Criminally Spun Out: Book 5 of the Fiber Maven's Mysteries

by J. Traveler Pelton

  “Thank you.” replied Brad. “What’s going on?”

  Dr. Fieldlings started. “It appears the neighbors never heard the kids because from day one, she was both isolating them and drugging them with mild barbiturates and too much Tylenol. We’ve put activated charcoal in their bellies; we’re flushing their bodies with IV fluids, and we’re watching for symptoms. When they were brought in, their level was high, but it’s come down considerably over the last few hours. The largest danger was seizures and respiratory problems, but those have not happened.

  “We won’t know if there is lasting neurological damage until a few days have gone by and they’ve been under observation. I would like to do an EKG and ECG on the children while they are still semi-conscious to get the best readings, but there’s a good probability they’re going to be ok. I don’t expect them to wake up for another couple hours, so we’re going to take them down for tests now.

  “If those exams come back well, and they wake up in the next three hours, and their bodies seem to have eliminated the drugs in their system, then they’ll be able to go home in, I’d say, 48 hours. If not, we may have to take them to Children’s for more intense care. The next couple hours are crucial. We want to try and eliminate long term effects of the drugs and avoid seizures. In the meantime, the bloodwork showed some interesting factors.

  “Whoever had the children was feeding them not only over the counter prescriptions but appeared to be giving them some herbs. She most likely thought it would make them healthier. The police found a couple bottles of herbal complex they sent over and the babies tested positive for it and for CBD oil. From what we were told, she was not completely in her right mind. It’s almost as if she was playing with dollies, we found evidence she’d put Band-Aids on non-existent cuts, given Tylenol for non-fevers, used too much toothache gum ointment, that sort of thing. Whatever was wrong with her, it’s a good thing you got them back. She could have damaged their livers.

  “At any rate, we’re going to run tests over the next couple hours; we’re pushing fluids, and we hope they regain consciousness without seizures within the next three hours or so. If we can get them over this hump and get the drugs all out of their systems, they ought to recover.”

  “Her elevator never left the basement,” growled Annie.

  “Shh,” cautioned her grandma.

  “If everything goes well, and nothing is damaged, they could be home in two days?” Brad clarified.

  “That’s what my prognosis is right now. With your permission, we’re going to move them down and start testing. If you want to come down, you may, or you can wait here for them to come back.”

  Casey spoke first. “I’m not leaving them.”

  “I’m not either,” said Brad.

  Sandra stood up. “I think I need to get Annie and myself home. She has to get strong enough to go back to school, but you call us if anything happens, ok?”

  “I think I may have left Rutherford with the sheriff,” said Brad. “It gets fuzzy after the ambulance came.”

  “Ruckus is with Matthew over at the hardware. He’s coming to the farm tonight. I’m taking Annie home and staying there with her and Ruckus. You take care of my grandchildren, you hear me?” she said as she hugged Casey.

  “Yes, now that they’re back, they’re not going to be left for a second,” said Casey.

  The cribs were unattached to the wall, the nurses pushed them out and down to the elevator, Casey and Brad followed. The babies never moved, lying attached to their IV’s, still, pale, and breathing slow. Sandra and Annie got on another elevator and headed for home.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The room where the Christmas tree stood was covered in ripped-off wrapping paper. Rutherford was lying on his back, snoring in a corner. Casey sat next to Brad on the couch, sipping hot cocoa. Annie was on the floor with the twins. Matthew, Aurora and Skye sat on the floor, assembling a Lego car.

  Casey sighed. “I can’t believe six weeks ago we were bereft of our babies, all due to a crazy old lady. Brad, I ever get that nuts, just shoot me, ok?’

  “I promise.” He paused. “I heard the other day she was declared incompetent to stand trial and has been placed in the mental hospital south of Columbus and will stay there indefinitely to life. If she becomes competent, there’s to be a plea bargain. The Fiber Sisters are still shaken by what happened that one of the ladies in our town should be so ill and no one noticed.”

  “I know. There’s a good reason we ought to look after our neighbors. After the holidays, Allyssa has called a meeting with the ladies to get everyone back on track.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. Now that it’s over, and the babies are fine, it’s all really sad. I hope nothing like this ever happens again to anyone in our town.” He paused a moment. “Of course, there is one unsettling thing about all of this.”

  “What’s that?”

  The shawl that was hung up in Finian’s and the one hung up in the bank don’t match the ones Alice made. Several of the Yarn sisters looked t them for us and declared they’d not been made-Alice crocheted. Those ones are knitted.”

  “She didn’t know how to knit?”

  “Not that anyone remembers.”

  “So, you’re saying there’s a crazy person left out there?”

  “Possibly.” She sighed.

  “Well, for now, we have each other together, in our own home, and safe. We have so much to be grateful for this Christmas.”

  “I agree, but the greatest thing to be thankful for is each other,” he smiled in satisfaction. “Wonder if those two are going to make it official soon? Skye sure has taken a shine to Matt.”

  “I was sad to miss Toby and Helen’s wedding,” Casey sighed.

  “Babies were still in the hospital, they understood.”

  “Still, I love weddings.”

  Sandra looked up. “I have a sort of surprise for us all,” she said. “It’s a trust me trip. We have somewhere to go.”

  “Excuse me, mom?”

  “Everyone get their coats on and Casey, we can go in your van, and Matt can carry any extras. We have somewhere to go.”

  Shooing everyone out into the hallway and getting them all dressed in coats and mittens, they loaded up and Sandra directed the way out of town. It was a beautiful Christmas day.

  She directed them to Dana’s farm, where they found several other cars already arrived.

  “What on earth is she doing on Christmas day?” Casey exclaimed

  In the doorway of the barn, Alan Martin was directing people.

  “It’s an old custom with the McCallister’s. You’ll see when you go inside,” her mother stated.

  Following the others, Brad saw Erik and his wife ahead of him, several of the Yarn Sisters, the pastor’s wife.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Sally enthused. “Wish we had had this at our Christmas Eve service.”

  There at the end of the barn, using a stack of hay as a backdrop, was a live nativity. All of the animals in the nativity had a baby at their side. Local teens played the parts of Mary and Joseph, the wise men, the shepherds. It was a marvelous tableau. Soft music played and a recording of the chapter of Luke about the birth of Christ repeated itself.

  After watching for a few minutes and exclaiming over the baby animals, they followed the crowd outside and to the back porch where refreshments were being given out: hot cider, warm cookies, and coffee. Next to a nicely decorated Christmas tree, Dana was handing out small fiber gifts for Christmas, 3-D printed drop spindles, small bags of roving, felted laundry balls, stocking hats, beaded stitch counters, and for the less craft inclined, calendars featuring pictures of the farm and the animals.

  Dana was greeting all her neighbors; people were getting acquainted. “I had planned on doing this last night but heard it would interfere with the church Christmas Eve services, so decided to do it today,” she explained. “We’re only going to be open for a couple hours so please sign our attendance book. It’s been so much fun
meeting you all.” She smiled as she shook hands and wandered around. “The workshops are open in my barn for those of you who want to see mom weave on the big loom, and we’re so glad you came.”

  “Do you have a petting zoo?” asked one parent.

  “No, it may seem like it, but not really. However, if you follow Molly here into the side barn, we have some animals that enjoy petting. If you take one of these bags of carrot and apple slices, you can feed them,” answered Dana, handing out bags. “There goes Molly with another group of kids.” Dana smiled at Casey as she came up and got bags to feed the animals.

  Sally came up to Casey and joined her on the walk to the second barn. “Emory’s family was found and she left our home three days ago. I got a call from her last night and she’s happy and having a good Christmas with her uncle. He hadn’t even known there was a problem or that she was in foster care!”

  “People can be heedless even of their relatives, I guess.” Casey went over to pet the highland calf in the barn.

  Brad and Casey, Annie and the others stayed an hour or so, and left to go home.

  “I’m glad she wasn’t made upset by someone using her spindles for crimes,” remarked Brad. “I wonder if she’s going to teach anymore.”

  “That’s something the fiber ladies and Allyssa are working out in January. I hope so. I want to get back to it; I find it soothing and it’s something I can do with the babies around.”

  “Merry Christmas, dear.”

  “You too. Let’s get home so I can make a feast. And honey, thank you for the spinning wheel. I can’t wait to learn how to use it.”

  “Why wait?” asked Annie. “You can pull it upon You tube this afternoon.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll wait for the class. There’s something good about getting together with friends to learn.”

  The Malcom’s got into their car and started for home, soft Christmas carols playing from the CD. As they pulled into their house, it started snowing again, and they all went in to relax and just be thankful to be home and together and safe. Ruckus took his place by the babies’ cribs and closed his eyes as wonderful smells started coming out of the kitchen.

  Thank you for reading Criminally Spun Out!

  Our Next Cozy Mystery Series is called The Furry Family Mysteries, and this is chapter one of book one, just to give you an idea of the fun to come…

  Chapter 1

  Hazel stood on her front porch overlooking the comfortable row of mid-fifties houses. The street was quiet at this hour: too early for school buses, too early for commuters, just a few walkers and joggers going about their business getting up a mild sweat before they started their day. The newspaper carrier tossed her paper up to her, and, as always, her dog Ascot jumped up and caught it and fetched it to her. Ascot – a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with long, soft ears, big eyes, black, brown, and white coat – sat down next to her watching the people, perfectly content to be her companion on this brisk morning.

  The newspaper boy tossed the paper onto the porch of Hazel’s next-door neighbor. Lillian heard it and came out, followed by Minuet, a sunburst Persian, who lazily wandered out the door, tail high, nose up, owning the porch. Ascot sighed and lay down to avoid seeing her and barking. It wasn’t proper to bark at your master’s best friend’s idiosyncrasies; that being that she was, to put it gently, a cat lady. Ascot’s owner was a dog lady. How they came to live next to each other was a total mystery to Ascot, but he’d ask Freddy, the retired police dog. Fred had been here longer than anyone else in the household.

  “Morning Lillian, lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “Just perfect for late spring. My crocuses are up all over the yard, I have some almost-up daffodils. I’m going to open up the outside runs, if that’s ok?”

  “I’ll be having the dogs out for their morning walk shortly. Just let me get them all attached and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Good! I want to do a good cleaning while the animals are out. The poor dears really hate the vacuum. My niece is coming over to the meeting today. So nice the library allows us to use their ready room downstairs.”

  “I’ve got the thumbprint cookies ready and boxed, waiting.”

  “I got some of that delicious chocolate mint tea they just got in over at Mileson’s. It ought to go well. Do you know if Amelia has the agenda typed up for us?”

  “I don’t, but she’s so efficient she probably has today’s and the next three months as well. I’ll see this afternoon. Do you need a ride?”

  “I have to go shopping this afternoon, so probably not.” Both ladies were too polite to mention that when they rode in each other’s cars, neither household of cats or dogs could stand the smell that got on them and would be very standoffish, especially the two Siamese over at Lillian’s.

  Hazel went inside and saw her husband, Ethan Sinclair, a retired contractor, was already attaching dogs to their leashes and leashes to the hooks he’d welded to their golf cart.

  Besides Ascot the spaniel and Fred the Alsatian, there were Fluffy the Great Dane, Spike the Pekinese, Harlow the Pomeranian, Angelina a Cocker Spaniel, Railroad the pug, Pacman the shar-pei, Sylvester and Nate, inseparable brothers, standard poodles, Alestra the chow and Alistair the chihuahua who bossed them all. Anything under fifteen pounds was attached to the golf cart Hazel drove; all the large dogs were attached to Ethan’s cart. She helped him finish, grabbed her dog essentials bag and they all headed for the Fern Springs’ dog park. Twelve dogs in all, earning them the title master dog parents in town as a joke. They fostered and found homes for dogs. However, some they simply couldn’t part with, and they ended up staying.

  Ethan headed up the local humane society. Right now, they had homes coming up for five of these dogs, but there were always other worthy dogs in need of rescue. Whenever the local dog shelter got a dog surrendered they thought might be acceptable to Ethan, they called, generally a couple times a month. Right now, they were considering bringing a blue heeler into the mix. He needed gentling and training and would be able to be adopted out fairly quickly.

  Once everyone was in place, Ethan climbed in, fired up Bertha the golf cart, and headed towards the park a mile away, dogs surrounding the cart, marching in time. His wife and her cart, Agnes, brought up the rear.

  Hazel was a retired teacher. The kids she taught were now high schoolers or adults and they’d wave to her as she went by, surrounded by dogs, and she’d wave back. Max, the local cop, would watch them go by, shaking his head, not quite sure this was street legal, but they kept to side streets and obeyed the signs, so who was he to judge. Besides, she’d taught him years ago, and one of the things she said was obey all just laws and do the best with all the other ones. Once they arrived at the dog park, Ethan and Hazel took the dogs in one by one and let them run as a pack in the fenced two acres that was the park, walking along behind with scoops and depositing remains in the trash dispenser.

  Back at her pink and white cape cod house, Lillian was going from window to window. Her husband, Samuel Hausted, used to work for and with Ethan and was an expert builder himself. One year for Lillian’s birthday and his own sanity, he had connected two windows in the upstairs with one from the downstairs backrooms with fenced-in outdoor tunnels that ran along the outside back and sides of the house, attached firmly, with several small patios within them. When the weather was nice, the windows were opened and the cats all ran out to run and chase, sun themselves on the little platforms by the windows, and in general have a grand time going up down and around the house outdoors. The tunnels led to a partially enclosed cat pen on the roof, complete with cubby holes and platform perches. Lillian loved it, so did her animals, of which at last count there were Summer, Winter, Fall, Spring, and Minuet (Persians), Lily, Rose, and Daisy (Siamese), Josephus, Foxy, Fred, and Alberta (fosters, different colors, all with personality quirks that made them hard to place.).

  Lilian raised Persians, Siamese, and occasionally Himalayans. She fostered other cats which were fixed and waiting
for homes for the local humane shelter. The tunnels built around their house had earned her the sobriquet crazy cat lady. Lillian was a retired administrative assistant, having worked at the bank for 27 years, and having been replaced by Natalie Brown, a somewhat uppity woman who hated cats with a passion almost as virulent as her boss’s dislike of dogs. They made a good pair. They ran a good bank. Animal lovers they were not.

  Lillian opened the tunnels as soon as she saw the dogs leave for the park. The cats dashed out and she got to work super cleaning without their criticism. The Siamese especially hated the vacuum cleaner and the Swiffer mop gave them fits.

  She had an old-fashioned pie safe she kept her baked goods in so no one unauthorized would sample them. It had a padlock on it, because Summer simply would stop trying. He had succeeded once in getting the doors open and ended up sitting on top of some warm pies while leisurely eating them. Blackberry juice does not come out of a cat’s fur easily, nor does it come out of rugs, couches, or anything else he managed to run over before they caught him and put him in a carrier. He yowled for half an hour at the injustice while Samuel installed the locks. He still had a habit of sitting on the top of the pie safe when it was full of warm pies cooling.

  Samuel Hausted was working in his shop this morning. In spite of all the cats, Lillian’s house was always clean and organized and neat; there was always fresh baked bread and pies or cookies because she dearly loved her husband. Neighbor kids knew they could stop any time after school to help socialize the cats, and always find a welcome ear for their troubles, a couple cookies, and cold milk. She was the local secretary of the Humane Society now. Their two children were grown and had families of their own. Their life was full, furry, and happy.

  Fern Springs was a pleasant little town in Ohio of about 6,000 residents, most of them having been born and raised there. Some of the kids went away to college and came back, some stayed away but always came home for holidays. The main industry was farming, with small farms polka dotted all around the town. There was an elementary and junior high school complex that had just been built and had all the fancy city people toys installed, electronic white boards and computers, a new gym. The high school kids were bused to the local district high school where they were joined by four other districts in a school of nearly a thousand students, between the vocational school and the regular high school. Everyone agreed their schools were simply the best and football games, basketball, soccer, and softball games were avidly followed and attended. The town had a nice sized grocery store, two gas stations (one at either end), a library, a police station, fire station, a couple medical clinics, and a few other small shops. There was no danger to anyone of something like a Walmart coming in and ruining all the mom-and-pop stores because all the land was in family farms that had gone back generations and which had children waiting to take them over, so there was simply no space for development to get a foothold. If you wanted to do that sort of shopping, you drove twenty miles to the nearest shopping mecca, somewhere up by Medina. Most folks didn’t bother. They had a few eccentricities, but not more than any other small town. People made lifelong friends here, people helped each other out, and life was mostly good except for a couple small details.