by Janet Bolin
Dora interrupted me. “The scrawl.”
I went on, “I think the scrawl on this matches Antonio’s list of our so-called threadly sins. I don’t know what Paula’s or Kent’s writing is like, but Loretta decorates her printing with all sorts of little swirls and things.”
Neffting asked, “Are you two handwriting experts?”
We both shook our heads.
Dora told him, “I’ll show you the list with the threat on the back of it. You’ll see what I mean.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’m not a handwriting expert, either.”
Touché.
Dora glared. “And you ought to see the prescription label, too.”
Neffting asked, “Did it say what the medicine was?”
I held my hands out, palms up, showing I had nothing. “We didn’t undo the sticker. It was all gummed together, and we’d have destroyed it. And we couldn’t see a patient’s name, either, only the letters A and N. Capital letters. The doctor’s name, phone number, and address were missing, too, except for Buffalo, New York.”
Neffting scribbled in his notebook. “I wish no one had removed those items from the scene, but when we’re done here, I would like to see them, Mrs. Battersby.” He wrote more, then closed his notebook, reached into his satchel, and pulled out another clear plastic bag. It contained a candy package, its top neatly cut off. Pastel candies had spilled from the package into the plastic bag. “Recognize any of this?” he asked.
Of course I did. “That looks like the package of Jordan almonds that I saw in the briefcase in my cubicle. That was the other thing besides the medicine vial that I sent a state trooper to see. The white Jordan almonds resemble the mints that Antonio was eating during the rehearsal on Friday night and at the reception Saturday night, and it appears to me that many of the white almonds were removed from the package you have there. Chief Smallwood and Gord, Dr. Wrinklesides—”
“Gord’s my son-in-law.” Less than a year ago, I’d never have expected Dora to sound this proud, of either her daughter or her son-in-law. Her months in Threadville had been good for her, for all of us.
I sent her a quick smile, then went on, “Chief Smallwood and Gord Wrinklesides found white candies in Antonio’s pocket after he fell. I assumed they were the candies that Antonio had been eating.”
I hadn’t told Dora my theory about the almonds, but suddenly, she became even more animated. “Saturday night after Antonio collapsed, Gord asked Antonio’s wife whether Antonio had heart trouble, and she said she didn’t know, but our actions may have caused a heart attack. But the medication you just showed us isn’t heart medication. It’s to counteract sudden and severe allergic reactions.”
Neffting stared at her as if she’d just confessed to murder.
She raised her chin. “Well, you asked Willow if she had allergies right before you showed her the vial. Besides, I haven’t lived over seventy years without picking up a little knowledge. Nuts are a common allergen, even for adults. Antonio may or may not have heart trouble, but you’d think his wife would have mentioned his allergies. If that allergy medicine was his, maybe he was allergic to nuts, or maybe only to almonds. He could have accidentally eaten candy-coated almonds, thinking they were his usual mints.”
I asked, “Wouldn’t he have recognized the flavor?”
Dora shook her head emphatically. “Not if his first reaction to almonds was when he was a small boy and he hadn’t tasted one since. I read about a case like that.”
If she had read about it, a person planning to harm Antonio could have, also. I hoped Neffting didn’t think that Dora’s knowledge of these details meant that she had arranged his death.
I asked, “But wouldn’t he at least have noticed that the candied almond tasted different from his mints?”
Dora shook her head. “Try eating a bunch of strong mints and then placing something else in your mouth. All you’ll taste is mint.”
I persisted. “Wouldn’t the texture be different? If he noticed that and then started feeling peculiar, like he was reacting to a nut, wouldn’t he have taken his medicine?”
Dora answered, “Maybe he did notice the difference in the texture. And he must have recognized that he was having a reaction. Remember, he was feeling around in his pockets and saying, ‘Where’s my—’ and ‘Help!’ before he collapsed?”
I turned to Neffting. “You’re a homicide detective, aren’t you?”
“Most of the time.”
“Are you investigating . . . a death?”
He didn’t answer.
“You are,” I said.
Dora nodded.
“Antonio’s?” I suggested. “Anthony Drudge?”
Neffting didn’t answer.
I told him, “Despite what his wife, Paula, said, Dora did not hit him.”
Dora picked up her empty mug again. “And neither did Willow.”
I remembered to tell him another peculiar thing I’d noticed on Saturday night. “After Antonio fell, his wife immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was dead, although according to Gord Wrinklesides, he wasn’t. Could Antonio’s wife have expected him to die?”
Dora wagged a finger at Neffting. “Who would be more likely to know about a man’s allergies than his wife? She could have hidden his medication and somehow slipped him some of those candy-coated almonds.”
I broke in, “He kept his mints in his jacket pocket. He was constantly popping those mints during the rehearsal for the fashion show, and Saturday night during the reception, he came too close to me, and his breath was minty.”
Dora crowed, “So it was easy! His wife slipped a Jordan almond into his pocket along with his mints, and he unknowingly ate it.”
I tapped my fingers against my cutting table. “When Gord asked Paula if Antonio had heart trouble, she said he might, and she didn’t know if he had medication.” I looked straight into Detective Neffting’s eyes. “Wouldn’t that have been the obvious time for his wife to state that he had allergies and should be carrying allergy medication? Don’t you think the fact that she didn’t mention his allergies could be incriminating?”
Detective Neffting merely stared at me, and I remembered another time when he hadn’t seemed to believe my theories.
Unwilling to admit that I’d been eavesdropping on the argument between Kent, Loretta, and Paula, although I was sure that Vicki suspected that I had been, I worded my next question carefully. “Where did Antonio get the money to renovate that old mansion and open a school? Maybe he hasn’t been making his loan payments, and the lender decided to teach him a lesson.”
Dora squeaked, “We also found a warning in that wad of paper that said, ‘Pay up or else.’ That threat was typed. That could have been from the people who lent money to Mr. Drudge.”
Neffting gathered the papers I’d given him and the sheets from the silent auction. “You watch too much TV. I’ll take these things out to my car, then I’ll meet you in your—Willow’s—cottage, Mrs. Battersby.” He left.
As soon as the front door closed behind him, Dora held up her index finger. “I think we guessed exactly what that detective was thinking.”
“Maybe,” I said with a lopsided frown. “Except he thinks I’m the one who put the almond into Antonio’s pocket and hid his medication.”
“How could he? The killer is often the spouse, especially a wife if she’s enraged by her husband’s philandering, like Paula probably was. Paula should have known that he was allergic to almonds.”
“We still don’t know for sure that he was.”
“Ha. That detective might as well have come right out and told us. They probably discovered during the post mortem that Mr. Drudge died from an allergic reaction, and they’ve decided the whole situation is a bit fishy.”
“I think you’re right.”
Outside, Detective Neffting got into his cru
iser and sat there as if he were writing notes.
Or waiting for backup to help him arrest someone.
19
I changed the sign on the door from Come Back Later to Welcome.
Neffting was still sitting in his car.
“Thanks for the coffee, Willow,” Dora said. “I guess I’d better return to Blueberry Cottage before that detective comes to look down his pointy nose at the evidence we collected. Mind if I take a shortcut through your apartment?”
“Of course not.” I might as well give her a key and let her supervise my life.
“Thanks. That hill in your side yard is too steep. I need your young man.” She clumped down the stairs.
What young man? Dora could come and go through my apartment as she pleased, any time of the day or night, and she might never encounter the man she insisted on calling mine. I sighed.
Vicki’s cruiser pulled up behind Detective Neffting’s. Together, they headed for my side gate.
My phone rang. It was Mona. “I have the most fabulous idea!”
She’s going to ask me to do something that takes all of my time. Get ready to say no.
“I’ve told that gorgeous hunk from TADAM that I want to buy all of the outfits from the fashion show that we seven Threadville ladies made.”
“Gorgeous hunk?”
“You know, that guy with the sulky, damn-your-eyes look. Kent somebody or other.”
Kent, a gorgeous hunk? To each her own.
Then I realized what else she’d said. “How can you buy all the outfits? It was a silent auction. The highest bidders are entitled to the clothes.”
She let out a careless burble of laughter. “That would be me. I bid on some of them, but the auction was never properly completed, and now I’ve told Kent that I will pay two dollars over the top bids on all of the outfits that we made.”
Rumor had it that at least one of Mona’s ex-husbands was looking after her very well, financially. Still, some of the outfits had received no bids, and Mona would be able to strut around in my Gluttony cocktail dress and matching bloomers for only two dollars. Lucky her.
I asked cautiously, “What are you going to do with them?” Resell them at a profit to the people who made them? No, thanks . . .
“Kent—don’t you just love that name? So distinguished. Kent said I can’t have them yet. The police took the clothes we wore in the fashion show as evidence against that sourpuss who was married to that poor, sweet man who died.”
Sweet? He’d been male, though, which had probably been enough for Mona. “Evidence against Paula?” And Dora and I weren’t suspects? That would be a relief.
“Well, Kent didn’t say that, but of course she did it. She couldn’t have made it more obvious that she hated her husband for the way he ogled the rest of us. As if it were his fault that Threadville just teems with beautiful women, and she just let herself go!”
“But—”
Mona went on as if I hadn’t tried to speak. “I know you think you’re the only one in the world who can solve murders, but I intend to prove that Paula murdered her husband. Then we can have the outfits back.”
“I think they keep evidence until after convictions, and sometimes for years beyond that, in case of appeals.”
“Then you can make them all again! It will be easy for you, having already practiced.”
I didn’t dispute her or point out that the other Threadville proprietors and I hadn’t necessarily enjoyed making those outfits in the first place, and certainly wouldn’t be thrilled about making duplicates. I asked, “Why do you want them? It’s not like they were beautiful or elegant.”
“That’s just it!”
I was missing something. “Just what?”
“That hunky Kent is going to help me put on a play, and we’ll donate most of the proceeds to TADAM’s scholarship fund. What do you think of that?”
I think I may consider moving out of Threadville. “Do you have experience putting on plays?” I asked.
“I wrote one in elementary school and played the lead. How difficult can it be?”
That depends on whether or not you want people to enjoy it . . . “Why do you need the outfits we wore in the fashion show?”
“For costumes. And they’ll only fit certain people, so we all have to be in the play! And guess what the play’s title is!” Without waiting for my answer, she crowed, “The Seven Threadly Sins!”
There’s another Threadville, in Mississippi. Maybe I can convince Haylee and her three mothers to move there with me, and we can all open new shops . . . “But we’re not actors.”
“Not a problem! All you have to do is memorize your lines and act them out. Easy peasy. Besides, I’ll help you. And I’ll have most of the lines, anyway. You’ll barely need to do more than you did in the fashion show—just go onstage and prance around. You hammed it up. You know how to act. You and Edna both do, and the others will learn.”
“Mona, I’m sorry, but I can’t take the time. When In Stitches is not open, I have custom machine embroidery orders to fill.” I did my best to sound firm.
It did no good. “Don’t forget the scholarship fund. I’ve told Kent that my one requirement before I pay for the outfits, if I can wangle them from the police, is that I am to be a member of the scholarship selection committee. At this point, the committee is only the widow, who will be in prison by the time the play winds up, that gorgeous Kent, and that woman with the hair.”
“Loretta.”
“Yes, her. I told him that I’d expect to get a scholarship for our little Ashley, and do you know what he said? He said that girl had a lot of talent, and he’d vote with me. So, we have to do it.”
And it would give us a chance to see more of him and find out if his printing was bold, stylish, and angry. Plus, as annoying as Mona could be, she was a Threadville proprietor, one of us, and we shouldn’t leave the woman alone with Kent, much as she might like that, as long as we suspected he could be a killer.
“I . . . guess I can do it.”
“Great! I’ll tell the others that you’re helping. Want to be assistant director?”
Gulp. “I wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
“No problies. Your hunk and his employees can build the set and be our stagehands. See what you can do to convince him, okay, before I tackle him?” She giggled. “Not physically, of course, but just give me the word anytime you change your mind about him, and I’ll be happy to take over.”
Yes, she’d made that obvious. And she apparently didn’t know that Loretta was the one doing the tackling these days. I wasn’t going to tell her, though. “He works long hours. He might like to do it but not have time.”
“Nonsense. He built that haunted graveyard and chapel for that other gorgeous hunk, Ben. He’ll make time for an important charity like this.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Threadville buses from Erie and from northeastern Ohio stop outside the shop.
“Today’s Threadville tourists are here, Mona. We’d better stop chatting.”
“They are? Okay.” As usual, I didn’t see any of the women head toward Mona’s decorating shop, Country Chic. She kept saying she was going to offer courses and workshops, but after a couple of years in Threadville, she had yet to offer her first one. Nearly everything she sold was already made and decorated, and I didn’t think she had a clue how to actually create anything herself, besides working up a yearning for every man between the ages of twenty and sixty-five.
The women from our morning embroidery class came into In Stitches.
“What are we doing today, Willow?” they asked.
“Crewel work.”
Rosemary, who drove the tour bus from Erie, asked, “How can we do crewel embroidery with machines? Aren’t you supposed to use thick wool yarn? That won’t fit through the eyes of our needles.”
Georgina, a frequent attendee who actually lived within walking distance of the Threadville shops, guessed, “Bobbins? We’re going to work upside down?”
Women clowned, pretending to stand on their heads.
I admitted, “I haven’t tried it myself yet. Is everyone game?”
Of course they were. We chose flower designs that might have been in Jacobean tapestries and hooped our fabric right side down instead of right side up, with our stabilizer on top, in plain view for once.
We threaded bobbins with the heaviest weight of embroidery thread I’d been able to order. It was sort of woolly and came in many beautiful tones.
In machine embroidery, a little of the thread that goes through the needle is pulled around to the back of embroidery motifs so that the bobbin thread does not accidentally show on top.
But now we wanted the bobbin side of the design to actually be the top, so every time we changed to a new color of bobbin thread, we changed the thread in the needle to a matching color of normal weight, matte finish thread. I hoped that, when we turned over our embroidery to view it from the proper side, the thinner thread would hide among the heavier, woolly stitches.
We loaded our designs into our sewing machines and stitched them. They looked pretty from the top, which would eventually be the bottom, but we could hardly wait to take our hoops out of our machines.
My design didn’t look really great, but some of my students who were extremely talented and patient ended up with floral motifs that they really liked. One woman had even managed to put her crewel embroidery on velvet, by pressing the velvet onto a sheet of my new super-sticky stabilizer on the bottom side of her hoop.
Before we broke for lunch, many people bought several spools of heavy embroidery thread.
Rosemary groaned. “Why do you keep doing this to us, Willow? I’m going to need lots more colors of this thread.”
Sometime during the morning, Detective Neffting’s and Police Chief Vicki Smallwood’s cars disappeared from Lake Street.
In my afternoon workshop, we again practiced crewel machine embroidery. I turned down my machine’s top tension and was happier with this version of upside-down crewel embroidery. Adjusting tension was always trial and error, and none of us particularly liked trial and error. We all wanted trial and perfect the first time.
