Dire Threads

by Janet Bolin

  While they worked, I was gratified to see several investigators, wearing baggy coveralls over their clothing, in my backyard with Uncle Allen.

  I told my students to create a sewing project using the designs they’d stitched and to bring their work to the next day’s class. In hopes of encouraging more of them to purchase embroidery machines, I handed out a list of websites where they could shop for more designs, including mine, of course, plus a few others offering free designs. I also asked them to bring fleece scarves to tomorrow’s class, and we’d embellish them with embroidery.

  Rosemary clapped her hands. “We’ll make the scarves ourselves.”

  Discussing their projects, they trooped off to Pier 42. I took the dogs outside for a leashed romp through the front yard, then we went downstairs to the kitchen, where we ate lunch and I listened for my chimes.

  The afternoon class went even better than the morning’s. The woman who had bought a sewing machine on Tuesday gleefully purchased the embroidery attachment for it. The desire to compete flared in several pairs of eyes, and I saw more sales in my immediate future.

  A uniformed state trooper strode past my front door toward The Ironmonger. Without slowing, she seemed to take in every detail of In Stitches, inside and out. I waved, but she kept moving.

  The Threadville tour bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for an hour after the afternoon class ended, and its passengers shopped while they waited. I sat down at my computer and loaded the design I’d made showing the man in the camouflage jacket and orange neon hat disappearing between trees. For the stumpwork look I wanted to achieve, I created steps in the software similar to the process of appliquéing with an embroidery machine.

  I kept having to stop my work on the design for the best of reasons—customers. Chattering, they bought stabilizer, felt, and more thread than they could possibly use in a year. Whenever they didn’t need me, I went back to my embroidery.

  I filled a bobbin with dark nylon lingerie thread and inserted it. I had learned through trial and horrendous error to try out new designs before stitching them on expensive fabrics. Like every fabriholic, I had a stash that kept growing no matter how many projects I concocted that might contribute to using it up. Working and living across the street from Haylee’s aptly named store didn’t help. I unearthed a large scrap similar to the linen I planned to use for the commissioned wall hanging. I tightened the remnant with stabilizer in my largest hoop, one I could actually jump through, and fastened the hoop to the embroidery machine.

  My first instruction to the embroidery machine had it baste around the shape of the man and several trees near him. The machine stopped, leaving stitches that showed me where the puffy foam was supposed to go. I placed gray foam on the hooped linen and restarted the machine. It obediently tacked the foam down, perforated around the edges of the man and the trees, and stopped again for me to tear off excess foam.

  Now I was ready to stitch the actual design. As always, I took the thread colors I needed from my sales display. Since I never put partially used spools back where customers might accidentally purchase them, my personal supply kept growing.

  I threaded the design’s first color, olive green, and started the embroidery machine. First, it stitched the underlay, a simple pattern that held the fabric in place and prevented it from being distorted by the smaller, denser stitches of the actual design. Then it did the fun part, machine embroidery stitches more intricate than anything our great grandmothers ever dreamed of. It stopped for me to change colors, then punched away at the design again. The picture began to come alive, raised portions and all.

  Another group of women crowded into the store, too, women who obviously hadn’t been taking Threadville courses. Their clothing lacked pintucks, ruffles, ruching, faggoting, quilting, and other decorative touches. They grabbed things from one corner of the store, dropped them in another, muttered to each other, and eyed me with speculation. Susannah and Georgina lived nearby and could shop any time, so they hadn’t stayed around with the out-of-town students, or I’d have asked them who these women were.

  Every time my computer monitor went to sleep, another of the strangers jiggled my mouse to display the design I’d begun stitching. It was easy to understand why. Watching the embroidery machine match the design on the computer screen was almost magical. I could hardly wait for Clay to build the dog pen at the top of the stairs, though. My computer would be safer inside a pen where curious people couldn’t accidentally erase files. To be safe, I made backup copies of the design.

  “Miss, can you help me?” A stocky older woman yanked a spool of gold metallic thread from the display. “What’s this for?” Her eyes and skin tone matched her gray hair and her salt-stained snowmobile suit, which she must have borrowed from a taller person. The pant legs nearly tripped her, and one sleeve threatened to devour the expensive spool of thread in her hand.

  “Decorating. Embroidering.”

  She snorted. “Doesn’t look practical.”

  I said in my nicest support-the-other-Threadville-retailers voice, “You’ll find practical sewing thread at The Stash across the street. And if you want quilting thread, try Batty About Quilts.”

  She picked up a spool of purple silk thread. “What’s this for?”

  Was she planning to go through the displays, spool by spool, with the same question? Before I could answer, the dogs let out a volley of barking near the apartment door. They sounded like they were in the shop instead of in the apartment where they belonged.

  A woman in a black, down-filled jacket had unlatched my apartment door. Two inquisitive dog noses wedged themselves out.

  Gasping, I sprinted toward my dogs.

  The snoopy woman jumped away from the door and asked in a strained voice, “Restroom?” She kept her face averted, not that I’d have been able to see much of it anyway. The fur-trimmed hood hid most of it.

  Tails waving madly, Sally and Tally tore around the shop, making friends with surprised customers.

  Too annoyed by the nosy woman’s nerve to risk speaking and telling her what I really thought of her, I nodded toward the restroom door. Not only was it clearly marked, it was ajar and the light was on. No one could have missed it. Except, maybe, a woman hiding inside a parka with an enormous hood snugged around her face.

  She shut herself into the restroom. I hoped she was as mortified as I would have been if she had caught me sneaking into her apartment. Police officers might have found the woman’s actions interesting, if not suspicious. Beyond my front windows, laughing shoppers ran between The Stash, Tell a Yarn, Buttons and Bows, and Batty About Quilts.

  No state troopers were in sight.

  With help from my sisters-in-thread, I captured the wiggly dogs and put them on the landing at the top of the stairs. As I closed the door, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho looked up at me with their sweet, sad amber eyes. “Sorry, guys,” I said. This time, I locked the door.

  I returned to the thread display to continue my interrupted discussion with the woman in the snowmobile suit. She opened her fist and displayed a spool of pale green glow-in-the-dark thread. “I’m buying this.”

  I led her to the cash register. Slowly, she unzipped one of her snowmobile suit’s pockets. She rattled change, then called toward the back of the store, “Rhonda!”

  The woman in the parka and enormous hood emerged from the restroom. What had she been doing, pawing through cleaning supplies and toilet tissue in the cabinet under the sink?

  The woman buying the thread asked her, “You have any money?”

  Rhonda looked at the amount I’d rung up and shook her head. What I could see of her face was pinched and sour, as if her life was so unsatisfactory that she spent it with a permanently downturned mouth. Her complexion said she was in her twenties, but her expression was haggard enough for someone several times that age.

  The older woman prompted, “You’ve got your charge card, haven’t you?”

  Rhonda looked even more miserable. “I . . .” She turne
d to the woman and hissed, “She’ll see . . .” I wasn’t able to hear the rest through the matted faux fur.

  The older woman threw her a scornful look. “I already said your name. She musta heard.”

  Without looking at me, Rhonda fumbled in her pocket and brought out crumpled bills. “Here, Aunt Betty.”

  Aunt Betty added enough change to buy the thread. Apparently, that entitled her to ask me questions. “How long did you know Mike Krawbach?”

  I had to put a stop to this idea that Mike and I had been more than distant acquaintances. “I didn’t, except as zoning commiss—”

  Rhonda interrupted. “You’re the one Mike Krawbach was visiting when he died.”

  The back of my neck burned. “He never visited me!”

  Aunt Betty crowed, “Ha! We know he was in here. And in your backyard.”

  “Uninvited.” Did I have to sound so adamant? True, I didn’t want anyone believing I had any sort of relationship with Mike Krawbach, but I shouldn’t be handing out motives for others to use against me.

  Aunt Betty’s mouth turned up in a cunning sneer. “Where did you live before you moved to Elderberry Bay?”

  “New York.”

  She gestured at the boutiques across the street. “I hear you knew those women there. Are you related to them?”

  “They’re my friends,” I said. “I only knew one of them before I moved here. Haylee, who owns The Stash.”

  Aunt Betty leaned toward me. “If anybody had it in for poor Mike, she did.”

  All Haylee had done was refuse a second date with the guy. Plus maybe regale several people with her tale about the long walk home in new heels. I backed away. “I’ve known Haylee for years. She would never kill anyone.”

  Aunt Betty and Rhonda twisted their mouths in scorn.

  It was my turn to ask them questions. “Are you two related to Mike Krawbach?”

  Blushing, Rhonda backed away and whispered, “No.”

  I heard creaking noises and soft footsteps behind me. My heart hammering, I turned around.

  Locals watched from various places around the store, but the women I recognized as Threadville tourists formed a semicircle around my back. My sisters-in-thread didn’t speak, but their glowers and folded arms should have intimidated Aunt Betty and Rhonda into purchasing expensive machines to make up for their false accusations.

  Rhonda muttered, “You’re not getting away with this.”

  Aunt Betty shoved the younger woman ahead of her toward the door.

  “Don’t forget to sign the guest book,” I called in my most invitingly musical voice, the one that would alert people who knew me that I was in one of my more dangerous moods.

  Aunt Betty’s only response was to slam her palm against the door, setting the glass pieces of my wind chime crashing together like Mike Krawbach had on Tuesday.

  The two women clambered into a pickup truck and drove away.

  A black pickup truck.

  Who were those two women, Mike’s girlfriend and her aunt? Or Mike’s attackers? The rest of the locals followed them out. Were they trying to protect someone?

  All my life, I had dreamed of owning a shop like In Stitches. Now I wasn’t so sure, especially about my cheery, cross-stitched Welcome sign.

  I had moved to a village of amateur sleuths who thought that investigating a crime meant deciding who the villain should be, and then searching for “proof” to fit their theory.

  And I was their chosen villain.

  Or, perhaps, their chosen victim.

  12

  LOCAL WOMEN HAD SNOOPED THROUGH my store and peeked down the stairway to my apartment. Now these self-appointed sleuths were probably running to Uncle Allen to reinforce his determination to blame me for the murder of Mike Krawbach.

  I must have been frowning. The locals had left, but the Threadville tour ladies watched me with frank concern.

  Rosemary fanned her face and gave me a supportive smile. “Weren’t they a bunch of lovelies?”

  A woman in a white fuzzy vest demanded, “Can’t they make themselves decent coats?”

  I covered a giggle with a fake cough. My students probably didn’t notice. They went back to serious browsing and lived up to their reputation for stretching the Threadville tour past its scheduled departure time. I realized Rosemary was the bus driver when she rounded up tardy passengers. She was good-natured about it, probably because she wanted the extra shopping time, too. She bought umpteen more colors of felt. Threadville tourists knew how to have fun.

  By quarter after five, everyone was gone, and I was alone with my dogs.

  Not for long. Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho had only begun investigating our snowless front yard when my front gate’s latch clinked and Uncle Allen led a tall, uniformed man toward me. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the man. “This is Trooper Gartener.”

  I had never, during my two entire months in Pennsylvania, been pulled over for speeding or any other traffic violation, but even though this trooper wasn’t wearing a Smokey the Bear hat, and his short black hair was bare to the February night, my knees quaked. He was big and obviously strong, with rugged features. He looked hardy and competent, like he’d keep a cool head in emergencies, and would probably rescue several people and their pets each week. I would not want to be on the wrong side of the law with him around, though. Hoping it wouldn’t even cross his mind that I might be, I managed to smile and say hello, and I very carefully did not let my eyes stray to his left ring finger.

  Gartener gave me a curt nod. His dark eyes penetrated straight through me.

  Hardy, competent, and tough, yes. Also forbidding. I decided not to offer to shake hands with him. “Is Trooper Smallwood here?” I asked. She would be friendlier than these two.

  Gartener could, apparently, speak. “She’s around.” He became silent again. I broke up the staring contest and pulled my inquisitive dogs away from the two men.

  Uncle Allen demanded, “How well did you know Mike Krawbach?”

  “Not at all,” I answered. “You were there when I exchanged the most words with him.” My fickle dogs wagged their plume-like tails.

  Uncle Allen let them sniff his gloves. “What about later that night? Ever since he was knee high to a rutabaga, every female for miles around wanted to be close to him. You didn’t invite him over, let him into your yard, then fight with him?”

  Angered because Uncle Allen believed his bevy of amateur sleuths, I retorted, “I most certainly did not! Unless he willingly climbed over the fence with his murderer or a very strong person threw him over my fence, someone had a key that opened my padlocks.” I explained about the search in The Ironmonger for matching keys, and the very audible bandying about of the numbers printed on packages. “Have you checked alibis for Herb Gunthrie, Irv Oslington, Smythe Castor, and Clay Fraser?”

  Uncle Allen snapped, “You do your work and we’ll do ours.”

  Fine, but I might define my work differently than he would, especially if he neglected what I thought might be important facets of the investigation and ended up, maybe, arresting the wrong person. Me, for instance.

  Gartener stood with his feet slightly apart and his hands behind his back. He seemed fixated on me. He was so stiff that I wondered if he wore bulletproof long johns in addition to his bulletproof vest. Bulletproof socks, too, maybe. Even his facial muscles barely moved. “We’re checking into everything.” His voice was surprisingly warm for a man who looked so cold.

  Uncle Allen squinted at me. “You were first at the scene of the crime, and besides, you have a picture of him on your computer.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He started toward my front door. “Mind if we look?”

  I did mind. Shouldn’t they get a search warrant? Gartener stared at me with that unnerving and unwavering gaze, and suddenly I saw how I must appear. Yes, I had phoned the state police wanting them to help our one and only policeman investigate Mike’s murder. And yes, my motivation was to prevent Uncle Allen from
arresting me.

  But I had made the call because I was innocent. I wanted justice.

  Gartener, however, apparently thought I’d phoned them because I was guilty and hoped to encourage the state police to yank Uncle Allen off my trail.

  One look at Gartener, however, and anyone might quail. Maybe I should have left my fate in Uncle Allen’s hands.

  Meanwhile, I was blocking the local policeman and the trooper from entering my premises. Actually, I wasn’t. Sally and Tally were. I appealed to the men’s reason. “If some of the women who were in my store today told you I have Mike’s picture on my computer monitor, they’re wrong. The picture they saw was taken after Mike died. So unless you’re hiding something, like he’s not really dead, it can’t be him.”

  Uncle Allen stepped forward, putting himself in danger of becoming incorporated in an original weaving made by my dogs and their crisscrossing leashes. “If you showed it to others, you might as well show it to us.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I didn’t show it to anyone. They looked.” I didn’t add that fiddling with other people’s computers was rude. Usually, I liked people to discover my embroidery designs in any way possible—they might want to buy them. Although certain this would not be the case with Uncle Allen and his new sidekick, I relented, shortened the dogs’ leashes, and led the two men inside.

  Uncle Allen looked from my monitor to the partially stitched design in the giant hoop, where the man in the woods was merely a blob of gray puffy foam. “Where’s the picture of Mike?”

  I pointed at my computer monitor and the photo showing a dead cornfield, a band of trees, lots of sky, and a camouflage shape and an orange patch—the hunting coat and neon hat—among the trees. “That’s the photo those women saw. They were imagining things. I don’t have any pictures of Mike. None. Not one.” I showed him the time stamp saved with the file. “See? That proves the photo was taken after Mike died.”