by Amanda Lee
“Right,” I said, my voice coming on the end of a sigh. There was no reasoning with her. If I was going to get out of this, I needed to appeal to Ed. “I’m sure if you turned yourself in, Mr. Harding, and explained that this was all an accident or something, then everything would work out all right in the end.”
“Oh, it’ll work out,” he said. “But I’m not going to prison for arson.”
I thought the arson charge would be the least of his worries after he was found guilty of the murder of Chester Cantor, but I continued to try to play dumb. “Susan, maybe if you talked with him. . . .”
“Nope,” she said as breezily as if I’d asked her to try to change his mind about his restaurant preference. “I’m in too deep myself, at this point. Plus, Daddy and I decided that we’d never let each other down again, didn’t we, Daddy?”
Ed nodded. “That’s what we decided.”
I had to do something. And I had to do it quickly.
“Um, look,” I began. “I have some money in the kitchen—ten thousand dollars. I keep it hidden in there just in case.”
Susan’s eyes widened. “You keep ten thousand bucks in your kitchen?”
I nodded. “And it’s yours if you’ll just let me go.”
Susan looked at Ed. He curved both sides of his mouth into a contemptible frown and gave a slight shake of his head.
“But don’t think you could kill me and then find the money,” I said. “You’d never find it if you didn’t know exactly where to look.”
Susan looked back at me.
“I’m offering you a way out,” I said. “With that ten thousand dollars, you could make a nice nest egg for yourself, Adam, and Melanie.”
Susan wanted to take me up on my offer. I could tell by the way she was biting her lip and looking anxiously from me to Ed.
“You can take the money, tie me to a kitchen chair, and then leave,” I hurried on. “When Ted gets back—” I glanced at the hall clock. “Oh, goodness, he’ll be back anytime—we need to hurry. Anyway, when he gets back, I’ll tell him someone broke in and tied me up. I’ll give him a fake description. The police will be looking for somebody else. Best of all, they won’t be looking for two murderers.”
“Come on, Daddy,” Susan said. “What do you say? We really could use that ten thousand dollars to make a fresh start.”
“Do you really trust her?” he asked.
She nodded. “Her mother is loaded. Works in the movie business.”
“I don’t mean do you trust her about the money. I’m asking if you honestly believe she’ll keep her mouth shut about our coming here and robbing her?” he snarled. “Sometimes I can’t believe how stupid you are.”
“Stupid?” Susan sputtered. “I’m stupid? You’re the one who jumped the gun and killed Chester Cantor! And then you jumped the gun again and set the Cantors’ house on fire! I’m the one who found you in that halfway house in Pennsylvania and gave you a life here.”
“Some life!” he shouted.
“You have it a lot better than you did!”
As the two of them were arguing, I was backing ever so slowly toward the front door. Unfortunately, Ed noticed.
“Stop or I’ll kill you right now!” he yelled at me.
I stopped.
“Show us where that money is,” he said.
“Follow me.” I headed for the kitchen. Although there was no money there, there were weapons. I just had to find one that would provide me the distraction I so desperately needed. The knives were too obvious; plus Ed would likely shoot me before I could get in the first jab.
The freezer. I’d heard once that people sometimes keep valuables in their freezers. As I walked, I did a speedy inventory of mine. I had a solidly frozen ham I meant to bake for Easter. And it was a big ham. I’d planned on having lots of guests if I wasn’t able to spend the day with Mom. That might work.
I went to the freezer and opened it. I could feel Ed’s hot, rancid breath on me. It made me feel nauseous. Well, that, and the prospect of imminent death.
“You keep ten grand in the freezer?” he asked.
“Yep. I like cold, hard cash.”
“Ha-ha—”
Before he could finish that last “ha,” I’d broadsided him in the face with the ham. He went down. Susan, who’d trailed along behind us, wailed, “Daddy!”
I threw the ham at her and raced out the back door. Angus came running, and he and I escaped through the gate. We hurried to my next-door neighbor’s house, and I called nine-one-one.
Epilogue
By the time the police got to my house, Ed and Susan were gone. They didn’t get far and were quickly caught, however, because they’d actually taken the time to go through my freezer to see if there was any money in it. As it was, everything in my freezer—including the ham—had been ruined. But, looking at the big picture, that was okay. Food could be replaced.
It turned out that Ed was Susan Willoughby’s biological father. She’d always known she was adopted, and she’d been searching for her birth parents for years. When she’d found that her father was living in a halfway house in Pennsylvania, she’d sent for him and had been taking care of him for the past eight months. Why hadn’t she introduced him around? The best Ted and I could come up with was that Susan was ashamed of him. She was trying to clean him up and find him some work before she let his identity be known. But Ed wasn’t ready to give up his crooked ways and adapt himself to a more acceptable lifestyle.
Susan had been romantically interested in Adam Cantor, but Adam hadn’t felt the same way about her. She’d hoped that by cultivating a friendship with Mary and having Ed cultivate a friendship with Chester, she could have excuses to be around Adam so he’d see what a great gal she was. He hadn’t seen it. Adam had seen through Ed, though, and had refused to try to get him on with the company where he worked. He’d also discouraged his father from hanging around with Ed, so it was actually Chester who’d nixed the idea of their working together to find the treasure.
Speaking of the treasure—or, in this case, the tapestry—Adam had taken it to the dry cleaner after leaving my shop Saturday morning. He’d wanted it cleaned and preserved so he could frame it as a reminder of what his father had wanted for him and the rest of his family. Adam is on the road to recovery. He has enrolled in anger management classes and is seeing a therapist to help him resolve his abusive behavior. Contractors are working on their new house, and Melanie is excited that her new bedroom will have a window seat “perfect for doing embroidery, reading, or just daydreaming.”
As for the reality show, it did go on. J. T. Trammel was “more tickled than a bedbug in a feather duster”—his words, not mine—that things turned out the way they did. He’d lined up one local who was willing to swear that the treasure of the Delia was cursed because it led to so much destruction. In spite of having a “cursed cargo,” the sea did yield the Delia’s wreckage. So far, divers have recovered a handful of rare natural pearls. I’m thinking Melanie is going to have a fantastic college education!
Christine Willoughby started coming into the Seven-Year Stitch on a regular basis. During her last visit, she reported that Jared had been seeing “a sweet girl who works at MacKenzies’ Mochas. Her name is Keira.” To my credit, I kept my jaw from dropping to the floor, and I didn’t let on to Christine that Keira was anything but “a sweet girl.” Could Jared pick them, or what?
Remember how I’d been trying to get Audrey Dayton introduced to Todd? She took care of that herself. I saw her walking out of the Brew Crew with him at lunch the other day, and they were laughing. I hoped it would work out for them.
As for Ted and me, I finally got Mom’s Easter egg finished. We went to spend Easter weekend with her in San Francisco and had a blast. It was Ted’s first time in San Fran, and Mom and I had so much fun showing him the city.
So things were pretty much returning to normal. But then, this was Tallulah Falls. I knew I’d better enjoy it while it lasted.
AUTHOR�
��S NOTE
I had a lot of fun doing the research for this book. To learn about shipwrecks off the coast of Oregon, I consulted the following books:
Lost Treasure Ships of the Oregon Coast by Theodore Schellhase
Peril at Sea: A Photographic Study of Shipwrecks in the Pacific by Jim Gibbs
Guide to Shipwreck Sites Along the Oregon Coast by Victor West
Buried Treasure of the Pacific Northwest by W. C. Jameson
When I searched for these books, the Guide to Shipwreck Sites Along the Oregon Coast was out of print and came from a used bookseller. One of the book’s previous owners had written notes in the margins, such as, “I remember going on this ship after it was on beach for some time. Still can see some remains.” My grandmother used to write notes in the margins of books, and it made me treasure this little book all the more.
In addition to the books, I studied Web sites, including:
Graveyard of the Pacific (http://historylink .org)
Pacific Coast Pirates and Spanish Galleons (http://fncbooks.com/OregonPirates/)
Oregon Coast Shipwrecks (http://www.theo regoncoast.info/Shipwrecks.html)
Red Bubble (http://www.redbubble.com)
Depoe Bay Annual Pirate Treasure Hunt (http://www.treasuredepoebay.org/)
Pirates of the Pacific Festival (http://pirate softhepacificfestival.com/index.html)
Underwater Archaeology (http://underwater archaeology.gr)
Domestic Abuse Statistics (http://www.aard varc.org/) and (http://ncadv.org/)
Read on for a sneak peek
at another crafty Embroidery Mystery
from Amanda Lee
The Quick and the Thread
Available from Obsidian.
Just after crossing over . . . under . . . through . . . the covered bridge, I could see it. Barely. I could make out the top of it, and that was enough at the moment to make me set aside the troubling grammatical conundrum of whether one passes over, under, or through a covered bridge.
“There it is,” I told Angus, an Irish wolfhound who was riding shotgun. “There’s our sign!”
He woofed, which could mean anything from “I gotta pee” to “Yay!” I went with “Yay!”
“Me, too! I’m so excited.”
I was closer to the store now and could really see the sign. I pointed. “See, Angus?” My voice was barely above a whisper. “Our sign.”
THE SEVEN-YEAR STITCH.
I had named the shop the Seven-Year Stitch for three reasons. One, it’s an embroidery specialty shop. Two, I’m a huge fan of classic movies. And three, it actually took me seven years to turn my dream of owning an embroidery shop into a reality.
Once upon a time, in a funky-cool land called San Francisco, I was an accountant. Not a funky-cool job, believe me, especially for a funky-cool girl like me, Marcy Singer. I had a corner cubicle near a window. You’d think the window would be a good thing, but it looked out upon a vacant building that grew more dilapidated by the day. Maybe by the hour. It was majorly depressing. One year, a coworker gave me a cactus for my birthday. I set it in that window, and it died. I told you it was depressing.
Still, my job wasn’t that bad. I can’t say I truly enjoyed it, but I am good with numbers and the work was tolerable. Then I got the call from Sadie. Not a call, mind you; the call.
“Hey, Marce. Are you sitting down?” Sadie had said.
“Sadie, I’m always sitting down. I keep a stationary bike frame and pedal it under my desk so my leg muscles won’t atrophy.”
“Good. The hardware store next to me just went out of business.”
“And this is good because you hate the hardware guy?”
She’d given me an exasperated huff. “No, silly. It’s good because the space is for lease. I’ve already called the landlord, and he’s giving you the opportunity to snatch it up before anyone else does.”
Sadie is an entrepreneur. She and her husband, Blake, own MacKenzies’ Mochas, a charming coffee shop on the Oregon coast. She thinks everyone—or, at least, Marcy Singer—should also own a charming shop on the Oregon coast.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I’d said. “You expect me to come up there to Quaint City, Oregon—”
“Tallulah Falls, thank you very much.”
“—and set up shop? Just like that?”
“Yes! It’s not like you’re happy there or like you’re on some big five-year career plan.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“And you’ve not had a boyfriend or even a date for more than a year now. I could still strangle David when I think of how he broke your heart.”
“Once again, thank you for the painful reminder.”
“So what’s keeping you there? This is your chance to open up the embroidery shop you used to talk about all the time in college.”
“But what do I know about actually running a business?”
Sadie had huffed. “You can’t tell me you’ve been keeping companies’ books all these years without having picked up some pointers about how to—and how not to—run a business.”
“You’ve got a point there. But what about Angus?”
“Marce, he will love it here! He can come to work with you every day, run up and down the beach. . . . Isn’t that better than the situation he has now?”
I swallowed a lump of guilt the size of my fist.
“You’re right, Sadie,” I’d admitted. “A change will do us both good.”
That had been three months ago. Now I was a resident of Tallulah Falls, Oregon, and today was the grand opening of the Seven-Year Stitch.
A cool, salty breeze off the ocean ruffled my hair as I hopped out of the bright red Jeep I’d bought to traipse up and down the coast.
Angus followed me out of the Jeep and trotted beside me up the river-rock steps to the walk that connected all the shops on this side of the street. The shops on the other side of the street were set up in a similar manner, with river-rock steps leading up to walks containing bits of shells and colorful rocks for aesthetic appeal. A narrow two-lane road divided the shops, and black wrought-iron lampposts and benches added to the inviting community feel. A large clock tower sat in the middle of the town square, pulling everything together and somehow reminding us all of the preciousness of time. Tallulah Falls billed itself as the friendliest town on the Oregon coast, and so far, I had no reason to doubt that claim.
I unlocked the door and flipped the closed sign to open before turning to survey the shop. It was as if I were seeing it for the first time. And, in a way, I was. I’d been here until nearly midnight last night, putting the finishing touches on everything. This was my first look at the finished project. Like all my finished projects, I tried to view it objectively. But, like all my finished projects, I looked upon this one as a cherished child.
The floor was black-and-white tile laid out like a gleaming chessboard. All my wood accents were maple. On the floor to my left, I had maple bins holding cross-stitch threads and yarns. When a customer first came in the door, she would see the cross-stitch threads. They started in white and went through shades of ecru, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, gray, and black. The yarns were organized the same way on the opposite side. Perle flosses, embroidery hoops, needles, and cross-stitch kits hung on maple-trimmed corkboard over the bins. On the other side of the corkboard—the side with the yarn—there were knitting needles, crochet hooks, tapestry needles, and needlepoint kits.
The walls were covered by shelves where I displayed pattern books, dolls with dresses I’d designed and embroidered, and framed samplers. I had some dolls for those who liked to sew and embroider outfits (like me), as well as for those who enjoyed knitting and crocheting doll clothes.
Standing near the cash register was my life-size mannequin, who bore a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, especially since I put a short, curly blond wig on her and did her makeup. I even gave her a mole . . . er, beauty mark. I called her Jill. I was going to name her after Marilyn’s charact
er in The Seven Year Itch, but she didn’t have a name. Can you believe that—a main character with no name? She was simply billed as “The Girl.”
To the right of the door was the sitting area. As much as I loved to play with the amazing materials displayed all over the store, the sitting area was my favorite place in the shop. Two navy overstuffed sofas faced each other across an oval maple coffee table. The table sat on a navy, red, and white braided rug. There were red club chairs with matching ottomans near either end of the coffee table, and candlewick pillows with lace borders scattered over both the sofas. I made those, too—the pillows, not the sofas.
The bell over the door jingled, and I turned to see Sadie walking in with a travel coffee mug.
I smiled. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It is, if you think it’s a nonfat vanilla latte with a hint of cinnamon.” She handed me the mug. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
“Thanks. You’re the best.” The steaming mug felt good in my hands. I looked back over the store. “It looks good, doesn’t it?”
“It looks fantastic. You’ve outdone yourself.” She cocked her head. “Is that what you’re wearing tonight?”
Happily married for the past five years, Sadie was always eager to play matchmaker for me. I hid a smile and held the hem of my vintage tee as if it were a dress. “You don’t think Snoopy’s Joe Cool is appropriate for the grand opening party?”
Sadie closed her eyes.
“I have a supercute dress for tonight,” I said with a laugh, “and Mr. O’Ruff will be sporting a black tie for the momentous event.”
Angus wagged his tail at the sound of his surname.
“Marce, you and that pony.” Sadie scratched Angus behind the ears.
“He’s a proud boy. Aren’t you, Angus?”
Angus barked his agreement, and Sadie chuckled.
“I’m proud, too . . . of both of you.” She grinned. “I’d better get back over to Blake. I’ll be back to check on you again in a while.”
