“Right,” Dinah said, sitting down next to me. “She just made a deadly choice in snacks.”

“I wish I’d paid more attention to everything when we found her,” I said, getting up. The Average Joe’s Guide to Criminal Investigation repeated over and over how important it was to examine a crime scene right away. Then I stopped myself. “But it wasn’t a crime scene, right?”

“Right,” Dinah said, standing beside me. “I’m sure you’ve avoided Adele by now. It’s getting cold and damp here. I could use a little time in front of a fireplace. Commander Blaine set up board games and hot chocolate in the common living room of our building.”

“Aha, so you’re changing your opinion of him.”

“I still say he’s too fussy for my taste, but our campfire dinner the other night was fun, and he certainly came through during the whiteout. And those s’mores…” Her voice trailed off as she looked down the beach. “Okay, maybe that was not the best example under the circumstances, but he certainly came up with a lot of variations on the original idea.”

“You can argue all you want, but I think you’re softening.”

“He’s not my type,” Dinah countered. “I see myself with the brooding poet type. You know: intense, wears turtle-necks. Yeah, and isn’t into relationships, and is probably a jerk, too,” she added with a groan.

“I don’t think Commander is a jerk,” I replied. “He might be a little stiff and a little too enthusiastic, but definitely not a jerk.”

“Maybe not, but what do we really know about him? Just that he has a postal center in Tarzana and he’s very into parties. Doesn’t it seem a little odd to you that someone who’s so into entertaining is alone?”

I glanced in the direction we’d come from. “Even if he might have a dark past, that cocoa is starting to sound good. You’re right, it is cold and damp. We might as well go back.” We got up and started to walk toward the street. As we approached the fenced-off area, I made a visual sweep of the planted area. Something got my attention. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at a strange glow.

We moved closer for a better view, but it still appeared to be just a ghostly light.

“Maybe somebody threw one of those light sticks back there,” Dinah offered, walking on.

I stood my ground and peered into the darkness. Curiosity had gotten the better of me. I had to know what it was. Dinah saw that I had stopped at the fence and came back. I tried leaning over it to see if I could reach the glowing spot, but it was too far away. “I’m going in,” I said, stepping over the low chain. But going in was as far as I got. There seemed to be no way to reach the glow without tromping on some plants. Dinah picked up on my plight and offered to hold my legs so I could lean over the plants without falling in them.

She braced herself, digging her feet in the sand, and held onto my calves as I leaned and reached into the tangle of growth. I tried to avoid thinking what night creatures might be crawling around, just waiting for some tasty fingers to come their way. Instinctively I balled up my hand. I wished I had my son’s old Pinchy-Winchy claw toy to use, or at least gloves. I willed my hand open, and as I pushed through the wiry brush, I felt something soft and grabbed it. It came free easily and obviously wasn’t attached to the sand.

Dinah pulled me up straight and we both looked at what I was holding. We couldn’t make out the color in the darkness, but the shape was clear.

I was holding a small pouch purse, and the glow was coming from something shaped like a flower attached to the front.

That was about all we could make out in the dark.

“Why do I think this has something to do with Izabelle?” I asked as we trudged up the beach toward the street.

CHAPTER 10

“WOW, GLOW-IN-THE-DARK YARN,” DINAH SAID as I turned off the light in my room. We were examining the pouch purse, which we now knew was lime green and the six-petaled flower was a satiny pink and the whole thing was crocheted. In the darkness the purse disappeared, but the pink flower gave off an eerie light. We had slipped back into Asilomar without crossing paths with anyone from our group. We wanted to keep the bag under wraps until we could check it out, and had avoided the cocoa party by slipping up the back stairs in Lodge.

I flipped the light back on. The purse was on my bed between us. “Okay, now that we’ve cleared up the strange light thing, you ought to see what’s inside,” Dinah said.

I knew Dinah was right, but I still hesitated. There was something unsettling about looking into someone’s purse. By the design, it was hard to think it was anybody’s but Izabelle’s-after all, she was supposed to be the queen of crochet embellishment, and who else would think of using glow-in-the-dark yarn to make flowers? But what was it doing in an off-limits area?

I swallowed and opened the purse, reaching inside. Along with sand sticking to the fibers, I felt something cold and metal that had snagged near the top. It turned out to be a key with an Asilomar tag.

“There’s an obvious way to be sure the purse belonged to Izabelle,” Dinah said. Of course she was right, and we went out into the hall. We made sure it was empty, then slipped toward the door to Izabelle’s room. I had the key in my hand but I hesitated again. In all honesty I didn’t want the key to fit. I wanted the purse to belong to some random person who had nothing to do with our group. If it was Izabelle’s, it brought up a lot of questions, like how someone in the middle of an allergy attack would decide to lob her purse into the bushes.

Dinah nudged me and spoke in a low voice, urging me to stick the key in the lock. I took a deep breath and tried to put it in. It didn’t go. I felt a wave of relief and even laughed a little.

“So, I guess we were wrong,” I said, turning to go. Dinah took the key from my hand and turned it around. That way it fit perfectly, and with half a turn the door was unlocked and slipped open.

Neither of us made a move. If opening the purse felt strange, it was nothing compared to looking into her room. I was about to pull the door closed when something moved in the darkness and made a rustling sound. Both Dinah and I jumped as a shadow passed in front of the window. There was someone in the room. Instinctively I lunged forward, then slid on something as the shadow slipped out the window.

A moment later the room was flooded with light as Dinah flipped the switch. I skated across the floor on a flutter of papers, rushing toward the open window. But when I looked out, the small balcony was empty.

“What was that about?” Dinah said, her voice high-pitched with tension. My heart was still pounding as I took a deep breath.

“Somebody was in here.” I began to scoop up the papers, looking at them as I did. They had copy centered in the middle of the page. When Dinah saw one, she said they were galley pages.

“They must be from Izabelle’s book. The one she was making the big to-do about. Her fusion craft.” Dinah put on her creative writing teacher hat and explained the pages were typeset like the book. “It’s the last step before the book comes out.” Dinah pointed to a notation penciled in the margin. “She must have been proofreading them.”

As we piled them on the bed, Dinah held up a page in front of me. “Look at the title: The Needle and the Hook.”

“You think her big fusion craft was mixing knitting and crochet?” I asked.

“It looks that way.” Dinah riffled through the pages on the bed. “It also looks like most of the book is missing.”

We both looked toward the window. “Do you think the shadow was a woman, like maybe Adele? What if she found out the subject of Izabelle’s new craft and went bonkers?” I pictured Adele ranting about the fusion craft soiling the purity of crochet.