Death of a Crafty Knitter

Stormy Day Cozy Murder Mystery Series
Each book in the series contains a complete, stand-alone mystery, but you may wish to read the series in order to follow along with other events in the lives of Stormy Day and friends.

READING ORDER:

1. Death of a Dapper Snowman

3.
to be announced

For a current listing of Stormy Day books, check your favorite ebook retailer or visit the author at
www.angelapepper.com

DEATH OF A CRAFTY KNITTER

STORMY DAY COZY MURDER MYSTERY #2

ANGELA PEPPER

Chapter 1

Voula Varga woke up
on New Year's Day and went about her usual morning routine, not knowing it would be the final day of her life.

As she stood in her kitchen, waiting for the coffee maker to release her coffee, she scowled and tapped her long, black-lacquered fingernails impatiently.

Soon, she told herself, she would live in luxury and have a maid to bring her coffee in bed and fix her manicure. When that day finally came, all of the drudgery of hustling for a living would be behind her. Her humiliation would be over.

She couldn't wait to see Misty Falls in her rearview mirror. The postcard-pretty little town, nestled in a scenic mountain valley, was a nice enough place, except for the people. The residents all bored her to tears with their terrible, awful, horrible, tedious niceness. On top of that, they failed to recognize her as any different from the rest of them.

Voula Varga should have been a star. If those Hollywood casting agents knew how to spot genuine talent, they would have seen it. But they were fools. Instead of giving her the lead roles she deserved, they cast her in small parts. Some actresses would have been happy to get a few speaking lines and a regular paycheck, but for Voula, each assignment was a personal insult. She was always cast in the same pathetic role: fortune-teller.

By the time she left Los Angeles, Voula Varga had been credited as the gypsy fortune-teller or psychic or voodoo priestess in more than forty feature-length films and an equal number of television dramas. Her closest thing to a breakout role had been in a fantasy epic, playing an evil sorceress who summoned the dead. It was to be her big break. Unfortunately, the film tanked at the box office and went on to become a joke. There were regular viewing parties around the country now, where people gathered to watch the movie and make fun of it, yelling out Voula's lines of corny dialog at the screen.

Her movie career had flatlined after that film, along with the careers of all but a few people associated with the failed endeavor. She fled Los Angeles and wandered from town to town, working odd jobs here and there until she stumbled upon a way to use her particular curse for her own gain.

Voula Varga was utterly perfect at playing a fortune-teller.

So, instead of fighting it, she embraced her curse and
became
her typecast role. Even before she'd fully mastered the tricks of the trade, people who visited her booth to have their palms read thought she was the real thing. From her dark, curly hair to her golden eyes, Voula looked the part of a mystical psychic, and now she played the part for real. It was the role of a lifetime, and she would soon be wealthy and powerful.

She had a plan.

She'd moved to Misty Falls six months earlier, in the summer. It was the warmest day of the year for the little town, and she was overdressed in her layers of dark scarves and flowing dresses. People eyed her uneasily on her first walk through town, as though they could tell she had a plan to suck the life savings out of all the gullible townspeople before disappearing again.

On the first day of the new year, Voula Varga poured her morning coffee, unlocked her front door, walked upstairs, and stood at one of the windows that overlooked the entire unsuspecting town. She stood there and she cackled her evil, malicious laugh, not unlike a witch in a bad movie.

Two hours later, the doorbell rang. Voula quickly changed out of her silky nightie into one of her everyday long dresses. She pulled on her winter jacket, grabbed a box of bullets, and answered the door.

"I have a little treat for us," Voula told the visitor as she held up the bullets. "Give me a minute to gather up some old cans, and we'll see if that lovely antique still fires."

The visitor was surprised by this suggestion, but reluctantly agreed to go along with the plan.

Of course
her visitor had agreed to her suggestion of target practice. Voula always got what she wanted from regular people who weren't as sophisticated or as smart as her.

Voula smiled as they walked through the snow, down the sloping hill of the backyard. The visitor fretted that people would hear the gunshots, but Voula said, "They'll think it's just illegal fireworks, left over from last night."

They put foam earplugs in their ears, loaded the old gun, and took turns firing at aluminum soda cans lined up on a fallen log. The shots were loud, but the house was secluded, just outside of town, so Voula didn't worry about the town's bumbling police force showing up to snoop around.

Voula laughed freely as she fired shots at the cans. She missed every shot, but liked the feeling of the gun's kick in her hands. She loved the power. She couldn't get enough of it.

The visitor, however, wasn't as excited by target practice and began to grumble about cold hands.

Voula stopped shooting and pulled out one of her earplugs to re-mold it. She tilted her ear toward the house. "Do you hear something? It sounds like crying."

They listened in silence for a moment, but the only sound was the whistle of a breeze that had just picked up.

"Never mind," Voula said. "Must have been a stray spirit whimpering in the wind. Sometimes they get shy and stop talking when you actually listen."

They walked back up to the house, made a second pot of coffee, and went upstairs to the room where Voula hosted the knitting club and did readings.

As they talked about how last night's performance had gone, Voula tried to focus on what her visitor was saying, but it was all so boring and beneath her. She nodded and pretended to be listening as she sorted through her basket of knitted dolls. These dolls were her own invention, and she'd learned to knit just so she could make these little voodoo dolls. Even before they were dressed in their clothes, they seemed to have their own personalities. Sometimes, when she was finishing a doll, she imagined that she really
was
a witch, and that these objects held magical powers.

She picked up the green and purple masquerade mask she'd been given the night before. With a few snips of her sharp scissors and a dab of glue, she would be able to create a miniature version of the mask.

She smiled, because out of everything, the crafts were probably her favorite part. While knitting or creating miniature outfits, the rest of the world disappeared.

"What about you?" asked the visitor.

Voula looked up and blinked as she tried to recall the last few seconds of conversation.

"Sorry," Voula said as she pushed away the basket of dolls and crafting materials. "The spirits were speaking to me, and I didn't hear you over their noises." She made an elaborate hand gesture and uttered a nonsense spell before hissing, "Hush, foul spirits. Hush and be still."

The visitor fixed her with a steady look and repeated the same question Voula hadn't heard the first time. "Are you dating anyone? Your cheeks have the glow of a woman in love."

Voula snorted with contempt. "A wise woman doesn't confuse a few moments of vigorous exercise for love." She let out a mean-spirited cackle. Firing the gun had unleashed something in Voula. She felt raw and energized, and for once she wanted to say what she really felt instead of uttering the lines from a script.

"Vigorous exercise?" the visitor asked. "Do you mean… with a lover?"

Still warm from her witchlike laughter, Voula continued, "Men are only useful for two things, and the most pathetic of the lot are only useful for
one
thing, and that's paying the bills. Of course, you have to make all the right noises to let them think they're competent at the other thing, or you'll have to deal with the sulking." She rolled her eyes and groaned.

"I'm sorry I asked." The visitor frowned and pushed back their chair. "Never mind."

Voula sensed her control over the situation evaporating and quickly went into damage-control mode. She shook and convulsed, pretending to be fighting an internal battle with spirits.

Gasping, she gripped the edge of the table and said hoarsely, "That wasn't me. That was a man-hating spirit." She convulsed again, then waved her hands around as though shooing away ghosts. "That wasn't me," she repeated.

The visitor didn't push the chair away and leave, but didn't seem comfortable, either.

They both looked down at the gun on the table, equal distance between them. The box of bullets sat alongside the antique gun.

"Voula, tell me the truth," the visitor said gently. "Were you really possessed by a spirit just now? Is any of the stuff you do real? Do you even believe in the power of love?"

"What does it matter?" Voula spat back. "Don't act like you're better than me. Who were you thinking about shooting in the eye when you fired off those bullets in the backyard just now?"

The visitor gasped. "Nobody! I'd never think about killing a person."

"What if you could make it look like an accident?" Voula grinned and tapped her long, black-lacquered fingernails on the table. "Don't act like you haven't been planning the perfect murder ever since that first night we shared a bottle of wine and I said too much."

The visitor reached for the gun on the table. "This was a bad idea."

Voula reached for the gun at the same time. "Don't you dare wimp out."

Chapter 2

I was dealing
with what felt like the biggest decision of my life when my friend showed up at my front door.