Threaded for Trouble

by Janet Bolin

  To show that the Chandler Champion for sale in my store was not a killer, I connected it to my computer and used it for the morning lesson. The Champion worked well enough, though I preferred models from my trusted manufacturers, maybe because those sewing machines were solid and reliable. Besides, as far as I knew, none of them had ever been accused of killing anyone.

  I’d begun using computers, software, and embroidery machines to create thread art when I lived and worked in New York City. People had not only bought the designs I’d offered on my website, they had commissioned me to create new ones. I had been quite happy to switch from working in New York to living in Threadville and owning a machine embroidery boutique, where my enthusiastic students inspired and encouraged me. In addition, customers from all over the world e-mailed me photos of their pets, homes, and in one case, a broken baseball bat that had been instrumental in winning a Little League semifinal, all to be immortalized in thread. Customers who owned their own embroidery machines downloaded my designs and stitched them in colors they chose. Others bought finished products. The baseball bat motif had embellished a wall hanging.

  I demonstrated how different brands of software turned photographs into embroidery designs. We all loved the way the software showed how the designs should look when stitched. Rosemary and Georgina, who owned their own digitizing software, attempted it first and were pleased with the computerized depictions of their designs.

  Mimi, still battling a dry cough, tried next, and had great luck, but the next woman’s groans of dismay gave me the teaching opportunity I’d wanted. “Experiment with the number of colors,” I suggested. “Sometimes more colors will help, but often, simpler is better. Try fewer colors.”

  “It means fewer thread changes,” Rosemary added, “unless you own a commercial embroidery machine.” None of us did. Our embroidery machines were accessories that went with amazing sewing machines like the Chandler Champion. We could sew with our machines or connect our embroidery attachments and stitch professional-looking designs. Our machines were versatile, and scads of fun.

  Everyone gathered around and offered suggestions until the woman was satisfied with her design. After that, most of the students figured it out on their own. We saved the designs to stitch another day.

  The afternoon class, composed of women who had spent the morning shopping or attending lessons at other Threadville shops, was similar, except that no one got it right the first time. They were good-natured about it, though. It helped that a few hours had passed since we’d found out about Darlene. Seeing a woman alive, right here, the day before, and hearing that she was dead less than twenty-four hours later had shocked all of us.

  I looked forward to a quiet dinner with my dogs and an evening of working on my candlewicking project. However, the minute the Threadville tour bus disappeared up Lake Street, my phone rang. “Willow, it’s Edna.” I knew from the lowered tones of her usually chirpy little voice that she wanted something.

  That could mean trouble…

  7

  MY HAND TIGHTENED ON THE PHONE. What did Edna want, and how could I keep her out of mischief?

  “I made an extra lasagna,” Edna said.

  My breathing steadied. How much difficulty could Edna get into with a lasagna?

  Plenty, apparently. She went on, “I’m going to take it to the Coddlefield children, since they just lost their mother and may not have anything to eat…” She stopped as if waiting for me to finish for her.

  I managed, “Mmm-hmm.”

  “And I was wondering if you’d come along with me to drop it off, since you know the family better than I do.”

  Well, hardly, but Edna’s proposal was a nice one, and the thought of eight motherless children dragged at my heart. Besides, Felicity had accused me of rigging a sewing machine to kill Darlene. Maybe we could get a look at that sewing machine.

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll bring cookies.” I baked cookies every Monday, the one day of the week that none of the Threadville stores were open. It was only Thursday, and I still had lots of cookies in my freezer.

  “Your molasses cookies, Willow? Yum, those are soooo good. Shall we drive out to the Coddlefields’ after your dogs have their outing? You probably haven’t had time to give them one since your customers left.”

  “Okay.” Although Opal and I were the only Threadville proprietors to own—or be owned by—pets, all of Haylee’s mothers were thoughtful about what others had to do for their pets. And for their kids.

  I let Sally and Tally play outside, then settled them in our apartment and grabbed a tin of cookies—molasses, as Edna had suggested. What could I possibly say to children whose mother had just died? I patted the dogs good-bye, then dawdled across the street to Buttons and Bows.

  Edna’s store, as always, cheered me. I walked past the gleaming array of buttons, ribbons, and trims. Edna’s back room overflowed with more notions and gadgets than anyone could ever use. Well, maybe. We could try. I called toward an open door at the back of the shop, “Edna?”

  She pattered down the stairs from her apartment and popped through the doorway. I smelled tomatoes, garlic, oregano, and cheese.

  Mouth watering, I pointed at the elaborate quilted casserole carrier. “Did Naomi quilt that for you?”

  “I made it.” She lifted her chin. A dimple showed in one cheek.

  “I should have known.” Pastel satin bows decorated each quilt square. If the ribbons hadn’t tipped me off, the sequins and rhinestones should have. “It matches your blouse.” Edna had created a top by sewing satin ribbons together by their edges, then adding sequins and rhinestones.

  Edna cocked her head. “Too much? I thought it would show that the casserole carrier wasn’t part of the gift.”

  “Maybe you should leave the carrier in the car when we get there? But people usually return casserole dishes, don’t they? So maybe they’ll return the carrier, too.”

  She raised her shoulders in a just-between-us-girls gesture. “They won’t return these. I used two disposable aluminum pans, one inside the other, so I wouldn’t have another disaster.”

  “Disaster?”

  “Well, it didn’t actually wreck my dinner party. The restaurant we went to was fine. These pans simply do not hold up to heavy lasagna with loads of cheese and tomato sauce. I had quite a mess to clean up after I got home.” She pointed with her chin. “My car’s out back.”

  Her sedan was small, but big enough for her and her best friends. They’d scrimped and saved while living together during their school years, sometimes doing without a car, sometimes sharing an old beater. Now, in addition to owning shops and apartments, they each had a vehicle, and none of them believed that Haylee needed one. Haylee, however, loved her new cherry red pickup truck. And her independence. Her shop was the largest in Threadville.

  If birds could drive, they might drive like Edna did. Wobbling to whichever side of the lane caught her attention, she headed south, out of Elderberry Bay. “It’s not far,” she said.

  Nodding her head toward fields on my side of the car, she drifted dangerously close to them. “Those soybeans are gone. Shriveled up. Hardly any rain all summer.” Pointing at fields to our left, she nearly crossed the center line. Fortunately, a cornfield on the right came into view. “Those cornstalks shouldn’t be so brown in the end of August.” A mailbox threatened my window. I flinched.

  We couldn’t tell what crop had been beyond the line of trees on the left. That field was black, flattened, and acrid with the smell of burned vegetation. Edna crossed the center line. “Maybe that’s where the fire was last night. Did you hear the siren?” Turning her head toward me, she nearly plowed into the ditch on my side.

  I gripped the edge of my seat. “I heard it.”

  She shook her head, which had nearly catastrophic results for the car. And for us. “Everything’s so dry, all it takes is one cigarette carelessly tossed out a car window. Ah, here we are.” Beside a mailbox that said Coddlefield, a gravel driveway woun
d between trees to a clearing. A lawn dotted with colorful children’s toys surrounded a three-story Victorian farmhouse.

  The fire chief’s SUV was parked in the driveway beside the maroon and white pickup truck I’d seen Russ driving. My earlier guess was confirmed. Plug must be Darlene’s husband. I hadn’t known our fire chief’s last name. People just called him Plug. He said it was because he’d wanted to be a fireman all his life. His buddies joked that they’d given him the nickname in grade school because he was plug ugly, and built like a fireplug, besides. Both were believable.

  We got out of the car. After driving around with the windows open, Edna’s bleached and broken-off hair stood up all over her head. That and the glitter glue she’d added gave her a rakish look of good cheer. She lifted the aromatic lasagna from her casserole carrier. Although she held the foil pan-within-a-pan with care, her lips thinned as if she were being burned.

  I thrust my tin toward her. “Let’s balance your lasagna on this. Maybe it will help thaw the cookies.”

  Together, we stacked the lasagna in its nestled pans on the tin. To keep our unwieldy donations steady, we walked sideways, facing each other with our hands under the tin and the hot edges of the disposable pans grazing our bare arms.

  The front door banged open. “What are you doing here?”

  I looked up into the red and angry eyes of Russ Coddlefield. “Russ, I’m sorry…”

  He bounded down the porch steps and raced past us. “Leave me alone. Leave all of us alone.”

  He slammed himself into his truck, backed up, nearly hit Edna’s car, then tore off, spewing gravel.

  I don’t think I moved during that entire time, except for a shudder.

  “We should leave,” I tried. “Russ doesn’t want us here.”

  “He’s too young and grief-stricken to know what he wants.” Her deep brown eyes soft with sympathy, Edna watched the truck bounce down the driveway and disappear. “That poor boy.” Haylee could be right. Her mothers might be planning to take on Russ, and perhaps all the other Coddlefield children, too, as their next do-good project. Uh-oh.

  Edna backed up the porch steps. Not wanting to drop the food, I had to follow her.

  She pressed the doorbell with her elbow. Deep inside the farmhouse, Westminster chimes sounded.

  No one came. The front door stood open, with only a screen keeping us from walking right in. We couldn’t see or hear anyone inside the house. Maybe we could retreat.

  No such luck. Edna rang the doorbell again. More Westminster chimes.

  “Coming,” a sweet feminine voice called. Smiling, a girl who looked barely older than Russ strode down the hall and opened the screen door. Her blue-gray eyes were clear, her face rosy with heat. The only sign that things weren’t quite right was her uncombed blond hair. Lank on this muggy day, it would be flyaway in the middle of winter. My hair gave me similar problems.

  “We’re so sorry about your mother,” Edna began.

  The girl shook her head. “She’s not, she wasn’t my mother. I’m the au pair.”

  “Who is it, Tiffany?” A man called. “Can’t you get rid of them?” He sounded downright surly.

  Tiffany blushed more, and frown wrinkles deepened between her pale eyebrows. I adjusted my estimate of her age upward into the mid-twenties. She jerked her head toward the back of the house. “Sorry about that. Plug…Mr. Coddlefield is not himself. Understandably.”

  “We thought you might be able to use a casserole,” Edna said.

  Awkwardly, we edged it, balanced on the tin, toward her.

  “And some cookies,” I added. “They’re underneath the casserole.”

  “Lasagna,” Edna explained. “It’s hot.”

  Tiffany started to reach for it, then whisked her hands behind her back. “That’s nice. Leave it out there, and I’ll go get oven mitts.”

  “Tiffie?” Plug was apparently working up a rage.

  “In a minute!” She fluted it over her shoulder in a placating, yet strangely flirtatious way.

  Somewhere behind her, a child started crying, inconsolably, wails that could go on and on, for a lifetime, probably.

  Tiffany’s chin quivered. She lowered her head.

  We were only making things worse. Maybe we should have obeyed Russ and left the family alone.

  Edna squared her shoulders, a sure sign that she was fortifying herself with her particular brand of stubborn determination. “Is there anything we can do?”

  She was only milliseconds away from barging inside, hunting down that child, and picking it up. Was it the littlest girl from yesterday, or one of the two small boys, proud of their cowboy shirts? Either way, I was about to cry, too. I tugged at the cookie tin and casserole combo we were carrying together. Edna, however, didn’t budge, so I couldn’t flee.

  “You’ve done enough,” Tiffany said. “Absolutely. Thank you. I totally appreciate it.” She jerked her head back as if indicating something in the depths of the house. “He will, too, really. They all will. It’s just that…” She heaved a ragged sigh. “It’s hard, you know, so hard. But if you leave it on the table over there”—she pointed at a table next to an old-fashioned porch swing hanging from the white-painted wooden ceiling—“I’ll take care of it.”

  Edna shuffled toward the open screen door. “We can bring them in.”

  I had to shuffle with her.

  Tiffany shook her head quickly. “I’ve got to go.” She released the screen door. It slammed in our faces, leaving us with no polite option besides following Tiffany’s instructions and leaving the food on the porch.

  I pulled toward the table beside the swing, but Edna planted her feet on the old floorboards. “A raccoon or cat could get it. Maybe a skunk.” She shuddered.

  If Haylee had known about our mission, she would have come along to keep Edna out of mischief, but Haylee wasn’t here, so it was up to me to bring Edna safely home.

  “The others will be expecting you,” I tried. Most nights, Opal, Edna, and Naomi gathered together for dinner, taking turns in each others’ apartments.

  “Not until seven.”

  “I’d like to finish my IMEC project before the Harvest Festival…” And I hadn’t figured out yet exactly what I was going to do.

  “It will only take a second to find the kitchen,” she assured me. “Hang on while I open the door.”

  “Edna,” I whispered, drawing her name out like a kid might on a playground.

  Keeping one hand underneath the tin of cookies, she used the other to ease the screen door open. The foil pan slanted. I caught it with my forearm. The crimped aluminum edge didn’t burn, but who needed a hot pan touching skin on a sweltering evening?

  “Careful,” Edna warned. She backed against the door to keep it open and slid her hand underneath the tin again.

  I could have yelled or resisted or grabbed the pan and tin, heat and all, but the child’s howling pulled at my heart, too. Steadying my side of the casserole and cookie tin, I sidled with Edna into a bright entryway.

  All around us were touches of handmade needlework, projects that Darlene must have lovingly crafted. It appeared that she had also collected antique and vintage samplers and linens, and had decorated her walls with them. She’d been fond of the sorts of things I loved. I wished I’d gotten to know her. In her house, surrounded by her belongings, I understood some of the loss her family must be feeling.

  We needed to set the casserole and tin of cookies down, then leave.

  Edna must have seen my speculative glance at the spindle-legged antique table beside a stairway leading upward. “The hot pan might mar the wood,” she warned.

  Darlene’s hand-crocheted doily would have prevented that, but Edna would only come up with another excuse, like the pan might scorch the doily. Her motherly instinct was much stronger than mine, which, I feared, was rapidly becoming stronger. More children joined the chorus of screams.

  With marching-band precision, we sidestepped together down the hall past open doors leading
to two former parlors, one now a playroom overflowing with books and toys, and the other a living room with soft couches and chairs and a wide-screened TV over a fireplace. From the outside, the house had appeared to ramble, with new sections built every few years. I hoped I wouldn’t have to hobble, facing Edna and jointly lugging food, through all those additions to find a place to set the tin and the casserole. Edna was going to insist on locating those grief-stricken children before she would leave. And I still harbored hopes of getting a good look at Darlene’s sewing machine. How could it have killed her?

  We started past a doorway to the dining room. A peculiar, tuneless humming came from inside the room. I turned my head to see who was making the noise.

  In the far corner, beside a glass-doored china cabinet, Tiffany was in the arms of a much older man—Plug Coddlefield, widowed for approximately twenty-four hours.

  8

  TIFFANY WAS LEANING INTO PLUG, KISSING him on the lips, moaning with apparent pleasure. The tips of his fingers were in the back pockets of her jeans.

  Deeper in the house, his motherless children bawled and blubbered.

  Edna had her back to the tableau in the dining room, but my dropped jaw must have alerted her. Plus my feet seemed to have forgotten how to move.

  Edna glanced into the room and did a classic double take. Her mouth opened to match mine. I managed to be silent.

  Edna, however, let out a gasp.

  Tiffany and Plug jumped away from each other as if a firecracker had exploded at their feet.

  Edna whipped around to face me and gave her head a jerk toward the back of the house. She tugged on the tin and casserole.

  My feet had to come unglued, or hot, gooey lasagna would cascade all over them.

  We were still in view through the doorway. “What’s going on?” Plug demanded.

  Edna made a very plausible jump and turned toward him. “Oh!” Maybe she wasn’t acting. Maybe she really was startled. Or embarrassed, like I was. “I didn’t see you there!” Right. But to give her credit, she sounded sincere.