Spin a Wicked Web Read Online Free PDF Page B

Consternation flooded her voice.
"How did you hear about it?"
    I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. "You're not
going to believe it."
    "Not going to believe what?" Her tone was flat. She had an inkling of what was coming.
    "I found her." I opened my eyes to find Meghan had closed
hers, and had added the telling gesture of pinching the bridge of
her nose between thumb and forefinger. Meghan may have hated
me finding dead bodies even more than I did.
    I plunged on. "After the funeral reception I went over to the coop for my spinning lesson with Ruth."
    Meghan dropped her hand and rolled her eyes at this further
evidence of my recent obsession with fiber.
    "Anyway, no one was there when I arrived. The front door was
open, and I thought someone was working in the studio and had
forgotten to lock it. I went inside, but no one was there. At least
not downstairs. Upstairs in the studio spaces, I found Ariel. She
was..." The screen my efficient brain had erected fell away, and
my mind's eye filled with the image of Ariel Skylark lying on her
back, lips blue, tongue slightly protruding. The tangible violence
surrounding the scene. I took another deep breath and forced myself to swallow the lump in my throat. "She was strangled, Meghan.
Strangled with my yarn."
    Startled, she asked, "What do you mean, your yarn?"
    "It was the first skein of yarn I'd completed spinning. Just a plain,
off-white yarn, full of slubs and kind of weird looking, but I could
have made a hat out of it, or something. I mean, I'm not saying a hat is more important than, well, you know, it's just, it was my first
skein, and I'd just finished it a couple days ago, and now it's a... "
Another dry swallow. "... a murder weapon."
     
    Meghan sank down on the bench by the picnic table. "Sophie
Mae?"
    "Yeah?"
    "Why is it that you, of all people, managed to find Ariel?"
    I shrugged. "Just unlucky, I guess."
    She sighed.
    "What?" I asked.
    "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?"
    "What kind of a question is that?"
    "Like what you did when Philip Heaven died."
    "Ruth said something to that effect, too," I said. "I don't know
why everyone thinks I'm going to wade into a murder investigation. Last time cured me of that."
    My housemate didn't look convinced. "That'd be a lot easier to
believe if I didn't know how much fun you have when you're poking and snooping."
"
    I do not!"
    "Uh-huh"
    "No one else was looking into those other deaths, and somebody needed to find out what really happened. But believe me,
Barr and Robin are all over this case."
    "Okay. Good," she said. "I have two more clients, and then I
have to go pick up Erin. Let's not make a big deal about this tonight, okay?"
    "Right. I don't think she ever met Ariel, so we can downplay it
however much you want." I gave her the egg I'd been holding. "I'm going over to Barr's, make him dinner tonight, so I might be home
late anyway."
     
    She grinned. "I won't wait up."
    Meghan went inside the house. I moved to inspect the squash
vines to see if the milk solution I'd applied to the powdery mildew
on the leaves had been effective. It looked like it had stopped the
unsightly white fungus in its tracks.
    Fun? She actually thought I had fun investigating Walter's, and
then Philip's deaths? Well, okay. Maybe unraveling a puzzle was ...
interesting. At least it wasn't boring. And I was two for two, so I
must have been pretty good at it.
    Right?

    Of course, making Barr dinner came with a not-so-hidden agenda.
I was determined to find out what he'd been pussyfooting around
for the last few days. His procrastination had no doubt blown the
whole thing out of proportion in my mind, and it would probably
turn out to be something totally, laughably boring.
    At least I hoped so. What's that Chinese curse? May you live in
interesting times?
    I also wanted to know whether I needed to worry about the
fact that my yarn had been the murder weapon. Did Robin actually