Death of a Crafty Knitter (16 page)

This was it. She was about to tell me about the coven. I asked, "Was she really a witch?"

"No. There's no such thing as witches."

I nodded.
That's exactly what a witch would want you to think.

"But Voula Varga was the real deal," she said, giving me a chill that ran up my spine like a snake made of ice cubes.

"Real? How?"

"She was a psychic. I wouldn't be surprised if her spirit was walking around this wake right now, listening to what people say about her. That's why everyone's so shy about sharing their stories." Barbara looked up at the low basement rafters. Suddenly, she jerked her arms, as though she'd seen or felt something.

"Are you feeling okay?"

"Just a chill." She rubbed her forearms, which were bare below the elbow, her elegant black dress having only three-quarter-length sleeves. "I haven't been in a house with a basement in years. It's cold down here, like a mausoleum."

"Sorry it's so chilly. You can go back up if you like, and I'll find those darn napkins eventually, I'm sure."

"Voula knew things," Barbara said, her voice much softer and quieter than it had been most of the night. "Voula knew my soon-to-be-ex-husband was holding out on me. I paid for sessions with her, and she did her chants, communicating with the spirits on the other plane. It took so long, and I was about to give up and write off her fees as a valuable lesson learned, when she told me about his secret bank account. I sent my lawyer in the right direction, and we nailed my ex. I was so grateful, I happily paid Voula double for the sessions."

"Did she ask you to pay double? Or to pay some sort of finder's fee percentage?" I remembered the con artist books at her house. The truly noteworthy thing about Voula's reading choices was the lack of literature on communicating with spirit planes.

Barbara shrugged her bony shoulders and used her left hand, bare of rings, but with an indentation where a wedding band had once been, to smooth her silky black hair. "She had a way of asking for money without asking. She made you feel like she was doing
you
the favor by taking it."

"So, she wasn't exactly a friend?"

"I don't suppose she had any friends at all. She wasn't the warm, fuzzy type. My ex-husband said she was a narcissist, possibly a psychopath.
He would know
."

An image flashed in my head: the gun, left behind at the crime scene.

Ruby suspected the killer was a man. If it hadn't been a lover, it could have been another male enemy.

Barbara's ex-husband, whose name I didn't even know, shifted onto my list of suspects. If he'd been hiding money during a divorce settlement, that confirmed he was the deceptive type. If he knew Voula was the one revealing his secrets, whether the information had come from a spirit plane or somewhere else, he might have been angry enough to kill her.

My mind reeled with the possibilities. Six months in town was long enough to set up alliances and gather a few enemies. I didn't believe Voula was getting information from spirits on another plane, but it was possible she had human spies, or other ways of getting information. She could have befriended someone who worked at a bank, or even within the police force.

I turned away from Barbara and started moving boxes around on the basement's storage shelves, buying time before I would "find" the napkins.

"Do you know if Voula worked with anyone?" I asked casually. "Like an assistant, or someone who set up appointments?"

"I don't think so. Why do you ask?"

I'd prepared myself for a question like this, so I had my answer ready.

"I'm not sure if you know about what happened to me in December, but long story short, I've decided to keep my eyes wide open from now on. This is a small town, and when something bad happens, I'm not going to blindly walk into another dangerous situation."

"Yet you invite twelve strangers into your home," she noted coolly. "One of us could be the killer."

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but I remained calm and didn't whirl around to face Barbara. There was a teasing tone to her voice, but no malice.

I answered with equal coolness, "If one of the Crafty Knitters is the killer and takes me out tonight, that leaves eleven witnesses."

"I suppose it does. What's this?"

Something cool brushed against my ear. My breath caught in my throat as I froze. The coolness was Barbara's bony hand, reaching… for the napkins, on the top shelf. In her heels, she was taller than me, and must have spotted the plastic-wrapped stack once her eyes had adjusted to the low light of the basement.

"Ta da," she said triumphantly. "Found the napkins."

"Must have been helpful spirits guiding you."

She made a wheezing attempt at a laugh.

I turned around and studied her face. Despite the small smile on her thin lips, her eyes were still wide, the whites showing around her irises. She was afraid. Not of me, but of something, or someone.

And why wouldn't she be? A murderer was on the loose in Misty Falls, and it could be her ex-husband, or someone else she knew. The killer could be someone sitting upstairs right now, helping themselves to smoked meats and cheese.

"Everything's going to be okay," I said soothingly. "The police will catch Voula's killer."

She turned away slowly, then stopped. With her face in profile to me, she nodded forward as one gleaming tear ran from her eye, down her cheek, and fell upon the bare concrete floor. The tear darkened a circle. I blinked, and the tear was lost in the pattern of the gray concrete.

"Then what?" she asked. "Nothing will ever be the same again."

I didn't know what to say, but then part of an Irish prayer I'd printed out to read at the wake came to me.

"
May you always hear, even in your hour of sorrow, the gentle singing of the lark.
" I paused. "That's an Irish proverb. I've got the rest of it printed out upstairs, but I can't remember the end."

"That was nice," Barbara said. She handed me the napkins without meeting my eyes, said she needed to use the washroom, then disappeared up the wood stairs.

I stood alone under the bare light bulb. The furnace kicked on, filling the basement with its rumble. I looked up at the other door, the closed one next to the one Barbara had just gone through. That door led to Logan's side of the duplex. I wondered if he was home, and if he could hear the party happening on my side. Someone turned up the music.

Logan wouldn't dare pop over, for fear of being cajoled into dancing.

I heard laughter, the clinking of glasses, and then one woman encouraging the others to take a pinch of the snuff, just for fun.

I got a feeling that, just like the other wakes I'd been to with my father, this one was going to last as long as the food and drinks held out, and many secrets would be spilled.

Chapter 16

I'd never been
to an all-woman wake before the one I threw for the
Vibrant & Vivacious Voula Varga, Psychic Extraordinaire
.

By ten thirty, everyone but me was drunk. That wasn't the unusual part, though. All dozen of the ladies had brought their yarn and needles, and they were actually knitting. Someone started a drinking game: if you dropped a stitch, you had to take a shot of whiskey. Naturally, this led to more dropped stitches and more drinks.

Nobody seemed to notice that I was neither drinking nor knitting. I had my trusty ball of yarn, and I wound it partly onto one hand loosely, the way I'd seen others do, then wound it back onto the ball. Jeffrey had finally ventured out and sat on the coffee table, smack dab in the middle of the living room, watching all the wiggling strings he wasn't allowed to play with. For him, this knitting wake was either heaven or hell, or maybe both.

I kept my mouth closed and my ears open as people related their personal stories about Voula. Barbara told the same anecdote she'd shared with me in the basement, about Voula locating the money her ex-husband had squirreled away.

"She always saw right through people," said the youngest woman in attendance, a round-cheeked redhead. "She knew my boss didn't hate me, but was only behaving like a total freak because of a lawsuit by a former partner."

While the redhead called her boss colorful names, I realized I knew her from Jeffrey's veterinary clinic. She shared a few details about the lawsuit and I quietly smiled to myself—not because the case itself made me happy, but because this must have been the business Logan was attending to when I first met him, and now I knew things about his life he hadn't told me.

There's definitely satisfaction in knowing something that someone else thinks is a secret. Voula must have been the happiest woman in the world, with all the information she had. Over the evening, I heard story after story about her many insights.

How did Voula get her information, though? Some of the ladies in attendance believed it came from spirits, but I wasn't buying the psychic angle. It sounded more like the type of stuff private investigators dug up.

So, if she was basically just a private investigator, why did she operate as a psychic?

I stole away to the washroom for a few minutes and sent my father a text message with some of the details I'd learned, as well as that question.

He replied to my text with a tiny cartoon of three ants and a picnic basket.

Ants? Picnic basket? I flung my problem-solving skills down this new tangent. The picnic basket was a clue! My brilliant father knew something and was giving me a hint.

A moment later, he sent another message, this one with words:
Oops. Sorry. I meant this one.

There was a new image, this one a head of lettuce.

I was so confused by this that I forgot what I'd even asked him in the first place. I called and asked him to clarify.

"Why, that's a head of lettuce, and lettuce is another word for money." He chuckled, clearly amused by himself.

"You think she got more money by claiming to be a psychic? Do private investigators not make that much money?"

"Why do you ask?"

Someone tapped on the washroom door and asked if it was occupied.

"Just one minute," I called out as I turned on the sink water. My voice low, I told my father, "I can't really chat now. I'll call you later. How late will you be up?"

"I'll be up until I'm asleep, at quarter after bedtime o'clock, which is two train stops before Snoretown."

I groaned. Of course he wouldn't just give me a time. That would be too easy. If you want information from Finnegan Day, be prepared to ask two or three times, and brace yourself for a text message with a head of lettuce or picnic ants or heaven knows.

The woman on the other side of my bathroom knocked again, with some degree of urgency, so I quickly said goodbye to my father, vacated the washroom, and returned to the party.

Stitches were dropping
, another bottle of whiskey was open, and still nobody would spill the beans about investing in Voula's friend's movie deal.

Finally, I just asked.

"Hey, did any of you ladies meet Voula's friend, Bernard Goldstein? I hope someone got in touch with him and let him know about her passing."

The twelve ladies exchanged furtive glances, and the ones who could still hold their needles straight kept on knitting while the others kept eating and drinking.

Only Barbara answered me, saying, "Who?" and frowning.

I repeated his name and swept my gaze around the circle, looking for reactions. It could have been my imagination, but I thought I saw lips get thinner, being pressed together. Barbara's sister had her hand over her mouth, but it had been there most of the night, so that wasn't new.

Barbara shrugged. "If someone's a good friend, I would imagine they'd notice she wasn't around. I don't think Voula had much in the way of family, the poor dear. She was a bit of a lost soul."

The redheaded veterinary assistant made a choking sound and began to shake. The woman next to her slapped her on the back while another woman asked if she could breathe. The redhead shook her head and held up her hands to signal she was okay.

"I'm sorry," she said, then began to laugh. "I'm so sorry, and you'll probably all think I'm a terrible person, but I've had four drinks, so whatever. I'm really grateful for the way Voula helped me, but… was it just me, or was she kind of a…
you know
. Kind of
not that nice
?"