by Janet Bolin
Susannah studied her feet for a couple of heartbeats. When she raised her head, panic struggled with horror in her eyes. “Oh, Willow,” she whispered. “I’m so afraid the police will find out what I did.”
25
SUSANNAH WASN’T THE ONLY PERSON WHO couldn’t hide her emotions. Her confession had shocked me. “What did you do, Susannah?”
She darted a glance toward my row of sewing machines. “I didn’t hurt a machine or anything. I didn’t hurt Darlene. But I threatened her.”
“How?” I needed to sit down. I leaned back against a shelf of lightweight linens.
“Those charities Darlene wanted money for? They weren’t charities. The money was going right to her. That’s how she could afford a nanny and all those expensive sewing machines and everything. I…I wrote to her and demanded my contribution back.” She sounded and looked absolutely wretched.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing. I only mailed the letter the day before she died. I wish I hadn’t sent it at all.”
There was only one thing she could do. “You’re going to have to tell Chief Smallwood.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Detective Gartener, then. He’s not as scary as he looks.”
She repeated, “I can’t. They’ll think I killed her, and I didn’t.”
“What did you say in the letter?”
“I didn’t blackmail her or anything. I should have said I would report her to the authorities if she didn’t repay my contribution. But I didn’t know which authorities to threaten her with—the state police? The IRS? The FBI? So I just said I would take action. That could be read the wrong way.”
It certainly could. “That’s why you have to talk to the police before they find the letter. Tell them what you said and what you really meant.”
She kept shaking her head. “Maybe they’ve already read it.”
“You should still tell them about it.”
She pulled a strand of her long, curly hair into her mouth, clamped her lips around it, and shook her head.
I pointed out, “You might not be the only donor who was upset at giving money to a fake charity, and someone else may have been more than upset.” Might have gone into a murderous rage? “Tell the police what you know about the charities. It could be important.”
“I guess you’re right.” She was saved by the bell, or at least by my front door chimes. She rushed off to greet customers, and I went downstairs to share lunch outside with my dogs. It was another glorious, if rainless, day.
When I went back to In Stitches, Susannah headed for the door. I caught up and murmured to her, “Call Smallwood. She’s not an ogre.”
She gasped. “I’m supposed to be back at Batty About Quilts right this very minute.” She ran out the front door.
If she didn’t confess, what could I do? Should I do? Other than keep my eyes open for that letter when I delivered the Chandler Champion to Tiffany…
After the Threadville shops closed for the day, I phoned Edna, who was, of course, eager to help deliver the Chandler Champion. She offered to drive, but I said that, no, it was my turn. I wasn’t certain I ever again wanted to be a passenger in a car Edna was driving.
We’d barely made it out of the village when I heard the distinctive keening erupt from the siren on top of the fire station. Fields on both sides of the road were still parched. Off to the south, dark smoke rose. That had to be where the fire trucks would head.
We drove down the Coddlefields’ long, winding driveway. No fire chief’s SUV. Russ’s truck wasn’t in front of the house, either.
I parked behind a small black sedan. Preferring to be certain that Tiffany was home before we lugged the heavy sewing machine to the house, Edna and I walked up the gravel driveway past the sedan. Its engine ticked.
Ever the sleuth, Edna said, “Someone else has just arrived.”
We climbed the porch steps. Inside the house, children screamed with despair.
Edna and I looked at each other. “This is too much,” she muttered under her breath. “Those kids are not being well cared for.”
“It’s probably hard to keep them from crying,” I reminded her.
Heaving a sympathetic sigh, she knocked on the screen door’s wooden frame.
No one came, and the children continued bawling. I pushed the button for the door bell.
Tiffany sprinted down the hall from the back of the house and opened the door wide. Her face was flushed. “Thanks for…” She looked down at our feet. “I thought you were bringing my…” She turned redder. “Um, bringing the kids their sewing machine.”
I explained, “We wanted to make sure you were here before we got it out of the car. That sewing machine is heavy.”
She nodded twice, a decisive gesture. “I’ll carry it.”
Edna flung her arms straight out like she was flying. “No. You—” She paused, then repeated the word emphatically. “You go comfort those children.”
Edna undoubtedly thought she was being subtle.
I turned quickly so that neither of them could see my horrified amusement. Calling over my shoulder, “We’ll be right back,” I trotted toward my car.
Edna followed me. “Shall I take one side of the carton and you take the other?”
I remembered being pulled around by a hot lasagna. “I’ll carry it. Can you open and close doors for me?” I tugged the carton across the backseat until I got both hands underneath it.
“Good idea,” she crowed. “We can be in the kitchen with those kids before she returns to the front door.”
Carton in my arms, I staggered toward the porch. Edna slammed my car door, then flitted ahead of me. Before I got anywhere near the screen door, she had pulled it open slowly, minimizing its squeaks. I walked into the foyer. No one, I was glad to see, had taken down the framed antique linens that Darlene must have loved.
Tiffany rushed toward us from the direction of the kitchen. “Sorry, I should have gotten the door for you.” She must have succeeded in comforting the children. I didn’t hear even the tiniest sob.
“Where would you like this?” I managed not to drop the thing. I was beginning to fervently dislike Chandler Champions.
“Leave it on the table in the dining room. I’ll carry it up to the sewing room later. It’s way up on the third floor.”
“We can take it,” Edna offered.
We could?
Edna added another of her subtle hints. “You have those kids…”
Tiffany brushed hair from her face. “They’re fine. I sent them to the basement to watch TV. It’s the only thing that takes their minds off”—she made a sad little moue of her mouth—“you know. Their mother.”
“Oh, dear,” Edna said. “We do know.”
The Chandler Champion must have gained three hundred pounds since I removed it from the car. “I don’t think you can carry it upstairs by yourself, Tiffany,” I cautioned her. “Maybe you should leave it for Plug.”
That did it. Tiffany suggested that she and I could carry it together. She slid her hands underneath the carton. Edna zipped around us and up the stairs as if she hoped to uncover important clues to Darlene’s death, like maybe a written confession.
We passed bedrooms. Pink frills and bunk beds in one, blue trucks and bunk beds in another. All of the beds were covered in quilts that Darlene must have made. She’d outdone herself with the intricate quilt on the king-sized bed in a large corner room.
Edna pounded up the flight above us. With determination, gritting of teeth, and tensing of muscles, Tiffany and I carried that five-ton sewing machine up the top flight of stairs without tumbling back down.
The sewing room took up the entire south end of the attic, with high, sloping ceilings, and windows on three sides, plenty of storage, and a dressmaker’s dummy in Darlene’s size.
I could barely wait to set the sewing machine down, preferably at table height, but apparently, no one had tidied away Darlene’s work. All three tables w
ere loaded—a top-of-the-line sewing and embroidery machine from a reliable manufacturer, a serger, fabrics, patterns, cutting mats, notions, and the pieces of a small dress cut from pink calico with tiny lavender flowers printed over it. Would anyone ever finish the little girl’s dwess? Again, I felt sorry for the woman whose life had ended too soon. If she’d lived to a ripe old age, she would have had plenty of time to finish all of these projects and begin many more.
Breathing heavily after the climb, Tiffany stared at a bare corner. “I forgot! They took the table the machine was on.”
Edna bunched fabrics together and made room on another table. “Who took it?”
“The investigators.”
Edna’s eyes widened, and I could see she was wondering the same thing I was. Why would the police take a sewing table as evidence?
26
FEARING THAT TIFFANY WOULD PICK UP ON Edna’s and my silent communication about the police removing Darlene’s sewing table for evidence, I looked away from Edna. I hoped that Darlene had appreciated her sewing room, a dream of natural light, plenty of space, work tables, and built-in cabinets.
Tiffany and I eased the carton onto the table Edna had cleared, then rested, huffing and puffing, against the table. Edna trotted to the cut-out dwess. “Adorable!”
“I’m going to finish it,” Tiffany said.
A phone rang in a room in the northern end of the attic. The room’s door was open enough for me to see a cluttered desk and at least two phones. Was this where the charity work was done? Would police investigators go through all those papers on the desk, or had they already taken away what they wanted? If only I could spend a few minutes in that room, maybe I could find the letter Susannah had sent to Darlene…And do what with it?
Following my glance toward the phone, Tiffany flapped a hand in dismissal. “The answering service will get it.” Maybe it was just as well that I wouldn’t be tempted to remove evidence.
Edna asked, “Why did the investigators take a sewing table?”
Because something about it was wrong. Gartener and Smallwood had hinted that they had evidence of murderous intent besides the obvious sabotage of the sewing machine. Like maybe they knew that someone had sawed the table’s legs partway through and…
“It collapsed,” Tiffany said, as if collapsing sewing tables were a common occurrence. “That’s how the sewing machine ended up on top of Darlene.”
“Did you see it on her?” Edna was apparently abandoning every attempt at subtlety or tact.
“I was away, at my apartment. I’ve moved here now so I can be here evenings and nights if Plug gets called out to a fire, but then I was only here days.” She blushed.
“So this happened in the evening?” Edna asked her.
“Yes. That day, I took the little kids to storytelling at the library at four thirty. I brought them home to Darlene around six. Plug got home around ten.”
The blush deepened as if Plug had been with Tiffany that evening. Maybe they’d told the police they were together to establish their alibis.
“Plug found Darlene. He was, like, devastated. I asked the kids who put them to bed that night. They said that Darlene did. She usually tucked them in around eight, then headed up here to sew.”
Edna continued her cross-examination. “Do you know who else was here that evening?”
“As far as I know, only Darlene and the five youngest kids. The three little ones were sleeping and the eight-year-old and twelve-year-old were in the basement watching TV. They didn’t hear anything. Which reminds me. I’d better get downstairs. I can’t hear the little ones from up here.”
Edna offered, “While you’re with them, want us to set this machine up for you and test it?”
“No, that’s fine.” Tiffany engaged me with her clear-eyed look. “A manual should be packed with it, right?”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I checked. And this is a floor model, and has been working perfectly.” And it should continue to…
Tiffany herded us downstairs.
In the foyer, Edna made another attempt to stay. “Is there anything else we can do? I used to play games with our daughter.” That would be Haylee. “We could entertain the children for a half hour or so while you—” She glanced toward the dining room. “Set the table and prepare dinner.”
Tiffany edged us toward the front door. “That’s all under control, and they set the table. It’s always been their job. I try to keep up their routine as best I can.”
“Have you been with them long?” Edna made her interrogation into a polite, sympathetic conversation. I had to admire her persistence.
“I’ve been their au pair for two years.”
With a hand on her wrist, I urged Edna toward the porch. “They’re lucky to have you.” I wasn’t sure I came across as sincere. If Tiffany had caused their mother’s death, the children weren’t lucky at all.
Edna was probably thinking the same thing. She didn’t move despite my tugging. Was she trying to manufacture more ways for us to stick around and snoop?
“Hurry,” Tiffany said. “Plug’s gone to a fire. If he comes back and sees you here, there will be questions. It’s better if he doesn’t see your car, either.”
Edna jutted her chin out. “He’ll see the sewing machine.”
Tiffany ran her hand across her forehead, letting a couple of fingers wipe her eyes as if tears had leaked out. “He’s not likely to go into the sewing room again, ever. Being up there to pack that sewing machine nearly killed him. He swore he’d never go back.” She bowed her head until her straight blond hair curtained her face. “Darlene’s daughters deserve the machine. Like totally.”
I tightened my fingers around Edna’s wrist and hauled her outside.
On the driveway, Edna pulled out of my grasp. “What got into you, Willow? Every time we come here, I end up black and blue.”
“Let’s go,” I muttered. “I don’t feel safe here.”
She showed me her wrist, the bruises that Tiffany had made last time, and the pinkish marks from my fingers just now. “Me, neither, but you seem to be the greatest danger to me.” Her eyes twinkled. She loved teasing Opal, Naomi, and Haylee, and as far as she was concerned, I was a member of their family, too.
We got into the car. Edna asked, “Are you afraid Russ and Plug might come back?”
I drove down the driveway “That, and Tiffany was lying about something.”
“Murdering Darlene, most likely,” Edna contributed drily.
“Or these daughters of Darlene’s who must have a sewing machine. In a sewing room that is too painful for their philandering father to visit. He exchanges an old wife for a younger model, and the two older daughters, who didn’t seem very happy with their mother, to put it mildly, are going to ensconce themselves in their mother’s sewing room beside her dressmaker’s dummy and take up her hobby?”
“None of it adds up, does it?” Edna asked.
“It adds up to Tiffany selling that machine and pocketing the proceeds. Plug and his kids won’t even know.” I drove back to our shops and apartments.
I ate outside on my patio while the dogs romped around, but trepidation about the adventure in store for me—learning how to fight fires—nearly spoiled my dinner. Fortunately, Haylee was going, too, so maybe the whole thing would be bearable. Or, knowing us, we’d be kicked off the force for laughing too much.
It might be a good idea.
The evening was hot, without a whiff of a breeze. I changed into old jeans, a T-shirt, and comfortable running shoes. The dogs looked woebegone when I told them to stay. Kissing them good-bye, I promised to return before long.
Haylee and I got into her bright red pickup truck, and she drove to the ball field.
The first thing I saw there made me want to ask Haylee to turn around and drive home again.
A red truck. Not the fire truck, although that was there, too.
Clay’s pickup.
27
SURELY, EVEN THOUGH CLAY AND I SEEMED to b
e on friendlier terms again, he wouldn’t think I was chasing him.
Isaac waved at us from a group of men next to the fire truck, but Clay strode to my side of Haylee’s pickup. He asked through the open window, “Are you two okay?”
When would he stop believing I was always in dire straits?
I gave him a confident smile. “We’re here for the training.” That would show him that I didn’t need help all the time. “Are you, too?”
“I’m already on the force. You two aren’t by any chance trying to solve a murder, are you?”
I climbed out of Haylee’s truck and stood facing him, nose-to-nose. Nose-to-throat, actually, since no matter how much I stretched, he was taller. I backed up and tilted my head until I looked him in the eyes. “No one has said it was a murder. Mona thought that a couple of Threadville proprietors should become firefighters, and she…um, volunteered us. This was before Darlene died.”
Isaac called, “We’re ready to start.”
The three of us walked toward the group near the fire truck. Tall brown grasses swished against our jeans.
Plug Coddlefield’s terse nod contrasted with Isaac’s wide and welcoming grin. Russ Coddlefield shuffled his feet and didn’t look at Haylee or me, though his gaze did flick toward Clay. Four other boys about Russ’s age, dressed in jeans, ball caps, and T-shirts, stared at Haylee and me like we were from outer space.
Haylee and I introduced ourselves, but no one else did. Maybe they already had, though we weren’t late.
“We’re all here—” Isaac began.
Plug stepped in front of him. “I’m running this, not you.”
Isaac backed away, hunched his shoulders, and flapped his hands, palms up. “Whatever.”
Plug threw his cigarette butt onto the grass and ground it out with a boot. “All you applicants, line up in front of me.”
We did. Russ, the four boys, Haylee, and me.
“Not behind each other,” Plug thundered. “Beside each other.”
Where were we, in elementary school? We rearranged ourselves.
