overheard him and Drew in the middle of a bitter argument.” I thought back to the office. “And there’s something else. There was something white and lacy hanging off a drawer pull, as though something had caught on it and torn.”
“I didn’t see that. Lacy like how?” Dinah said.
I closed my eyes and conjured up the image. When I had been catching that last look at it, I had tried relating it to something familiar. What had I thought of? And then an image floated forward and grew clear. It reminded me of the doilies Adele had sewn on her skirt.
DINAH WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WITH THINGS TO do. I had arranged to meet CeeCee later to buy the yarn for the shawls, but I stopped home for lunch first. Cosmo rushed toward the door as I came in, with Blondie in close pursuit. What a change. When I only had her, she sat in her chair all day unless it was walk time or I offered her some cheese.
As I put my keys down on the counter, Morgan came out of her room and startled me. I’d gotten used to dog noises but not the sounds of another human. She came up and suddenly hugged me, wanting to make sure I was all right. I had told her about the murder the night before when my younger son Samuel stopped over during the break between his day job as a barista and his evening gig playing piano at a restaurant. He’d already gotten the basics about the incident from his brother.
“As long as you’re okay,” Samuel said when I’d finished giving him the details. He had taken his father’s death harder than his brother, and I knew he worried about something happening to me. With that settled, he and Morgan had exchanged awkward glances, and then he had left to go to his night job.
“I was going to have some lunch. Want to join me?” I asked, hoping my smile and cheerful voice would brighten her expression. She looked more melancholy than usual.
“That would be nice. What are you having?”
“When in doubt grilled cheese sandwiches always work,” I said, washing my hands and starting to take things out of the refrigerator. She agreed to eat with me, but only if she could make her own. I stepped aside as she extracted a package of no-fat American cheese product, which was as close to cheese as plastic was to cashmere. She had some bread, too. Sliced so thin, light shown through it. It was extremely low in calories and high in fiber thanks to the secret ingredient. The label called it by some fancy name like cellulose specialo, but I looked it up. It was basically wood fibers.
I used bakery egg bread and Muenster cheese. She made hers in the microwave, while I sizzled some butter in a frying pan, which filled the air with a delicious aroma. When I added the sandwich, it smelled even better.
When our sandwiches were ready, we sat at the little booth in the kitchen and I asked her how things were going.
“Not so good,” she said, taking a tiny bite of her sandwich. “I went on an audition for a music video this morning, and they said I didn’t look ethereal enough. That means five pounds too heavy.” She put down her sandwich as if it were its fault and drank some sparkling water.
“I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that you’re already almost too ethereal,” I said. “The next audition will go better.”
She slumped and looked glum. I decided the best tactic was to let her know there were people who had worse problems. I told her about Sheila and how Drew Brooks had cheated her and she’d confronted him just before he got killed.
“And now she’s worried because her fingerprints are on the paperweight that hit him on the head, and she doesn’t even know that this police detective overheard her threatening him. I’m just hoping the detective doesn’t start treating Sheila like a suspect.”
“Wow,” Morgan said, sitting up. “I guess some people do have bigger problems. I bet I’ve seen her scarves at the Cottage Shoppe.” I asked her if she shopped there often and if she knew anything about the Brooks brothers.
“ ‘Brooks brothers,’ that’s funny,” she said. It was amazing how much better she looked when she smiled. She said she had liked the store better when their aunt owned it. “She had all kinds of unusual and wonderful things. Somebody had made a shadow box out of an old dance program from
“They are beautiful,” I said. Since she liked the handcrafted things so well I thought maybe she’d like to learn how to make some and asked, “Would you like to join the crochet group?”
“That would be nice except I don’t know how to crochet,” she said. When I assured her someone would teach her, she said she’d come with me to the next meeting.
Morgan had become all animated, and I enjoyed having a daughter-age person to talk with. The only down moment came when I got a cookie for dessert and offered one to her. You would have thought I’d offered her a cockroach.
An hour later, with the dishwasher taking care of the cleanup, I left to meet CeeCee at the Super Craft Mart to buy the yarn for the hugs of comfort project. She was waiting by a display of craft books when I got there. She kept looking around as we walked back toward the yarn department, and I finally asked her what the problem was.
She glanced down an empty aisle. “You have no idea how it is now. Everybody is looking to catch you doing something embarrassing and stick it on the Internet. Now that I have a hit show, it’s even worse.” She leaned close and lowered her voice. “I practically have to sleep in stage makeup. The other day somebody got a picture of me in my robe, getting the Sunday newspaper. My hair looked like I stuck my finger in an electric socket.”
I hadn’t seen the photo she was talking about, but I could just imagine it. I’d always kind of laughed at CeeCee’s obsession with stage makeup and posing herself just right if there were any paparazzi around, but I suddenly saw it in a different light. Her situation made me glad I was a nobody.
As soon as we got to the yarn department, she pointed out the worsted acrylic and said each shawl would take about six skeins. We both started counting skeins and eventually filled two carts with yarn.
“We’ll start them in the group, but then everybody is going to have to do a lot of the work on their own. I promised the shelter twenty shawls,” CeeCee said, wincing. “That’s how many women are at the shelter now. Then I said we would keep providing them, so when someone new came, they’d have one to give her.” CeeCee seemed upset. “I hope nobody lets me down.”
Was it my imagination or was she looking at me?
I mentioned that Morgan was joining the group, but had to add that she didn’t know how to crochet. At the end of the aisle I noticed shelves of what looked like balls of string.
“What’s this stuff?” I asked, pulling down one of the orbs of material.
“That’s what you use to make thread crochet, dear. Lacy bookmarks, doilies, that sort of thing.”
She took down one of the balls and showed it to me. “Number 10 is the most common kind. It’s also called bedspread weight. The higher the number, the finer the thread.” CeeCee took off a package of slender steel hooks. “These are the kind of hooks you use.”
Near where she’d found the hooks there was a display of pattern pamphlets. The pamphlet cover showed a linen tea towel with a delicate crocheted edging. Something about the design caught my attention. I kept starring, trying to place it. Then the answer came to me. “That looks kind of like what was hanging on Drew Brooks’s desk drawer,” I said, picking up the book and moving it around to see it from another angle.
“Something was hanging on a desk drawer?” CeeCee said, perplexed.
“Didn’t you see it? When we found him in the—”
“Remember, I didn’t go up there. Thank heavens. Hearing about it was enough. And then being kept in a parking lot to be questioned. That blond detective was giving me a bad vibe. She asked me if you knew the victim. She really doesn’t seem to like you.” CeeCee’s voice changed tone. “But she’s certainly a beautiful knitter. Did you see her bag?”
I did a double take. CeeCee complimenting a knitted project?
