Spin a Wicked Web by Cricket McRae Page A

been allowed
to remove it from the crime scene.
    "No-I had an extra at the house."
    "So you have three spinning wheels? Wow."
    She ducked her head. "Four actually."
    "That seems like a lot. Do you use all of them?"
    "Well, not this one, at least not very often. That's why you should
keep it as long as you want, until you decide what kind you want to
get."
     
    I grinned. "How do you know I'm going to want my own wheel?"
    "Because you, my dear, are thoroughly hooked"
    Meghan snorted. "I'll say."
    Erin wrinkled her nose. "You're spinning yarn? Like in the
olden days?"
    "Well, yes. I guess so. Only, like so many things we do now, it's
more for fun than out of necessity. The people who used to spin in
order to cloth themselves never had that luxury."
    She nodded. "Yeah, I get it. I guess there are a lot of things like
that."
    Ruth gestured over her shoulder toward the pen where our four
pullets were quietly clucking and making the low moaning sounds
that count as conversation among chickens. "Like keeping laying
hens."
    Meghan and I both smiled as Erin jumped in. "But the girls are
necessary. How else would we get fresh eggs for breakfast right from
our own backyard? Plus they give us fertilizer for the garden, and
then turn around and eat all the weeds from it."
    "Girls?" Ruth asked, looking amused.
    "Well, they are girls, aren't they? Girl chickens," Erin said.
    We all liked raising the chickens and keeping them in the backyard, but she was the most enthusiastic. She cared for them exclusively, so the burden on Meghan and I came down to occasionally
buying chicken feed, grit and oyster shell. Since "the girls" would
likely produce more eggs than we could possibly use in the summer,
we'd told Erin she could sell the extras and keep the money for all
her hard work.
     
    "Well," I said, spearing a few leaves of chickweed from my salad
and holding them up. "At least we get to eat some of our own weeds,
too."
    Conversation continued, and I concentrated on my dinner. As
I chewed, I stubbornly pushed aside the disturbing events of the
day and focused on my environment: warm friends, the beauty of
the vegetable beds, the bat house mounted on a fence post, the
chickens getting ready to roost for the night.
    When Ruth touched my arm, I jumped. "Let's take some of
these plates in," she said.
    We gathered up plates and utensils, waving Meghan and Erin
back when they tried to help. Erin slipped into the hen pen, as she
called it, and began murmuring to her girls in a low voice. Meghan
watched, smiling.
    In the kitchen, I quickly set to washing the plates. I love the dishwasher, don't get me wrong, but when we grilled in the summer
there were rarely enough dishes to justify starting it up. Besides, the
house still held heat from the day, and it didn't seem prudent to add
to it.
    Ruth said, "The spinning wheel is in the living room."
    "Thanks again for that. It's sweet of you to let me borrow it."
"
    I want you to do something, though."
"
    I paused in rinsing a plate. "Oh?"
    I want you to go over and talk to Chris Popper."
    Oh.
    Slowly, I dried my hands and sat down at the kitchen table. I'd
been so caught up in my own drama that I'd nearly forgotten what
Barr had said about Chris killing Ariel. Now I remembered my
insistence that she call me if she wanted to talk, and felt torn. She'd lost her husband twice, it seemed: once to another woman and
then, finally, to an accident. But would she really have killed Ariel
over it? Especially after Scott was already dead?
     
    "Barr and that woman detective think she killed Ariel," Ruth said.
    There was a note of distaste in her voice when she mentioned
Robin Lane. The fledgling detective had tried to bully information
out of Ruth a few months previously. Ruth had been flat on her
back in a hospital bed at the time and in a lot of pain. Barr was
right. His partner had all the people skills of a grumpy badger.
    Cautious, I inclined my head a