Dead Men Don't Crochet

of her. “I think that puts Trina on the suspect list. Maybe she hit Drew with the paperweight, and when his face hit the soup she just waited until the soup had done it’s deadly work and then began to scream. And there’s Dorothy, too. She claimed not to be upset, but maybe she just said that. She could have gone up there earlier and smashed him on the head.”

I watched Dorothy picking up a brass lamp to check the price. No question, even though she was well into her sixties, she had the strength to swing a paperweight with some force. More people came in the shop, and the buzz of conversation got louder. I recognized some of the regular customers from the bookstore. Dorothy was being pulled in all directions by the crowd.

“Can you believe all these people,” Dinah said. “You’d think they were giving something away.”

“Are those the paperweights?” a woman asked, pointing to a group of objects on the mantelpiece. She was wearing casual pants and high heels, a look I never understood. Someone else was apparently interested in them, too, and pushed next to her, asking the same question. It took a moment for it to make sense. Then I realized they were talking about the paperweights that had been on Drew’s desk. Ugh. There was some discussion about which of the ones on display had been the one.

“None of these,” Kevin said. “The police have the one that hit my brother. It’s evidence, you know.”

The woman in the heels said she really wanted to buy one since they were a part of history. I rolled my eyes to myself. I had this thing about people and their desire for a part of history. Or what they thought was a piece of history, anyway. A paperweight from the desk of a dead guy didn’t qualify in my book, even if he was murdered.

She picked up a brass bust of Teddy Roosevelt and a tall glass piece with a green jellyfish suspended inside. I remembered seeing them on the desk. Someone asked Kevin what the one looked like.

“It was a globe inlaid with semiprecious stones on a silverplate base. It was quite heavy for its size,” he said. Then he looked uncomfortable with what he’d said. The mention of it stirred my memory, and I shuddered as I recalled seeing the globe lying on its side. I realized the red I’d seen on it wasn’t pieces of ruby.

Meanwhile, I heard rumors starting to circulate among the growing group of shoppers. Someone mentioned that one of Sheila’s scarves had been on Drew’s desk, too. Suddenly there was a run on those. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not for Sheila. She might make some money, but it only brought more attention to the fact that one of her scarves had been in the room when Drew died.

Dinah and I slipped into the dining room to get away from the crowd. Apparently they hadn’t put it together yet that the free samples of soup were prepared by the same person who had made the soup Drew drowned in. Dinah and I took some soup samples and sat down at one of the small bistro tables. Kevin had made a nice cream of asparagus with a touch of curry. From our table, we could see that Kevin had joined Dorothy in dealing with the crowd.

Everyone seemed occupied, which gave me an idea. I pointed upstairs. “What do you think? There may never be another chance like this. I’d like to see Drew’s office. Maybe the white lacy stuff is still hanging on the drawer.”

“We have to be stealth,” Dinah said with a twinkle in her eye. She crumpled her soup cup and got up.

“Wait a second,” I said, sitting back down again. I’d worn no-show white socks with my slip-ons, but somehow the socks had slipped down and were in a bunch right at my arch. I pulled off both socks, stuck them in the pocket of my khaki slacks and put the shoes back on. I could practically feel a blister forming as we threaded through the crowd toward the stairs.

My heartbeat picked up as I checked to make sure no one was looking in our direction. A rush of adrenalin surged through me as I started up the stairs with Dinah right behind me. We moved quickly, and when we were out of sight, I let my breath out. We’d made it.

It seemed eerily quiet after all the racket downstairs.

The first time I’d been up here, I hadn’t paid much attention to the hall. Now I noitced that the second floor went over only the front half of the building. There were two open doorways and one closed one, which I guessed led to a bathroom from the ancient days when this was a house.

I was curious to see what Drew’s office looked like now that the crime scene investigators and detectives had finished with it. The desk was cleaned of tomato bisque residue, and the paperweights had been moved downstairs. The CSIs must have taken the bowl and the rest of the soup. I wondered how they handled keeping a bowl of soup as evidence.

I didn’t see Sheila’s scarf. Did that mean they’d taken that as evidence also, or was it just so soup soaked it had gotten trashed? This time I noticed there was a desk lamp, a three-tiered paper holder and a telephone. I supposed last time I’d been in the office they had all been on the floor. Someone had tried to clean the carpet, but residue of the red still showed in the beige pile. There were some shelves in the back with books about antique and collectible prices. I noticed a printer on the bottom shelf with a USB cord to nowhere. I guessed Drew must have brought in a laptop.

What I didn’t see was anything hanging off a desk drawer.

“Maybe whatever it was is in the drawer now,” Dinah whispered.

I hesitated. So far all we’d done was look at what was readily seeable; opening drawers seemed to be crossing a line. What was that saying—in for a penny, in for a pound? It seemed silly to sneak up here and not check out everything. Besides, if I was careful, no one would know. I took out one of the no-show socks and used it as a hand cover so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints.

“Clever move,” Dinah whispered.

The drawers were mostly empty. One had a bunch of blank labels and some postcards. I looked at one. It was lime green and announced that a new shipment of goodies had arrived and encouraged the recipient to make sure and come in. Another had some pencils and pens, stamps and a copy of The Greed Machine. We’d had a signing for it. The author had bragged that he knew how to grow money, which basically amounted to diverting it from other people’s pockets into his. I had a feeling it must have been Drew’s personal bible.

I stood back and looked around again.

“I think we’ve covered it here,” I said softly. I walked out and headed for the other bedroom/office. “I wonder what Mr. Kevin has,” I said, slipping inside. His office was slightly smaller and the furnishings were plainer. The desk was antique, but plain wood rather than the inlaid squares of Drew’s desktop. There was a bookcase with a few books. All appeared to be cookbooks, and the one that seemed the most handled was on restaurant design. There were some restaurant equipment catalogs and also a binder. I flipped open the binder and saw it held a collection of recipes, including one for the tomato bisque soup.

Dinah sat down on the love seat while I continued to looked around. I took out one of my no-show socks again and used it to open the desk drawers. There was a phone book, some pens and pencils and two packages of fruity mint gum, which I thought sounded like an upset stomach waiting to happen.

I was sliding the drawer shut when I heard noise on the stairs. Voices that were growing louder. I turned toward Dinah. She’d heard them, too. I think we must have had matching panic faces. Operating on instinct, she slid behind the love seat and I crawled under the desk, grateful that it had a modesty shield across the opening, so no one could see me from the other side.

This was the problem with snooping around. You could get caught. I squeezed under the desk as far as possible, but I still had a view of the feet and pants’ bottoms of the two people who came in the office. Two legs had faded jeans and not the kind thrown in vats of bleach or washed with rocks to look that way. These appeared authentically paled by countless washings. The feet were in work boots that looked as though they’d seen their share of action. The other legs wore dark olive green dress trousers, and the shoes were loafers with tassels, or as I called them, men’s party shoes. I also noticed something white and balled up under the desk. In my panic I must have dropped my no-show sock. I silently snatched it and put it in my pocket.

“So, here are the plans and costs,” the jeans-and-boot person said. He was shifting his weight and had a deep voice. “We’d be enlarging the kitchen and dining room by adding onto the side and back. We’d take out the storage room and use the space for another downstairs bathroom.”

I listened with interest. I’d already figured out the other feet belonged to Kevin. It was kind of a no-brainer since it was his office and I recognized the olive green trousers from before. So, Drew was barely out of the picture and Kevin already was getting estimates from a contractor. One more sign Kevin wasn’t exactly inconsolable over