Dire Threads

by Janet Bolin

  My rights? I’d seen such things on TV and in movies, but didn’t know for sure what it meant. Surely, he couldn’t be arresting me.

  I told myself to calm down. Maybe Uncle Allen had to read me my rights simply to ask me questions. Besides, he was an unreliable witness.

  He was unreliable at more than witnessing. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and put his glasses back on. “I can’t read the thing. You’ll have to read it to yourself.” He handed it to me.

  Rights? These looked more like wrongs.

  “Read it out loud,” he demanded.

  Hadn’t he just said to read it to myself? “Carrots,” I said haltingly. “Onions, potatoes. Milk.” Helplessly, I looked up at him.

  Not surprisingly, he was staring at me like I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. He grabbed the scrap of paper and pried at its edges with cracked and dirty nails. He shoved the paper back at me. “It’s still folded. You have to finish unfolding it.”

  I managed to open the small square of paper. It was creased, and the handwriting was tiny, faded and blurred.

  “Read that,” he directed. “So’s I can hear it.”

  I tried. “You have the right to something something.”

  “Remain silent,” he barked.

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “You said to remain silent.”

  He took a deep breath. “It says you have the right to remain silent. And . . . what else does it say?”

  That I have the right to throw you out of my apartment, I considered snapping, but I didn’t think he’d go for that. This afternoon, he had displayed a strong disregard for search warrants. “It says, ‘anything something something can something something something the right to an attorney something something—”

  Edna popped out of the laundry room. “The right to an attorney! You can’t question us without our attorneys present!”

  Haylee clattered down the stairs from my shop, and Opal and Naomi flew out of their assigned bedrooms. Barking, the dogs danced around, jumping on everyone except Naomi, whose green face apparently made them wary, and Uncle Allen, who looked dumbfounded at the incursion of noisy women and dogs into his interview.

  “I’m only asking questions,” he said. “I need answers now, while everything is fresh in your minds.” His lower lip trembled. “Someone killed a young man I’ve known since he was a baby, and I would think that any good citizen would want to help me put that person behind bars.”

  Opal, Naomi, and Edna examined each other’s faces, then mine and Haylee’s. They raised and lowered eyebrows, cocked heads, and puffed cheeks in a language that only they understood.

  They must have reached a consensus. Opal said, “Of course we’ll help every way we can. C’mon girls, back to our hidey holes.” She seemed to be enjoying herself a little too much.

  They scampered away, leaving me bewildered. But not Mirandized, which may have been their plan. If the attending policeman didn’t read us our rights properly, perhaps nothing could be used against us in court.

  I didn’t have much to tell Uncle Allen, anyway. “Mike must have been riding his ATV on the trail. The noise woke me up. The dogs barked, and we went outside. Both of my gates were padlocked, but Mike was lying in my bushes. I called 911, and Dr. Wrinklesides came first, then you. While I was gone, my canoe paddle appeared beside Mike’s head. Then, when you arrived, we saw that pickup truck.” Uncle Allen made me recite it all about a hundred times, probably in hopes of tripping me up, then sent me upstairs to trade places with Haylee.

  I didn’t bother closing the door at the top of the stairway. Despite the dogs panting and tap dancing beside me, I heard everything the other four women said, and it was all the same. Uncle Allen’s siren woke them up. They came to my place to find out what was wrong, and he knew the rest.

  When he was finished, I went downstairs. The dogs got there first.

  Opal and Edna kissed me good night.

  Edna whispered to me, “Don’t worry about the blood on the jacket. He put it in a plastic bag. Plastic compromises organic compounds.” She was already thinking up ways my mythical defense attorney could have me acquitted?

  Naomi hugged me.

  Haylee, obviously having trouble controlling new giggles about the green smudge Naomi had just added to my sweatshirt, kept her head turned away from Uncle Allen.

  I threw on another of the coats I’d made, a burgundy wool one. Before assembling it, I had embroidered the collar and cuffs with a simple burgundy design in varying widths of satin stitch. Maybe I had a tendency to embroider everything possible, but I did occasionally restrain myself.

  All of us, except for two dejected dogs, who would have welcomed any excuse for an outing, went outside. Calling quiet good-byes, the women went uphill toward the street. Uncle Allen’s flashlight hadn’t become any brighter in the warmth of my apartment. I guessed Elderberry Bay’s law enforcement budget didn’t allow for an adequate supply of batteries. Shining my light ahead of us, I let him lean on my arm while we negotiated our way down the hill. The ambulance was gone.

  I pointed toward the dark woods on the other side of the river. “What’s over there?”

  “Trees.”

  Helpful. “Who owns them?”

  “It’s a state forest.”

  “So Mike’s attacker could have crossed the river and escaped through the state forest?” And would be far away by now.

  Uncle Allen let out an exasperated sigh. “No one can cross that river. They’d be crushed by shifting ice or fall in. They’d drown.”

  It wouldn’t be easy to cross all that moving ice, but it was possible, especially for a desperate risk-taker like the person who had assaulted Mike. I asked, “What are you going to do about Mike’s ATV?”

  “I’ll go over that in daylight. It’s close to dawn already.”

  I held out my flashlight. “Take mine and go over it now.”

  “That wouldn’t be enough. And don’t forget I need to go check up on every dark pickup truck in the county.”

  Most of the time, Elderberry Bay was probably fine with only one police officer, but tonight he needed backup. I suggested, “The state police could send investigators and check up on everyone around here who owns dark pickup trucks. I think it was black.”

  “It was too dark to be sure.”

  He was right. I offered, “I could help you guard the crime scene until state troopers arrive.” They shouldn’t take long, should they?

  “You are to stay away from the crime scene. Stay out of your backyard. Don’t touch anything on your way inside.”

  I asked, “Do you have some of that yellow police tape in your cruiser?”

  “I’ll bring some.” He shuffled to the ATV and held something up. “Got the key.”

  Taking the key might keep someone from driving off on Mike’s ATV. It wouldn’t keep anyone from tampering with evidence.

  Uncle Allen shut himself into his cruiser and started it. His horn began honking again, as if he couldn’t turn it off. With any luck, it would wear itself out like the siren, which was now only moaning. That cruiser needed some serious repairs. He backed slowly down the trail to a wide spot. Holding my breath for fear he would skid down the bank into the river, I watched him turn around. He headed uphill toward Lake Street. The cruiser’s barnyard sounds passed the front of In Stitches, then whooped off into the icy distance.

  Relocking my gate, I couldn’t help glancing into the bushes where Mike had died. How had I missed seeing my canoe paddle underneath those bushes when the dogs and I first found Mike? I hadn’t let Sally and Tally out of my sight after we discovered him until I locked them in my apartment, so I knew they hadn’t moved it. I hadn’t, either. How had it suddenly appeared near Mike?

  I shuddered from lack of sleep, creeping horror, and freezing temperatures. My quaint little Blueberry Cottage had become frightening and forbidding. Maybe I would have it bulldozed, after all. As if being chased by a millio
n murderers, I ran up to the other gate, locked it, then dashed back to the apartment.

  Cuddled together in Sally’s bed, the dogs barely lifted an eyelid.

  Why did Mike Krawbach drive his ATV to my place and climb over my fence? Maybe he had attempted to torch the cottage, became giddy from gasoline fumes, tried to climb out of my yard, fell off my fence, and sustained terminal injuries. Or my canoe paddle failed as a pole vault.

  Beaten, Dr. Wrinklesides concluded in the cold, moonless night.

  What if someone had been trying to murder me, had come into my dark yard, and had attacked the wrong person?

  Would he return to make another attempt on my life?

  6

  HAD THE MURDERER SEEN MIKE IN THE dark and mistaken him for me? Mike was almost as tall as I was. Maybe, in a bulky winter coat, he could have passed for a woman. It wasn’t a pretty thought.

  Besides, who would want to kill me? The only person I could think of was Haylee’s and my former boss, Jasper, now incarcerated in a white-collar detention center for his financial crimes.

  Two hours had passed since Mike’s ATV had awakened me. It was only six, but there was no point in trying to sleep. Uncle Allen had said to stay out of my yard, and I had no desire to venture into it, but he hadn’t said I should stay off the trail. Maybe, before Uncle Allen could return with a team of investigators, I’d see something in the pre-dawn that hadn’t been noticeable in the dark. I slipped my flashlight and digital camera into pockets, leashed the dogs, took them outside through In Stitches, and walked them down Lake Street to where the trail met the sidewalk. The ATV had been parked facing upriver and had probably crossed this sidewalk, but I couldn’t see tracks from ATV tires on the sidewalk or in the street.

  The pickup truck that Uncle Allen and I had seen creeping around the corner could have come from this spot or from the beach, at the foot of Lake Street. The only vehicle in sight was my car, parked halfway to the beach. Though tempted to dash to it, I walked the dogs to the trail and turned toward Blueberry Cottage. I searched for ATV tracks, but the ground was frozen solid and I couldn’t see any tracks, not even from Uncle Allen’s cruiser.

  I peered over my locked gate. The door of my shed still hung open, and the gas can and my canoe paddle hadn’t moved. How had that paddle ended up near Mike while the dogs and I were inside calling for help? Maybe Mike had leaned the paddle against branches, and it had fallen. I photographed everything as well as I could from my vantage point, which wasn’t easy with two dogs pulling at leashes looped over my wrist. I didn’t let the dogs anywhere near the ATV, and I stayed away from it, too.

  I hurried the dogs back along the trail and up to Lake Street. I felt paralyzed, not only from the cold. I didn’t know which direction Mike’s attacker had come from or where he might have gone.

  He knew where I lived, and although he might not have planned to kill me in the first place, he might think I’d seen him, and he would come after me. Perhaps he was lurking around even now. Didn’t they say that criminals sometimes returned to the scene of the crime?

  And there was my car, a half block away on Lake Street, near the beach. I could be a moving target instead of a stationary one, which was hardly reassuring.

  At least I wouldn’t have to drive around aimlessly. Recently, I’d been commissioned to embroider a rural scene on a large piece of linen, and I hadn’t yet taken the photos for it. This morning’s snowless dawn would be perfect. I’d gotten the job through my website, where I offered my designs for sale and also advertised my custom work, like the kitten portrait I’d shown my students yesterday. Custom work could be the most fun—and the most challenging. My software would translate my digital photos to embroidery designs.

  Sally and Tally didn’t mind running with me the rest of the way to the car and jumping into the backseat. They curled up and covered their noses with their fluffy tails.

  Checking my mirrors for pursuers, I drove out of the village and east on Shore Road. The sky in front of me began to pale. Vehicles, most of them black pickups, were parked in driveways, but no one else was on the road. I meandered along, searching for the sort of scene my client wanted.

  And fighting to shut my memories of the night into a less accessible part of my brain.

  Embroidery. Focus on embroidery . . .

  Unlike most of my clients, who wanted portraits of their pets, homes, and cottages, my latest client wanted me to design the entire thing, and also wanted the wall hanging to resemble stumpwork, a centuries-old technique, similar to appliqué, of layering embroidery over stuffing or wood. Lately, machine embroiderers had copied stumpwork by using thin, dense foam for the stuffing. They called this method puff embroidery or three-dimensional embroidery. I preferred the antique sound of stumpwork.

  Traditional stumpwork also incorporated flexible, narrow-gauge wires into smaller embroidered pieces that would represent objects like leaves, petals, or animal ears, and would be fastened to the original design for the third dimension. Starting with a photo would give the design realistic light and shading. I would need to devise a way for my embroidery machine to stitch wires into place reliably without breaking needles.

  I’d driven farther than I’d planned, almost ten miles. Curving, the road emerged from a small wood. The perfect panorama for my project opened before me. A field, tan with last summer’s broken cornstalks, was in the foreground, in front of hazy, gray blue woods, all of it underneath a pink-tinged sky. A hunter wearing a camouflage jacket and a neon orange hat added a speck of color to the woods. I pulled off the road and snapped picture after picture.

  When I could no longer see the hat among the trees, I drove on. The sky in the south brightened from pale apricot to delicate azure. The road ran along bluffs above Lake Erie, covered with ice resembling a quilt stitched together from patches of peach, periwinkle, and lime. I parked again and got out. Some of the photos I took showed the lake as if no human had ever touched it, but when I aimed the camera in another direction, I captured images of ice fishing huts dotted over the frozen bay. Smoke swirled from the chimney of one. An ATV was parked beside it.

  Boom!

  I dove to the ground beside the driver’s door. Had the murderer followed me out of the village to take potshots at me?

  The noise rocketed out onto the lake, too prolonged for a gunshot. The thick lake ice must have developed a sudden, and very long, crack. I had to admire one thing about ATV club members. Riding an ATV onto that ice took courage. Or, perhaps, a blithe disregard for danger.

  If the lake was going to scare me half to death every few minutes, I was done taking pictures. I opened the door, slipped into the car, drove back to Elderberry Bay, and parked near the beach again.

  I hesitated on my shop’s front porch. In Stitches usually felt like home, but I didn’t relish being alone, and my customers weren’t due for at least an hour.

  I turned around and surveyed the windows of the apartments above the shops across the street. Could I barge in on Haylee or one of her mothers?

  Haylee came out of The Stash and beckoned. I lifted a hand to show I’d be there in a minute, put the dogs into the stairway leading down to my apartment, locked my shop, and ran across the street.

  Haylee met me in the doorway. “Come for breakfast,” she said.

  I needed no further encouragement. We could talk and talk about last night and never completely get the horror out of our systems, but we could try.

  The last time I had been in her store, less than twenty-four hours before, Mike was alive and we were both angry at him and his arrogance. My anger had evaporated, but it was strange seeing those same fabrics displayed on racks as if nothing had happened.

  Haylee’s store was the largest in town, with rooms and rooms of beautiful fabrics, and her apartment above the store was huge, loft style, with arched windows, vast open spaces, light hardwood floors, and high ceilings. Her furniture was spare, comfortable with no fussy decorations. I loved the look, but her mothers often suggested
she should add their unique sorts of embellishments, and I usually teased that she needed embroidered touches. At the moment, I didn’t feel like teasing.

  She led me to her minimalist, uncluttered kitchen and handed me a knife, a small onion, and a red pepper. “You chop those while I beat the eggs,” she said. “Let’s make as much noise as we can.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Noise?”

  She shrugged. “Whatever. Noise. Activity. Pounding, chopping. To help us cope with . . . earlier this morning.”

  “Did you sleep,” I asked. “After?”

  “Not much. Did you?”

  Tearing seeds and white membranes from the pepper, I told her about my explorations.

  “You should have asked me to come with you. Or any of my mothers.”

  “Maybe they managed to sleep.”

  She banged her whisk through the eggs and against the sides of her stainless steel bowl. “We should have all . . . gotten together to sew or something, instead of going back to our own apartments and lying awake.”

  “I didn’t like him,” I said. It wasn’t a change of subject.

  She agreed. “No, he was full of himself and he had a mean streak. But . . .”

  “There was no reason to kill the guy,” I finished for her.

  “As Opal would say, ‘live and let live.’” Haylee called the women who raised her, including Opal, her birth mother, by their first names. “Who would have done such a thing?”

  “Uncle Allen suspects me.”

  Haylee snorted. “He doesn’t know you.”

  I waved my knife in the air. “I did say, in front of half the village, that I’d kill Mike if he bulldozed my cottage. And I have the impression that Uncle Allen is looking for revenge, not justice. I’m an outsider, a convenient scapegoat.”