Dire Threads

by Janet Bolin

  Edna pulled at my sleeve. Haylee and Smythe had gone ahead, out of view, and Opal and Naomi were trying to forge past Mona and Pete, who were very neatly blocking their path.

  I stopped. Rhonda crashed into my back. Ignoring her shrill swearing, I grabbed a pine bough. “Mona,” I called. “Can you tell what kind of tree this is?” It looked exactly like every other pine tree around us.

  My ploy worked. Mona and Pete came shaking and nodding back to us, allowing Opal and Naomi to rush off after Haylee and Smythe. “How many needles in a cluster?” Mona asked.

  With Aunt Betty wheezing alarmingly close to my shoulder, I took time counting to give Opal and Naomi a chance to catch up with Haylee.

  “Five needles,” Edna answered for me.

  “W-H-I-T-E,” Mona spelled, shaking her head. “Five letters and five needles. It’s a white pine.”

  I thanked her, and she rushed to the head of the line again, at least to the head of the line that we could see. Opal, Naomi, Haylee, and Smythe had to be way out in front.

  Edna and I stuck to Herb and Karen along the trail through the woods, across a corner of the field, through a natural windbreak of bushy evergreens, and into Smythe’s farmyard. We passed his barn and outbuildings, all recently painted and very neat. Padlocked, too, maybe to keep the latest generation of teen gangs out.

  Irv positioned himself beside the straggling line of hikers and collected Smythe’s maps. With an innocent smile, I kept my map hidden in my pocket. I would find out when Smythe’s birthday was and I’d embroider a version of his map on a fabric card for him.

  Aunt Betty and Rhonda straggled behind. They may have decided they didn’t have to continue playing detective. Or they couldn’t keep up.

  We climbed onto Smythe’s screened porch. He opened a door, showing off a spotless, warm, and inviting kitchen. He’d taken off the yellow parka and bee-stinger cap, and had donned a yellow and black striped apron. Behind him Haylee, Opal, and Naomi wore aprons identical to his. They all looked extremely proud of themselves.

  “Come on in, everybody,” Smythe called. “Coffee’s on, and we’ll have toast and honey.”

  He had rushed ahead to prepare breakfast. Apparently, Haylee, Opal, and Naomi had volunteered to help.

  I hesitated. Smythe’s breakfast sounded delicious.

  “Are you coming in?” Edna asked me.

  I shoved my coat sleeve back to catch a glimpse of my watch. It was nearly eight. “I need to get back to take my dogs out again before I open the shop so the poor babies won’t have to wait until noon. You stay.”

  She made a show of eyeing the black pickup trucks parked along both sides of the winding driveway. I got the message. Anyone could be hiding behind or in one of them. “I’ll walk you to your car,” she muttered.

  I whispered, “And who will escort you back to Smythe’s house? The others are inside helping him.”

  She raised her chin. “I’ll be fine.”

  I suggested in a quiet mumble, “Just watch from here until I get to my car.”

  She agreed.

  I ran down Smythe’s porch steps and jogged past Jacoba and Luther, who were sitting in one of the black pickups with its engine running. I got into my car and negotiated the driveway’s curves.

  Smythe’s farm had to be about halfway between Shore Road and the next road, farther south, the one I thought passed Mike’s driveway. I chose the way I knew.

  I turned the corner onto Shore Road. A black pickup truck was behind me. I thought it might be Herb’s, but it passed his place. Smoke drifted from the chimney on Dawn’s barn.

  I stepped on the gas. The truck sped up. I slowed down. It did, too. It never came close enough for me to see who was in it.

  Was someone following me? Mike’s murderer?

  I told myself to calm down. Nearly everyone in this morning’s group had arrived in black pickups. It stood to reason that at least one other hiker besides me couldn’t stay for Smythe’s breakfast and would return to Elderberry Bay along Shore Road. Herb could be on his way to work. Or it could be Luther and Jacoba on their way back to open up the General Store.

  The truck dropped back before I made the turn onto Lake Street. Nevertheless, I parked in front of In Stitches, ran inside, and locked the door.

  In the apartment, Sally and Tally attempted to kiss my face without putting their paws on me. “Sorry I didn’t take you along,” I told them. “Mona wouldn’t have liked you interfering with the wildlife, though you might have been more interested in coyote scat than the rest of us were.” I opened the back door. Forgiving as always, the pups raced around until I called them in so I could make certain that In Stitches was ready for the Threadville tour bus and the day’s lessons.

  I’d swept the night before. My shop was spotless, but some of my smaller embroidery hoops were hidden behind larger ones again. I rearranged them on the counter. Nestled together, the laminated oak hoops made concentric circles like the rings of that stump this morning. My pun about being stumped had gone over like a . . . like a downed tree. Clay might have laughed.

  Smythe was usually happy to joke around, but something had been bothering him. Probably Mona and her discouraging head shaking.

  I booted up my computer to work on my next stumpwork project. I planned to puff up the ice fishing hut, the smoke coming out of its chimney, and the ATV parked on the lake. I would add several layers of foam to the foreground, too, and I would embroider copies of twisty, bare sumac trunks growing on the edge of the bluff above the lake, then wire them to bend forward from the picture. When it was done, I would display it where it might encourage my students to try new things. And to buy new sewing and embroidery machines.

  As I hooped fabric and stabilizer and placed pieces of foam in the right places, all I could see was Smythe’s distressed face when I blurted my feelings about killing an old tree.

  Later, in his kitchen, he’d appeared happy and proud of his place. His farm was amazingly neat, and he obviously tried to keep it perfect. I saw again his recently painted barn and the sturdy outbuildings surrounding his farmyard.

  I flung the back of my hand across my mouth.

  All of his outbuildings had been padlocked. One of those locks had been shiny and new.

  Wasn’t that lock similar to the ones I’d bought the night before Mike died?

  According to Sam the ironmonger, the old-timers had seen Mike pocket something that could have been a package containing one of those locks with a key matching mine. Where had that padlock ended up?

  Smythe’s farm?

  31

  I’D RULED SMYTHE OUT AS MIKE’S MURDERER for three reasons. One, he was too sweet. Two, I hadn’t figured out a motive for him. Three, he’d been in Erie when Mike was attacked.

  Murderers could appear sweet, I knew.

  Other people had stronger motives.

  Herb was my prime suspect. Mike had caused him injury and pain. Herb had loved driving big rigs. Now all he could do was putt around in a cute post office vehicle.

  Pete DeGlazier’s motive was a little more nebulous. Maybe Mike had stolen Pete’s fishing hut and everything in it.

  Irv had been Mike’s friend when they were boys, committing minor crimes together, maybe. Had Mike threatened to reveal things about Irv’s past that could cause Irv to lose his job as mayor of Elderberry Bay?

  If Smythe had been a regular in Mike’s gang, his motive could be similar to Irv’s. Was it worth killing over, many years later?

  Those huge amounts going into Mike’s bank account—had Mike been successfully blackmailing someone? Smythe?

  Smythe had seemed uncomfortable about the black walnut stump on his property, right next to Mike’s woods. And Irv had goaded him about it. Smythe’s face had become red, and he’d turned away. So we couldn’t see his expression? Was it anger? At Irv or at Mike?

  According to the women who threatened me in the ladies’ room at the roast beef dinner, Mike had loved beautiful things made of wood. Mike had want
ed to bulldoze Blueberry Cottage, which was built of irreplaceable hardwoods. Had he loved beautiful wood enough to condemn my cottage so he could take the lumber for his own projects?

  Enough to steal a tree from Smythe? Many trees?

  Lots of trees had been cut down in that section of Smythe’s woodlot, and in Mike’s woods next to it, but not in other parts of Smythe’s forest where hardwoods grew. Had Mike logged his own forest and part of Smythe’s, fooled the timber company into believing he owned it all, and pocketed the proceeds? There had been about ten years between the two huge deposits in Mike’s bank account. The timing seemed odd for blackmail, but not impossible. Timber probably couldn’t be harvested that often if the woods were totally cut down each time, but in Smythe’s woodlot, only selected trees had been felled, including an enormous black walnut that might have netted tens of thousands of dollars by itself.

  And Smythe, reputedly as sweet as his honey, may have said nothing about the theft. Not then.

  There was a fly in the honey. Smythe had left for the Honey Makers’ Conference the evening before Mike died, and hadn’t returned until Friday. I’d assumed he’d done the obvious thing and stayed in Erie all that time.

  That had been a silly, unthinking conclusion, the sort Uncle Allen might jump to. In fact, Uncle Allen had jumped to it. Surely, I could reason better than that.

  Smythe could have waited until Wednesday morning to leave for Erie, he might have never gone to the conference, or maybe he left Erie during the night and made it back to the hotel before the conference’s first morning meetings. It would have been daring, though. His amber truck would be recognizable among all the black ones in and around Elderberry Bay.

  Maybe he borrowed someone’s black pickup truck. Mike’s? Or he’d come with Mike on Mike’s ATV, and walked home, shortening his time away from the conference by cutting through Dawn’s farm.

  I needed to take another look at the photo I’d taken last Wednesday morning of the man in the orange hat disappearing into the woods. The only hat I’d ever seen on Smythe was his whimsical yellow and black striped stocking cap, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have worn an orange one, especially if he didn’t want to be recognized. Had I taken a photo of a killer walking home after beating Mike?

  I discovered another fly in the honey. I realized with a shock that all of the photographs I’d taken that morning were missing. Someone had deleted them.

  There was no reason to do that unless the killer feared that my photos could provide evidence against him. It was a stretch. When I’d photographed the man, he’d been almost ten miles from the scene of the crime, and Mike had been dead for almost three hours. Long enough for someone to walk that distance . . .

  But if the killer knew he was the person I’d photographed, it wouldn’t have seemed like a stretch to him. He could be afraid that my evidence might point straight to him.

  And he could have easily heard about the photographs I’d taken. The local amateur sleuths had snooped around my computer and informed Uncle Allen, and probably everyone else in Elderberry Bay, that I had a picture of Mike, but when I took the photo that was now missing, Mike was already dead.

  If the man in the photo was a murderer, he might fear that, sooner or later, someone would examine that photo and discover the time and date the picture was taken. They would know that the man in the photo couldn’t be Mike.

  To prevent anyone from identifying him and figuring out that he had been fleeing the scene of the crime, the killer could have stolen my camera, turned on my computer, and erased all of my photographic evidence.

  All?

  He wouldn’t have known to search through my embroidery portfolio. Trembling, I loaded my embroidery software.

  Sure enough, I’d saved the best photo where only an embroiderer would look.

  The man was taller than Herb or Irv. As tall as Pete or Smythe.

  Or Clay.

  The break-in had occurred while I was at the roast beef dinner, which Clay hadn’t attended. But Clay couldn’t be a murderer, I told myself, repeating Haylee’s confident assertion from the night before.

  Smythe had attended the roast beef dinner. I’d seen him when we were lining up for food, but not before or after. He could have arrived at the dinner late or departed early, could have broken into my shop, stolen my camera, and deleted my photos. I didn’t want Smythe to be a murderer, either, but I’d seen that shiny padlock hanging from one of his sheds.

  In hopes of figuring out for sure who the man was, I enlarged the photo on my screen. The resolution wasn’t great, but I could make out a bit of yellow and maybe some black on the man’s right hand.

  Could that be one of Smythe’s hand-knit yellow and black striped gloves? I hadn’t seen those gloves since before Mike’s death. Smythe had been bare handed or wearing work gloves ever since. He had worn the hat and socks that matched the gloves, however.

  Although I couldn’t positively identify the man in the photo, I renamed it and saved copies in unrelated files. To be extra safe, I also saved a copy to a thumb drive and jammed the tiny drive deep into the front pocket of my jeans.

  Haylee, Opal, Naomi, and Edna were with Smythe. None of them believed Smythe could be a murderer. What if Haylee’s mothers decided to leave the young lovebirds alone?

  Dialing Haylee on my cell phone, I rushed to my front windows. Closed signs were still displayed in all of the Threadville boutiques across the street.

  Haylee didn’t answer. I texted her to return to her shop as soon as possible. If she was too busy to answer her phone, would she look at her messages?

  I didn’t take time to power off my computer. I closed the dogs into their pen, ran out the front door, locked it, and dashed to my car.

  A black pickup truck was parked in front of the General Store.

  I pressed down on the gas pedal and careened around Cayuga Avenue. I zigzagged through village streets to Shore Road. No one was following me.

  I accelerated. To the speed limit. Above it.

  Dawn’s farm looked the same as it had a half hour earlier, and so did Herb’s house. No vehicles in their driveways.

  I barreled onto Smythe’s road, then zoomed to the Hap-Bee Hap-Bee sign that marked the end of his driveway, and turned in.

  The driveway curved. Curved again. Smythe’s house came into sight.

  All of the vehicles, including Edna’s and Haylee’s, that had been parked in front of it were gone. No pickup trucks.

  Not even Smythe’s.

  Haylee and her mothers must have driven home the other way, and we had passed each other on roads a mile apart. They were probably warmly ensconced in their boutiques, ready for the day’s students and shoppers. I didn’t have to rescue anyone, after all.

  I didn’t want Smythe to be a murderer. I much preferred Irv, Pete, or possibly Herb. And maybe one of them was.

  A potential method of ruling out Smythe dangled with other keys from my car’s ignition. I parked the car, grabbed my keys, and tiptoed around behind Smythe’s house. If he showed up, I’d say I was hunting for . . . a lost glove. I thrust one of my gloves into the pocket with Smythe’s map and dashed to the shed that was locked with a gleaming new padlock.

  The key went easily into the lock. It turned.

  The padlock popped open.

  32

  MY THROAT DRY, I STARED AT THE padlock in my hand. Smythe had a key that would open my locks. He could have beaten Mike, dragged him into my backyard, and fled, locking the gate behind him.

  Smythe, sweeter than his honey. A murderer?

  Out on the road, brakes squealed.

  Tires crunched on the gravel in Smythe’s driveway.

  My car was in plain view. If anyone came around the corner of Smythe’s house, he’d see me.

  I had to get out of sight quickly. There was only one place to hide, and it was right in front of me.

  I yanked the padlock off the door, pocketed it and my keys, pulled the shed’s extra-wide door open, slipped int
o the shed, and closed the door. I let go of the door. It inched open by itself. I yanked it shut.

  Maybe someone had driven to Hap-Bee Hap-Bee Lavender Farm hoping to see Smythe, would realize he wasn’t here, and go away.

  The vehicle’s engine turned off.

  A door slammed, a thunk of metal on metal. My ungloved hand cramped on the icy door handle. If the new arrival was Smythe, and he was a murderer . . .

  Would he recognize my car in front of his house? Someone clomped up the porch steps. The screen door screeched. My teeth chattered. I huddled my chin into my scarf.

  I was nicely hidden in Smythe’s shed, but if whoever it was came out to look for me, they might notice that the shed door wasn’t completely closed and the padlock was missing.

  Being discovered skulking in a shed could be a bit embarrassing. If a murderer was doing the discovering, however . . .

  My left arm tense across my chest, I grabbed the door handle with my gloved hand and thrust my bare right fist into my pocket. By the time my eyes adjusted to the dim shed, my hands were warm enough to dial Uncle Allen on my cell phone.

  “Come out to Smythe Castor’s farm,” I whispered.

  “Why?” He sounded sleepier than usual.

  I didn’t want to explain. I needed to listen for sounds from Smythe’s house. “I’ll show you when you get here,” I whispered.

  With a grumpy grunt, he disconnected.

  I shoved my phone into my pocket and let my gaze drift around the inside of the shed.

  What I saw turned my bones to ice.

  A camouflage jacket and an orange ball cap hung on a hook near the door. The cap had been professionally embroidered. Under purple grapes were the words Krawbach Vineyard. Mike’s cap? A scrunched up pair of yellow and black striped gloves lay on the dirt floor. Why would Smythe lock his coat, gloves, and Mike’s hat in his shed? Was he hiding evidence until he figured out how and where to destroy it? Again, it seemed like a farfetched theory, but a murderer might only be thinking of ways of saving his own skin, and would destroy or hide every bit of evidence anyone might ever pin on him.