Seven Threadly Sins

by Janet Bolin

“Did you see Macey touch him?”

  “No.”

  “Not even push him away?”

  “No. Did you find her fingerprints on, say, that smooth, shiny belt buckle he wore?”

  “We don’t have the fingerprint results back yet.”

  “Who did you fingerprint? Everyone at TADAM?” They hadn’t fingerprinted me or any of my friends, as far as I knew, and Ashley would have told me if they’d fingerprinted her.

  Vicki wrote in her notebook. Whenever she ignored my questions, I suspected that she was too professional to tell me I might be right. Police officers could be a pain.

  I suggested, “Just because I didn’t see Macey slap Antonio or bat him away doesn’t mean that she didn’t.”

  Vicki continued writing without looking at me.

  I guessed aloud, “Maybe Macey changed her story about who touched her at the rehearsal because she was afraid of being accused of harming Antonio. After the fashion show, I saw Macey leave her apartment building and jog toward the lake. A short time later, I saw Kent outside the conservatory. This evening, Ashley told me that Macey said that while she was jogging that night, she saw Paula come out of the conservatory in the wee hours of Sunday morning.”

  “Hearsay,” Vicki scoffed. “Circumstantial.”

  I defended myself. “I thought you’d like to know so you could ask Macey herself.”

  “Okay, sure, but we probably already got that information from her.” She jotted something in her notebook, anyway.

  I pressed on. “However, if Macey was out in the wee hours of Sunday morning, she could have been in that conservatory, also. She could have planted the evidence in my cubicle. She could have made up her story of seeing Paula come out of it.”

  “You’re really fond of jumping to conclusions, aren’t you, especially if you can contort those conclusions to fit into one of your many theories.”

  I defended myself. “All of them—Paula, Kent, Loretta, and Macey—were near the conservatory around one thirty. One of them could have put the candy-coated almonds and the vial of allergy medicine with my things. Didn’t you drop Paula off at the TADAM mansion around that time? Maybe Antonio’s key ring included one for the conservatory.”

  “Where do you get all this information?”

  “Edna knew when Gord came home and that you’d dropped him off before you took Paula to TADAM.”

  “And you were out wandering the village at that hour, too.”

  “Yes, but even if I, for some strange reason, had planted the evidence among my belongings, why would I have gone out of my way to report finding them there?”

  “Some investigators might say you were trying to deflect suspicion from yourself.”

  “My fingerprints are probably on the candy package and on the medicine vial, and maybe even on the briefcase. That proves I didn’t put them in my own cubicle. If I’d been trying to implicate someone else, I’d have wiped off my own fingerprints.” I didn’t mention that I would have wiped them if I hadn’t heard someone coming.

  Vicki stared at me like I’d flown in from outer space. “Maybe. But if you’d been trying to implicate someone else, you might have left all the earlier fingerprints in place.”

  I shook my head as if to clear lingering skunk fumes. “You give me too much credit. Someone, not me, attacked Paula last night, and I’m betting it’s the same person who arranged Antonio’s death. Were they able to remove that stabilizer from Paula’s skin?”

  “Yes. Her skin was a little red. It may burn or itch, but she’ll heal.”

  “So? Who did she say attacked her?”

  Just as I feared, Vicki didn’t answer my question. Instead, she asked, “Has any of your stabilizer gone missing?”

  I slapped my forehead. “I was tired after that late night. I forgot to check.”

  My inventory was computerized, so it was easy to tell how many rolls of that kind of stabilizer I should have. I went into the storeroom and counted, then came back out to the rack where I displayed it. I counted twice. Three times. I heaved a big sigh. I didn’t want the assault against Paula to be connected to In Stitches, but it was. “One roll is missing,” I admitted.

  “Could you have taken it yourself, maybe downstairs to work on a project?”

  “No. I keep good records.”

  “I thought so. What do you imagine happened to it? And when?”

  “I can’t tell when, but the theft had to have been recent. I ordered that kind of stabilizer for the first time a month ago. I’m guessing it went missing yesterday when Paula and her students were here. I believe that Paula hid a folded sheaf of papers, Antonio’s business plan, underneath a bolt of fabric. Either she or one of her students could have taken the roll of stabilizer. I didn’t watch all of them the entire time they were here. And she was carrying a bag big enough to hide it in.”

  “What about your other customers?”

  “My regulars have never shoplifted, although I suppose stranger things have happened. And I didn’t creep around spying on new customers.”

  She glanced up at my white cathedral ceilings. “No security cameras?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you need some.”

  “Close the barn door after the horse is stolen? Luckily, stabilizer isn’t as expensive as a horse.”

  She stroked the top of a sewing machine. “How much is a roll of that kind of stabilizer?”

  I told her and she whistled.

  I justified it. “Aren’t the things we need supposed to be expensive, to prove that we’re doing something important?” I added in sly tones, “Like police cars and equipment?” Acting afraid that she was about to swat me with her notebook, I scooted to the cutting table and opened a drawer. Of course my engraved scissors weren’t there. I kept them downstairs in my guest room closet. At least, that was where I’d last seen them. I asked, “Were you able to figure out whose scissors those were?”

  “Three guesses.”

  “Mine should be downstairs. Paula took her students to Haylee’s shop yesterday, also. Someone left a business plan there. Kent visited The Stash later. Paula or her students or Kent could have hidden the business plan and/or picked up Haylee’s scissors.”

  Vicki merely tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

  “They were Haylee’s,” I concluded. “Engraved with her name.”

  Again, Vicki refrained from either affirming it or denying it. Looking down at her notebook, she asked, “Was Kent in your store yesterday?”

  “Not unless he was here while Rosemary took over during my lunch hour.” Rosemary often worked in the Threadville shops while we had our lunch breaks. In return, we gave her an employee discount plus wages. She spent more in our shops than she earned, however, so it was a win for everyone.

  “Can you give me Rosemary’s name and address?”

  “Sure. She lives in Erie.”

  “All the better for the staties. They’re based there.”

  Was Kent guilty of both Antonio’s death and the attack on Paula? Maybe both cases would be wrapped up this evening. I asked, “Did the scissors have fingerprints on them?”

  Vicki didn’t answer.

  “I guess that means they’d been wiped,” I hazarded.

  Again, no answer from Vicki. Did that mean I’d guessed right?

  I tried another question. “How about the plastic packaging for the stabilizer?”

  “Wouldn’t you expect your fingerprints to be on that?”

  “Yes, and maybe the prints of anyone who handled it before it was shipped to me, and from customers who examined it. But what about inside the packaging? Someone ripped the backing from the stabilizer, wadded up the backing, and tossed it on the floor. Did they wipe off every fingerprint? Or from the stabilizer itself that they pressed over Paula’s mouth and around her wrists and ankles?”

&
nbsp; “That’s a little more complicated. The lab’s working on it. We won’t get those results soon, either.”

  “Let me guess. The doorknob on the carriage house had been wiped, but they found nice clear prints on that. Those will be mine.”

  “Should I send the fingerprint tech to take your prints?”

  “You can. I have nothing to hide.”

  “Where were you and Haylee at nine last night?”

  31

  Did Vicki think that Haylee and I had ganged up on Paula? My answer was a little heated. “Neither Haylee nor I would have bound and gagged anyone, with stabilizer or anything else. We were in The Stash with Opal, Naomi, and Edna.”

  Vicki reminded me, “Those three are Haylee’s mothers, and they treat you like a daughter, too.”

  “We were also with Ben Rondelson.”

  “Would he lie for you or Haylee?”

  “I doubt it.” Why would Vicki suspect that Haylee and I might have attacked Paula? Surely, Vicki knew we would never do anything even remotely like that. Had Paula blamed us? I guessed, “Paula may have heard our voices outside the carriage house when she was banging her head against the wall. Maybe she somehow connected us with the attack. But it had obviously happened earlier, or she wouldn’t have been inside the carriage house banging her head against a wall.” I tapped my fingernails on the butcher block counter. “How did she get into that predicament without noticing who put her there?”

  “You’re sure she didn’t know who put her there?”

  “If she says it was Haylee and me, she certainly did not.”

  Vicki only watched me. Was she waiting for a confession?

  She was going to wait a long time. I suggested, “What if . . . Paula somehow managed to wrap herself in stabilizer?”

  Still, Vicki said nothing.

  Okay, if I had to do all the talking, I would. “It doesn’t make sense for a murderer to immobilize Paula and trust that she’d still be there when he came back to . . . do whatever he’d planned to do to her.”

  “He?”

  “Or she. If Paula had figured out who killed Antonio, and then Paula threatened that person, wouldn’t the murderer have silenced Paula right then and there? Or at least made it harder for anyone to find her? That stabilizer is sticky. The adhesive is strong, and the stabilizer itself is tough. But I suspect that anyone with any strength at all could have gotten out of it. Paula was neatly sitting against a wall, in as comfortable a position as possible under the circumstances. Her hands were bound on her lap, not behind her. Again, comfortable. And there was that long piece of stabilizer stuck to the handle of the lawn mower, easily within her reach, as if she’d prepared it before she got her wrists and hands stuck together, and then she’d found that she didn’t need it.”

  “That could have been the way the attacker worked,” Vicki responded. “If you were going to stick someone together with stabilizer or duct tape or anything like that, you wouldn’t want to be wrestling with the sticky stuff at the same time you were wrestling with your victim.”

  “I don’t like your use of the word ‘your.’”

  “One’s.”

  “And you didn’t write down a word of my theory.”

  “Theory,” she repeated. “No, I didn’t.”

  “So, should we try it?”

  “We? Are you planning to assault a police officer, or have one assault you?”

  “Neither. I’ll put some of it on myself to see if I can do it, and then get out of it. Did you find out from the EMTs how to get the adhesive off skin?”

  “Nope.”

  I pictured myself arriving at Clay’s picnic with stabilizer around my ankles, wrists, and hands, and frowned. “I’ll stick the stabilizer to my socks and the hems of my jeans, which was how Paula’s ankles were bound together. But this is not my preferred use of my expensive super-sticky stabilizer.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.” But she didn’t. Instead, she took photos of every step while I removed a roll of stabilizer from the rack, opened it, cut a four-foot-long length, peeled off the backing, then carefully wrapped the sticky mess around my ankles.

  “Lucky thing for you that you’re a police officer,” I muttered. “Or I might accuse you of planning to post those pictures on social media so you and your friends could get a good laugh.”

  She took another photo. “The only friends who will see them are in the state police.”

  “How’s Toby Gartener? And why isn’t he the detective on this case?”

  “He’s fine. He wasn’t on duty when Antonio’s death was ruled a possible homicide, so he didn’t get the case.”

  I patted the stabilizer into place. “There.”

  She asked in a sweetly encouraging voice, “Aren’t you going to try gagging yourself?”

  “No way. I’m going to see if I can pull my ankles apart without touching them with my hands. Or banging my head against a wall.”

  “She didn’t have that much of the stuff on her ankles.”

  “Thanks for telling me that now that I’ve immobilized myself.”

  “No problem. If this experiment doesn’t work, I’ll suggest that some rookie state troopers should try it, with only the amount of stabilizer Paula had around her jeans.”

  First I tried to pull my ankles away from each other. It was harder than I’d guessed. As I’d already told Vicki, that stabilizer was tough. I looked up at Vicki.

  She held her hands up. “Keep trying.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask for help,” I said with as much dignity as a person sitting on the floor with her ankles bound together with super-sticky stabilizer could.

  I tried pulling one foot toward my bum, but both feet moved together.

  I rubbed my ankles up and down against each other, and before I had to humble myself to ask Vicki to pass me some scissors, the stabilizer began rolling onto itself and coming unstuck from my jeans.

  Within minutes, I was free, and I hadn’t used my hands.

  “Ha!” I shouted. “Paula could have rescued herself. But she didn’t. Either she’s the biggest wimp on earth, or she planned the whole thing, planned that she’d be discovered like that, and then she’d blame Haylee and me. I’m guessing that she’d already told Detective Neffting that we must have seen Antonio’s business plan and had killed him because of it. And this was after she’d hidden copies of his business plan in our shops. She’s trying to add more ‘evidence’ that we killed Antonio.” I raised one dramatic finger. “And why would she do that?”

  Vicki only shook her head. She was still not writing in her notebook. But she did take a picture of me in that heroic pose.

  If she wasn’t going to answer, I would have to. “To deflect suspicion from herself, because she’s the one who made certain that Antonio’s medicine wouldn’t be near him when he ate the almonds she placed in his pocket!”

  Vicki didn’t write any of it down. Instead, she headed toward the front door. “See you, Willow. Stay out of trouble.”

  I bent down and tried to pull sticky goo off my jeans. “Wah! I’m not sure how to get the rest of the adhesive off my clothes.”

  “You’re the expert on fabric and fashion.” She aimed her camera at my gummy ankles, snapped several pictures in rapid succession, then left.

  “Thanks!” I called after her.

  She turned and waved.

  I went downstairs to my apartment and put my jeans and socks in the laundry room to worry about later. I had just enough time for a quick shower with lots of lather in my hair. Knowing my hair would stink most when wet, I dried it thoroughly and then braided it in a tight braid in back.

  In clean jeans and a sky blue sweater that Opal had knit for me, I leashed the dogs and took them out the patio door.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Dora called from her porch.

  I went closer.

&nb
sp; “I smell skunk,” she said. She wagged her finger at the dogs. “Did you two get into mischief?”

  “They didn’t,” I answered. “Haylee and I did. Last night.”

  “Your dogs are on leashes. Where are you off to? I’d say I hoped it was to make up with your young man, but you’re going to have to wait until you smell better. That redhead may have the advantage over you at the moment.”

  I had to confess to Dora that the dogs and I were on our way to a picnic with Clay. “He’s bringing the food.”

  She folded her arms and a dreamy expression crossed her face. “No man ever brought me food. Have a great time. But don’t go near him.”

  I laughed. “Since you detected the smell from so far away, I guess I’d better stay on the opposite end of the beach from him.”

  She made shooing motions with both hands. “Run along. And have fun.”

  I took the dogs out the back gate so we could walk along the hiking trail. I wanted to hurry to Clay, but the dogs had to sniff every bush and tree along the wide, shaded trail.

  They didn’t speed their pace much when we reached the sand at the shore of the lake, either, but I told them we might be late to see Clay. Hearing his name, they perked up their noses and their tails and let me lead them to the harder sand at the water’s edge, where we jogged.

  Clay was already sitting at a table, which he’d covered with a cheerful yellow and blue plaid tablecloth and what looked like enough food for ten people. Was it a good sign that only two bottles of wine were visible?

  My plan of not going close to him was ruined by the dogs, who yelped and rushed toward him, their tails waving madly. Dogs had to be leashed while on the beach, so I had to go along.

  Letting them sniff his hands, Clay looked up at me with a rueful smile. “Better not come too close,” he said. “I smell like a skunk.”

  32

  Clay had given me the perfect opportunity to confess that I smelled like a skunk, too, and it wouldn’t matter if I came closer to him. Instead, I fastened the dog’s leashes around the leg of the picnic table, scooted onto the bench across from him, and blurted, “What happened?”