by Janet Bolin
I shuddered at the thought of people sabotaging sewing machines to harm their owners. “I’d like to be proven wrong.”
“Any idea who might have done this?”
“Either a member of the Coddlefield household—Plug or Tiffany, maybe, because they had the hots for each other, or Russ, who seems unpredictable and maybe angry. Or the sewing machine company rep, Felicity Ranquels. On Wednesday afternoon, she was supposed to follow Darlene to the Coddlefield farm and train Darlene to use the machine. Do you know if Felicity found anything wrong with the machine when she was giving the lesson?”
Chief Smallwood snapped a fingernail against her notebook. “Investigators talked to her and to Tiffany again last night after we were here. Felicity said she didn’t try a wing needle, but she and the deceased put in those monograms you found yesterday, except for the odd one that started with T-I-F. You guessed right about that one. Tiffany had been teaching the littlest girl her letters. Or trying to. But then—” She gave me a stern police officer look. “Someone typed in your name, too. Not Felicity and not Tiffany.”
And if one of them had done it, would she have admitted it? “I didn’t. That was around five, right after the wing needle override was turned off. What time on Wednesday did Felicity leave Darlene’s place?”
“She claims it was around four.”
“And she drove to Cleveland by herself. Did anyone see her? Did she buy gas? Was she stopped for speeding on the interstate?” The thought of sour-faced Felicity speeding made me want to giggle, but I maintained a solemn expression and asked, “Who was at the Coddlefields’ at five on Wednesday? Tiffany? Plug? Russ?”
“Tiffany was with the four smallest children at the library. Plug and the four older children were working on an irrigation system in one of their fields. If anyone was home, it would have been Darlene.”
“Maybe Darlene was going to monogram something for me,” I hazarded, “as a thank-you for Wednesday’s ceremony?” Stranger things had happened.
Smallwood rapped out, “Where were you around five on Wednesday evening?”
“In my shop, waiting on customers. You can ask Rosemary, the tour bus driver. She usually gathers her passengers around quarter past.”
“Where were you the rest of the evening? Anybody see you?”
I had to admit that, except for about a half hour around six thirty when I’d visited the other Threadville shops, I’d been home alone with my dogs.
“Could Felicity Ranquels have damaged the machine in all the ways you showed us yesterday?”
“Probably not on purpose. She didn’t seem to know much about sewing.” By the time I finished describing Felicity’s homemade jacket and imitating her peeved expression, Chief Smallwood was obviously trying not to laugh, and I was beginning to like her. I asked, “Did you look into Darlene’s life insurance policies? Were they large? Was Plug the beneficiary?”
“Would it be surprising for a husband to insure his wife for a large amount, especially when there are eight kids to look after?” Smallwood looked at me expectantly, like she knew I would draw my own conclusions from her rhetorical question.
“No,” I answered.
Smallwood gave me a long, slow nod. Plug must have been the beneficiary on a big life insurance policy. Very interesting.
My first customer of the day came in.
“Thanks. You’ve been very helpful,” Smallwood said. She trotted out like someone who had accomplished her goals.
What had those goals been? I hoped that she was strongly considering Russ, Felicity, Plug, and Tiffany as possible suspects and that she would pass those conjectures along to the lead detective in the case, her former partner, Gartener.
On Sundays, we didn’t teach courses or give workshops, mainly because customers kept us busy. Halfway through the morning, a man marched into my shop. He was several inches shorter than I was, tanned and obviously fit. Who, besides Haylee, a trained tailor, would wear a neatly tailored suit in Threadville?
Another detective from the state police?
While I made change, bagged purchases, and chatted with customers, the man wandered around the store, picking things up and putting them down. He must have felt me watching him, because he occasionally glanced my way, but most of the time he was obviously eavesdropping on my customers.
If he wasn’t a detective, he was a reporter.
I mentally rehearsed what I should say to reporters: No comment.
18
THE STRANGER LINGERED OVER THE LONE Chandler Champion displayed in my store. He put his hand on it.
I quickly gave the last customer her embroidery hoops, appliqué scissors, and metallic thread.
The man’s face was inches away from the Chandler Champion’s needle. Maybe he wasn’t a reporter. Maybe he was a professional saboteur of Chandler machines, about to harm this one, too. Where was Chief Smallwood when I really needed her?
I stumbled over my feet in my hurry to reach him. “Can I help you?” I asked.
“I’m looking for Willow Vanderling.”
He didn’t flash a detective’s ID, so he had to be a reporter. No comment, no comment, no comment. “I’m Willow.” I had to fight the friendliness a shopkeeper should show.
He reached into a pocket and handed me a card. Jeremy Chandler, it said, President, Chandler Sewing Machine Company.
“You’re…Mr. Chandler?” I managed. The boss for whom Felicity Ranquels had shown so much reverence when she came to In Stitches to present the Chandler Champion to Darlene? I had pictured someone older. This man was probably in his late thirties. In case he didn’t like women looming over him, I backed up.
He flashed very white teeth at me. “Call me Jeremy.”
Okay, I could do that, even if Felicity, his employee, hadn’t. What was he doing here after missing the presentation Felicity had expected him to attend? “I thought you’d have been here on Wednesday.” My inept words made me feel even more gauche.
“Couldn’t make it.” He stroked the Chandler Champion. “This wouldn’t be the machine we presented to our winner, would it?”
Why wasn’t he at the Coddlefields’ asking that question? Did he know that Darlene’s machine had made its way back to my store? “No,” I said.
“Any idea where I could find it? I’d like to check it over, repair anything that might not be working. People are calling it a killer sewing machine. That’s not quite the image we want to project.” His tan was streaky, as if he might have painted it on.
“I believe the police have that sewing machine in their custody.”
The blindingly white smile did not falter. “Police? Custody? Isn’t that rather drastic?”
“Would you like the chief’s phone number?” People were lining up at the cash register again.
“No, no, I believe you. I see you’re busy. I don’t have to be back in Cleveland for my flight to New York until tomorrow.” He turned the full brilliance of those dazzling teeth on me again. “I’d like to talk to you about…this whole thing. Can I take you out to dinner this evening? Maybe you know of a place?”
Actually, I’d been looking forward to a quick supper with the dogs, then a companionable evening with my embroidery machines. But this man might divulge information about the Chandler Company and their quality control and safety checks. “Sure. How about The Sunroom, just a few doors down Lake Street, toward the beach?”
His frown didn’t wrinkle his forehead as much as I’d have expected. Whitened teeth, tan from a bottle, and Botox? What else about this man might be an illusion? “I was thinking of something nicer,” he said with practiced diction. “Should we drive to Cleveland for a better class of restaurants? I have a rental car outside.”
Like I was going to Cleveland with a complete stranger, especially one who might have manufactured a killer sewing machine. Besides, he had hired Felicity Ranquels, not exactly a point in his favor. “I hear The Sunroom is excellent. Five stars from…” I squinched up my face, trying to remember, and un
squinched it as quickly as possible. If I didn’t already have wrinkles, I soon would, and then I’d need Botox, too, and I might end up looking like Jeremy Chandler.
The superior quirk of his upper lip said that a restaurant rating service that ventured this far from New York City wouldn’t impress him, anyway. “Meet you there at…would seven o’clock be too late for farmers to eat their supper?” Again that superior quirk.
If he was going to insult everybody and everything in this corner of Pennsylvania, I didn’t want to spend one more moment with him. However, I did have questions I wanted to ask him. “Seven will be fine.”
Shoulders back, chin up, heels of his polished shoes hitting the floor like hammers, he strode out of In Stitches.
Customers streamed in and out all morning. After a large group of laughing women left, Tiffany walked in, trailing Darlene’s smallest daughter and two little sons. All three children were damp, their sturdy little legs and feet covered in sand. The four-year-old boy clasped a green plastic shovel tightly in one hand. They’d obviously spent part of their morning at the beach. “We’ve come for their mother’s sewing machine,” Tiffany announced.
I didn’t want to tell her in front of the children where it was. And maybe the police wouldn’t want her to know, either. “Plug told me he never wanted to see it again.”
For half an instant, I thought Tiffany was about to argue, but her expression went back to its usual bland polite interest, and I couldn’t be sure what I’d seen.
The little girl piped up, “Tiffie’s going to make me a new dwess.”
Tiffany smiled down at the child, then gave me a clear-eyed look. “Plug acted out of grief. He would never come right out and say he was wrong, but he regrets bringing that machine back. He has four daughters, and although Darlene already had a sewing machine when she won that one, her two older girls love to make their own clothes, and the two younger ones…” She gave the small hand in hers a playful shake. “You want to learn how to make yourself pretty dresses, too, don’t you?”
The little girl nodded solemnly. So did the boys. There was no rule, as Jeremy Chandler might attest, that only females could sew.
However, Darlene’s sewing machine could be tied up as evidence in a maybe-it’s-a-homicide case for years. But I had an idea I wanted to run past Jeremy Chandler. “You have your hands full. How about it if I get back to you tomorrow?”
Tiffany assessed me with those cool gray eyes. “I guess that will be all right.” Her lips tightened as if she were chalking up my misdemeanors to toss back at me if she ever needed to. “The machine really should belong to the children, you know.”
Obviously, she thought I was keeping it for myself. “It needs to be thoroughly checked by its manufacturer before anyone else uses it.”
“Then maybe the manufacturer should replace it,” she snapped, and I remembered the claw marks she’d put on Edna’s arm.
The children must not have liked her tone. Wailing, they tugged at her to pick them up. She dragged them outside. She had a quick temper and wasn’t always able to hide it. Had she lashed out at Darlene by tampering with her machine?
The visit from the two-faced nanny couldn’t dampen my mood, however. Every time I pictured Jeremy Chandler and his bantam-like confidence, I wanted to laugh. The minute Susannah arrived at lunchtime, I ran to The Stash. Haylee took one look at the grin on my face and led me to a quiet part of her store. Patting leopard-patterned fake fur, I outlined my plans for the evening.
Haylee’s eyes lit up. “You can gather clues about him and his sewing machine company. Have a great time!” The smile left her face. “But be careful. Don’t go anywhere alone with him.”
I promised I wouldn’t, then sprinted back across the street and took the dogs outside with me so they could play while I ate. It was another hot day, but the breeze came off the lake, bringing humidity and haze with it. Farther to the north, tall clouds massed. If that storm was like others this summer, though, rain would fall into the middle of Lake Erie instead of on nearby fields where it was needed.
After lunch, I settled the dogs in their pen with the table that Susannah had set up. The shop’s big back windows bathed her temporary sewing machine repair workshop in light. She was waiting on a customer, so I joined her at the cash register until the woman left.
With a troubled frown, Susannah whispered, “I have to show you what I found.”
She led me to the storeroom and grabbed the carton that had originally housed Darlene’s Chandler Champion. “Look what’s in the bottom.”
A scrap of candy pink fabric was wedged underneath one of the flaps. I yanked it out. I was almost positive that it matched the pink broadcloth Darlene had used for her twelve-year-old’s dress and Russ’s cowboy shirt. Using white thread, someone had sewn different stitches, some plain, some intricate, in equally spaced lines down the scrap. I ran the ornamental stitching between my fingers. “I wonder why we didn’t see this earlier.”
“That brochure must have been hiding it. I was looking for the screwdriver we were using last night, and pushed that brochure aside, and there it was.”
The brochure advertised other Chandler products. Toasters weren’t our prime interest in Threadville, so none of us had bothered to move the brochure before.
“Did you find the screwdriver?” I asked.
She grinned. “It was right in the tool box, where it belonged. I missed it the first time.”
I shoved the scrap into a pocket and we both returned to the shop. Cooing at the dogs, Susannah let herself into their pen and sat down to take a sewing machine apart.
Ashley, an avid fifteen-year-old customer, came in, picked up a bolt of heavy natural linen, and carried it to my measuring and cutting table. She had been attending classes in Threadville all summer. She wanted two yards for an embroidered wall hanging. “If it works out the way I picture it, I’ll enter it in IMEC.” She bowed her head as if embarrassed by her audacity in entering a competition in which most of the other contestants were adults.
I unrolled the fabric. “I can’t wait to see what you come up with,” I said. “You’re so talented.” She didn’t own an embroidery machine but did very well with the ones in my shop. The freehand thread art she created with her mother’s old machine at home was nothing short of amazing. I double-checked my measurements and gave her a little extra. “I still have to decide what I’m going to enter.” If anything.
“I know what picture I’m making,” she said. “It’s in my head. Aren’t you going to display them at the Harvest Festival next weekend?”
“Yep. I’d better hurry.” It was Sunday. On Friday night, I needed to set up my corner of the Threadville Booth. I gave her a student discount, and she left happy.
The rest of the afternoon, I waited on customers and tried, without success, to dream up a satisfactory method of making the candlewicking I’d envisioned. Susannah finished working on our customers’ machines, helped me close the shop for the evening, and then went home.
I took Sally and Tally downstairs and outside. Watching them run around, I thought about what to wear to dinner with Jeremy Chandler.
Luckily, I didn’t own any farmer’s overalls, or Jeremy’s comments about restaurants and farmers’ dining hours might have tempted me to put them on. I considered jeans. A denim skirt.
I had to prove I wasn’t a hick. After a luxurious shower, I put on a black pencil skirt and matching tank top, and draped a wrap around my shoulders. Edna had made it for me from black satin ribbons woven together and trimmed with tiny crystal beads. By the time I added strappy high heels and a black satin bag I’d embroidered with black silk thread in an allover design, my sophisticated look had to rival anything I’d ever seen on the sidewalks of New York.
I crammed the scrap of pink fabric into my bag and walked, head high, to The Sunroom to meet Jeremy.
The maître d’ ushered me into the glassed-in balcony. I took one look around and nearly burst out laughing.
The r
oom was almost full. Of people I knew.
19
HAYLEE AND CLAY WAVED AT ME FROM one table. I’d never seen Clay in a suit before. He looked, not surprisingly, gorgeous. And so did Haylee in a retro black linen sheath. As I came closer, I could make out a dried drop of white paint on Clay’s ear. He’d cleaned up but probably didn’t know he’d missed a fleck. It was endearing, and my smile had to be bigger than any I’d given him during the past few months.
At another table, Naomi and Opal raised their glasses and nodded at me. Naomi wore a long skirt and a jacket she’d quilted from patches of hand-dyed, jewel-toned silks. Opal was in one of her crocheted ensembles, this one a long skirt and top in coral.
In another corner of the glassed-in balcony, Edna, in her beribboned gown, didn’t appear to notice my entrance. Her attention was locked on her dining companion, Dr. Wrinklesides. He could have worn that black suit on a concert stage. Was he about to burst into song?
Jeremy Chandler must have thought my ever-growing smile was for him. He beamed at me from a corner table overlooking the park, the beaches, the lake, and the river, then stood and pulled out my chair for me. For a heart-rending second, I caught a heel, but managed to extricate it without ending up under the table—tablecloth, silver, crystal, china, and all.
Jeremy seemed pleasantly surprised by the menu. Consulting with our attentive waiter, he chose expensive wines to go with each course. Good thing I wasn’t going to have to wobble very far on my stiletto heels to get myself home.
After we ordered, I excused myself, found the maître d’, gave him my charge card, and arranged to pay for Jeremy’s and my meals and the meals of all my friends—Haylee and Clay, Opal and Naomi, and Edna and Dr. Wrinklesides. They were giving up an evening to guard me and shouldn’t have to pay for it. Besides, I didn’t want to owe Jeremy anything. Except maybe a sewing machine. If he gave me one, though, it would be to replace Darlene’s, which he and his company may have constructed so poorly that it ended up killing her.