by Janet Bolin
Neffting touched the top of Gord’s head. “Look after her, Doc, help’s on its way.” Bellowing, “Stop!” he dashed away with surprising grace and disappeared into the lobby behind the others.
As if fearing she’d faint, Patricia folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them.
Mrs. Battersby sat beside me and patted my arm. “Oh, my,” she said. “Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. The poor thing. And such a lovely dress, too. That orange suits her. Or it did when she still had some color in her face. Is she still breathing?”
Baffled, sickened, and afraid for Vicki, I lifted my shoulders in a helpless shrug. I felt like I’d also been clobbered. I whispered, “She has to be.” That bowling bag weighed a ton. I let it drop the last three inches to the floor, then I more or less slid down to the floor to kneel beside Opal.
“Vicki?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
Obviously she wasn’t, but she was breathing. I nearly sobbed with relief.
Gord brushed her hair away from her temple. “She’s going to have a lump and a bruise.”
Vicki opened her eyes. “Where’s my bag?” She sounded panicky.
“On the table,” I answered.
“Give it to me.” She struggled as if about to sit up.
Edna pulled my shawl off the chair, folded it into a neat bundle and eased Vicki’s head down onto it. “There, there,” Edna cooed. “Lie still.”
Opal spread her own wrap over Vicki.
Gord cautioned Vicki, “Don’t move. Your head’s been hit, hard. An ambulance is on its way.”
With great care, I picked up Vicki’s bag and handed it to her. It weighed almost as much as that crystal ball had. Vicki thanked me and wrapped both arms around it.
Gord turned to me and raised an eyebrow.
I explained, “A police officer never loses track of her weapon.”
“Great,” he retorted. “A likely concussion, and we give her a gun.”
“I’m okay,” Vicki claimed. “Just dizzy. Help me up. I need to join the other officer until backup arrives.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Clay, Ben, Dare, and Haylee chased after Juliette while Detective Neffting radioed for help for you. They’ll catch her.”
Vicki tried to prop herself up on her elbows, grimaced, and let Edna help her down again. “Civilians. That’s just super. All they’ll do is get in the way. That woman could be armed, besides.”
“She was,” I said, chagrinned at not having stopped that bowling bag before it collided with Vicki’s head. “But she’s not now.” I glared at the bag. “Maybe I’ll take her weapon—her crystal ball in its bag—and go outside to help hunt her down.”
Vicki and Haylee’s three mothers yelped in unison, “Don’t you dare!”
Vicki mumbled to the mothers, “I’ve been around you three too much.”
“Don’t worry,” I told them. “I don’t feel like lugging that heavy thing around. And you’ll want it as evidence, Vicki. I hope I didn’t wipe off all of Juliette’s fingerprints. I’m afraid Detective Neffting thinks I attacked you with it.”
“He went after her,” she pointed out.
I tried to control a doubtful expression. “Maybe he just wanted to talk to Dare some more.”
She didn’t take the bait, didn’t criticize her colleague for his momentary lapse of attention. But to be fair, Juliette had attacked viciously and quickly. Vicki said, “I saw that bag in Juliette’s hands. He must have, also. And I saw you, Willow, trying to deflect the thing. I owe you.” She winced. “Again.”
Behind me, a female voice said, “Yuck.” I turned around. Brianna scowled at me. “You people make me sick.”
I said evenly, “Then you’d better go home. But before you do, put your card on my kitchen counter so I can order more thread.”
Brianna slouched toward the doors leading out to the porch, but Vicki called to her. “Don’t go now, though. Don’t any of you go outside. That woman could be armed with something else, and even if she’s not, Detective Neffting may be forced to fire his weapon. Stay inside and away from windows. And that’s an order.”
With an exaggerated groan, Brianna plunked herself into a chair close to the door.
Patricia raised her head. Pale and shivering, she gazed into the distance. Slowly, she lost the shocked expression, but she moved cautiously as if she feared being attacked. She eased out of her chair and pointed at something on the floor underneath the table just beyond Vicki. “What’s that?”
45
Patricia tiptoed to the table beyond Vicki, peered underneath it, turned to face us, and ran her palms down the skirt of her brown faux suede dress. “Juliette’s wallet must have come out of her bowling bag when she swung it at Chief Smallwood.”
“Don’t touch it,” Vicki ordered. I had to admire the authority she exerted despite being injured and stretched out on the floor.
Patricia absently brushed at the streaks her hands had made on her skirt. “Pictures spilled out of it. The one on top is of . . .” She swallowed, then spoke quickly, as if the words might burn her tongue. “It’s a picture of Isis’s son, Heru Crabbe. I knew him in high school. Juliette went to the college he attended. He died there.”
Vicki and I exchanged glances. I patted her shoulder and struggled up from my kneeling position, which wasn’t easy in that voluminous cape.
Haylee, Ben, and Clay trooped back into the banquet hall. Ben and Haylee gave each other a high five.
Haylee sang out to the rest of us, “Juliette’s handcuffed and locked in the back of Detective Neffting’s unmarked cruiser.”
“Where’s Dare?” I asked.
Haylee pulled her hair back into a hand-held ponytail. “Detective Neffting asked him if he’d like to sit in the front seat and continue their conversation. Dare accepted.”
Still prone, with my lovely shawl as a pillow and Opal’s as a blanket, Vicki groaned, pulled a radio out of her evening bag, pressed buttons, and said into it, “Detective Neffting, would you please bring that woman back into the banquet hall? There’s something here that we need to question her about.”
Clay and Ben looked at each other and rushed toward the lobby. Haylee sprinted to catch up.
Vicki objected, “Stay here, you three.”
“We’ll be right back,” Ben answered.
Vicki closed her eyes. “They’ll just get in the way.” I knelt beside her again.
Minutes later, Neffting led Juliette, handcuffed and barefoot, into the dining hall. Looking like he thought he had accomplished an extremely important task, Dare swaggered in on Juliette’s other side. Their faces serious and determined, Ben, Haylee, and Clay walked tightly behind the other three. Juliette didn’t have a hope of escaping.
Vicki demanded, “Help me sit up.”
Gord agreed with obvious reluctance. “Okay, but lean on us.”
Opal, Edna, Naomi, Gord, and I all helped prop Vicki up, and she held court from the floor. “Where’s your wallet, Juliette?” she asked.
Juliette lifted her head. Her eye makeup had run. “I must have lost it.”
Vicki demanded, “Is that it, underneath the table?”
Neffting took Juliette where Vicki was pointing.
“I guess so,” Juliette said.
“Give me a break,” Vicki scolded. “You should recognize your own wallet.”
“It’s mine,” Juliette mumbled.
“And how did it get there?” Vicki demanded.
Neffting looked unhappy about letting Vicki ask all the questions, but since he couldn’t know what direction Vicki’s interrogation might take, he didn’t have a choice.
Juliette answered, “Beats me.”
Vicki persisted, “Could it have fallen out when you swung your bowling bag around?”
“I didn’t.” Juliette eyed me. “Willow’s the one who
swung that bag at you. I was just . . . lifting it.”
That prompted a loud chorus of “We saw you!” and “Willow didn’t do it!”
Vicki pleaded with everyone to be quiet. “You’re hurting my head.” A twitch of her mouth reminded me that she often hid her sense of humor. “Whose picture spilled out of your wallet, Juliette?”
“Lots of things spilled out.”
Vicki asked, “Patricia, can you point to the picture you told me about? Sorry I can’t get up and do it myself.”
Warily keeping her distance from Juliette, Patricia pointed.
Juliette shrugged. “Just some guy.”
“Work with me, here, Juliette,” Vicki said. “No one carries pictures of strangers in their wallets.”
“I didn’t say he was a stranger,” Juliette shot back.
“So who is he?” Vicki probed.
“Some guy I knew in college.”
“Name?” Vicki asked.
Juliette hesitated. “I think it was Hero.”
“Heru,” Patricia corrected her. “Heru Crabbe.”
Juliette’s head shot up. “How would you know that?” Her words were as ferocious as her eyes.
Patricia backed farther away from her. “I knew him in high school. His mother was my history teacher.”
Juliette continued glaring at Patricia. “His mother was to blame for his death.”
My resolve about letting the police handle their own inquiries suffered a temporary lapse. “How?” I demanded.
Vicki frowned at me and framed the question her way. “What do you mean his mother was to blame for his death?”
“The way she brought him up to lie, cheat, steal other people’s term papers, and everything else. Like get in with the crowd that supplied the drugs that eventually killed him.”
Vicki sat up straighter. “How do you know what killed him?”
Head lowered again, Juliette spoke from behind a curtain of her own hair. “That’s what everyone said, and I believed it. And then I met Isis here in Threadville and . . .” She shrugged. “Other places. Other craft shows and fairs. After she found out where I went to school, she asked me if I was the tall girl named Juliette who had dated her son in college and had given him a drug overdose.”
Neffting finally found his voice. “And were you?”
“Of course not,” Juliette said. “I barely knew him.”
Vicki’s injury hadn’t damaged her sarcasm. “So that’s why you carry his picture in your wallet.”
“It was a reminder to myself about what can happen to people who get in with the wrong crowd.” Instead of the self-righteous smirk I’d have expected from someone delivering that statement, she continued gazing down toward her bare feet.
Neffting warned her, “We’re going to have another look at all of the people who were at the party the night he died.”
Juliette shot back, “If Isis told anyone I slipped those drugs into his drink, she was lying. He took them himself.”
“So you were there,” Vicki accused.
Juliette shook her head. “You didn’t have to be at those frat parties to know what happened at them.” The ribbons dangling from her white velvet gown were now creased and bedraggled, transforming the dress from cheerful to pathetic. “I didn’t contribute to Heru’s death, and I didn’t kill his mother.”
Dare widened his stance. “Ha! Detective Neffting allowed me to have a close look at your shoes before he loaded them into an evidence bag.” He gave me a smug smile. “You all think you’re such great sleuths, but I detected at least two other bits of lightbulb caught among the sparkly things originally attached to those shoes. The lab is sure to find more.”
Juliette flushed. “So?”
“So, those little bits of lightbulb aren’t heavy enough to travel very far, even if the bulb shattered. The only person who would have gotten those on her shoes had to be the person who was next to Isis when the lightbulbs hit the water. And that would be . . .” He raised one finger dramatically in the air. “The person who pushed her in.”
“I wasn’t wearing those shoes that night.” Juliette looked wildly around at other people’s feet. “I lent them to Haylee. She’s your murderer.”
Mrs. Battersby stood up and raised herself to her full height, all of about four-eight. “No she’s not.” Did I detect a note of pride in Mrs. Battersby’s voice? “I was with Haylee that entire evening until she ran off to answer the fire siren and try to rescue that woman that someone had already pushed into the river.”
“Willow, then. I get those two mixed up.” Juliette’s voice had become thin and nasal.
I defended myself. “I never wore your shoes. Besides, when the lab looks at the outfit you were wearing that night, they could find bits of glass in it.”
Puckers in Juliette’s forehead relaxed slightly. “And maybe they won’t.” Her voice became almost strident again.
“I wasn’t talking about the long skirt and peasant blouse,” I told her. “I was talking about the dark jeans and matching jacket that you changed into and quickly changed out of after you pushed Isis into the river.”
Juliette’s bare toes curled against Ben’s lovely dark oak floor. “That’s nonsense.”
Neffting took out his notebook and nodded at me. “Why do you say that, Willow?”
“Her blouse was on backward after Isis was pushed in. I saw her tuck in the tag.”
Neffting took notes, probably about what to ask Juliette—and me—later.
“So?” Juliette asked. “I must have put the blouse on backward and worn it that way all day and all evening, too. That tag pops out all the time.”
I accused, “I didn’t see you tuck it in earlier, in the fire station.”
She backpedaled. “Well, not all the time. And I did tuck it in, several times.”
I asked the group, “Did anyone else who was there that night see the tag hanging out or see her tucking it in? Opal and Naomi? You were working with her on the skirt.”
Everyone said they hadn’t seen her tuck the tag into the front of her blouse in the fire station.
Juliette’s toes uncurled. She’d painted her toenails different colors, matching the ribbons she’d sewn to her gown. She pointed out, “So? I tucked in the tag without anyone noticing.”
Although pale, Vicki’s face showed her usual tough determination. “Maybe when we search the room where you’ve been staying we’ll find the jeans and jacket.”
I carefully did not look at Haylee. Vicki would never need to know we’d snooped among Juliette’s things.
As if her brain felt like it was sloshing around inside her head, Vicki slowly turned toward Naomi. “Juliette has been staying with you, right?”
Naomi nodded. “Yes, Chief Smallwood.”
Neffting took over. “You’ll have to stay out of your apartment until it’s searched.”
“Okay.” Naomi didn’t look happy about it, and who could blame her? Edna’s wedding was the next day, and like the rest of us, Naomi would want to get ready in her own apartment. But ever helpful, she told him and Vicki, “I found scraps of paper in my shop. Someone had written something about breaking a curse by encircling the victim with light. And that’s like what Juliette said about Gord and Edna.”
Juliette shrugged, “What bearing does that have on anything?”
I answered her. “You were trying to break Isis’s curse on Edna. Isis has been following you around from show to fair to show, trying to ruin your reputation as a fortune-teller, hasn’t she? You either had to stop her or find another way of earning a living. I saw you on the trail that night, before Isis was murdered.”
Vicki frowned. I guessed I wasn’t supposed to admit that, but I went on, “And we found the thread you were unwinding from the spool of glow-in-the-dark thread that we’d been using in the fire station. That thread was t
o be your circle of light, wasn’t it?”
I could tell I’d rattled Juliette. Her breathing choppy, she stammered, “That was later, right before Patricia came along. I’d seen Isis at the river the night before, casting spells on Edna and Gord, and I knew I could counteract those spells by encircling Threadville and everyone in it with light. But that’s all I did. I wouldn’t have harmed Isis. Or her son.” She added belatedly and untruthfully, “Or anyone.”
I asked, “Did you cut a frill off the overskirt we made?”
“Isis did that.”
“How do you know?” Vicki asked.
“I saw her. She was attacking that overskirt with scissors. I didn’t stick around, though. I ran off to get help. She was ruining that skirt, and I knew that you people had put a lot of time and effort into it.”
“Who did you ask to help you?” I demanded.
Vicki glared at me.
Juliette merely shrugged. “I couldn’t find anyone. But I didn’t harm Isis. I wasn’t there.”
I snapped my fingers. Juliette jumped and stared at me.
“It’s obvious that you can hear perfectly well,” I pointed out. “I heard you running up Lake Street after Isis was pushed in. I yelled at you to come help, but you kept going.”
“I didn’t hear you,” she insisted. “The person you heard running couldn’t have been me. I was probably knocking on your door or Haylee’s to tell you about the damage Isis had done to the overskirt. I did no harm to Isis. I suspect she harmed herself.”
Her excuses were a little late. She had attacked Vicki after the glass fragment had been identified. Vicki had only asked to see Juliette’s shoes.
Neffting must have agreed. He said evenly, “None of this really matters at this moment. As I told you before, you’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer, which is a serious offense. No other arrests yet, but we’re also going search your car, your home, and the room where you’ve been staying here in Threadville. I mean Elderberry Bay. We’re going to question you more about the night that Isis Crabbe died, and we’re going to take statements from all these witnesses.”
Dare tossed his hair back. “Those lightbulb fragments from her shoes should be enough, though it’s lucky they stayed on her shoes for so long.”
