Dinah finally nodded with recognition and I told her it was in the storage locker, too. “I wonder why Dan put that in there?” I was going to say more, but Dinah gave me a loud psst and pointed while hiding her finger with her hand. When I looked up, Dan had just gone up to the counter. I slunk low in the seat.
He was clean shaven and dressed for a day at the store. He seemed in good humor as he ordered his coffee and said something about opening the store early. He certainly had tunnel vision when it came to his business. I wondered what he would do if I dangled Kelly’s key in front of him.
I held my breath as he walked past our table and was relieved when he just waved a greeting before heading for the door.
When he was gone, we went back to talking.
“Why don’t you talk to Barry?” Dinah said.
“Are you kidding, after the episode with the PinchyWinchy. Do you think there’s a chance he’d take me seriously?”
“No, you’re probably right,” Dinah said.
“I have to get to Detective Heather. It is exactly what she needs.”
As the tea began to relax my nervous energy, my whole body began to ache for sleep. I told Dinah I’d call her later and used the last of my energy to walk to the greenmobile and drive home.
I walked in through the kitchen door, hoping I could make it to bed without falling asleep first. Barry was freshly dressed for work and making coffee. He looked up when I passed him.
“Mason called a few minutes ago. He said to tell you that you left your shirt at his place.” Barry scowled as he looked at my day-old clothes. I was too tired to even ask why he’d answered the phone. I responded with a shrug before dragging myself across the house and flopping on my bed.
I fell into a dead sleep for a couple of hours then forced myself up, showered and put on my work clothes before going to the bookstore. Bob took one look at me and automatically made me a black eye. He was right it was a two shots of espresso day for sure.
The jolt of caffeine went right to my brain and I was able to function. As I went through my tasks at the bookstore I considered how to approach Detective Heather. What was I going to do, call her and say, “By the way, last night I happened to be looking in Kelly Donahue’s storage locker and I noticed there was a gun, which probably is the murder weapon.” What if Barry mentioned the Pinchy-Winchy episode? After the look he’d given me when he’d seen me in the morning, anything was possible. Would it have made any difference if I’d explained to him where I’d been? Would he have believed me? I didn’t owe him an explanation anyway. We were just ships passing in the kitchen, I reminded myself.
* * *
It turned out I didn’t have to worry about contacting her, Detective Heather showed up at the bookstore. I saw her head back to the yarn department. On top of being hot looking, smart and a detective, Heather was an accomplished knitter and gave us a lot of her yarn business. She was dressed for work in a fitted navy blue suit and white blouse. I went back there and found her looking through our supply of circular knitting needles, which Adele kept trying to hide. I asked her if she needed help.
Detective Heather turned at the sound of my voice and then gave me a little laugh. “You could help me with something knitting related?”
“As a matter of a fact, I could.” I pointed to the knitted swatches hanging on the bins of yarn. “I did those,” I reminded her. Mrs. Shedd didn’t want to lose any business, so she’d convinced me that we needed to have knitted and crocheted swatches of all of our yarns. Adele wanted no part of anything that had to do with knitting, so I’d done the knitted ones with my limited skill.
I picked up a set of high-end circs, as people in the know called circular needles, and said they were the best and everyone said they were worth the added cost. Detective Heather took them from me and began to look them over. I suggested she take them out and try them.