…the detective’s wife is knitting. Because no one notices her sitting in the corner knitting, she’s picked up on a number of clues that the detective himself missed. He’s running all over town interviewing people and occasionally becoming needlessly involved in gunfights. The killer, whenever he sees the detective coming, either puts on his smoothest and most innocent face or slips out the back door and heads down to the river to dispose of the evidence. The detective is pretty sure that the guy with the naturally guilty face is the killer, but naturally, the detective is wrong. The detective’s wife wonders how it is that the detective has managed to be a detective all these years without learning how to sit down and think once in a while instead of spending all day riding around recklessly in the squad car or lecturing his subordinates on how to conduct a proper investigation. She knits the clues she’s found into the sweater she’s knitting for the detective, but when she gives it to him for his birthday he glances at it pityingly–doesn’t she have anything better to do with her time than knit odd sweaters–and says he’s sorry he can’t stay for cake. He’s just gotten an important call about the movements of the innocent man with the guilty face. He says he’ll be back later but the detective’s wife looks at the sweater, finally sees how all of the clues fit together, and knows he won’t ever be back at all.
longest night
three new flies
in the cobweb
Red Dragonfly 
Anyway, a very nice play on the Fates from mythology, who together control the threads of future and past events. And the haiku caps that off nicely too. Just like a detective to marry close to the center of the mystery, but lack the proper respect for domestic occupations due to women. To his everlasting regret!
Ha, you attribute far too much sophistication to me, but I’ll take it. 🙂
It’s not surprising, perhaps. There are such things as universsal metaphors that just arise from our experience and are molded by individual hands. Hah! Another web of circumstance! The universal metaphor of female creativity that leaves men dumb, but rigid with admiration in a kind of grip of death-like trance. Heathcliffe and the spider’s web. That’s what I wanted to say about it, black widow! The lure of the female detective novelist. A sufficient revenge for some, for not being appreciated. But you have my attention.
Ah…I love it so much when people find stuff in my writing that I had no idea was there…thanks for your enlightening and inspiring reading, Garry.