At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [28]
“Her name is Ann Marie Lucas,” Bridget informed her, starting the engine, “and she’s a local hand spinner. She weaves the yarn into shawls and capes and sweaters that sell for hundreds and hundreds of dollars—like wearable art.”
Lori gave her an admiring look. “Wow, good work. How did you find that out?”
“The old-fashioned way.” Bridget couldn’t prevent a smirk. “I read it in a newspaper.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s call her.”
“There’s a problem,” Bridget said. “She only buys the finest quality wool, and our sheep are—well, they’re a mess. They’ve been wandering around in the pasture for two years. They’re filthy and matted . . .”
“We can wash them,” Lori insisted.
Bridget shot her a look. “Wash sheep?”
“How else are you going to get their wool clean?”
Bridget thought about that. “Well, I guess I’ve done crazier things. But before they can be washed, they have to be dipped to get rid of parasites . . .”
“You can buy sheep dip at the hardware store.”
“And there’s no point in doing any of it until right before we have them sheared, because they’ll just get dirty again. And the sheepshearer doesn’t come until April.”
Lori shook her head adamantly. “No, no, no, don’t you see? If we wait until then—until everyone else has fleece—we’ve lost our home field advantage! We have a flock of sheep with two years’ growth of wool on them in a market where no one else has any wool at all. We have to strike while the iron is hot.”
Bridget cast her a puzzled look. “I don’t know how we’re going to get them sheared any sooner.”
Lori sat back and folded her arms across her chest with a self-satisfied smile as she pronounced, “By doing it ourselves.”
Some people might have put a temporary patch over the hole in the wall, and proceeded with sanding the floors. But Cici believed in doing things right, and since the floor molding had to be taken off before the stain could be applied to the floors, anyway, and since repairing the hole in the wall was bound to make a mess, she put the sander away and gathered her tools for the repair job.
By the time Ida Mae came in from the kitchen to ask if she wanted lunch, Cici had the floor molding off and had trimmed away the broken edges of the cracked wall to a six by eight rectangle. She had also made a rather intriguing discovery.
“Ida Mae,” she said, turning away from her examination of the inside of the hole, “this wall is hollow! Did you know that?”
Ida Mae returned a scowl. “How do you suppose I’d know that? I wasn’t born here, you know. You want soup or what?”
“You don’t remember there being a closet or anything here?”
Ida Mae gave her a look that suggested there were no words to express the stupidity of that question. “There ain’t no closets in this house except the ones you built.”
“That’s right,” murmured Cici thoughtfully, “there aren’t. I’m going to get a flashlight.”
“You’re eating soup for lunch.”
By the time Lindsay came in, Cici had widened the hole enough to insert her hand, with the flashlight, and part of her head. “There’s a whole big space back here!” she exclaimed. “Lindsay, come look at this!”
Lindsay hung back. “Um, spiders?”
Cici scooted back out of the hole, brushing the plaster dust off her cheeks. “Seriously, it’s like someone walled over a whole room. Why would anyone do that?”
Lindsay looked uneasy. “I read a story once about a nun who was walled up inside a convent. Some questions are better left unasked.”
But by the time Bridget and Lori returned, Cici had enlarged the hole with her reciprocating saw to a two foot square, and Lindsay, who was smaller about the shoulders and torso than Cici, was halfway in, halfway out of the wall.
“Well?” demanded Cici anxiously, hovering over her.
“There’s something in here,” came Lindsay’s muffled voice in reply.
Bridget came forward hesitantly, tugging Lori with her. “A body?” she suggested.
Cici glanced at her. “Do you and Lindsay read the same books?”
Lindsay wriggled out, the flashlight in one hand, and a length of lavender ribbon, dull with grime, in the other. Her hair was mussed and her