Yarn to Go by Betty Hechtman Page A

hates math.’”
    “You’re not going to bring that up again,” Melissa said. She looked at the rest of group and rolled her eyes. “So, I made a mistake. It was how many years ago?”
    Lucinda interrupted before their fuss could escalate. “You know, Casey did some work at a detective agency. She can probably wrap this case up before the cops figure it out.”
    It was my turn to suck in my breath, and suddenly I regretted that I hadn’t been more specific about my duties to Lucinda. I’d just been a temp and was either a detective’s assistant or an assistant detective, depending on your point of view. Most of my work had been tracking down people on the phone. In the month I’d worked there, I’d gotten quite good at getting information on people. But the closest thing to actual detective work I’d done was taking over a surveillance when one of the PIs had a toothache. It hadn’t turned out well. Just my luck I’d been dressed in a bright red top that day. The subject had noticed me sitting in the car and took off out the back door.
    I didn’t think that qualified me to figure out what happened to Edie. I was about to try to tone down what Lucinda had said, but Bree jumped in. “If you’re going to investigate Edie’s murder, you have to realize it wasn’t me. I don’t think it was any of us.”
    “But who else is there? Who even knew Edie besides us?” Melissa said. She nudged Olivia and urged her to join the discussion.
    “To start with, there was a guy sitting at the table with me last night. I saw him talking to her when she went to get her dinner,” Scott said.
    “What were they talking about?” Bree asked.
    Scott shrugged and blew out his breath. “Probably nothing important. I forgot that Edie picked up people wherever she went. You all know how I met Edie,” he said. “She found me in the yarn department of a craft store. She figured out right away what was going on. I tried to act like I was just playing with the yarn. I tossed the skeins I was holding back into the bin they came from like I was playing basketball. But then she saw the needles I was holding. Edie wasn’t one to mince words. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re a closet knitter aren’t you?’ Right away she told me about this retreat and said it was just what I needed.”
    “Didn’t you say you went to her house to knit?” I asked.
    “Hey, I see where you’re going. No, I didn’t have something going on with her. I only went there a few times.”
    Kris came back in the room and saw that the only one knitting was Olivia.
    “How was it?” I asked, and she shrugged.
    “He wanted to know what I saw and what I knew about the group.” She looked around at everyone. “He asked me to send Scott in.”
    Reluctantly, the one male member of the group got up and headed toward the door. “You didn’t see any media people around, did you?” he asked Kris.
    She shook her head and he left.
    And so it went. When Scott came back, Bree went to talk to Lieutenant Borgnine. Lucinda went after her, and no matter what any of us could say, Melissa and Sissy went together. I’m sure Lieutenant Borgnine was thrilled about that. Olivia was the last one to go.
    By then the group had realized they’d missed lunch. Lucinda called Tag and talked him into having the cook whip up some treats.
    Just as Olivia returned from talking to Lieutenant Borgnine, Tag arrived with the food. The Blue Door was known for using as much local food as possible. Tag had brought thin-crust gourmet pizzas with fresh mozzarella cheese, tomatoes they grew behind the restaurant, garlic from Gilroy, artichoke hearts from Castorville and olives from Paso Robles. I knew the vegetables in the chopped salad came from a local farmer’s market that sold produce grown in the Salinas Valley and the dressing was made with olive oil from a boutique grower in Carmel Valley. He’d brought a selection of fruit—raspberries from Watsonville, strawberries from Oxnard,