Spin a Wicked Web

FOURTEEN

THAT NIGHT I wAs putting a few things away in my workroom when Erin came down to say good night. She hugged me for so long that I asked if anything was wrong.

She shook her head against my shoulder.

"You sure, Bug?"

A nod, then, "Do I act all snotty about being smart?"

I pulled back so I could look her in the face. She wasn't crying, but she looked pretty miserable nonetheless.

"No. You do not act all snotty about being smart. Who said you did?"

She looked at the floor.

"Zoe?" I guessed.

"Uh huh."

"Do you know why she said that?"

"No" Erin 's voice was sullen.

"So when did this come up?" I asked.

"At dinner last night. I was telling her about some of the stuff we did in math camp yesterday." She turned her face up toward mine. "Do you know anything about Fibonacci numbers?"

"Nope. Never heard of them."

"Well, they're this really cool series of numbers that represent the ratio of all sorts of things in nature-the spirals in sea shells and sunflower seed heads and pinecones and-you know about phi, right?"

"Uh… sort of."

Her face fell.

"I'm sorry, Bug. I'm just not into math. But you're obviously getting pretty passionate about it, and that's great. No, really," I said, seeing her skepticism.

"Well, when I told Zoe about it, she said I was being all conceited about being smart. She's smart, too, you know. It's not my fault her mom makes her go to soccer camp instead of math camp. So I told her she was being snotty about being a big jock."

"You guys don't usually fight." "

She shrugged and looked away. "Yeah"

"Feel pretty bad now, huh," I said.

I guess." She ground the toe of her flip-flops into the poured concrete floor.

"I bet she feels pretty bad, too. Why don't you give her a call?"

"… maybe"

"Tomorrow. After you've both slept on it a little longer"

She hesitated, then nodded. "Okay. G'night, Sophie Mae."

"'Night, Bug."

At the stairs she turned around. "Are you going to move in with Barr?"

Oh, gosh. Deep breath. "I don't know."

"Well, I hope you don't," she said. "I want you to stay here."

I could only manage a nod.

Planning to leave early the next morning, I called it a night at ten o'clock and went to bed, but for some reason I couldn't settle down. I lay in bed feeling twitchy and itchy and wide, wide awake. Finally, I gave up and went down the hall toward the stairs. Through Meghan's closed bedroom door I could hear her murmuring, talking to Kelly out in New Jersey. As I walked past Erin 's open door, Brodie raised his head, his big pointed ears silhouetted against the night-light.

The spinning wheel Ruth had brought over still sat in the living room. She'd also brought two paper bags of fiber for me to practice on. I retrieved a straight-backed chair from the kitchen, set it next to the wheel, and added two small pillows from the sofa to provide back support while I perched on the edge. Chairs actually designed for spinning had very shallow seats, more like stools with tall, narrow backs to enable the spinner to freely pump the foot peddle that rotated the wheel. Carefully, I oiled the moving parts of the wheel to reduce friction and wear and tear. This was a traditional wheel made by the Ashford company. I wondered if something like this was what I would ultimately choose for myself. There were many reputable wheel manufacturers and different designs of wheels. There were even portable ones that folded up and had a handle for carrying.

Of course, the most portable way to spin was the drop spindle, a device that looked like a stick with a perpendicular disk near one end. You stood and spun the spindle, which twisted the fiber attached to the top into yarn. Gravity provided the draw for the yarn. As the spindle neared the floor, you wrapped the yarn around the stick and began the process again. Of course, for me this was all merely theory; as fascinated as I was by the idea, Ruth hadn't taught me how to use one yet.

Expecting to find more of the natural wool I'd used to make what turned out to be a murder weapon, I opened a bag. Instead, I found a luscious rolled batt of Thea Hawke's hand-painted bamboo fiber in sunset hues-the exact thing I'd been so excited to try when I went in for my lesson and instead found Ariel. I'd mentioned how much I liked it to Ruth, and she'd remembered. What a sweetheart. I'd pay her back for it.

Oh, but how it felt, smoothly gliding through my fingers, the colors twisting together to make a gorgeous, variegated yarn that looked good enough to eat. As the spool gradually filled, the tension in my shoulders abated, my breathing deepened, and one by one the thoughts racing around in my head fell still. After awhile, I wasn't thinking about anything at all, the act of spinning fiber into yarn capturing my entire attention. I'd tried to meditate before, but never with an ounce of success. This had to be the most Zenlike thing I'd ever done.

When I ran out of raw fiber, I came back to myself enough to look at the clock. I'd been sitting there, pumping my foot up and down for over an hour! Better than any sleeping pill; I'd drop right off now. Plus, several yards of incredible yarn filled the spool. I'd have to find something marvelous to make with it. Heck, anything I made with it would be marvelous.

I removed the tension from the brake band and slipped the drive band off the wheel, then stood, stretching my palms up to the ceiling to work the kinks out of my back.

Oh, yes, I was addicted. I definitely needed to start shopping for a wheel of my own.

La Conner was located fifty miles northwest of Cadyville. When I left at 7:00 a.m., the air still held the sweetness of dew caressed by the early sun. Sipping coffee from a travel mug, I admired the increasingly pastoral view as I drove north on Interstate 5. At exit 221, I ditched the main highway and headed west through Conway and Stanwood on a series of roads that wound through lush farmland.

For twenty-five years, spring tourists had descended upon La Conner and the surrounding towns of Stanwood and Mount Vernon for the annual tulip festival. Buses took folks out to admire the profusion of multicolored blooms in the fields, where they could ooh and aah like spectators at a fireworks show, take pictures to their hearts' content, and buy more bulbs and tulipthemed geegaws than you could shake a stick at.

It was a lot of fun, granted, but I was glad the festival was over for the year and I'd only have to navigate the usual summer crowds.

Meandering through the bucolic June morning, I reviewed what I knew about Ariel so far. She was a bad artist, but didn't seem to know it. She was too lazy to get the training she needed to improve. Didn't want to deal with college because the expectations were too high, and she'd have to take classes she didn't like in order to get a degree in something she did like. She mooched money from her roommate. Jake Beagle had either a fatherly or carnal interest in her, though there was no evidence she'd been interested in him one way or the other. She wanted to marry money, but she had an affair with the husband of someone she knew.

Scott Popper was at least twenty years older than she was. I mean, that's not the worst thing in the world, but it made no sense in this situation. He wasn't rich, and his wife could have broken Ariel in half if she'd found out.

That thought gave me pause. Chris really could have, physically, strangled Ariel. And she admitted that she knew about the affair. It was a good thing both Ruth and Irene could vouch for her.

What would I have done in Chris' situation?

I frowned at a field of alfalfa and shook my head. I wouldn't want a man who didn't choose to be with me. Maybe Chris had also been unwilling to fight for Scott. Had it been the first time he'd had an affair? And never mind what Ariel got out of the affair-what about Scott? What the heck was wrong with him, to even get involved with her in the first place? Was it simply because she was so pretty?

Maybe. Men could be awfully stupid about physical beauty.

So I thought and drove and drove and thought. Traffic was light, and I made the trip in good time. In La Conner, I stopped at the Wild Radish Cafe and treated myself to breakfast. Then I went for a walk along the waterfront. Visible across the water was Fi- dalgo Island, home of the Swinomish Indian tribe. Gulls swooped and called, cormorants lurked, and the occasional seal frolicked in the Swinomish Channel.

Looking at my watch, I found I'd managed to waste the whole morning. How decadent!

At a waterfront restaurant I snarfed a quick cup of clam chowder, anxious to meet Ariel's brother and his family. I got back in my pickup and gave up my early bird parking spot. The town was already filling up with day-trippers from Seattle.