Dire Threads

by Janet Bolin

  “Thank you,” I said in my most gracious and un-girllike voice. “We’d love to come.”

  Her back to me, she unlocked her door and mumbled something that sounded like “great,” but with a sarcastic lilt. She was sure to be a supportive addition to the Threadville community.

  26

  INTENT ON DELIVERING MONA’S HALFHEARTED invitation, I dashed across the street to Batty About Quilts. The front room was breathtaking, a gallery of amazing quilts on white walls. Some of the quilts were carefully crafted scenes, collages cut from new fabric. Others featured keepsake photos printed on cloth. Some were today’s version of crazy quilts, every square inch embellished with embroidery, ribbons, buttons, and appliqués. A few of the quilts might eventually become coverlets on beds, but I would be afraid to put them where dogs might decorate them with muddy paw prints.

  “Naomi?”

  “Willow! Come on back and see what I just finished setting up.”

  I kicked off my boots and padded into the next room, where Naomi sold everything that went into making quilts.

  Her fabrics were neatly arranged by color and size of print. I couldn’t help running my fingers over them. Only one hundred percent cotton felt like this, a sensuous combination of crispness and softness. I saw myself piecing lovely shades together. With original embroidered motifs on every patch.

  Naomi showed me a quilting frame with a long armed sewing machine attached to it.

  “Wow,” I said reverently. “That’s enormous.”

  “It will stitch queen-sized quilts. I already have orders for people wanting me to do the fancy stitching over the quilts they’ve made.”

  “So you get to keep this baby?” I asked.

  She stroked the machine. “Until a newer model comes out. Then I’ll sell this one.”

  We smiled happily at each other. Owning a Threadville store was even more fun than I’d guessed. Despite visions of always being able to play with the newest, most exciting machines, I remembered why I’d come to visit her. “The store across the street is having an opening gala tonight, from five to seven. Mona DeGlazier seems to own it.”

  Naomi hurried to her window. “A home décor shop!” Her forehead puckered. “And she never said a word to any of us, never introduced herself. She could have asked our advice, like about what sells in Threadville and what doesn’t.”

  I pictured those bolts of fabric in the back of Mona’s store. “Or what we carry so she wouldn’t duplicate it,”

  Naomi stood taller and tugged at her patchwork vest. She had appliquéd adorable fuzzy poodles on every square. “Obviously, we have to go to this gala. We can do some more sleuthing and see if we can figure out for once and for all who killed Mike.”

  I headed for the door. “I’ll tell the others. Have fun with that quilting machine.” As if she wouldn’t.

  Opening Edna’s door set off the little “Buttons and Beaux” tune. I didn’t know how she kept those shelves of trims and buttons so pleasingly neat. I was sure she’d added a new collection of patterned twill tapes since I’d last looked. She popped out of her back room. “Willow! Can you join the rest of us for dinner here tonight at seven?”

  I smiled at her enthusiasm. “I’d love to. Maybe we should all go somewhere else first.” I told her about Country Chic’s opening gala.

  She beamed. “How nice of the villagers to provide us with gatherings every night where we can search for clues.”

  After cautioning her again about being careful, I jogged next door.

  Opal was arranging her latest creations for the next day’s Threadville tourists to admire. Fingering an angora scarf in shades of blue that made me long to luxuriate on Mediterranean beaches, I relayed Mona’s halfhearted invitation. Meanwhile, Lucy purred and wound around my ankles.

  Opal clapped her hands. “I wonder what I should wear . . .”

  I picked up the cat. “You have over three hours to whip up something.” Lucy’s purr revved to a rumble, vibrating her warm little body. Her fur felt like silk against my cheek.

  Opal pulled a fluffy tangerine-hued ball from one of her diamond-shaped niches. “I was wondering how to justify knitting some of this for myself.” The ball had to be yarn but was fuzzy enough to pass for another cat.

  When I left, Opal was humming and carrying an armload of tangerine yarn toward her homey dining room, and Lucy was following her, tail straight up. Anticipating, no doubt, a long cuddle in Opal’s lap. And attacking the fuzzy yarn.

  Haylee was in her classroom. With practiced ease, she was tailoring a spring outfit.

  I told her the plans the rest of us had made for this evening.

  She squeezed her face between her palms like a woebegone waif. “Dinners, dances, the gala, supper at Edna’s tonight, and that nature hike before sunrise tomorrow morning!”

  “At Smythe’s,” I reminded her. “He is a sweetheart.”

  “Yes, and so’s Clay. What are you doing racing around Threadville when he’s working in your shop?”

  “Running errands. Oh, and by the way, I asked him what he was doing in front of my shop last night. He claimed he was watching all of our shops.”

  “Then that’s what he was doing.”

  I stomped my foot. “Well, he didn’t have to. He should have come to the dance and . . . joined the fun.”

  “Trust Clay, Willow. I still think you two make the perfect pair.”

  “Perfect shmerfect. But maybe I’d better go back before my dogs decide to go home with him.”

  “Your dogs love him, Willow. You should, too.”

  I reeled as if from dizziness. “Now you’re really getting ahead of things. Must have been last night’s date.”

  “Ha.” She ducked her head and guided fabric underneath the presser foot of a whirring sewing machine.

  I ran outside and across the street. All the lights were on inside my store, illuminating my gorgeous merchandise and an equally gorgeous man working in the back corner. Clay lifted his head and smiled when I walked in. He was staining the dog pen. The dogs were nowhere in sight. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “I closed them in your apartment so I wouldn’t stain them, too.”

  I didn’t mind, but apparently they did. They whimpered in protest.

  Clay finished staining, then rubbed the wood until it glowed.

  I thanked him. As always, he’d done a magnificent job.

  He packed his tools. “Be careful until Mike’s murderer is caught, Willow,” he warned. “Don’t go anywhere alone.”

  I decided not to tell him that as soon as he left, I was going to drive out to Dawn’s place to pay her for the linens I’d sold and pick up any new pieces she might have. She didn’t scare me. She was afraid of everything. Even my dogs in the car would freak her out.

  Clay drove away. I ran down to my apartment and took my dogs out the back so they wouldn’t rub against their new pen’s stain, then up through the side yard to the street.

  Caterers were carrying covered trays into Country Chic. Tonight’s party might yield more than sleuthing.

  Dawn’s farm was on Shore Road, east of Elderberry Bay, the same direction I’d gone early Wednesday morning after Mike’s death. Had it really been only five days ago? Checking addresses on mailboxes, I drove slowly, enjoying glimpses of the ice-laden lake on my left and the woods on my right. I passed the little forest where I’d taken the evocative snapshot of the man disappearing into the woods. Dawn’s house, a sweet gray cottage with white shutters, wasn’t far beyond that.

  Two mailboxes stood in front of it—Dawn’s, and one for the house across the road. The other mailbox said Herb Gunthrie. Herb’s house was tiny, with a pickup truck in the driveway.

  Saturday night, I’d noticed, though it hadn’t really registered, that Herb drove a black pickup.

  Could it have been the truck Uncle Allen and I had seen turn onto Cayuga Avenue shortly before Mike succumbed to his injuries? Did Herb attack Mike, drive home, then, pumped with adrenaline, go for a walk in t
he woods?

  I knocked on Dawn’s front door. No answer. A beautifully maintained old barn was behind her house. Remembering my promise to Clay not to be alone, I returned to the car and leashed the dogs, then walked them across Dawn’s frozen yard.

  Fragrant wood smoke downdrafted from a chimney on one end of the barn. I knocked on a normal-sized door on the side of the barn. “Dawn?” I called. “It’s Willow.”

  She opened the door a crack. Her gray hair stood out in wisps around her head as if she’d run out to the barn the second she got out of bed. “Oh, it is you,” she gasped like someone calming down from an enormous fright. “Come in and bring the puppies with you.” She bent to let them sniff her fingers. “Hello there, you two darlings.” She wasn’t afraid of everything, then.

  I gave her the check I’d written. “All of your placemats and napkins sold.” Several looms were behind her in the toasty warm barn-turned-studio.

  “That’s odd.”

  “No it’s not. Your work is very attractive.”

  She waved one hand in front of her face. “No, I mean someone called me, a woman with a low, hoarse voice like she was talking through burlap. She offered to buy everything I made. She wouldn’t tell me who she was, so I turned her down.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I said quickly. “Mona DeGlazier is opening a home décor shop in that store next to The Ironmonger. Maybe she called you.”

  She looked perplexed. “Mona DeGlazier?”

  “Pete DeGlazier’s wife.”

  With a little gasp, she staggered backward. I hoped she wasn’t about to swoon again. “Pete DeGlazier?” She shook her head as if clearing cobwebs. “He must have remarried. Into money, sounds like, if his wife has the wherewithal to open a store.” Dawn probably hadn’t talked to anyone since Wednesday morning, when she’d told me about Mike’s gang, and now she was making up for her silence. “Years ago, Pete lost his farm and moved away. Not surprising he lost it, either. He was the laziest farmer around. Left crops to rot on the ground while he . . . I don’t know. Drank, I guess.”

  “I hear they bought a Victorian mansion upriver from the village.”

  Judging from her bug-eyed expression, that astounded her.

  On a loom beside me, a bedspread in a colonial pattern and shades of indigo and ivory was almost finished. I stroked the homey cloth. “Beautiful. Do you have a buyer for this?”

  “A museum shop. I sell most of my work through mail order.”

  A smaller loom was set up for placemats and napkins, while a gorgeous chenille scarf in spring greens and pastels reminding me of daffodils, hyacinths, and lilacs was materializing on an even narrower loom.

  She handed me a bag of placemats and napkins she’d finished. I suggested, “You might want to sell your things through Mona’s new store, Country Chic, instead.”

  “No, not to a DeGlazier. Never.” Her hands shook.

  Time for a new subject. “Has Herb always lived across the road?”

  “Only since his injury. That place is always being rented to someone new. A man named Foster inherited it. His great-great-granddaddy was one of the first settlers around Elderberry Bay. Everyone calls it the old Foster place, but no Foster’s lived there for years.”

  “And Foster owns that field and woods immediately east of the house Herb rents?” The woods where I’d seen a man the morning Mike died.

  “I own that. My farm straddles the road. The old Foster place is smack dab in middle of my farm. I’ve offered good prices for it. Foster refuses to sell.”

  Had she been planning to buy the land with the proceeds of weaving that she seemed to undervalue?

  She tilted her head toward Herb’s place. “Uncle Allen asked me where I was Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. I was here. I don’t sleep well. Every time I looked outside that night, Herb’s truck was in his driveway. Uncle Allen seemed pleased that I provided Herb with an alibi. He said that Herb told him my lights went on and off all night. Then he acted like that proved I’d been coming and going all night. He can’t have it both ways. Either I was here all night, providing Herb with an alibi, or I wasn’t here, and Herb doesn’t have an alibi. That ornery policeman twists everything to suit himself.” Her face paled to gray. She backed to her largest loom and plunked down onto the bench.

  I decided to stop agitating her or she’d never weave another row. As I turned away with her linens and my dogs, I heard her throw the shuttle, then smack the beater against the bedspread. Maybe I could come back some time and learn more about weaving. Threadville tourists would probably love to add the skill to their many ways of creating textiles. Could Dawn come out of her shell enough to teach them?

  Driving back to the village, I wondered what it had been like for her, living all alone on those bluffs above the lake where bullies like Mike Krawbach made frightening her a sport.

  Mike and some of the other people around here.

  Including Irv, Herb, and perhaps Smythe and Clay.

  27

  BACK IN MY APARTMENT, I OPENED MY closet and stared at the clothes hanging in it. How dressy would Mona’s party be? I finally chose black silk slacks and a black top I’d embroidered with colorful butterflies. Not owning a mink coat, I had to make do with my wool jacket.

  Mona met me at the door. The velvet of her crystalbedecked gown was stretched to its limits, riding up in unflattering ripples. She showed me where to hang my coat. “So glad you could make it.” She shook her head. “Your friend is here.”

  Apparently, Mona meant Opal. In the short time since I had joked with Opal about whipping up an outfit for tonight, she had knit a long caftan from the fuzzy tangerine yarn. Wearing it over red hand-knit slacks and a pale yellow sweater, she resembled a sunset. She beckoned me to a buffet table. “Look at these hors d’oeuvres!”

  “Tempting,” I agreed. “Let’s explore the store and put ourselves as far as possible from them.”

  A man turned around and bumped into me. “Hi!” He nodded encouragingly. “I’m Pete DeGlazier. Welcome to Mona’s and my boutique, the latest on the Threadville tour.”

  I carefully kept my jaw from dropping. The latest on the Threadville tour? Would our usual Threadville tourists agree? Nearly everything in Country Chic was finished and decorated, with no scope for the creative touches that Threadville tourists loved to add. What would draw them to this store more than once? I asked, “Will you teach courses?”

  “My wife will offer tips on interior decorating.” Nod, nod. “You’ll be glad to know and to tell your customers”—nod, nod, smile—“that we also provide custom upholstery and window treatments. White wine?”

  I nodded back at him. White appeared to be the only choice, which was probably just as well in a store stocked with furniture upholstered in pale fabrics.

  As soon as my wine was safely in my glass, I gravitated toward the fabrics in the back of the store. They were stylish and upscale, with prices to match. Who would actually do the upholstery and create the window treatments? Not, I guessed, the famously lazy Pete. Mona? Or would the work be done offsite by someone else?

  Haylee found me contemplating amazingly realistic faux suede that we could sew—and embroider—if we used needles made specifically for leather. Like me, she couldn’t help touching the material. She wore a tailored black suit and high-necked white blouse. Her blond hair was pinned up. Near the front door, Edna and Naomi accepted wine from Pete. Edna’s hair was brown tonight, a color I’d never seen on her before, and her outfit was quite tame, although I suspected that what looked like a plain brown jacket from across the room was not plain at all. Beside her, Naomi wore a long skirt and matching jacket, both quilted in patches of black and white in a pattern resembling flying geese. Mona could learn a few things about how clothes should fit from the other Threadville boutique owners.

  Hatless again, Smythe arrived and made a beeline for Haylee.

  Herb brushed past the other two and zeroed in on me. “What was Petal saying about me in the post office today?”<
br />
  What a strange greeting.

  Pondering an answer, I sipped at my wine. “That you work very hard. But, of course, I already knew that.” I tried to give him a charming smile that wouldn’t signal my suspicion that he might have murdered Mike. “I couldn’t have saved my cottage without your help.” I felt myself flush. Whoever killed Mike Krawbach had been very instrumental in saving my cottage, either from being burned down that night, or from being bulldozed later if it survived the fire.

  The store became crowded and noisy. Herb stepped closer. “I saw you visiting my neighbor today.” He showed his teeth in what was probably supposed to be a grin. “The old bit . . . witch.”

  So Mike’s gang members were every bit as fond of Dawn as she was of them. Shouldn’t they have outgrown their childish animosities? Herb was Dawn’s neighbor. Maybe she’d done something recently to bring about his caustic reaction. I answered his implied question. “I sell her weavings in my shop. Don’t you like her?”

  Herb put his face almost in mine. Maybe he didn’t want to shout to make himself heard in that crowd, but his invasion of my personal space felt threatening. “All my life, she’s blamed my friends and me for things we didn’t do. Whenever anything happened, she was on the phone to the police.”

  Pursuing that line of questioning might make it dangerously clear to him that, alibi or no alibi, he was among my lists of suspects. I asked, “Where’s Karen?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Was she supposed to be here?” He kept moving closer to me, and I kept edging backward. If I was going to be cornered in one part of the store, I should have stationed myself closer to the buffet table.

  A huge hand fell on my shoulder and a familiar voice bellowed, “Hello there, young lady! I see you’re feeling better.”

  Dr. Wrinklesides.

  Certain I couldn’t yell loudly enough to make him hear me, I smiled.

  He pushed a huge plate overflowing with food toward me. “You could use some fattening up. Help yourself.”

  Choosing a cube of cheddar, I looked for Herb. He was gone. Avoiding the good doctor? Maybe I should, too, if he wanted to fatten me up. “Are you singing tonight?” I shouted at Dr. Wrinklesides.