by Janet Bolin
I said to Haylee with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, “Let’s go on the nature hike.”
She looked pained. “Six in the morning?”
“It would be good for us.” Without moving my head, I flicked my gaze toward Edna.
Haylee got the hint. “Okay, let’s go sign up.”
Smythe closed his hand around hers. “Glad you’re coming. The walk is on my farm, and I’m serving toast and honey afterward.”
Karen and Herb decided to go, too. At the table where we could add our names to the list of participants, someone referred to the president of the nature club as Mona. At last night’s roast beef dinner, Pete DeGlazier had mentioned a wife named Mona. How many Monas could there possibly be in a village the size of Elderberry Bay?
The volume of the music rose a few notches, and the dancing began. Herb and Smythe made certain I had a couple of dances with each of them. After seeing Herb handle that unwieldy wheelbarrow, I wasn’t surprised that his right arm was strong enough to hold me so tightly that I kept stepping on his feet. He laughed every time, like I was doing it on purpose to be cute, but I felt inept and clumsy. Being taller than he was didn’t help my mood, either.
I danced with Sam the ironmonger. I danced with men I didn’t know. I danced with Dr. Wrinklesides. “I’m glad to see you’re getting out,” he shouted. “Best thing to help you get over your ailments!”
I tried to convey that I hadn’t suffered any sort of trauma.
“See? Time heals everything.” He looked closely at my hand. “Even that bruise is gone.” Dancers around us stared. He was the best dancer of the evening, and he seemed to make it his business to dance with every woman in the community center. When he passed me with Edna in his arms, he was singing along with the music. No one seemed to mind, since his singing was much better than the recorded musician’s.
I danced and joked and talked and sipped at wine, but the evening passed, and Clay didn’t show up. Firmly telling myself that I didn’t care and therefore couldn’t be the least bit disappointed, I left when Haylee and Smythe did.
Smythe tucked his bare hands into the pockets of his yellow parka and exaggerated a shiver. “It’s even colder than last week.”
Clay had been right. The river should stop rising.
The heater in my car kicked in about the time I turned onto Lake Street.
At the same time, a different sort of heater came on inside my brain.
A red pickup truck with white lettering on the door pulled away from the curb next to In Stitches and sped away into the night.
Clay’s truck.
25
MY FIRST INSTINCT WAS TO PRESS down on my gas pedal and follow Clay. Maybe he’d been looking for me. On the other hand, he could be trying to avoid me.
I parked. Remaining in my car, I peered through the windows of In Stitches. The shop looked fine, with a small light in the back casting a warm glow over the tempting array of merchandise.
In Stitches. My home. My dream. Despite my love for it all, the cold night wasn’t the only thing causing my sudden fit of trembling.
What had Clay been doing? He’d known I’d be out. He hadn’t attended last night’s roast beef dinner, either, and during that party, someone had broken into my shop.
As Uncle Allen had pointed out, Clay had renovated my place and might still have a key. After Clay finished replacing my door, I would learn how to change the lock. Haylee would help me, even if she didn’t know how, either.
Smythe’s pickup truck came down Lake Street and parked behind me. If Haylee saw me brooding inside my car, she’d be worried. I got out.
Haylee and Smythe were quick. In seconds, they were beside me on the sidewalk.
“Is anything wrong, Willow?” Smythe asked. Why did the nicest men in town always ask me that question? Haylee looked concerned, too.
I tried to arrange my face into a confident smile. “Nothing, but after last night’s break-in . . .” I trailed off, letting them fill in the rest for themselves.
“We’ll go in with you,” Haylee offered. “And make sure everything’s okay.”
Inside the shop, I did a quick survey. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed.
On the other side of my apartment door, Tally whined and Sally barked. I let them into the shop. Although obviously glad to see us, they pushed past us. Looking for Clay? Had he been inside while I was at the dinner dance? The dogs snuffled up and down aisles.
“So, everything’s fine here, Willow?” Smythe asked.
I brushed hair from my eyes. “Yes. It was silly of me to think I’d have break-ins two nights in a row.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t silly.” He turned to Haylee. “Shall we go?”
“Go ahead,” she said, giving him a sweet smile, taking his arm and leading him toward the door in a way that made it impossible for him to say no. “I have”—she paused for a second—“sewing questions for Willow.”
She was the expert when it came to sewing. But Smythe included me in his sunny good-byes. “See you both Tuesday morning at my place.” Whistling, he strode off toward his truck.
The moment he pulled away, Haylee locked the door and turned to face me, arms folded, eyebrows lowered. “Okay, spill. What happened?”
I walked my fingers across the top of a bolt of homespun linen. “Clay was in his truck outside my store when I arrived. I couldn’t tell if he saw me, but he drove off quickly, and I didn’t get to ask him what he wanted.”
“Maybe he was looking for you.”
I gave her a wan smile. “Maybe. How was your evening? I didn’t mean to cut it short.”
“We had a great time, but . . . sometimes, it’s easiest if there’s no question of inviting him—any date, that is, especially a first date—up to my apartment afterward.” She glanced outside and threw me a grin. “He’s gone. Don’t let Clay worry you, Willow. He’s not a killer.”
I hunched into myself. “That’s what I think, too, mainly because I don’t want him to be one. But that makes my logic and sleuthing ability too much like Uncle Allen’s. I have to be more objective.” I plucked a teensy wisp of thread from the floor. “Something’s been nagging at me since Mike’s murder, since the evening before it, actually. Someone opened my gate and let my dogs out. I suspected Mike.”
“Makes sense,” she said.
“Yes, but Clay brought them back. What if Clay let them out and only pretended to rescue them?”
“That’s silly, Willow. Why would he do that?”
I didn’t have an answer to that, objective or otherwise.
“You can’t distrust everybody in Elderberry Bay,” she said. She must have had a great evening with Smythe. Hadn’t she and her mothers and I been warning each other not to trust anyone? “I think your dogs want something.”
They were racing up and down the stairs to and from the apartment.
Haylee came out to the backyard with us. The dogs ran down the hill and barked at the levee of sandbags, which to them must have resembled a huge snake.
I shined my light at the flood. It had threatened the top of the sandbags all day. Surprised and excited, I said, “The water’s gone down, maybe a whole inch.”
“Time to celebrate!”
“You and your mothers were right,” I admitted. “I tried to talk you out of making those sandbags. But they really did keep the flood out of my cottage.”
“I’m right about Clay, too.” I let her out through the front gate.
Despite what Haylee said, though, I was determined to be cautious around Clay.
That determination lasted until the next morning, Monday, the day all Threadville shops were closed. I took the last load of cinnamon cookies out of the oven and went up to the shop to embroider the rest of the cornstalks for my wall hanging. Someone tapped at In Stitches’ front door. Jumping, I turned around.
Holding a tool box in one hand and a level in the other, Clay was looking in through the glass. Did I detect a certain wariness in the set o
f his shoulders and the thinning of his mouth as I walked toward him, or was he only imitating my expression? Trying to look as if I wasn’t the type to go around murdering men in and around Elderberry Bay, I opened the door.
Clay must have decided I wouldn’t murder all of them, or at least not him. He came inside.
The dogs went wild. He put his tools down, crouched, and let them slobber all over him. “Sorry I didn’t make it last night.”
“I saw you leave here when I was arriving home after the dance.” I meant it as a question, but it came out as an accusation.
Rubbing Sally’s ears, he didn’t look up at me. “After your break-in the night before, I wanted to keep an eye on all the Threadville shops.” He spoke slowly, like maybe he was making it up or had seen my car turn onto Lake Street, memorized an excuse, and then had trouble reciting it. “Threadville has become an important part of the local economy. I sat outside in my truck all evening. Nobody came near any of your shops.” He scratched Tally-Ho’s chest.
I would have preferred to dance with him. Only one dance, the one I’d been promised. All I said was, “Thanks. You didn’t need to.” It came out brusquely. “Like some coffee?”
“I’d love it.”
I herded the dogs into the apartment with me so he could leave the front door open while he carried materials in from his truck. As I brewed coffee and heaped fragrant cookies onto a plate, I heard Clay’s footsteps crossing the floor above me. My new caution forced me to consider that he might be snooping through embroidery hoops and bolts of stabilizer.
On the other hand, if he hadn’t murdered Mike, he might think that I had.
We were in for a fun day.
I put a carafe of coffee, two mugs, and the cookies on the tray. Negotiating the stairs while balancing the tray and keeping it out of reach of two inquisitive doggie noses was a challenge. At the top of the stairs, I scrabbled at the knob with my elbow. Clay must have been waiting on the other side. He opened the door. Wriggling, Sally and Tally danced around him.
I set the tray down and poured two mugs of coffee. “Do you need help carrying things from your truck?”
“I’ve got everything I need, thanks.”
I offered the plate of cookies.
One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Except these.” My two cute little traitors sat at his feet and gazed adoringly up at him. And at what he was eating.
I left the apartment door open so the dogs could be with Clay and me, but I locked the front door in case embroidery-crazed fabriholics should come wandering through Threadville and inadvertently let my pups escape.
Using sharp appliqué scissors, I carefully cut out the cornstalks and trees I’d embroidered Friday night. It was sort of like making paper dolls when I was a kid, drawing them and their clothing, then cutting them out. Clay whistled, measured, and sawed through oak. The combined scents of fresh sawdust, cinnamon cookies, and wood smoke took me back to a contented time in my childhood before my mother went into politics and my father shut himself into his workshop.
I couldn’t help thinking that Clay was kind and gentle, not a killer. Be careful, I reminded myself. Objectivity is a virtue.
I threaded wire through the satin stitches outlining the cutout trees and cornstalks. I tried various ways of bending the wires until the cornstalks and tree trunks looked almost real. I fastened them to the wall hanging. With the tan cornstalks in the foreground, and the embossed hiker and trees in the background, the whole thing came across as a whimsical celebration of seventeenth-century stumpwork tapestries. I grinned.
Clay admired my handiwork and impressed me by understanding the amount of creativity that had gone into it. But then, he was creative himself. That was my totally objective judgment.
He was doing another spectacular job with his carpentry. An Arts and Crafts–style oak railing formed two sides of the pen, while walls formed the other two. The apartment door opened into the pen. He was building a neat gate that would be barely noticeable because of its similarity to the railing but would allow me easy access to the dogs and the apartment.
Although Naomi could have given me pointers about perfectly binding the edges of my wall hanging, I managed a neat binding. Sally-Forth helped by rolling onto the foot pedal and starting the sewing machine when I least expected it. Pulling my fingers away from the wildly stitching needle, I gained a sudden appreciation for the phrase “in the nick of time.”
At lunchtime, Clay came downstairs and helped prepare hamburgers with all the fixings. He liked them, especially the buns. “I cheated,” I confessed. “My bread maker makes the dough, and I shape and bake it.”
We polished off every crumb, then accompanied Sally and Tally to the backyard. The river had gone down another couple of inches. I held my arms out triumphantly toward the river as if inviting it in now that it wasn’t likely to accept my offer. “We did it!” Yipping, the dogs dashed around us in tight circles.
Inside again, Clay began fitting the gate to the dog pen. I arranged tissue-paper padding around the three-dimensional trees and cornstalks on my wall hanging and carefully packed it in a carton. Leaving Clay and the dogs to each others’ company, I walked around the corner to the post office. A few days ago, the weather had felt too cold. Now I wanted the below-freezing temperatures to last a nice long time, then warm up very, very gradually. The river needed to recede a lot before the next thaw.
The tiny post office was empty except for the postmistress, a woman about my age. Her nametag said Petal. Auburn curls fluffed out around her face like a flower around its center, and her eyes were a soft violet blue. Even her voice reminded me of flowers. “Willow Vanderling,” she read from my return address. Her mouth round, her eyes wide, she beckoned me closer. “Don’t let them pin Mike Krawbach’s murder on you. That guy had plenty of enemies long before you moved to Elderberry Bay.”
Putting on my most confiding expression, I asked in a hushed voice, “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill him?” I held my breath.
Her soft violet eyes hardened. “I hate to say anything against a colleague.” She leaned closer. “You know Herb, our mailman?”
Herb. The thought of such a nice person being a murderer sickened me, but I nodded, encouraging her to continue.
She murmured, “He and Mike were friends. Herb wasn’t always a postman. He used to drive those big eighteen-wheelers all over the country. He loved it. But he had to quit doing that and start working here when Mike hurt him.”
I couldn’t help gasping. “Mike hurt Herb?”
She whispered, “Herb told me in confidence that Mike told him to drive a big farm tractor across a slope at Mike’s vineyard. Afterward, Herb thought Mike had purposely deflated the tires on the downhill side as a prank, and selected Herb as his victim. Mike actually laughed at Herb for coming down so far in the world that he had to drive our cute little post office vehicle instead of the big rigs.” She looked at me sternly as if to make certain I understood the extent of Mike’s villainy.
Biting my lower lip, I nodded.
She went on, “But . . . if you ask me, Herb’s arm has improved a lot more than he wants anyone to know. Maybe he’s still collecting disability? When he doesn’t know I’m watching, he acts like nothing’s wrong—”
A door slammed in the back of the post office. “Hi, Petal!” It was Herb.
Drawing her finger across her lips in a zipping motion, she backed away from me.
I gave her a terse nod. I’d noticed that Herb was stronger than he let on, too.
Strong enough to beat Mike up?
Herb sailed into view, saw me, and stuck his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Willow, what brings you here?”
“A package.” Brilliant answer. I pasted on a smile. “The river’s going down. Thanks for your help.”
“No problem.” He sauntered into a back room where I could no longer see him.
Waving good-bye to Petal, I left.
I stopped walking when I caug
ht sight of the building that Edna had guessed was a meth lab or marijuana grow-op.
The old aqua wooden front door had been replaced by a gleaming glass one, and the building’s windows were no longer papered over. They were clean, with furnishings tastefully arranged behind them. A rocking chair and knitting basket made a vignette in the window to the right of the door, while a garden table set in springtime pastels adorned the left window. Above it all, a shiny new sign said Country Chic.
I crossed the street for a closer look. Beyond the window displays, I made out wicker furniture, vases, objets d’art, throw pillows, and, against the back wall, shelves of fabric.
Fabric?
A new Threadville shop in Elderberry Bay? Why had its owners kept it a secret from the other Threadville retailers?
The door was locked. A sign in its glass announced: Gala Opening, Everyone Invited.
Five to seven o’clock. Tonight. Nothing like short notice. The other Threadville boutiques were closed today, and none of the regular tourists would know about the gala in time to attend.
Behind me, a woman called in a voice sharpened by anger or annoyance, “We’re not open yet.”
I turned to see who didn’t want me snooping around the new store. It was Mona DeGlazier, Uncle Allen’s sister-in-law, the woman leading a nature hike on Smythe’s farm in the morning. The president of the nature club wore a genuine mink coat, though the irony seemed to escape her. She eyed my burgundy wool jacket with its subtle tone-on-tone embroidery. “Oh. You’re that girl with the little sewing business.”
I stifled a smug smile. Compared to Mona, I might be considered a girl, but my shop wasn’t exactly little. Was she going to put me down whenever she got the chance? This could be fun.
Her mouth widened abruptly and narrowed again, a twitch more than a smile. “Well, you might as well come to our gala tonight.” She shook her head again. “Tell your friends.” She frowned toward the other side of the street where The Stash, Tell a Yarn, Buttons and Bows, and Batty About Quilts were. She bustled past me.
