Page 26 of Christmas Mittens Murder

“Actually, Doris, I just happened to be driving by . . .”

So not true.

She had made a point of coming here today.

“And I thought I would stop and ask you if you saw the cute TikTok video that Rosana and her knitting circle posted.”

Doris snapped her head back so fast Hayley thought the granny glasses on her nose might fly right off. “Why on earth would I ever do that? I long ago made the decision not to expend any of my energy thinking about that contentious group of awful women.”

“I totally get it. But I watched it recently, and there is something I noticed that piqued my interest, and it has to do with you.”

Doris raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What was that?”

Hayley pulled out her phone. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”

She opened the TikTok app, scrolled down for the video and pressed play, handing the phone to Doris.

“I’m a happy, happy hooker,

Got dinner in the slow cooker,

’Cause my needles are ready to knit,

Making a holiday sweater that fits . . .”

Doris shook her head, unimpressed. “I stand corrected. Forget the Shop ’n Save Christmas wreaths. This has to be the tackiest thing I have ever seen in my life!”

“You didn’t see them perform this number at the bazaar?”

“Of course not! I may have heard some noise in the background, but I was busy with the raffle, and I certainly would not have wasted my valuable time watching this monstrosity! My word, imagine women that age acting so silly and immature!”

She tried to hand Hayley her phone back, but she refused to take it. “Please, Doris, keep watching.”

“Do you get some kind of perverse pleasure torturing me like this, Hayley? Rosana is so off-key, my ears hurt!”

Doris turned her nose up as she continued watching the video until the key moment when she was clearly seen heading up the stairs toward the exit with Esther Willey.

Hayley tapped the screen with her finger. “There. That’s you . . . walking toward the exit with Esther.”

Doris practically hurled the phone back at Hayley. “So what?”

“So what?” Hayley repeated incredulously. “Doris, consider the time line. You are clearly seen on the video leaving the church with Esther just minutes before I discovered her murdered in the cemetery!”

“Are you accusing me? How dare you! Esther was a dear, dear friend!”

Hayley scrolled the video back and paused it, zooming in on Doris’s face as she was leaving. “Look, you’re scowling. Obviously you were upset about something.”

Doris’s armor was slowly starting to crack. “I-I don’t remember. . .”

“Come on, Doris, you expect me to believe that? It will be a lot better for you if you just tell me the truth.”

Doris sighed, cornered. “It was nothing, Hayley, really. I had just heard some rumor that Esther was spreading malicious gossip around town about me, that I was hated in the knitting circle, that they called me ‘stitchin’ bitch’ behind my back and that they were going to vote to kick me out of the Crochet Mafia. I was furious. I co-founded that circle with Helen. It was just as much mine as it was hers or anyone else’s. I asked Esther if we could talk in private so I could confront her about it, and so we went outside.”

“Did Esther confess to bad-mouthing you?”

“No! She furiously denied spreading any rumors about me or anyone. And I believed her because she appeared to be as genuinely angry as I was. She guessed that the rumor probably got started by someone in Rosana Moretti’s circle, one of the Happy Hookers! Every single woman in that hateful group was singularly focused on driving a wedge between us and blowing up the Crochet Mafia. It’s downright shameful!”

That struck Hayley as entirely possible.

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