by Janet Bolin
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Willow’s Embroidered Cell Phone Case
Thread Art Tips
PRAISE FOR Dire Threads
“A wonderful debut, embroidered seamlessly with clues, red herrings, and rich detail. And though the mystery will keep you guessing until it’s sewn up, Willow and her friends will leave you in stitches.”
—Avery Aames, bestselling author of the Cheese Shop Mysteries
“What a great start to a new series. Janet Bolin has stitched together a colorful cast of characters and wound them up in a murder. The cop car alone is worth the read. Lots of fun and machine embroidery, too.”
—Betty Hechtman, bestselling author of the Crochet Mysteries
“Quirky characters, charming town, and appealing sleuth are all beautifully stitched together in this entertaining first mystery.”
—Mary Jane Maffini, author of the Charlotte Adams Mysteries
“A deftly woven tale embroidered with crafty characters who will leave you in stitches!”
—Krista Davis, bestselling author of the Domestic Diva Mysteries
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DIRE THREADS
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / June 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Janet Bolin.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-52884-6
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To the original Edna and the original Naomi, who loved creating with thread.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my supportive critique partners, Krista Davis, who writes the Domestic Diva Mysteries, and Avery Aames, who writes the Cheese Shop Mysteries. I couldn’t have done this without you.
I really appreciate the enthusiasm of my first agent, Jacky Sach, then at BookEnds, and my acquiring editor, Sandy Harding, then at Berkley Prime Crime. Jessica Faust of BookEnds never ceases to amaze me for the time she’s willing to devote to my projects. Faith Black, my editor at Berkley Prime Crime, took my manuscript and turned it into a book. Thanks to all of the people at Berkley who helped her, particularly Robin Moline, who created the beautiful painting for the cover, Annette Fiore Defex, the cover designer, and Tiffany Estreicher, the interior text designer, who added touches that make the book even more special.
I also have to thank Bill Richardson and Shelagh Rogers of CBC radio for their encouragement over the years and for understanding my humor and making it funnier in the way they read my stories aloud on their radio programs.
Sisters in Crime, especially the Guppies Chapter, have been very helpful, including Lorna Barrett, Sandra Parshall, and Annette Dashofy. I loved hanging out with other members of the New York /Tri-State Chapter when I lived in New York. Those dinners in Greenwich Village made me feel like a real writer. Besides, I learned important things like the mechanics of getting published, and that authors, agents, and editors are approachable. Also that shouting, “Let’s kill him!” in a restaurant can get one some funny looks. And no, I wasn’t the one who did the shouting.
Thanks to all my friends at www.KillerCharacters.com, where the characters of our books carry on a dialogue (and just plain carry on). Thanks to Avery Aames, Lorna Barrett, Krista Davis, Betty Hechtman, and Mary Jane Maffini for taking time to read my manuscript and comment.
And thanks to my friends and family for engaging in some rather peculiar conversations about murder and how to solve it. We’re nice people—really!
Last but not least, thanks to my readers. You’re the greatest.
1
FOR THE FIRST TIME, MY NEW BOUTIQUE, In Stitches, was officially part of the Threadville tour, which was both exhilarating and daunting. What if the ladies from today’s tour avoided my shop, or worse, hated it?
But the first person to enter In Stitches on its opening day was a man. Mike Krawbach was gorgeous, if you liked icy blue eyes and an underfed look that made a certain type of woman want to take him home and fatten him up. I didn’t trust him. He always talked to me like I was two years old, for one thing. He tossed an envelope onto a bistro table displaying my embroidered white linen tablecloth. “Here you go, Willow. My decision on your application to renovate that shed at the back of your property.”
Shed? Blueberry Cottage was a Victorian confection of curlicues and gingerbread trim. Small, made of wood, and quaint. Definitely not a shed. Renting it to others would help ensure my financial survival, but it needed work. “You mean Blueberry Cottage.”
Mike stretched his neck up as if to make himself taller and remind me that he was th
e village’s zoning commissioner, and I wasn’t. “It’s been called that grandiose name since my granddad was a boy. It’s a shed, and it’s on a flood plain, too close to the river for us to allow a building permit. You can paint it, inside and out, but you can’t do anything structural, like replace leaky plumbing. Or leaky windows.”
I resisted the urge to peek at his feet. He was tall, but even standing on his tippy toes, he wouldn’t be able to loom over me as much as he might like. I argued, “The hiking trail is between it and the river, and that trail is wide. The Elderberry River couldn’t rise that far.”
Mike shrugged. “The decision is final. Take it or leave it.”
That was a choice? He strode out, leaving me seething. In Stitches hadn’t had a customer yet, and I was almost ready to return to investment counseling in Manhattan.
Almost, but not quite. Outside, the Threadville tour bus arrived, and ladies streamed from it. Their handmade hats, coats, mittens, and scarves outshone ice crystals dancing in the pale February sunshine. Women disappeared into The Stash, Batty About Quilts, Tell a Yarn, and Buttons and Bows.
Threadville’s real name was Elderberry Bay. The village had been heading toward ghost town status until my best friend, Haylee, had fled Manhattan, opened The Stash, and inveigled other people to open other textile arts boutiques. Now, crafty women flocked to this small village on the Pennsylvania shore of Lake Erie to browse, take courses, find inspiration, and spend money.
I was a little stunned when about twenty of them poured into my shop. Their coats were decorated with every form of embellishment known to woman, except one—machine embroidery. They were coming to me to round out their education, and I had optimistically put five chairs around the table holding my computer and sewing machine.
A woman frowned at the logo I had embroidered on a suede vest trimmed with fun faux fur. The logo was my own design, a stylized weeping willow. Uh-oh. Didn’t she like my work? The willow was supposed to help new students remember my name. “Tut, tut,” she said. “Willow for sorrow.” The name Rosemary was emblazoned in sequins across the front of her sweater.
Rosemary for remembrance, I thought. “Willow’s my name.” I’d been Willow all my life and had never known sorrow. Except, perhaps, during Mike’s visit a few minutes before. But I wasn’t going to let Mike Krawbach ruin my first business day in my new shop.
“Maybe your sorrow will be trying to stay willowy all your life. You’re doing a good job, so far.” She lowered her voice to an ominous murmur. “Luckily, you can get away with wearing poufy fun furs, especially with your long legs and those tight jeans, but wait until you hit thirty and middle-aged spread. And you don’t even color your hair, you lucky girl.”
Choking down a laugh at all these personal comments from a stranger, I touched my hair. It was fine and straight, flyaway with static electricity at this time of year. “How do you know I don’t color it?”
“No one would dye their hair that mous—” she began. Flushing, she attempted to pull her foot out of her mouth. “People with light brown hair usually choose a more vibrant color. But the brown goes so nicely with your blue eyes.”
Without admitting that I was already a couple of years beyond thirty and suddenly tempted to color my hair, I retrieved more chairs from my storeroom and set them up. My students crowded around the woodstove, warmed themselves with mugs of hot cider, and eyed my embroidery boutique.
It looked great, and I was proud of it. A hundred years before, this building had been a brand-new home. Recently, someone had converted it into a store, and Haylee had called to tell me I had to come and see it. Someday, I hoped to meet whoever had done the renovations and built the store’s oak cabinets and shelving, which perfectly matched the building’s original Arts and Crafts style. The shop was charming, especially the antique walnut floor and wainscoting, which together were probably worth more than my mortgage.
The merchandise I offered for sale was appealing, too. Sleek new sewing and embroidery machines would make mouths water and pocketbooks open. Bolts of natural fabrics brightened one corner of the shop, while my classroom area occupied another. My notions were specific to embroidery—stabilizers, spray-on adhesives, hoops, and scissors with funny, curved blades. My favorite displays, the ones I always lingered over, were the racks of embroidery threads. Gleaming in nearly every color imaginable, machine embroidery thread came in shining metallics, lustrous rayon and silk, sparkling polyester, and subtle, rich cotton.
If my customers or I needed anything else, all we had to do was meander across the street to the other boutiques. I loved Threadville, and I loved my new life in it. Except for Mike Krawbach, of course. There had to be a way around his high-handed decision.
Students left the woodstove to examine samples of my work. Rosemary pointed at one of my favorite projects, a patchwork backpack embroidered with mythical beasts. “That’s what I want to make.”
I unfolded the last chair. “We’ll get there.” Judging from the clothing these women had sewn for themselves, we’d get there quickly.
With a gentle tinkling of sea glass and driftwood chimes, the front door opened enough for a thin woman to sidle into the shop. Pulling her coat tightly around herself, she perched on a chair in the back row. She was dressed all in black, her gray hair hung limply, and her face was lined with sadness. I hid a shiver. She should be the one wearing the willow.
I opened my mouth to begin the day’s lesson.
Behind me, the glass in my chimes clashed, and the front door banged open.
“Ladies,” a man called out in a rich, deep voice. “Good morning.”
I turned around. Of all the gall. Mike Krawbach was back. I glared at him.
He beamed as if he were bringing these ladies a long-awaited treat. “You all adore Threadville, right?” he asked.
My students nodded and shouted their agreement, except for the sorrowful woman, who must have dropped something. She bent over and scrabbled her hands over the floor.
Mike displayed his teeth in a smile gauged to make each of the ladies think it was meant personally for her. “Then you’ll want to sign this petition to show Threadville how much you love it. Your husbands will want to come here, too, and will drive you here. Often.”
What a throwback, acting like women couldn’t drive. I suspected that many of the Threadville tourists chose the bus because they reveled in their all-day outings with other textile enthusiasts.
“Ooh,” one woman breathed. “That would be great.”
“Ha!” another said with scorn. “I couldn’t buy a yard of fabric or a skein of yarn with hubby looking over my shoulder.”
Mike gave her a special smile. “If you sign my petition, he’ll be too busy to look over your shoulder, I promise you.” In a boyish gesture that looked calculated to me, he pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. There was something furtive in the way he set a sheaf of papers and a handful of pens on my embroidered tablecloth, as if he hoped I wouldn’t notice and my students would.
Rosemary leaped up to defend my handiwork. “Ink can stain this sumptuous white linen.” She moved the pens and papers to my measuring and cutting table.
Making a mental note to clean that table before I unrolled fabric on it, I studied Mike’s expression of affected innocence. What was he planning, a bar where husbands played pool and watched TV while their wives shopped? Why would that require a petition? He winked at my students in a way that made me more uneasy than ever, then marched out, wide shoulders, narrow hips, and all. Working in his vineyard had given him a physique that any man might envy.
I heard several sighs. Nostalgia? Many of the women were old enough to be Mike’s mother, maybe his grandmother.
I reclaimed my students’ attention by asking them when they had first become interested in embroidery. Like me, most of them had been given a simple embroidery project as soon as their fingers could hang on to a needle.
One woman, dressed head to toe in mauve, summarized it. “I worked my
way up from satin and cross stitches to needle weaving and cutwork, but—”
Rosemary laughed. “Hand embroidery is beautiful but life’s too short.”
I held up a stitched portrait of a long-haired tortoiseshell kitten. “How long would this take by hand?” I asked.
“Weeks,” the lady in mauve said.
Rosemary groaned. “Decades.”
Everybody laughed. “The actual stitching,” I said, “was done in about an hour.” I patted my computer monitor. “I started with a digital photo that the kitten’s owner e-mailed me. My software transformed it to an embroidery design. The most time-consuming part was changing the thread for each new color.”
Rosemary shouted, “I want one of those machines!”
The class was off to a perfect start. However, I had to tell them they could have fun with machine embroidery without purchasing a shiny new machine. “Today, I’ll show you how to embroider with your sewing machine, even if all it does is straight stitches.” I hoped that, after a few lessons from me, many of my students would discover they needed embroidery machines and would purchase them from me. I distributed pens containing water-soluble ink and asked my students to draw something with straight lines, like a building, on squares of felt.
A few of them copied the Blueberry Cottage design I had embroidered on towels. The woman in mauve stationed herself at the back window. With a few simple lines, she sketched an elegant version of the cottage. These classes were going to be wonderful. I would learn at least as much as I would teach.
I demonstrated how to load felt, backed by stabilizer to support it and prevent it from puckering, into the kind of embroidery hoops our ancestors might have used, golden brown oak laminated in concentric circles.
