“Pink, stay with me. He’s going to haul me off to some interrogation room and shine bright lights in my eyes until I give in and confess to something I didn’t do.”
I tried to tell Adele she was being overly dramatic, but she was too busy being overly dramatic to listen. Typical Adele. One minute she’d be lobbing zingers at me, but as soon as there was some kind of problem, I was suddenly her best friend and savior. Even if the rhinestone clipboard hadn’t put me in the position of being responsible for her, I wouldn’t have abandoned her.
Sergeant French led Adele to a bench and then told Sheila and me that he wanted to speak to her alone, but Adele set up such a ruckus he finally agreed to let us stay.
“Am I a person of interest?” Adele demanded. There was just the tiniest curve to her mouth, and I wanted to roll my eyes. Only Adele would think being a person of interest made her special.
Sergeant French didn’t know Adele, so he took her seriously and said he was just trying to find out what happened to Izabelle.
“Well, I certainly don’t know. I was so upset after the workshop-there she was wearing that choker made with the stitch I came up with. Do you have any idea how upsetting that was? Here I had been putting her on a pedestal as this crochet goddess, and then she turns out to be a stitch thief.”
Adele went on and on after that, giving Sergeant French probably far more information than he wanted about the ins and outs of crochet. When she got to explaining how she needed the choker back because she couldn’t remember how many yarn overs she’d done before pulling the yarn through all the loops, his eyes glazed over.
“I really need to get that piece of my work back. Is it with her things?”
I wanted to throw up my hands. Adele was outdoing herself. Was she actually asking Sergeant French to go through Izabelle’s things?
“I can prove it’s my work,” Adele said. “I spilled a little drop of pink pearl nail polish on the inside. So all you have to do is check it and you’ll know it’s really mine.” Adele turned to me. “You know, Miss Rhinestone Clipboard, you’ve got another problem. The retreaters are arriving this morning, and at least some of them are expecting to have workshops with Izabelle this afternoon.”
I had been so concerned with Izabelle dying, I hadn’t thought about her workshops until that moment. But as usual with Adele, everything she had said was really a setup.
“Of course, I could take her place. No problem with teaching people to crochet. Sheila can assist me,” she said, nodding toward her roommate. “And as for the workshop she called A Subtle Touch of Crochet”-she jiggled her head so that the big, floppy flower on her cloche wobbled-“I know how to make flowers and I’m an expert at trim. As for the last one, her world premiere fusion craft, sorry, no can do.”
Sergeant French listened to the interchange while staring intently at Adele. First, she’d said that Izabelle had stolen her work, and now she was only too glad to take her place. Was she trying to move up from person of interest to suspect? You never knew with Adele.
Sergeant French asked her where she was during the s’more time. “Did you perhaps go to the beach and meet Ms. Landers to discuss that stitch you were talking about?”
“Of course not,” Adele said with a harrumph. “Who’d want to go to the beach in all that fog? I took one of the bags with the classic s’mores and went to the fire pit. I don’t know why Commander Blaine had to go all fancy with-”
“I think that’s all,” Sergeant French said abruptly. Apparently, dealing with Adele had pushed his community- relations skills to the limit. He told Adele and Sheila that they could go, but I was to stay.
“I contacted Zak Landers,” Sergeant French said. “Turns out he’s her ex-husband. He seemed surprised she’d listed him. You should probably call him about her things.”
I glanced in Adele’s direction. “Are you considering her a person of interest?”
He didn’t answer but instead asked me if I knew the whereabouts of my people during the snack break.
“Why do you want to know?”
He appeared disgruntled and ran his hand over his slicked-back strawberry blond hair. “You’re not supposed to answer a question with a question.” He looked down at his notebook and seemed to consider his words. “I don’t think she was on the beach alone. It’s the campfire.”
“I get it. Who would go to the trouble of building a fire to toast a few marshmallows? Right?”
“Yes,” he said finally. “I asked her ex-husband if she would be likely to make a fire on the beach. He kind of choked.”
“You know she knew she was allergic to peanuts,” I said.
“Her ex told me,” Sergeant French said.
“Did he tell you she carried an EpiPen?”
Sergeant French began to eye me warily.
“As a matter of fact, he did. How did you know? Last night at the hospital, all you knew was her name.”
I took a deep breath and told him about finding the pouch bag in the plants and using the key to open Izabelle’s door.
“I was just trying to confirm that the bag was hers,” I said. “And you should know that someone was in the room when I opened the door.” I mentioned seeing a shadow go out the window and that I was sure the person had taken most of the pages of Izabelle’s manuscript with them.
Sergeant French was starting to give me a funny look. It got more pronounced when I mentioned how Dinah had just happened to turn the computer on and we’d seen the peanut allergy Web site.
“Maybe I better have a look at the room,” he said. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call to Zak Landers to get permission to check out the room.
I took Sergeant French back to Lodge. I retrieved the key and pouch purse from my room and took him down the hall. Once Izabelle’s door was open, we walked in and I pointed to the window, which was now closed, and again explained how I’d seen something dark go out the window. Then I pointed to the floor where the remnants of the manuscript had been. The spot was empty now, and a neat stack of papers was sitting on the bedside table.
“Are these the papers?” Sergeant French said, picking up the top sheet. It was the title page, and I explained that Dinah and I thought it was her book about the fusion craft. Of course, he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“Fusion craft? Enlighten me,” he said. As soon as I started talking about knitting and crochet, I sensed he was losing interest. “Okay, I get it. She was mixing two things. You said most of the pages were missing. He picked up the manuscript and thumbed through it. “Well, it looks like they’re all here now.” He paused a moment and then, in his best community-relations voice, suggested that maybe we’d been mistaken about a person being in the room. “A crow might have come in the open window. They can sure make a mess. Maybe the pages you thought were missing just got knocked under the bed.” He glanced around the room. “Housekeeping probably found them when they did the room.” He gestured toward the open door, signifying it was time to go.
“I can buy you trying the key, and when you saw something flapping around inside, going in, but looking at her computer is kind of a stretch. You should talk to her ex and find out how he wants to handle her things.”
I know I said I didn’t want it to be murder, but I couldn’t ignore a nagging question. Before I walked out into the hall, I posed it to Sergeant French.
“Izabelle Landers was extremely careful about what she ate. I thought she was on a diet, but now I realize it was because of her allergy. Why would she have taken the s’mores that contained peanut butter, and how did the bag with her EpiPen end up in the plants? I’m just saying it seems kind of suspicious. And I think you’re definitely right. I think there was somebody on the beach with her.”
Sergeant French appeared impatient. “Oh no, you aren’t going amateur sleuth on me, are you?” He rolled his eyes. “I appreciate your input, but we professionals have it under control. Are you trying to say you think somebody murdered her with a s’more?” He took a moment to collect himself and go back to his community- relations voice. “There’s an easy explanation. Maybe the s’more bag was mismarked, and she could have dropped the purse with the EpiPen without realizing it.” He draped the crocheted bag over his little finger to demonstrate how lightweight it was.
“But she’d have had to make the s’more, and she’d have realized there was peanut butter right away. Have you seen how those things ooze? And peanut butter has a definite smell. She’d never have made the whole thing and then eaten it without realizing what she was eating.”
