Thread End: An Embroidery Mystery

by Amanda Lee

  Did I mention that Ted looked gorgeous, by the way? He was wearing dark blue dress pants and a blue-and-white-striped button-down. I liked to think he’d been listening when I’d mentioned I was wearing my navy ensemble and that he dressed to complement my attire.

  During the half-hour-or-so drive to Depoe Bay, Veronica talked to me about her cross-stitch project, which she was doing very well on. And she talked with Ted about work.

  “Have there been any leads in recovering the textiles stolen from the museum?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, hang in there, dear. You’ll find them.”

  He rolled his eyes at me in the rearview and I nearly giggled.

  I would have loved to be able to see Veronica’s expression when we pulled up in front of Captain Moe’s.

  “Is this it?” she asked.

  “This is it,” Ted said. “Everybody sit tight. If Captain Moe is peeping out a window and sees a lady get out of my car on her own, he’ll most assuredly rake me over the coals.”

  He got out and came around to my door first. I grinned mischievously as I took his hand and stepped out of the car. He then opened his mother’s door and helped her out. He offered each of us an elbow to hold on to, and he ushered us to the door.

  I could hear the jukebox playing a loud rock song circa 1989 from halfway across the parking lot. I squeezed Ted’s arm. He looked down at me and winked.

  I was happy to be here at Captain Moe’s. Ted and I hadn’t been here in a couple weeks. And I was thrilled Ted had brought me somewhere that he knew I’d feel at ease.

  Captain Moe flung the door open just before we got to it. “I knew I recognized that strapping young man with the beauty on each arm!” He held open his arms, and I stepped into an encompassing Captain Moe bear hug.

  For the world, Captain Moe reminded me of Alan Hale Jr., who played the skipper on television’s Gilligan’s Island. He was tall and barrel-chested, and he had snowy white hair. Unlike Mr. Hale, however, Captain Moe had a neat, trim beard.

  After hugging me, Captain Moe shook Ted’s hand.

  “I know wee Tinkerbell here, but who is the other lovely lady you’re dining with tonight?” Captain Moe asked Ted.

  “This is my mom, Veronica Nash,” Ted said.

  “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Ms. Nash,” Captain Moe said, taking her hand and bowing slightly. “Welcome to my establishment.”

  Captain Moe was Riley Kendall’s uncle. He and Riley’s father had both referred to me as Tinkerbell for as long as I’d known them. I didn’t know if this was due to my hair color, my stature, or my impish nature. Or maybe they just couldn’t remember my given name. I didn’t mind. Having a nickname was cute—it made me feel as if I belonged.

  The diner had a counter down the middle of the back part of the room, and there was additional seating in the forms of booths and tables. Captain Moe showed us to one of the only empty tables in the place.

  “You’re busy tonight,” I said.

  “Never too busy for you, Tink. Your usual?”

  “Please.” I grinned.

  “Ted, your usual?” he asked.

  Ted nodded. “Please.”

  “And, Ms. Nash, would you like to see a menu?” Captain Moe asked.

  I could tell Veronica was struggling to adjust to this unexpected turn her evening had taken. She’d thought she was going to a high-class restaurant, and instead she was in a diner. It was a first-rate diner, mind you, but it wasn’t the Four Seasons.

  “Captain Moe makes the best cheeseburgers on the planet,” I told her.

  “I haven’t had a cheeseburger in ages,” said Veronica. “Give me one of those, please . . . and some fries . . . and a chocolate shake.”

  “So . . . three usuals,” said Captain Moe with a chuckle.

  He went over to the counter and got our drinks. When he brought them back, he asked about Angus. I told him Riley was in the shop Tuesday evening.

  He nodded. “She comes there to hide out, you know.”

  “She can hide out at the Stitch anytime,” I said.

  “Ted, I saw the press conference earlier,” Captain Moe said.

  “Press conference?” Ted echoed.

  “Yeah . . . Josh Ingle and that Padgett fellow were on the news offering a million dollars for any information leading to the recovery of the stolen artwork,” he said.

  Ted raised his eyebrows in my direction. “A million dollars? Whoa, Nellie!”

  * * *

  As we drove home, we discussed how well the evening went.

  “I was surprised at how well your mom adapted to Captain Moe’s,” I said. “I mean, she’d obviously been expecting a four-star restaurant instead of a tiny diner back away from everything.”

  “She loved that burger, though,” he said. “She didn’t leave a crumb!”

  I laughed. “Thanks for thinking of Captain Moe’s. I believe we were all more comfortable there than we would have been at a fancy restaurant.”

  “I totally agree. With me, you get the brawn and the brains.”

  “Speaking of your brains and your use thereof, when you said that about Nellie, I nearly fell out of my chair,” I said.

  “Hey, we could do a lot with a million dollars.”

  We turned onto my street, and Ted suddenly became serious.

  “What?” I asked. Then I realized there was a strange car in my driveway.

  Ted pulled into the drive. “You stay here.”

  “Wait,” I said. “It’s hard to be sure in the dark, but that looks like the rental car George Vandehey has been driving.”

  “Either way, I want you to stay in here with the doors locked until I assess the situation.” He reached into the glove compartment and got his gun. “If anything happens, call nine-one-one.”

  Before I could respond, he’d locked the doors and was moving around to the side of the car. Sometimes it scared me when Ted went into supercop mode. I had to admit it was sexy, though.

  Ted eased up to the rear driver’s side of the four-door sedan and yelled for the driver to get out of the car with his hands up. This set Angus to barking so loudly I could hear him from inside the car . . . and he was inside the house.

  George Vandehey got out of the car. His arms were trembling, and his face was ashen. Ted lowered the gun and motioned for me to come on. I got out of the car and hurried toward them.

  “We should get inside before Angus goes ballistic,” I said.

  The three of us went inside, George explaining as we went that he’d gone to the Seven-Year Stitch looking for Ted and me and then looked up my address in the phone book and come here when he’d found no one at the shop.

  “I wouldn’t have come by without calling . . . and I probably should have waited until tomorrow . . . but I was so excited. This can’t wait,” he said. “It’s about what I found on the flash drive my father had hidden in his hotel room.”

  Angus was still agitated, so I asked Ted to let him out into the backyard.

  “I’ll run up to the office and get my laptop,” I said, taking off my shoes and carrying them with me.

  “I’ll put on a pot of coffee after I let Angus out,” Ted said. “George, decaf or caffeinated?”

  “Either,” said George. “Actually, make it regular. I’m so excited, there’s no way I’ll get any sleep tonight regardless.”

  When I returned with the laptop, I could smell the coffee brewing. I headed for the living room but realized that Ted and George were in the kitchen. I went in there, set the laptop on the table in front of George, and booted it up.

  He took the flash drive from his pocket and plugged it in. “Okay. Let me show you the first photo and the corresponding note.” He pulled up a photo of the Cézanne painting in which the photographer had zoomed in on the apples. “The note for this photo was a single ten-letter word.” He looked at Ted and me expectantly, as if one of us was going to call out the word like contestants on a game show.

  I shook my head. />
  “Temptation,” said George. “I’ll admit I studied on it, but I couldn’t come up with a ten-letter word to describe apples. So then I opened a search engine and typed in a query asking what apples symbolize. Apples represent forbidden fruit. The ten-letter word is temptation.”

  “And finding that word helped you break the code?” Ted asked.

  “Precisely! See? Temptation has several of the major letters: t, e, a, i, and n. From there, it was easy to fill in the blanks on most of the other words. If you have a three-letter combination beginning with in, the other letter is more than likely a g.”

  “So temptation provided you with the beginning of a key,” I said.

  “Right.” George pulled a folded-up sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. “I wrote out all twenty-six letters of the alphabet with a grid below each letter. In the grid, I placed the symbol that Dad had created to correspond with the letter.”

  I unfolded the paper and looked at it before giving it to Ted.

  “As you can see, I didn’t fill in all the blanks,” George said. “Most . . . but not all. For example, there were no J’s in Dad’s notes.” He pulled up another photo. “This one is the entire image of the Cézanne. The corresponding note says Tried to buy from Cummings for the amount he paid for it. Cummings laughed. Said the Cézanne is worth what he paid many times over.”

  Ted and I exchanged glances. It was apparent that neither of us saw what George was getting so excited about. So far, the photos and notes he’d shown us proved nothing.

  “Now take a look at this one,” said George.

  A photo depicting a close-up of the knife filled the screen.

  “I took the knife as a sign of treachery,” he continued. “And the note that goes with this image indicates that Cummings wanted Dad to exaggerate the painting’s worth.”

  “But Chad Cummings had already told your father that it was worth what he paid for it many times over,” I said. “His wanting its worth exaggerated doesn’t make sense.”

  “It does when you consider the paltry amount Cummings paid for it,” George said. “Keep in mind that when he first bought the painting, no one realized it was an early Cézanne.”

  The next photo was a close-up of the glass of wine. “The note that corresponds to this photo says So says a German proverb—wine and women make fools of everybody. I’m guessing Dad’s referring to his love of Libby here. It’s a veiled reference telling why he was willing to go along with Cummings’s scheme.”

  George’s voice broke, and I patted his shoulder.

  “Who’s ready for coffee?” I asked.

  “Not yet for me, please,” George said. “I’m afraid I’d spill it in your laptop.”

  “None for me, either, thanks,” Ted said.

  “I feel that these next two photos—and the notes that go with them—are the most damning.” He pulled up a photo of the Cummingses’ home security alarm keypad. “The note says Code 093072—I am to go in on Tuesday evening when the family will be attending a play at the son’s school. The nanny will also be in attendance, and the rest of the staff will be given the night off. I’ve been told to take only the painting and my compensation of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If I take anything else, or if the painting is recovered prior to the insurance payout, my daughter will suffer the consequences.”

  I gasped. “Oh, my gosh! Cummings threatened your sister?”

  Ted merely stared at the computer screen. I could tell the gears were grinding in his head, but I had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Let’s see the next one,” Ted said.

  George brought up an image of the confession letter. I’d seen a copy of it at one of the online news sites.

  “The corresponding note says I was made to sign this. I notice with some satisfaction that something I’d said about the painting being unappreciated except for its monetary value was added to the letter.” George looked at Ted. “What do you think? Does this prove I’m right about Chad Cummings paying my father to steal his painting?”

  Ted took a deep breath. “It comes close. Have you spoken with Manu about this yet?”

  “No,” he said.

  Ted took out his cell phone. “Let me step here into the living room and call him. I’ll be right back.”

  While Ted went into the living room, I poured each of us a cup of coffee. George asked for sugar but no cream. I set the cup near his right hand.

  He raised his eyes to mine. “What do you think?”

  “I think this is incredible,” I said.

  “It proves my dad was forced to steal the Cézanne, right?”

  I nodded slightly, and then went to let Angus back inside. It did appear that the flash drive contained evidence exonerating Dr. Vandehey, but I didn’t know if it would be enough to convict Chad Cummings of insurance fraud.

  Angus greeted each of us and then went to the living room to find Ted.

  When Ted returned, he confirmed my fears.

  “The good news is that Manu’s men found the same thing you found,” he said to George. “This means that two independent cryptology teams—you and our tech guys—deciphered the code within the flash drive and got the same information. However, it will still come down to Chad Cummings’s word against that of a . . .”

  “Of a dead man,” George finished.

  “I’m afraid so. Your father can’t explain his actions to a jury, and Chad Cummings’s attorneys would present the argument that Dr. Vandehey created the flash drive after the fact in order to cover his tracks if and when he got caught,” Ted said.

  George sighed. “I guess that’s it, then.”

  “Not so fast. In the morning, Manu and I are going to bring Special Agent Brown up to speed on the information found on the flash drive. Then we’re bringing Chad Cummings in for questioning.”

  “Do you mean it?” George asked.

  Ted smiled slightly. “Yes. But don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Let’s say for the sake of argument that Chad Cummings is forced to admit that even one thing—that he gave Dad the security code, for instance—is true. Do you think that proves . . . ?”

  “Proves that Chad Cummings coerced your dad into stealing the Cézanne?” I asked.

  George shook his head. “Do you think it could prove that Cummings killed him?”

  “Let’s just see what tomorrow brings,” said Ted. “All right?”

  “Okay,” said George.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I kept looking at the clock in between customers Saturday morning. I knew Ted and Manu were questioning Chad Cummings, and I was anxious to know what was going on. I hadn’t deluded myself into thinking that Mr. Cummings would break down and admit that everything on the flash drive made sense and was true. In fact, some of the things Geoffrey Vandehey had alluded to hadn’t made a bit of sense as far as I could see. But I did hope that if Mr. Cummings was guilty of insurance fraud, the truth would come out somehow.

  A young woman and her little girl came into the shop. The little girl immediately squealed with delight and went to hug “the pony.”

  Her mother looked slightly horrified until I assured her that Angus—who was taller on all fours than her toddler (and a head taller than me on two feet)—was as gentle as a lamb and wouldn’t hurt the child. In fact, Angus lay at the girl’s feet so she could pet him easier.

  The woman appeared to be relieved, but she kept a watchful eye on the two of them.

  “I’ll be glad to put him in the back, if you’d prefer,” I said.

  “No, that isn’t necessary. I’m sure they’ll be fine,” she said. “I just get so nervous.”

  “That’s all right. You can’t be too careful where your children are concerned.”

  “Do you have any?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I said. Naturally, her question conjured up a lot of what-ifs and maybes, which I didn’t need to dwell on right at that moment. “Is there anything I could help you find?”

 
“I’m actually looking for children’s crafts,” she said. “She’s so creative, and I’d love to get her interested in embroidery . . . but I don’t want anything she could get hurt on or that would be over her head.”

  “Of course. If you’ll step right this way, I have a good selection of children’s needlepoint kits. They come with a stamped plastic canvas, the yarn needed to complete the project, and a large plastic blunt-tipped needle.”

  “That sounds like exactly the type of thing I’m looking for,” she said.

  After taking her over to the children’s section, I allowed her to browse and said I’d go back and make sure Angus and her daughter were all right.

  The woman quickly came over with her hands full of needlepoint kits. “Hey, Janilyn! Do you like these, sweetie?”

  The little girl lifted her face off Angus’s neck so she could see what her mom was talking about. She giggled. “Monkey!”

  “Yes, I knew you’d like that one,” said her mom. “What about these others? Do you like the puppy dog?”

  Janilyn nodded her curly blond head.

  “Angus is a puppy dog,” I told her.

  The child chortled. “No. He’s a pony!”

  “These kits are designed for children a little bit older than Janilyn,” I said. “But I’m sure you’ll watch her carefully.”

  “Definitely. When I’m not around, I’m putting the needle somewhere that she can’t get hold of it and put it in her mouth.”

  Janilyn gazed up at her mother. “I won’t eat it.”

  “I know. . . . I just like to be careful.”

  “Mommy careful,” Janilyn told me.

  “I’d be careful with you, too,” I said.

  Janilyn’s mom decided to take the monkey and the puppy kit and see how the child fared with them. “If she likes them, I’ll be back to get more.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I rang up her purchases.

  As they left, Janilyn waved to Angus. “Bye, pony!”

  Sissy Cummings came through the door as Janilyn and her mother went out.