Looming Murder Read Free

such a small town, I suspected I might be the only person in the room who didn’t know.
    He caught me staring at him. “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” he said defensively. “A coworker charged me with assault, when all I did was grab him by the collar.” He shrugged, looking slightly sheepish. “I guess I did sort of lose my temper. But frankly, I think I deserve a medal for the restraint I showed in just
threatening
to kill him. Instead, they tell me I have an anger management issue.” He made quotation marks in the air.
    Susan Wood cocked a hip. “As I already told you, Mr. Swanson, I’m not so sure you chose the easier of the two. Weaving can be hard work, maybe just as hard as weeding.” She was right. Depending on the yarn used, weaving can be murder on a person’s back.
    At that moment, the bell above the door tinkled, and a startlingly beautiful woman walked in with a sullen-looking teenage girl.
    “I’m Dolores Hanson,” the woman said, “and this is my daughter, Mercedes.” She gently elbowed the girl. “Mercedes, say hello.”
    Mercedes mumbled something that might have been a greeting. To say that she looked less than thrilled to be here was an understatement.
    Mother and daughter were both blue-eyed blondes, but all resemblance ended there. The mother, probably in her mid-forties, had the kind of perfect complexion one usually saw on soap ads. She was expertly made up and wore a floral dress, strappy high-heeled sandals, a pristine manicure and—wow—my eyes nearly popped at the size of the diamond ring on her left hand.
    The daughter—maybe sixteen—had the same coloring and similar height and weight. She might have been beautiful too, but the ghostly foundation and thick black eyeliner made it difficult to tell. She was dressed in top to bottom black: black T-shirt torn strategically to show off plenty of flesh, tight black jeans and black four-inch heels; even her dangling skull-and-crossbones earrings were black. But when I looked into her eyes, I saw insecurity.
So the provocative exterior is a mask
, I thought. I smiled at her and she averted her gaze.
    Now, what in the world would bring this pair to my little group? Neither of them seemed the weaving type. But, I reminded myself, who was I to judge? “You don’t seem the type,” was exactly what my friends had said when I shared my plan to open this shop.
    “I’m Della Wright. I take it you’re here to join our charity weaving group?”
    “We are,” Dolores said. “But I have to warn you, we don’t know the first thing about weaving. Will that be a problem?”
    “Not at all.” My eyes were drawn to her forehead, which was probably the smoothest brow I had ever seen. I was fascinated and had to stop myself from staring.
    “Hi, Dolores,” David Swanson said, brightening suddenly. “I had no idea you were interested in weaving.”
    She shrugged. “I’ve been a mental case since my husband’s death. I’m hoping weaving will help me relax.”
    David nodded, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know the first thing about weaving either,” he said, ignoring the remark about her husband. As I looked around the room, I saw that Dolores’s comment seemed to have cast a pall over the entire group. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because she kept talking.
    “Well, that means you and I will both learn something new today.” She walked over to him and put a hand on his arm possessively. “I didn’t expect to see you here, David. This is a nice surprise.”
    Something in her tone told me this was not entirely true. As if to confirm it, her daughter rolled her eyes and muttered, “Yeah, right, a big fat surprise.” I swung around just in time to see—was it anger?—in the teenager’s eyes. But as quickly as it had appeared, the expression was gone, and I was left wondering if I had imagined it. Dolores turned to give her daughter a warning look.
    It was time to get this meeting started. I herded the group