Thread and Buried

by Janet Bolin

  He asked, “Will your assistant mind that you’re away from In Stitches so long?”

  “I’ve still got three quarters of my lunch hour left.”

  Up the hill on Lake Street, a car door slammed. The gate leading into one of my two side yards clanged.

  Naturally, even though I expected Chief Smallwood, I pictured Snoozy Gallagher, stooped, wrinkled, freshly returned from Mexico, and dangerously determined.

  Demanding his treasure. Perhaps at gunpoint . . .

  3

  CHIEF SMALLWOOD APPEARED ON THE LIP of the excavation. “Whoa!” she exclaimed. “That is some necklace. If no one claims it, you’ll get to keep it, Willow.”

  “Clay found it.” I blushed at visions of Clay and me dining out every night for weeks. Each time, I would wear a different set of jewels and a gorgeous new outfit that I would make and embellish with tiny touches of tasteful machine embroidery. To attend that many elegant dinners, we might have to go on a long (and romantic—my imagination was spinning out of control) cruise.

  Smallwood dampened my optimism. “On the other hand, if it turns out to be part of Snoozy Gallagher’s trove, you two could be charged for possessing stolen goods.”

  I finally knew her well enough to realize she was kidding.

  Clay only encouraged her. “It’s on Willow’s property,” he deadpanned.

  Smallwood slid down into the hole with us. I envied her those heavy black police officer boots. Protected only by sandals, my toes were gritty. As usual, Chief Smallwood managed not to mess up her neatly pressed navy blue uniform or her pert blond ponytail. She was shorter than I was, about average height. Her faultless peaches-and-cream complexion always made her appear barely out of her teens, though she had to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She wasn’t trying to look super-tough at the moment, and was very pretty.

  She put on plastic gloves, nudged the diamond necklace aside, and peeked into another pouch.

  Blurting something improper and improbable about the nocturnal behavior of catfish, she jumped to her feet as if she’d been burned. “Emeralds, too. They look real to me, but we’d better call in experts. Meanwhile, we’ll have to treat this as a crime scene.” She pointed toward the grassy part of my yard. “Up you go.”

  With her right behind us, we clambered out of the excavation. She radioed the state police and said that a pair of civilians had found evidence that could be related to the case of the skeletal remains from the day before.

  She ended the call and told us, “They’ll send Detective Gartener. He’s the lead detective investigating the old skeleton that Fred Zongassi dug up.”

  The satisfaction in her voice made me hide a smile. In addition to being handsome, Gartener was kind, fair, and capable. Smallwood and Gartener had been partners as state troopers, but when Gartener had been promoted to detective, Smallwood had left the state police and become Elderberry Bay’s police chief. She was supposed to call the state police whenever she needed backup of any sort, and it seemed to me that she often asked for a detective.

  Gartener was frequently the detective on duty for our part of the county . . .

  I glanced at her ring finger. No engagement ring—yet.

  She turned to Clay. “You’ll have to stop excavating.” She included me in her glance. “And stay away from that hole and the treasure in it while I go get some tape. Don’t let anyone else in, either.” She ran up to the street and came back with yellow police tape.

  Before Clay and his employees had started moving Blueberry Cottage, they had rolled back the chain link fence on the river side of my property so they could drive their heavy earth- and cottage-moving equipment from the wide, flat trail into my yard. Because of my dogs, they’d temporarily bridged the gap in the fence with orange plastic snow fencing.

  The yellow tape that Chief Smallwood draped across the orange mesh gave it a strangely festive look. She pointed at the gate leading from my yard to the trail. “You can still come and go through your gate, Willow, and use that side of your yard.” She ran the tape up to Blueberry Cottage, across its riverside porch, and back down to the orange snow fencing.

  Clay asked her, “Do you know yet if the bones Fred discovered yesterday were Snoozy Gallagher’s?”

  Smallwood bit the tape off the roll and tied the end to the fence. “Not yet.”

  Clay had another question for her. “Did you find any hint of how he died?”

  “They’re not sure what bashed in his skull. Maybe it was Fred with your bulldozer.” Smallwood often found ways of sounding ever so slightly accusing.

  Her tone didn’t seem to bother Clay. He gave her a lazy grin. “It would have been an unusual accident. Fred sifts through the earth with that bucket as gently as if he were using a spoon.”

  I suggested, “Wouldn’t a new fracture in a skull look different from an old one?”

  Smallwood agreed that it would, and that this break had looked old to her. “But the lab will tell us, and will also give us an idea about how long ago the deceased was buried. You have to admit that ending up six feet under about the time he was supposedly hightailing it to Mexico could make his death look suspicious.” She pierced Clay with one of her famous glares. “How long has Fred Zongassi worked for you?”

  4

  CLAY BECAME SERIOUS. “FRED’S WORKED for me for a couple of months.”

  Smallwood took a notebook from her pocket. “What made you hire him?”

  “He had the experience I needed, and he’s really good with earthmoving equipment. He lived in Elderberry Bay as a kid, and after years out west, he wanted to come back.”

  Smallwood flipped back toward the beginning of her notebook. “Here’s the thing. Thirty years ago, when Fred was in his early twenties, he was head gardener at the Elderberry Bay Lodge. A day or two before Snoozy disappeared, Fred had a noisy argument with Snoozy, quit his job, and wasn’t seen around here again until recently.” She looked up at Clay. “It gets worse. Yesterday, Fred didn’t call me, or any law enforcement, as soon as he discovered those bones. He went off somewhere, first. We know that because other people heard his bulldozer shut off and saw him drive away about an hour before he called us, and he didn’t return to the site until after that. Could he have found the treasure near the skeleton, and come over here during that hour, and buried the box?”

  I shook my head. “The dogs and I were in the yard most of the time from twelve to one. Clay was the only one here from Fraser Construction.”

  Smallwood waved my comment aside. “Zongassi drove away from his bulldozer at one, and he called me shortly after two.”

  “Clay was here all afternoon,” I protested.

  He contradicted me. “Sorry, I wasn’t. I took off from one to two. I borrowed Willow’s new kayak, paddled up the river, and ate my lunch.”

  I’d told him to use that kayak anytime. I was hoping he’d like it so much that he would buy himself one, and we could go kayaking together. However, if I was going to daydream about boating with him, maybe I should aim for the cruise ship I’d been imagining earlier.

  Smallwood asked Clay, “Did anyone see you?”

  He shrugged. “Some ducks.”

  She gazed toward the river as if expecting those ducks to waddle up the bank and corroborate what Clay had said. “Zongassi didn’t need to come during his lunch hour, I suppose. He could have hidden the chest in his truck when it was parked at the Elderberry Bay Lodge, and then driven over here at night. How well do you know him, Clay?”

  “Not well, but he’s been an excellent employee.”

  Chief Smallwood’s eyes became a steelier shade of blue. “Don’t you find it strange that one of your employees dug up bones at the lodge yesterday, and you found a possibly related treasure here today?”

  Clay waved toward his bright yellow front-end loader. “Digging up related things in different places could be strange, but it’s not odd that Fraser Construction was involved in both, since we are the only people around here with this kind of
equipment.”

  Smallwood only grunted.

  Clay’s jaw tightened. “I’ll talk to Fred.”

  “No need.” Smallwood flicked her ponytail over her shoulder. “We already have questioned him, and will again if we need to.”

  “I guess we shouldn’t have touched that chest,” I admitted. “But before Clay dug it out, the ground around it didn’t look like it had been disturbed.”

  “I didn’t think so, either.” Clay propped his shovel against the front-end loader. “It was straight down from where that grass is over there. Besides, the box is rusty, and the sand around it was discolored, with rust, I thought.”

  Smallwood grunted again. “It’s going to be hard to pile up grains of sand the way they were.”

  I had to admire her skill with sarcasm.

  Squinting against the sun, she looked up at our faces. “Can one of you stick around until Gartener and his team get here? I don’t want anyone accusing me of helping myself to any of those gems.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” I said. My relationship with her had been rocky, but I was as certain of her honesty as I was of my own and Clay’s. Wealth—and that included diamonds and emeralds—didn’t matter to any of us as much as living with our own consciences. I added, “I’ll stick around, but first, I’d better go tell my assistant what’s keeping me.”

  Leaving the other two to keep an eye on the unburied treasure, I ran up the hill past Blueberry Cottage, which was now firmly bolted to its new foundation and ready for the renovations Clay and I had been planning. I slid open the glass door leading from my patio to my apartment. My dogs, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho, greeted me with wagging tails and pointedly hopeful glances at the backyard. They loved Clay. They also loved to investigate recent excavations, but this would not be a great time for one of their mining projects.

  I told them to stay, and as always, they obeyed. Keeping them inside, I slid the patio door closed and gave each of them a home-baked dog biscuit.

  My open-concept great room with its compact but convenient kitchen was aboveground, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Blueberry Cottage, my treed yard, the hiking trail, the Elderberry River, and the state forest beyond it all. I loved the view but would probably want to make drapes, especially if I succeeded in renting Blueberry Cottage to tourists.

  The fun thing about drapes would be the amount of embroidery I’d be able to add to them. I’d keep it simple like the rest of the embroidery in the apartment. My basic color scheme was white, but I had embroidered soft furnishings for punches of color. For June, my accent colors were yellow and navy. I planned to replace the yellow with red during July—I was a sucker for red and white stripes, and I’d been embroidering white stars on navy fabric. For August, I would switch to cooling greens and blues, maybe with wavy designs embroidered on them.

  I trotted up the stairs, opened the door at the top, and almost ran into Haylee. She and I were the same age and size, and although she was blond and her face wasn’t as long as mine and her eyes were a more vivid shade of blue, many folks thought we were sisters. An expert tailor, she sewed all of her clothes, and today’s printed jean jacket and matching skirt were gorgeous. She demanded, “What’s Chief Smallwood’s cruiser doing in front of your place, Willow?”

  Looking concerned, Ashley, my sixteen-year-old summer assistant, hovered nearby.

  No customers were in the shop at the moment, but I lowered my voice, anyway. “Clay found something in my backyard—”

  Haylee clapped her hand to her mouth. “Not—”

  “Nothing bad,” I explained. “But it could be the Elderberry Bay Lodge treasure, so we reported it to Chief Smallwood.”

  Ashley gasped. “The Elderberry Bay Lodge treasure? Really?”

  Haylee insisted on a full description.

  I gabbled about gems and precious metals and lovingly crafted pouches.

  Ashley breathed. “I can’t wait to tell people that my boss found the treasure the whole world has been looking for, like, forever!”

  Haylee agreed. “Ever since yesterday when they heard that Snoozy’s remains had probably been found, everyone’s been making conjectures about where that treasure could have ended up.” She gave me a stern look. “They’re saying Snoozy may have been murdered. You be careful. Don’t get yourself into danger.”

  “Snoozy disappeared thirty years ago,” I pointed out. “He may have come back later, but even if he did, his killer would be long gone by now.” I would tell her Smallwood’s comments about one of Clay’s employees later, when Ashley wasn’t around to hear and spread the news.

  Haylee relaxed her shoulders. “If you aren’t going to be careful, like late at night walking your dogs, bring me along for the fun.”

  “Okay.” The dogs always needed exercise, and so did we, and if our walks late at night just happened to coincide with a necessary bit of snooping, could we help it?

  “Maybe you should change the name of your shop,” she teased. “Yours merits the name of The Stash more than mine does, now.”

  Ashley giggled.

  Haylee added, “I wish I could stay to see your stash, Willow, but customers may need me in mine.”

  I watched her trot across Lake Street to her fabric store at one end of a row of textile arts shops on the ground floor of a perfectly maintained redbrick Victorian building. The other shops sold yarn, notions, and quilting supplies. Even before I’d first opened In Stitches, those four shops had given Elderberry Bay a nickname that was now familiar for miles around—Threadville.

  I asked Ashley if she could hold out and take her lunch hour a little later if mine lasted longer than usual. She said she’d be fine. “And if I run into problems, I’ll just holler out the back window for the police.”

  I laughed. I was lucky to have her working for me full time during the summer. In addition to her sense of humor, she had enormous talent with thread art. Stitching freehand with her mother’s old zigzag sewing machine, she’d been the only contestant in Pennsylvania to place higher than honorable mention in a major international machine embroidery competition.

  I thanked her, ran downstairs, whipped up a lunch for three, and carried a tray outside. Fortunately, the table and chairs I’d set up near Blueberry Cottage’s original location were beyond the taped crime scene. I plunked the tray down on the table and called Chief Smallwood and Clay.

  We finished our sandwiches and were about to dig into a tin of my secret recipe chocolate chip cookies when Detective Gartener, wearing jeans, T-shirt, and a blazer, arrived with two uniformed state troopers. Gartener nodded at Smallwood, and then shook Clay’s and my hands. “Good to see you both again.” A smile lurked behind his dark brown eyes, quite a change from the first time I’d met him, when he’d been stern, inscrutable, and just plain scary.

  All six of us munched cookies while Smallwood briefed Detective Gartener and the two younger troopers. Commenting on the marks that Clay had drawn in the sand with his front-end loader and his shovel, the troopers helped Gartener carry the box out of the pit. They set it on the grass. Detective Gartener opened the top few pouches.

  It didn’t take him long to decide that the jewelry probably was real and must have come from the Elderberry Bay Lodge robbery. “Before we take this away,” he said, “I want you all, including Clay and Willow, to help me inventory what’s in this treasure chest. I don’t want any questions later about what was or wasn’t there.” He had the deepest, most resonant voice of any human outside a film studio.

  After a look at my eyes, which had to be wide with anticipation, Smallwood laughed. “This will be fun,” she said.

  5

  WITH CLAY, DETECTIVE GARTENER, AND the two troopers watching us, Chief Smallwood and I took turns emptying the pouches, one at a time, into each other’s hands, which we held over my outdoor table. We didn’t want to drop stray gems onto the grass.

  Well, maybe I’d have liked that, but I wasn’t about to do it.

  None of the pouches held stra
y gems, though. All of the stones were set in bracelets, rings, necklaces, earrings, brooches, and tiaras. With knowledge and enthusiasm, Smallwood described each piece of jewelry and made certain that one of the uniformed troopers transcribed her words perfectly into his notebook while the other trooper took photos. Gartener labeled the pouches.

  After we’d itemized everything, Clay pointed out that according to local legend, a large amount of cash had also been stolen from the safe at the Elderberry Bay Lodge. “But we got to the bottom of the box. There’s no money.”

  One of the young troopers glowered at Clay and me as if he believed we’d taken the cash before we’d called the police.

  Gartener pointed out, “Whoever emptied that safe may have spent the cash but hidden the jewels until the hue and cry died down.” He gave Clay and me a friendly look. “Thanks for your help. You two can go.”

  I picked up the tray of plates and glasses and left the remaining cookies behind. Walking up the hill with Clay, I studied my lawn with new interest. “Did you notice anything resembling buried treasure when you excavated the new foundation for Blueberry Cottage?” I asked.

  He glanced down at me with a glint of teasing appreciation in his eyes. “Want to dig up the rest of your yard after the police are done with it?”

  “Sure!” I was only partly joking.

  “Let me know when we’re allowed in your yard again. And next Friday night, how about if I pick you up at six thirty for the gala?”

  “That would be great.” I had seven days to figure out what to wear.

  “I’ll go ask Haylee to come with us.” Clay waved and strode uphill toward the gate leading to the front yard.

  Humming, I jockeyed my tray of dishes and glasses through the door to my great room and past two snoopy dog noses. I dashed upstairs and thanked Ashley for looking after the shop for so long. She lived only a few blocks away with her parents and younger sisters and brothers, and usually went home for lunch. I told her to take until half past two if she wanted.