took on the tough stories; hell, he even took on the Philadelphia unions, and trust me, that’s playing with fire.”

I frowned. Had all that flamboyance on Roos’s part just been an act?

As if reading my mind, she said, “Different guy from the one we thought we knew, right?”

“It’s quite a leap, isn’t it, PJ? From investigative reporting to fashion photography?”

She snorted. “Yeah. How the mighty have fallen. Who knows, maybe some jerk from his past caught up with him and he had to make a quick getaway.”

“Did he ever have a run-in with Beau Cassell?”

“Not that I know of, but maybe he stumbled on something that Cassell wouldn’t want to be made public knowledge.”

“Like what? A shady real estate deal? I wonder if he involved Cyril in whatever it was.” I blew out a breath. “And either Cyril is dead, too, which I refuse to think about, or he’s hurt or injured somewhere.”

PJ rocked back on her heels. “Wouldn’t last long in this weather. Hey, perhaps he’s in hiding. Could he be staying with someone to fly below the radar? Like Martha, maybe?”

I shook my head. “No, not Martha. She’s dramatic, but I don’t think she’s
that
good of an actress. Regardless, we need to make a plan to find him. And soon.”

“Assuming he’s still alive, where would he hang out? What did he like to do?”

“Apart from give me a hard time, I don’t really know. I usually only ever saw him at the salvage yard.” Cyril and I had understood each other on some elemental level. We’d never had the need for the usual small talk—we just got right to the heart of whatever it was we wanted to discuss—and as a result, I didn’t know much about his past. All I knew was that he had once been a miner in Western Pennsylvania before he ended up in Millbury.

“He went to the auction once in a while, and he liked to fix things, but I don’t know of any other hobbies. I never saw him at the grocery store, although I suppose he had to go there sometime. I never saw him on the streets of Millbury or Sheepville, either. He didn’t have a washer and dryer, though, so he must have gone to the Laundromat now and then.”

“How about the pub? I’ll check there.” She waved a hand at me. “You can do all those other boring places.”

*   *   *

E
arly on Sunday morning, I made my usual pilgrimage to the salvage yard to feed the cat. I hadn’t slept well at all, tossing and turning for hours. Finally, at 5 a.m., I decided it was useless to try anymore and I slipped out of bed, not wanting to disturb Joe. I drank several cups of coffee while I tackled the fiendishly difficult
New York Times
Sunday crossword puzzle, cursing editor Will Shortz even as I admired him, and waiting for daylight.

As I poured kibble into his bowl, the little black cat rubbed his way around my ankles.

“You don’t seem overly concerned,” I said to him, yawning. “You think he’s coming back, too, don’t you?”

I listened to the sound of dry cat food crunching.

“See yon lantern?”

My heart skipped. I could almost hear Cyril’s voice echo in the kitchen, and I looked over to where he had been pointing that day he’d told me a smidgeon about his past. A battered black iron and brass lantern stood on a shelf over the doorway into the living room.

“That’s a miner’s lamp. I keep it there to remind me of all that I went through to get to this place. How lucky I am to be done with that kind of life.”

I sucked in a breath. Cyril had worshipped Martha, and told me he’d never been happier. To a loner and an outsider like him, she represented a warm, happy home. Something he’d never had.

And yes, he was a tad resistant to her busy social calendar, but he still went to everything with her, didn’t he? He could have refused, could have stayed in his trailer. But he didn’t. He loved her so much that he suffered through those swanky occasions just to be with her.

There was no way that he’d disappeared of his own accord.

I said good-bye to the cat, hurried up the lane from the junkyard, got changed, and headed for church.

Our little community church was situated not far from Glory Farm, surrounded by open fields with an ancient graveyard in the back. It looked like an old-time picture postcard, painted white, with its bright red door and bell steeple, where bells rang every hour on the dot. We were so far out in the sticks and buried in the past that we still had live bell ringers instead of automated electric ones.

When I arrived, I was surprised to see Eleanor standing outside.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I’ve never really seen you at church, unless it’s for a wedding or a funeral.”

“I’m here for moral support.” She nodded to where Martha, dressed completely in black and wearing an enormous black hat with black netting, was making her way over to us.

“Oh, dear,” I said.

“It may as well be a funeral,” Eleanor murmured.

The only spots of color on Martha were her chestnut hair and the redness around her eyes.

“What are
you
doing here?” she also demanded of Eleanor when she had given us both a hug. Or as much of a hug as she could manage due to the constraints of the hat. “I thought you didn’t believe in organized religion?”

Eleanor shrugged. “I live my life so I can look at myself in the mirror every day and be proud of the person in the reflection. That’s enough for me and my God.
She’s
okay with it.”

Martha just rolled her tear-puffed eyes at me. “Do you guys believe that someone took my flyers down last night? Every single one. Who would do such a thing? How can people be so mean?”

“Never mind about that now,” I said. “It’s freezing out here. Come on. Let’s go in.”

Inside the church, Joe sat on my left, Eleanor was on my right, and Martha sat on the other side of Eleanor.

As the reverend asked us to pray for the recently departed, tears pricked my eyes and I felt as though I could almost see Alex Roos’s spirit winging its way up into the rafters of the beautiful old church. I prayed for a sign that Cyril was okay and touched the pack of cigarettes in my pocket like a talisman. A wave of desperation threatened to sweep me under, and I prayed for the strength to continue to believe he was still alive. To not give up hope.

My lack of sleep was catching up to me, the effects of early-morning caffeine were long gone, and I breathed in several deep breaths, trying to suck in more oxygen to clear my head. Eleanor was busy pulling tissues out of her bag as fast as she could and handing them to Martha.

Althea Gunn led the chorus in her usual wobbly contralto. The rest of us were used to the racket, but Eleanor looked at me wide-eyed, and in spite of my sadness, I had to smile at her shocked expression.

“Holy Toledo. Is this for real?” she whispered. “She sounds like a ghost. No, wait, a constipated phantom.” She moaned, fluttering her hands in front of her. “Or one that’s laying an egg.”

“Stop it,” I hissed.

“Woo-hoo-ooh!” Eleanor moaned again, a little louder this time, the sound almost drowned out by Althea’s out-of-
tune but resolute singing.

The wailing vibrato grew in intensity, like someone was doing karate chops on Althea’s back. I could feel the shaking of silent laughter where Eleanor’s arm touched mine, and I struggled against the hilarity bubbling up inside.

“Hey, Daisy, remember that scene in
When Harry Met Sally
?” Eleanor wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “‘I’ll have what she’s having.’”

“You are
evil
.”

The more I knew I shouldn’t laugh, the more I wanted to. Joe looked over at us and simply shook his head. I cupped my hands like blinders around my streaming eyes so I couldn’t see her, but at that moment Althea hit a high note.

Eleanor grabbed the pew in front of her and threw her head back, as if in the throes of the greatest climax she’d ever experienced.

That did it.

I jumped up, slid quickly past Joe and the couple next to him, and practically ran out of the church with a hand over my mouth before the geyser inside me could explode.

I ended up in the graveyard and collapsed on a nearby gravestone, where my wild howling and choked laughter were enough to wake the dead. I laughed and laughed until I couldn’t laugh any more.

“I’m glad our sermons are so entertaining, Daisy Buchanan.” I looked up to see Father Morris standing over me. He had a light Irish accent and a melodious voice as rich as heavy cream.

I couldn’t think of an appropriate explanation. I felt as though I was ten years old, not fifty-eight. What the heck was the matter with me? “Sorry, Father. It’s not that, it’s just . . .” Suddenly I realized I was sitting on a gravestone, too, and I jumped to my feet. “I’m so sorry.” Not only had I left the service prematurely, I was laughing like a fool and being disrespectful of the dead.

“It’s all right. When Patrick Carney was alive, he never minded a beautiful woman sitting on his lap, especially one in such a good humor. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind now.”

I sighed. “Oh, Father, there’s just been so much going on lately, what with Stanley dying and then the murder of Alex Roos, and now I’m worried sick about Cyril. I’m a little emotional. I guess there’s a fine line between laughter and hysteria.”

“Everyone needs to let the steam out of the pressure cooker now and again.” He smiled gently at me. “Good to see you, Daisy.”

“You too.”

As he turned to leave, I called out, “Father? Could I ask you something?”

He raised an eyebrow in question.

“Do you think it’s possible to feel as though someone is still alive? Even though you don’t know for sure?”

Again, that gentle smile. “Our loved ones always live in our hearts and in our memories.”

I stared up at him, his figure backlit by the colorless sky. Were the souls of Stanley Bornstein and Alex Roos restlessly roaming this earth, or were they at peace?

After he left, I kept Patrick Carney company for a few moments longer while I watched a red cardinal flit across the graveyard.

“I
could really go for some gingerbread, or maybe a banana pecan muffin.” Eleanor gave Martha a gentle poke with her bony elbow. Usually a special request for one of Martha’s baked goods was an instant call to action.

I’d managed to catch the end of the sermon, thankfully, and now we were milling around at the coffee social.

“I couldn’t
possibly
think of food at a time like this. I’m distraught that Cyril wasn’t even mentioned in that service.” Martha’s mouth drooped. “Maybe if someone would find my soul mate, I might be more inclined to cook. Maybe if I could get some
help
from this village instead of being sabotaged or ridiculed at every turn.”

My heart was breaking, and I hugged her as tightly as I could. “Don’t lose hope, Martha.”

“I can’t. It’s all I’ve got.” She dabbed at the corners of her sore eyes.

“Look, Cyril is a Yorkshireman, and as stubborn and ornery as they come. If anyone can survive and land on their feet, it’s him.”

“Yep. Old birds are the toughest!” Eleanor said, and then she lowered her voice to a murmur. “Speaking of which, these dry-as-dust brownies of Sally McIntire’s are definitely for the birds.”

At that moment, there was a commotion near the doorway and I looked up to see the unfortunate Sally being led out of the room by her husband, who seemed to have a tight grip on her arm.

Dottie Brown came over. “Did you see how red her eyes were? Apparently she’s been crying for days, grieving over that dead photographer.” After Martha, Dottie was the town’s second most reliable resource for sizzling gossip.

It was true that Sally had hung around on the set every day, giggling and making eyes at Roos.

Dottie lowered her voice. “And on the afternoon of the Bornstein funeral, Jim McIntire was scouring the town for his wife, who was
not
where she was supposed to be.”

“Really?”

“She used to complain that he called her fifty times a day—to check up on her, asking her what she was doing, even if she was just out with a girlfriend for lunch.” Dottie pursed her lips. “If she turned her phone off, he’d show up at the restaurant. Total control freak.”

“Guys like that have a lot of repressed anger,” Martha said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out he was the one who killed Roos.”

Eleanor nodded toward Althea Gunn, who was manhandling a trestle table across the room by herself. “By the pricking of my thumbs, something bitchy this way comes.”

“Excuse me,” Althea snapped as she passed us, the table’s legs screeching against the floor.

I hurried to help her, but she’d already swung it into place. I walked back to my compatriots, raising my hands in the air.

“All that religion, but I can’t see as how it’s done her much good,” Eleanor muttered. “I don’t think I’ve ever met such a miserable person.”

“Someone tried to rob her house once,” Dottie said. “She tied him up and beat the crud out of him before the police got there. The guy told one of the officers he’d never been so glad to see anyone in his life.”

*   *   *

A
fter church, I told Joe I had some errands to run. Time to put my plan into action to see if I could find any trace of Cyril. I headed over to Sheepville and went to all the places I could think of—the supermarket, Laundromat, library, bank, and hardware store. It was sunny, but frigid. So cold that taking a breath of air hurt the back of my throat.

I’d brought a notebook with me, and for a while I diligently noted who I spoke to and the date of the last sighting, but it didn’t take long to realize I was following in Serrano’s footsteps. For as much as Serrano had seemed nonchalant about this whole situation, it was obvious he’d done his homework.

After an hour or so, I was dragging, so I stopped in at Jumpin’ Java Mama, a coffee shop on Porter Street near the library. On a chilly day like this, I wasn’t the only one with a yen for a hot beverage, and the little café was doing a roaring business. I claimed a cozy spot near the windows by slipping my coat over the back of one of the mismatched yellow-painted chairs. The round table was decoupaged with old postcards and bathed in the weak rays of the afternoon sun.

There were works from local artists for sale on one wall, and an antique coffee table with a chessboard sat in front of a sofa stuffed with yellow-and-red batik pillows. People were busy on their laptops, and a couple of kids were squeezed into one of the large armchairs, contentedly sipping hot chocolate.

I went up to the counter, where a sign said
SAVE THE DRAMA FOR YOUR MAMA
. The cheerful steel drums of Caribbean music mixed with the buzz of conversation and the laughter of the young hippie-type baristas. I could picture Eleanor being right at home working in a place like this in her day. I ordered a latte and was tempted by the Rocket Fuel Brownies, but I decided I’d save room for dinner. I’d just sat down at the table and was about to take a sip of the frothy concoction when I looked up to see what I was sure was the back of Cyril Mackey as he slipped out of the shop.

I banged the cup down on the table and scrambled out after him onto the sidewalk. I stood there for a minute, heaving for breath, looking up and down Porter Street in both directions, but he was gone.

I trailed back into the café, my heart racing, my body still shaking from adrenaline.

Was it really Cyril, or just wishful thinking on my part? And if it
was
him, why the hell didn’t he stop to talk to me?

Oh, Daisy, it could have been any other guy with long gray hair. You only caught a glimpse.

In my current emotionally wrung-out state, I had to agree with my inner voice. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen. Or if there had actually been anyone there at all.

I sighed and picked up my latte, and then just as quickly set it down. A newspaper on my table was open to the
New York Times
Sunday crossword puzzle.

I frowned at it and tried to remember. It hadn’t been there when I hung my coat on the chair, had it? No, because I’d admired the vintage postcard from Greece and another from Ibiza clearly visible on top when I first chose this table.

I grabbed the newspaper again, held it up to the light, and scrutinized it. Both Cyril and I were crossword fanatics, and I was sure I recognized his spidery capital letters.

Seeing as I’d already solved the puzzle at home, I suddenly saw that one clue was deliberately filled out incorrectly to say
canary
instead of
yellow
. Why did he fill it in that way? Was there some kind of clue in the
clue
?

Was Roos a whistleblower, like a canary signaling the presence of methane in a mine, for something unsavory that was going on in Millbury?

I was relieved to think that Cyril was alive, but why was he hiding?

*   *   *

O
n Monday morning, when I set out with Jasper for our walk, it was still cold, but it was a bracing, energizing cold, not the biting chill of the past week.

Jasper and I walked down the length of Main Street and then headed south on Grist Mill Road, past the church, toward Glory Farm. I tried to imagine what this road approaching Millbury would look like with the fields gone, the country lane widened, the earth churned up, and a slew of ugly Cassell townhomes replacing the unspoiled vista.

I paused while he peed against a pile of snow pushed to the side of the road by the plows, the wavy yellow slash looking a bit like the mark of Zorro.

He was experiencing snow for the first time this winter. Earlier this week, I’d laughed at his look of surprise when he took his usual launch from the back step and landed in the unfamiliar stuff. He recovered quickly, though, burying his face in it and eating it.

I’d slept well last night. Catching a glimpse of Cyril had helped ratchet the pressure down a notch. I was still worried, but there was hope. I hadn’t told Martha that I thought I’d seen Cyril in town, though. Perhaps Serrano’s mantra of verifying cold, hard facts had worn off on me, but before I toyed with Martha’s emotions, I wanted to be absolutely sure.

A red fox ran onto the road in front of us, and I held my breath at the unexpected sight. Jasper nearly choked himself to death on his leash trying to pull me closer, but the fox paused for a moment, staring at me.

“Go! Go! Don’t get run over,” I urged.

He disappeared through the undergrowth into the unmown fields. I kept him in sight as we walked along the side of the road, watching as he leapt, almost rabbitlike, as he toyed with some small prey in the grass.

After we passed the farm, we veered off the road onto a path that led toward the woods. The landscape was a rusty patchwork of orange and brown splashed with yellow, and sunlight falling on the leaves of trees made them almost glow.

I let Jasper off the leash and threw snowballs that he dove for and came up puzzled at their disappearance, his nose covered in snow. Blood surged through my muscles, and I almost felt like I was a teenager again, tramping over the fields, cheeks flushed, strong and confident, my whole life ahead of me. When I got home, the aches and pains of an older body would set in, but for right now I didn’t care.

“Let’s go, boy!” I yelled and broke into a run, laughing with the sheer joy of being alive. Jasper danced alongside me, catching my mood, his eyes bright and mouth open in delight

We passed a waterfall and I stopped to catch my breath, watching the water rushing around and over the stones. Like the ebb and flow of life.

Memories flooded in of me with my childhood dog. What a great dog he was, so smart and well-trained. I wasn’t sure I could say exactly the same of Jasper, but he was sheer unadulterated fun and pure endless love. I bent down and hugged him tightly.

*   *   *

L
ater that morning, as I hung another antique sampler on the wall at Sometimes a Great Notion, I reflected that my business was about selling memories. The handmade samplers, folk art, quilts, books, furniture, and linens all told a story of past lives. I was simply the caretaker of these treasures to pass along to another generation.

What would my daughter’s generation hand down to their children? People didn’t even print photos anymore. Everything was on their phones. How would they ever preserve the past? I smiled as I thought about Sarah, who, as a kid, never liked having her picture taken. Now one of her favorite things to do when she came home was to go through the old albums.

I read again the verse so carefully stitched by a young girl over a hundred and twenty years ago:

Let them see the error of their ways

Confess their sins to heaven

Accept the light of holy truth

All wouldst be forgiven

Let me not wail and weep

’Tis clear where my path must lie

Now with eyes that see

I follow humbly the heavenly light

Eyes that see.
The eyes of a child. The eyes of God.

There was also the eye of a camera. I was sure Alex Roos had captured something on film that someone wanted to keep quiet, but without his cameras, how would we ever know what it was?

I walked over to the counter where I was putting together a couple of glass jars filled with notions for an interior designer who had requested accent pieces for a shelf in her client’s study. I slipped some wooden bobbins into each, together with rolled pieces of tatting lace and spools of white and cream thread.

“I’ll tell you what, Alice; I’m still wondering about Ruth and what her story is.”

I pictured standing on the driveway that night in the falling snow and looking back up at the main house and the master bedroom window. Did Roos see something incriminating the night Stanley died? Threaten to expose her affair? Who knows what he might have seen. After all, he was living in her carriage house, and with a powerful telephoto lens . . .

Thought that Roos said he hadn’t slept at home that night.

I stared at Alice. “Darn it, you’re right. He couldn’t have seen what happened.”

Some customers came in then, and for the next few hours it was a steady stream of business. For a favorite customer, I gift wrapped a lacemakers’ box, which was a workbox fitted with essential tools—a pillow, patterns, scissors, pins, and bobbins. Another woman purchased a rare tatting shuttle case of mother-of-pearl with an abalone inset, made in England in the 1850s.

When I had time to catch a breath, I filled in some spaces in the display in the center of the store with a selection of crochet hooks and darning eggs, made of silver, wood, and Bakelite. I set an emery in the shape of a tomato next to them. It was like a small pincushion containing polishing powder. Pins and needles could be thrust through to remove rust and rough patches. Actually, I thought it would make a nice little thank-you gift to Althea for her help with the sampler pricing, so I set it aside.

It was almost five o’clock when the phone rang.

“I have some intel,” a hoarse voice whispered. “Can you meet me at the pub? Don’t wanna discuss over the phone.”