by Janet Bolin
Then again, maybe credit wasn’t quite the right word, and it was certainly not one that Haylee would have used under the circumstances. I was doing a less-than-stellar job of looking after Haylee’s most headstrong mother.
“This casserole is hot,” Edna chirped, “so we’re just taking it to the kitchen.” She was really good at playing innocent.
Tiffany knew that she’d told us to leave the food outside, but she didn’t give us away. Her face a brilliant red, she brushed past us. “Stay right there. I’ll get potholders.”
Arms folded across his chest, Plug stared at us from the back corner of the dining room. He didn’t seem conscious of his children’s very vocal sorrow.
Edna mouthed, “Come on,” and slid her feet quickly in the direction Tiffany had gone.
I managed to go with her.
Ahead of us, Tiffany cooed, but the children cried louder. Before we could catch up and see for ourselves that they were okay, Tiffany rushed toward us with a pair of oven mitts.
“Careful,” Edna warned. “These pans are hot, and not very sturdy.”
Biting her lip, frowning, Tiffany removed the casserole from our grasp, revealing the tin of cookies. “There’s more?” She flicked a glance toward the dining room. “Bring it in, I suppose. I gotta see about those kids.” She toted the casserole toward the back of the house.
Edna marched along after her. Her worry about the children, whose father hadn’t emerged from the dining room, was contagious. With my tin of cookies, I brought up the rear.
I barely took in the exquisitely crafted kitchen curtains and tablecloth with their gorgeous machine embroidery, and I didn’t have time to dwell on the loss of the talented Darlene Coddlefield. Her three youngest children appeared to be inconsolable. The little girl and smallest boy sat at the table. Still sobbing, the five-year-old boy had abandoned his seat to stand between his siblings and pat their shoulders. They hadn’t finished their cookies and milk.
Edna swooped to them. “Oh, you poor dears!” She grabbed napkins from a yellow holder shaped like a duck and patted the kids’ faces. The crying subsided into sniffles and hiccups.
Tiffany plucked the smaller boy out of his seat and stood him on the floor. “Now, now,” she said. “I told you I was coming, and here I am. Come on, be a man.” She lifted the little girl out of her booster seat and set her on the floor beside her brothers.
Misty-eyed, Edna looked ready to hug anyone who needed it, but Tiffany grasped Edna’s wrist and pulled her toward a screen door. “Thank you two for your help, but it would be better for all of us if you left us to mourn our own way.” She opened the door to a covered wooden porch sheltering bikes and trikes in every possible size. “Follow the walkway to the right, and you’ll come out near your car.”
Edna was not going silently. Still in Tiffany’s grip, she smiled down at the children shadowing Tiffany. “You were all very grown up yesterday, showing off your beautiful dress and your handsome shirts.”
The girl wrapped her arms around Tiffany’s leg and buried her face in the side of Tiffany’s skin-tight jeans. “I want my dwess back! That nasty lady took it!” The child must have meant Felicity, who had said she was taking the prize-winning outfits on tour after Darlene washed and ironed them again.
Tiffany let go of Edna’s arm and picked up the little girl. “I’ll make you more dresses,” she murmured.
Edna swallowed and opened her mouth. Before she could think of another reason to stay, like promising new dwesses embellished with buttons and bows, I pulled her out the door.
“Ouch,” she murmured when we were beside the house on a walkway between zinnias and petunias, their reds, oranges, and purples neon-bright under the August evening sun. “That Tiffany has claws, not fingers.” Angry marks blazed on Edna’s wrist.
“Maybe I did it,” I said. “I’m sorry. But let’s get out of here before she chases after us. Or Plug does.”
Edna came, dusting her arm as if she could brush off the claw marks or prevent them from turning black and blue. “You didn’t do it, Willow. She did. She was vicious.” Rounding the corner, she stopped. Edna was seldom speechless. Her mouth opened, but only a little hiss came out.
Hands on hips, feet spread, Plug stood with his back to us, right in front of her car, like he was about to open the hood.
Or had just closed it.
Edna was, for once, as still as a statue. Head up, I kept walking.
I heard Edna run toward me. I put my hand behind my back and spread my fingers out like an inverted gesture to halt.
She grasped my hand. Her breathing became a thin, high whistle.
Squeezing her suddenly icy hand, I spoke to Plug. “We’re sorry about your wife.” And for barging into your house and seeing you kissing the hired help.
He whipped around to scowl at me.
Steadfastly, I went on, “We knew how…guessed how…” All I could think of was this middle-aged man groping a woman who looked less than ten years older than his firstborn son.
Edna came to my rescue. “We figured your household would be in an uproar and no one would be able to cook. At least not…Well, we figured you’d be too distracted…” Now it was her turn to break off, undoubtedly remembering what, rather who, his distraction had been.
I took up the narration of excuses, not that we should have needed to excuse ourselves. Our intentions had been good. We hadn’t meant to snoop. Not that much, anyway. I blundered on. “We own some of the sewing stores in town, and met your children yesterday. They’re wonderful.”
Behind my back, Edna crossed my fingers for me. If I hadn’t been trying to appear sympathetic, I might have laughed. Plug’s older children had been far from wonderful. The little ones, however, seemed sweet. That five-year-old trying to comfort the toddlers had been especially heart-wrenching.
Plug moved to the red SUV in his driveway and leaned against it. He could have been bracing himself, but one of his hands managed to rest beneath the words Fire Chief. “I know who you are.” His voice was genial, and he managed a lip quirk that might have been a smile, but his eyes were sly. And chilling.
I tried to look like someone who would never dream of scolding a recently widowed man for grabbing a kiss.
Pulling her car keys from a pocket, Edna stalked around me, past him, and to her driver’s door. I strode to the passenger side and shut myself in.
“Take it easy driving,” I whispered. “We don’t know what he could have done to your car.”
She turned the car around. “Nothing feels wrong with it.” She drove down his driveway and out onto the road. “But…”
How long had Plug been near her car? Five minutes, tops. What could he have done, slashed a few tires? I peered into the mirror on my side. “Both tires on this side look okay.”
“I’ll pull off so we can check everything, but I don’t want to stop near Plug’s house. He might follow us.” Now she had no trouble staying in her lane. “That man.” The anger in her voice was enough to set fire to the field beside us. “With a girl that young.”
“She could be twenty-five,” I pointed out. “And she didn’t appear to mind.” I fiddled with the window button. “But, how terrible! His wife died last night.”
Edna threw me a knowing look, her eyebrows arched high. “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Dr. Wrinklesides said Darlene’s death appeared to have been an accident.”
“Maybe she saw her husband with Tiffany and had a heart attack.” She tightened her hands on the steering wheel and gasped.
A vehicle was racing toward us.
In our lane.
9
EDNA AND I WERE ABOUT TO BE CRUNCHED into a metal sandwich.
Her knuckles white, she swerved her car onto the shoulder.
Russ Coddlefield’s pickup zipped past, only inches from us.
Russ veered back into his own lane and sped down the highway. His laughter blew back on the hot, dry wind.
His mother had died the night be
fore, and now he was amusing himself by forcing us off the road. Last night, he had driven recklessly around Elderberry Bay. What other dangerous pranks could Russ have pulled?
Muttering choice phrases that I’d never heard from her before, Edna turned off the engine. “Let’s see if that boy’s father damaged my car.” She got out. I did, too.
We met at the rear bumper. “Nothing looks out of place.” The usual cheer was gone from her voice. We each continued our own circle, then Edna reached into the driver’s side and popped the hood. I lifted it. Together we peered underneath it. I understood sewing machines, but the workings of a car baffled me.
Edna seemed equally perplexed. “I’m not sure I’d know if anything has changed, but it looks okay to me.”
She slammed the hood. If Plug had closed it, he had done it more quietly. Then again, we hadn’t heard much besides the children’s anguish.
We climbed back into the car. Edna was probably as eager as I was to return to the safety of Threadville.
Ahead, Lake Erie and the sky above it were hazy blue, a perfect contrast with the golden fields, the dark green evergreens, and the yellowing leaves of late summer.
Edna asked, “Was Plug threatening us another way, besides acting like he might harm my car? If one of our shops caught fire, would the fire department take its time arriving?”
“Our shops won’t catch fire. Our apartments, either. We’re careful. But let’s make certain that our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors have fresh batteries. We’ll have to tell the others to check their batteries, too—Haylee, Opal, Naomi, and Susannah. And Mona, also, in case he lumps her in with the rest of us.”
Mona. I hadn’t taken the application she’d given me seriously, but maybe, for the sake of all of us with textile shops, Haylee and I should become volunteer firefighters. I wasn’t going to tell Edna, Opal, or Naomi, though. They’d try to dissuade us.
“Plug may think that Mona’s shop resembles ours,” Edna said. “I don’t. The rest of us give classes twice a day, four days a week. She doesn’t offer even one class a week. Nearly everything in Country Chic is already finished and decorated.”
“She sells home décor fabrics,” I said.
“She hasn’t a clue how to make draperies or upholstery. And do people hop off the Threadville tour bus and head to Country Chic? No. They divide themselves among In Stitches, The Stash, Tell a Yarn, Buttons and Bows, and Batty About Quilts.” She tapped out a rhythm on her steering wheel. “Still, you may have a point. Our philandering fire chief could simply ignore calls from any of us, including Mona.”
And what about Sam the Ironmonger’s hardware store, between my shop and Mona’s? I would hate to see Sam come to harm. Maybe he wouldn’t. He had owned that hardware store since long before Plug was born, and everybody loved him. “We’re probably being silly,” I said.
“Silly can save lives.”
“Sounds like a motto. I’ll embroider it in a candlewicking stitch for the Harvest Festival.” That broke the tension. We laughed, and she pulled into Threadville.
While the dogs wrestled in my backyard, I dug out the fire department’s flyer. Mona had thoughtfully given me two applications. I shut Sally and Tally into my apartment and ran across the street to Haylee’s.
She was sewing in the huge classroom on one side of her shop. I handed her an application. “Here’s a new way for us to have fun.”
She glanced at it and understood immediately. “What a great way to learn more about Plug Coddlefield and the death of his wife!”
I told her about Plug’s possible threat to all of us. She said she’d remind everyone to make sure they had fresh batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. I described Plug and his young nanny.
Haylee wrinkled her nose. “Ewwww. Two people who might have wanted to murder Plug’s wife.”
“Dr. Wrinklesides said Darlene’s death was an accident.”
“What if it wasn’t? What if a murderer is running around loose? We should catch him, or them, before they kill someone else. Like us.”
It was as good a justification for joining the fire department as any, which was to say it wasn’t very good.
The applications didn’t require much information besides our names, addresses, and phone numbers. Small print warned of exams that would test our firefighting knowledge and physical fitness. “Push-ups,” Haylee guessed.
“Ugh. I’d better practice, though Mona is convinced that you and I must be strong from heaving bolts of fabric around.”
Haylee flexed her muscles. She had substantial biceps.
I copied her. To my surprise, I had substantial biceps, too. “Wow.” I squeezed my right arm with my left hand. “Running a store really is better exercise than an office job was.”
“It’s better than everything about that office job.” She never tired of reminding me that I’d been reluctant to give up the security of a salary and bonuses for the uncertainties of retail sales. Security hadn’t been quite the right word for our jobs at Quinlan Financial Management, though. Together, we had investigated our boss and had been instrumental in putting him behind bars for stealing money from his—and our—clients.
Haylee had started the first of the Threadville shops shortly after Jasper Quinlan was arrested, and her mothers had joined her and opened their own shops. I’d stubbornly continued working at Jasper’s old firm, under new management, until after his trial and incarceration. Then, thanks to those bonuses and to my growing online embroidery business, I’d moved to Threadville and opened In Stitches. New customers discovered us every day. Best of all, Haylee and I both loved living and working here.
We finished filling out our applications. I went home, leashed the dogs, then walked them down Lake Street and around the corner to the fire station. It was closed up tight. I dropped our applications in the mail slot.
After a quick supper on the patio while the dogs played around me, I examined the cords and trims I’d purchased from Edna.
One way to create more authentic candlewicking stitches would be to zigzag over the trims with matching thread so the stitches would hardly be discernible, but I really wanted to find a way of forcing my embroidery machine to do the work, or most of it.
Unable to come up with a method I liked, I went to bed.
The inevitable siren from the fire hall woke me up in the wee hours. What was burning this time, another dry field?
Fortunately, I didn’t belong to the fire department yet and didn’t have to race off into the darkness, even if it might mean riding on a fire truck. I allowed myself to lie comfortably, imagining different ways of representing candlewicking. Drifting off to sleep, I pictured using the puffiest of the cording I’d bought from Edna, and satin stitching over it every quarter inch to squish it down. The unsquished parts would be similar to the lumps in knotted candle wicks.
In the morning, freshly confident with my nighttime idea, which, though labor-intensive, might work, I felt ready to tackle almost anything, including becoming a volunteer firefighter. I flopped down on the floor and tried push-ups. I could have done more if I hadn’t been laughing at Sally’s determination to lick my face. I collapsed in a heap with my two wriggling dogs, then took them upstairs and began sweeping the shop floor.
Susannah helped in my shop on Fridays, and came in wearing an orange linen shirt. I complimented her on it. Before she’d assembled it, I’d helped her embroider the fabric in an allover design of small, pretty flowers.
“I love working with linen.” Shadows under her eyes showed that she’d probably spent another night grieving over the death of her marriage.
I knew something that might cheer her up a little. “We’ve received another shipment of linen, heavier for fall and winter.”
She ran to the storeroom and dragged out a bulky package of multihued bolts, all shrink-wrapped together.
A lanky man ambled in and introduced himself as Isaac Sonnenberg, deputy fire chief. “Congratulations, Willow,” he said, his lon
g face a picture of earnest solemnity. “We’ve accepted your application to join the fire department.” His straight brown hair seemed to grow every which way. That, combined with the questioning pale blue eyes and the long arms and legs made him charmingly boyish, though I suspected he was in his mid-thirties at least.
“Haylee, too?” I asked.
He nodded. “Both of you.”
Susannah straightened from unwrapping the bolts of linen. Her lips and forehead puckered. I wished Isaac had brought the news when I was alone. Susannah might tell Haylee’s three moms that Haylee and I were joining the fire department. They wouldn’t approve.
Isaac tilted his head. My reaction was apparently too slow.
“That’s great,” I lied. “We have physical fitness and written exams to pass first, don’t we, before it’s official?”
He flapped his big, bony hands toward the floor as if my concerns could be swept away with my broom. “You’ll do fine.” He pulled a folded sheaf of papers from the back pocket of his jeans. “Here’s the manual. It covers all the questions that will be on the test, like ‘What is a fire truck?’” His gave his head a shake to show he was joking. “Training’s Tuesday evening. I’m sorry it’s such short notice, but if you can’t make it, maybe another time?”
He was offering me a way out. I told myself to snatch it.
“I can make it.” I was never very good at heeding my own warnings.
Isaac was as tall as I was, maybe taller. I could look directly into his eyes. He gave me the manual and told me to go to the old ball field near the state forest at six on Tuesday evening. “Will you need a ride?” he asked.
“I have a car.” I raised my chin. “It will get me to fires, too.” Or Haylee and I could ride together in her appropriately red pickup truck.
He blushed. “That wasn’t part of the test. I figured you wouldn’t have applied if you had to run to fires.” He scuffed his shoes against the floor like I’d forced him to stay after school. “Or walk,” he added. He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a business card. “Here, in case you need to get in touch with me without phoning 911.”
