Seven Threadly Sins

by Janet Bolin

  Moved “there.” Once again, she’d avoided naming the town.

  Clay slid the photo into the envelope. “Too bad. I guess I should get my mother to send me the next year’s photo.”

  Loretta shook that mane of hair. “No. We moved away that summer.”

  The woman had an answer for everything.

  “Let’s go up to the hayloft,” she said. “To see if we can put a tiny bathroom up there and still have room for a bed and a closet. Wouldn’t it make a spectacular sleeping loft?”

  Clay pushed gently at one of the thick wooden posts holding up the loft.

  “It’s sturdy enough,” Loretta urged him. “Look at how well the stairs are built.”

  We followed her to steep wooden stairs leading to a landing halfway to the loft. The planks were thick, solid wood.

  Clay walked around the downstairs and tested more posts. None of them seemed to budge. He peered up at the joists underneath the loft and at the underside of the loft. He took his time.

  Fidgeting, Loretta prodded at the outer walls as if examining the inside of the building’s tongue-and-groove cladding for signs of dry rot or insect damage.

  Finally, Clay announced his decision. “I think it’s safe for one of us to go up there. I’ll be careful. Willow, get ready to call 911 if I fall through a hole.”

  I could tell he was joking, but Loretta again said that she was certain it was safe.

  Staying close to the wall, he climbed the stairs until he was out of sight.

  Loretta ran up the stairs after him. “See?” she crowed from the loft. “It’s perfectly safe, even with two of us walking around.”

  Clay called down, “Willow, don’t come up here.”

  Loretta objected. “What a thing to say! She’s tall, but despite what Antonio said, she’s not that fat, and she can’t weigh that much.”

  Thanks for the compliment. I wasn’t fat at all. Maybe, someday, I would have to watch what I ate, but between rushing around inside In Stitches and my frequent long walks with my dogs, that day had not yet arrived.

  Clay answered, “Willow weighs hardly anything, but I’d just as soon not have another person up here. Two of us may be pressing our luck.” He raised his voice. “And stay out from underneath the loft, too, Willow. Okay?”

  “Sure.” I moved all the way to the back wall near the stall. From there, I could see only the top of Loretta’s head. She was near a shuttered window in front. Years ago, when the stall had an occupant, hay would have been loaded through that window, stored in the loft, and pitchforked down to the horse as required. Clay was beside the railing. He took a measuring tape out of his pocket. With his arm extended, he couldn’t quite reach the peak of the ceiling. He checked the tape and wrote something in a notebook.

  “Aren’t you going to measure the floor, too?” Loretta asked.

  “We already know the entire floor’s dimensions,” he said. “You measured them from downstairs.”

  “I did?”

  “You noted on your sketches where the posts are.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I guess that would work, wouldn’t it?”

  “For a ballpark figure, which is all we need at the moment, yes. But I’ll measure the area where I can stand up without banging my head on the ceiling.”

  “Thinking of living here?” Did she know how flirtatious her teasing sounded? Probably.

  “No, but you wouldn’t want your tenants knocking themselves out, either.”

  “No one is as tall as you are.”

  Gush, gush, gush. I wanted to run outside and breathe air that was untainted by skunks and Loretta’s insincere praise.

  But Haylee and Ben should be along soon, and at least Loretta was entertaining.

  Floorboards creaked beneath her as she investigated the inside of the building’s front wall. All I could see of her was the top of her auburn curls, then she must have bent over, and I couldn’t see her at all.

  Clay’s measuring tape twanged. If I’d been up in the loft, I’d have helped him hold the other end of it. Loretta could be missing an opportunity. But I supposed that since I was below them, on the dirt floor, she figured she was scoring points by being closer to him.

  He made notes, then moved to the railing and hooked the end of the tape over the edge of a floorboard.

  Suddenly, he went still. I knew him pretty well. Something had surprised him. He glanced down at me, put a finger to his lips, and pulled a white square from between the floor and the bottom of the railing. He stood, studied the white square for a moment, turned his upper body toward me and away from Loretta, and slipped the white square underneath his T-shirt.

  “Did you find something?” Loretta pounded toward him. “Let me see.” Her voice was sharp.

  “Just my note—”

  “No, that envelope. That’s mine.” She reached toward him. “You were always good at keep-away on the playground in fifth grade, too.”

  Fourth grade.

  “You never met me before Saturday night.” His words were firm.

  “You just don’t remember.” She elbowed him.

  Clay tilted toward the railing. It did not quite come up to his knees. Arms and legs flailing, he toppled over it and landed with a horrible thunk on the packed earth floor of the carriage house.

  35

  Completely still, Clay lay on his stomach with his arms and legs in strange positions.

  His shin should not be bent like that.

  I pulled myself out of an immobilizing, wide-awake nightmare. Screaming Clay’s name, I ran the three steps to him, squatted, and felt his wrist for a pulse.

  Above me, Loretta shrieked, “No!” In those heeled boots, she pounded down the stairs.

  Clay’s pulse was strong. I squeezed his wrist and gently placed my other hand on the back of his strong, tanned neck. I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to comfort him or myself.

  Loretta’s incongruous knee-high boots appeared next to his stretched-out arm. “Clay darling!” she wailed. “What happened?”

  She didn’t know that in her rush to snatch the envelope he’d been trying to hide underneath his shirt, she’d knocked him off balance, causing him to fall and break his leg, and maybe his skull and his back, too?

  She grabbed at his shoulder and his waist. “Help me turn him over,” she ordered.

  “No. I have first aid training. Don’t move him. We could make his injuries worse.” I spoke with both authority and desperation.

  “Shouldn’t we give him mouth-to-mouth, check his heart or something?”

  “No. He’s breathing. Don’t touch him.” Okay, I was being a little ferocious. I didn’t own the man, but I would protect him. Or any other injured creature.

  Glancing toward the door, Loretta pulled her hand out from underneath him. “I’ll go for help. I’ll drive his truck.” She groped in his pants pocket, extracted his keys, and jumped to her feet. “You call an ambulance and stay with him.”

  “Find Haylee,” I ordered. “She should be on her way here, possibly walking. Bring her here as soon as possible. She has first aid training, too.” I added, “Can you drive a standard?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  I wasn’t sure she would, but I was not about to leave Clay and drive his truck around searching for help. His face was turned away from me. I stroked his arm with one hand and fumbled for my phone with the other.

  I heard Loretta stomp to the door and slam it shut behind her. She must have been panicking. I would have to open that door for fresh air again, later. But at the moment, skunk odors were not my primary concern.

  “Willow . . .” Clay’s whisper was so soft I barely heard it. “Call 911.”

  “Yes,” My fingers were already hovering over my phone’s keypad. “You’ll be okay.”

  “I am,” he said.

  He didn’t
look it.

  Tapping three little numbers seemed to take eons. The dispatcher answered immediately, but that also seemed to take about a century or two. I told him we needed an ambulance.

  Beside me, Clay whispered harshly, “Police, too.”

  “Police?” I responded.

  The dispatcher must have thought I was making a request. “We’ll send them both, ma’am. Fire department, too.”

  In my state of shock, I almost blurted, Some of us are already here.

  I was only dimly aware of the sound of Clay’s truck starting, and then the gears grinding against each other.

  The siren on top of the fire station began its wailing, calling volunteer firefighters. If Haylee was on her way here, she would run back to the fire station only to discover she needed to be in the carriage house.

  “Help me up,” Clay said.

  “Lie still.” I rubbed his back.

  “Stop that.” Was he laughing? “Or I’ll never get up.” He turned his face toward me. He wasn’t laughing, but he was smiling.

  With the dispatcher on the line, I couldn’t tell Clay just what I thought of his ability to be a proper patient.

  “Don’t move,” I reminded him. “Help is on its way.”

  “It is,” the dispatcher said. “Keep the patient calm. You’re doing a great job.”

  “Well, he isn’t,” I grumbled. “He’s trying to sit up.”

  “Keep him still.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Very trying,” Clay contributed.

  “Your leg is broken,” I snarled at him. “And maybe your neck, too, not to mention your skull and your back. You know perfectly well that you need to lie still.”

  “I know perfectly well that you are adorable.”

  “Shh.” What a time for him to try to woo me. Was he concussed?

  “Willow, can you reach up underneath my shirt and find the envelope I tucked there before I fell?”

  I muttered, “What timing.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “What?” the dispatcher repeated.

  “Nothing,” I said to both of them.

  Clay told me, “The envelope is square, a bit bigger than a DVD, and I’m almost certain that there’s a DVD inside it. And probably a sheet of paper, also.”

  To lift his shirt I had to step around him to the side where Loretta had been. I wormed my hand up into his shirt. His skin was warm.

  “No tickling,” he said.

  Men. I knew better than to tickle an injured patient.

  Unfortunately, I had to admit that the envelope wasn’t there. I withdrew my hand. “It must have flown out of your shirt when you fell.” I closed my eyes, trying to picture those horrible moments without focusing on Clay tumbling toward the ground. “I think I saw it bounce toward the double doors, but it’s not there now. I wasn’t watching Loretta when she stomped out of here. She must have picked it up and taken it with her.”

  “Did you see what was written on the envelope?”

  “No.”

  “It said, If anything happens to me, view this DVD. It was signed by Antonio. Did you notice that Loretta appeared to be searching for something while I was measuring?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must have been that envelope.” He took a deep breath, but it sounded shaky. “And the night she first claimed she knew me and brought me out here, she seemed to be looking for something, also.”

  “Oh. I thought you were . . .” My face heated. “I figured you two were spending your time out here . . .”

  “Getting to know each other as she said? Not the way she implied. She threw herself at me in the TADAM kitchen before we came out here, and again as we were leaving, probably to make certain she smeared her lipstick onto me, but most of the time we were in here, she actually was talking about how we might redesign the carriage house. But she was also peeking into corners and behind things, like she’d lost an earring or something. There must be something in that envelope or on the DVD that she doesn’t want anyone to see.” Again, he stopped to catch his breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was dark with anger, shot through with pain. “She pushed me, Willow.”

  I stroked his hand. “From down here, I couldn’t tell if the push was deliberate or accidental.”

  “I’m sure it was deliberate. She may not have known what was written on that envelope, but she must have figured that whatever it was, once I saw it, I had to be eliminated.”

  And he hadn’t helped his cause by informing her point-blank that he had never met her before Saturday night.

  I remembered Naomi telling us that when she and Ashley went backstage while Antonio was winding up his seven threadly sins stunt, they’d seen Loretta standing with her hand on the back of the chair where we’d all been hanging and re-hanging Antonio’s jacket, and Loretta had appeared to have grabbed at the chair to catch her balance. A few minutes after that, I’d walked offstage and had kicked something that had rolled. Later, I’d wondered if that rolling object had been Antonio’s vial of medicine.

  Naomi and Ashley could have been only a second too late to see Loretta nudge that medicine underneath that chair where no one could see it. She hadn’t been catching her balance. She’d been making certain that she wouldn’t lose it while standing on one foot and pushing the medicine vial farther underneath the chair with the other. “Loretta killed Antonio,” I said.

  “What?” the dispatcher asked. “Someone’s been killed?”

  “Not tonight, but please write down what I said. Loretta killed Antonio. Paula didn’t kill her husband. And Loretta pushed Clay off the loft, too.”

  “This call is being recorded,” he told me.

  “Good.” I looked down at Clay. “I guess Loretta realized that I hadn’t read the envelope, or she might have pushed me off a loft, too.”

  “Good thing you weren’t up there. After all those lies about knowing me before, I didn’t trust her. I knew the loft was sturdy, but I didn’t know what she might do to you.”

  I’d guessed, without really thinking about it, that Loretta had done as she’d said she would, and had driven Clay’s truck away. I’d heard no more grinding of gears or the jackrabbiting of a vehicle when a novice depressed a clutch pedal. Now, listening carefully, I heard Clay’s well-tuned engine purring beside the carriage house.

  I glanced toward the door.

  A trickle of smoke was coming in through a gap between boards.

  I sniffed.

  Smoke? No.

  Despite the reek of skunk inside the carriage house, I recognized the additional odor.

  Exhaust fumes.

  36

  Loretta was piping exhaust from Clay’s truck into the carriage house.

  But I didn’t dare try to explain that to the emergency dispatcher. Clay would overhear, and he would again try to get up. It shouldn’t be too long, though, before he smelled the exhaust and realized we were in danger.

  I had to rescue both of us before he injured himself trying to do it.

  The building was not tightly sealed. Oxygen would still get in. I wished we hadn’t barricaded that skunk hole with concrete blocks, though. Both Clay and I had worked at that, and it might take me a dangerously long time to throw those blocks out of the way of that one rather large airhole.

  “Hang on,” I said to Clay. “I’ll be right back.” I jumped up and ran to the big double doors that should swing outward. I’d seen the two-by-ten fitted across the outside, and the way the doors had settled into the ground, but I pushed, anyway.

  They didn’t budge.

  Exhaust was forming a cloud near the smaller door. I ran to it.

  Locked. I rammed my shoulder against it. That achieved nothing besides pain and a likely bruise.

  I peeked through a chink between panels in the old wooden door. Clay’s tru
ck was backed up tight against it. I couldn’t see anyone inside the truck.

  I turned around. The piece of stabilizer still hung from the lawn mower handle. I dashed to it. Handling it carefully so I couldn’t accidentally mummify myself in it, I pulled it from the lawn mower.

  In two seconds, I was pressing it over the gap in the door nearest the tailpipe. Exhaust wisped in above the top of it, but maybe most of the fumes would stay outside.

  Clay was up on one knee and two hands, and was dragging himself, with his other leg still at a preposterous angle, toward the back of the carriage house. How could he stand the pain?

  “Clay!” I shouted.

  He kept going.

  The dispatcher asked me, “What’s going on?”

  “Tell the firefighters to get here as quickly as possible, and to move the pickup truck away from the building we’re in, or shut its engine off. We’re in danger from the exhaust.”

  “Leave the premises immediately.”

  “The doors are locked.”

  “Stay on the line, ma’am, and stay calm. Fire, police, and ambulance are all on the way.”

  I wasn’t going to lie down and wait for them.

  I grabbed the pitchfork that Loretta had knocked down earlier. Like a knight bearing a lance, I lunged at one of the windows. It shattered with a satisfying crash.

  “What’s happening?” the emergency dispatcher demanded.

  “I’m breaking windows.” I ran across the carriage house and bashed the other window, too. There was nothing like a battering ram in an emergency.

  The dispatcher warned, “Don’t try crawling out over sharp points of glass, or you’ll hurt yourself. Help will be there shortly.”

  “I won’t.” Even if I could climb out, would I be able to shut off Clay’s engine? What if Loretta had locked the truck with the keys in the ignition?

  Besides, with a broken leg, Clay could not possibly reach the windows and climb out. They were too far above the ground.

  Thud.

  What had fallen near the back of the carriage house? Clay had disappeared beyond the stall. I rounded the corner and found him sitting up, his legs more or less straight in front of him. He was tossing concrete blocks away from the hole we’d barricaded earlier.