by Janet Bolin
Uncle Allen appeared to avoid looking at our faces and the challenge he might see on them. Or maybe he was dazed by the variety of buttons beside him. “I don’t know.” He unbuttoned his coat. Slush slid to Edna’s shiny floor.
He was definitely missing a button.
Opal raised one eyebrow, but went on smoothly with the subject she’d started. “Someone appears to be renovating that store. Trucks came and went all day yesterday and today.”
“Men carried in lumber and tools,” Naomi added. “And light fixtures.”
Edna’s eyes opened wide, as if two million volts of electricity had zinged through her. Or maybe the notebook had poked her. “It’s a marijuana grow-op! Did anyone notice a building permit?”
None of us had.
“I’ll find out.” Uncle Allen’s grumble was not very convincing.
Edna crossed her arms over her strangely angular bodice. “You’d better investigate. It’s got to be a grow-op or a meth lab.”
Opal enunciated over the howling wind, “You should look into Mike’s dealings with the drug underworld.”
Uncle Allen tucked his thumbs into his belt like someone about to draw six-shooters from hip holsters. “Mike was the victim. Don’t go blaming him.”
Naomi wiggled her eyebrows toward Opal in a quelling manner. “She meant that Mike may have stumbled upon information, and those drug dealers had to prevent him from telling you.”
Unappeased, Uncle Allen grunted and turned to me. “I’ll have those keys now.”
I strode toward the door. “I’ll take you.”
“I can let myself in and bring the keys back.”
I wanted to make certain he found the button and saw the paint spots. “It’s okay,” I said.
Haylee climbed down the clanking aluminum ladder. “I’ll come, too.”
Uncle Allen hitched up his pants. “I don’t want anyone disturbing the evidence.”
Edna must have realized it was her last chance to see the button before Uncle Allen took it away. She tugged on boots. “We won’t do that.”
Uncle Allen, Edna, Haylee, and I trooped out. Snow blinded us. Wind pushed us back toward Buttons and Bows. Leaning forward, choking to breathe, we struggled across the street to my relatively sheltered yard. Tally-Ho and Sally-Forth voiced their indignation inside my apartment while we sidestepped past it, down the snow-covered hill to Blueberry Cottage.
I unlocked the door and turned on the light. Uncle Allen backhanded the space between him and us with one gloved hand. “You ladies stay outside while I do a sweep.” His flashlight hardly gave off any light, but it did show up cobwebs in corners, and I was tempted to offer him a broom for his sweep. I managed to restrain myself and was careful not to look at Haylee. It wouldn’t take much to set both of us off into giggles.
Edna stepped over the threshold. “This is lovely, Willow. It doesn’t need anything except a little cleaning.”
Haylee let out a few fake coughs.
“Allergic to cobwebs?” I asked with overdone politeness.
Haylee coughed harder. “Some sweeping would help.”
I suffered from an instantaneous coughing fit, too.
Edna cast both of us a stern look. “And some twig furniture,” she added brightly. “With its bark on. And you could whip up pretty cushions and curtains, Willow, and trim them with bows. It would be very cozy. With your views of the river, you could charge a good rent.”
Uncle Allen disappeared into the kitchen. I clamped my lips together, and Haylee did an admirable job of laughing silently. Edna shook a finger at us, which set us off again. Finally more or less in control of ourselves and of each other, the three of us tiptoed through the great room and positioned ourselves behind the line where carpeting met linoleum.
I couldn’t simply stand still, however. I strode into the kitchen and pointed down at the trail of aqua blotches. “When we’re done in here, I’ll show you similar spots outside on the front porch and door.”
Edna squealed, “The aqua spots lead from the door to the sink! Look, Detective DeGlazier. Here’s the button.”
He aimed his light into the sink. “I see it.” He cleared his throat and harrumphed as if trying to supply the plumbing noises that had been missing ever since the cottage’s water was turned off.
“What a charming kitchen,” Edna cooed. “All you have to do is paint the walls and install new appliances, and you’ll be ready for tenants.”
With a quick shake of her head, Haylee nudged her.
Uncle Allen untangled a plastic bag from a jacket pocket.
Raising and lowering her eyebrows, Edna asked me, “Do you have a paper bag or envelope?”
Uncle Allen used the plastic bag like a glove to pick up the button, then sealed it in the bag.
Edna peered into the bag. “I haven’t ever sold any like that at Buttons and Bows, but it looks familiar. The murderer must have lost it here.”
Uncle Allen focused on me. “Are you sure it didn’t pop off your coat? After you unlocked your gate and let Mike into your yard so you could beat him up?”
It was all I could do not to stamp my boot down onto his. “I didn’t let him in and I didn’t beat him up! And you took the parka I wore that night. Check, and you’ll see that it zips. It never had any buttons. And tonight, Sam told me that Mike might have stolen a padlock from the hardware store after I bought mine. Mike’s key may have opened my gate. He could have let himself and his killer in. Did Mike have a key to my gate when he was found?”
Uncle Allen pointed at me. “Aha! You caught him trespassing and attacked him. And no, he didn’t have your key. You’re the one who has your keys.”
“When I found him,” I reminded the policeman, “he had already been attacked. I didn’t touch him.” I pointed at the gaping door. “Somebody broke in here, probably after attacking Mike, because he heard my dogs coming.” I gestured at the sink. “He watched us and didn’t notice losing a button.” I tried not to stare at the spot on Uncle Allen’s coat where a button should be.
Edna must have had the same problem. Her head bobbed around as if she were looking for a new subject. She pointed at the closed bathroom door. “What’s in there, Willow?”
Uncle Allen opened the door and stuck his head around the jamb. “Oh.”
Haylee took one look at the steep angle of the toilet, and the dam burst on her giggles.
For once, Edna seemed to be at a loss for words. Finally, she concluded, with a great show of confidence, “All this room needs is a new toilet. You never needed a building permit, Willow. You were only trying to be nice to Mike by asking him for one.”
Behind Uncle Allen’s back, Haylee conquered her giggles and elbowed Edna.
Uncle Allen turned around and frowned at us. “It’s not the toilet. It’s the floor. This whole building needs shoring up. She would need a permit for that. And she was being nice? Nearly everyone in Elderberry Bay heard her threaten to kill Mike. You call that nice?”
Edna reminded him, “Dust that button for fingerprints. And maybe there’s DNA on it.” She made a pouty face. “Except if the button is damp, it will decompose in that plastic bag.”
Uncle Allen scoffed, “You watch too much TV.”
Edna raised her little chin. “I used to be a chemist.” She had a right to be proud. Together, she and her two best friends had juggled degrees, careers, raising Haylee, and perfecting the handcrafting of original and unique outfits.
I showed Uncle Allen the Ohio-shaped paint splotches on the front porch and door.
Predictably, he scoffed. “Someone could have made those tracks last summer.”
“That paint appeared the day before Mike’s attack.”
My hot retort barely fazed him. “So? Maybe someone tracked it in after we were done here.”
Or maybe one of the investigators tracked paint around. I didn’t say it.
He concluded, “It might have nothing to do with Mike or his death.”
I hated to admit it, but
he could be right.
He took a deep breath, sniffing the air with something resembling satisfaction. “Snow’s still coming down like a son of a gun. It keeps warming up like this, the river’s gonna overrun its banks.”
16
THE RIVER DIDN’T LOOK HIGHER THAN IT had earlier when Clay had made a similar comment, but Sam, who had lived next to the river for most of his eighty-something years, had also predicted possible flooding.
Silently, we trudged up the hill. Newly fallen snow had obliterated our footprints from only minutes before.
At the street, Uncle Allen headed for his cruiser, and the rest of us returned to Buttons and Bows. Naomi and Opal were tidying up the last of the cartons. Edna gazed around her glittering store. “Thanks, everyone!”
We all agreed that we loved getting the first look at Edna’s new merchandise.
Opal asked, “Did you recognize the button, Edna?”
“It wasn’t a type I’ve ever carried in my store, but it looked familiar.”
Haylee laughed. “Lots of buttons are round with holes.”
Edna glared.
I said mildly, “Not many are sliced from black walnut branches.”
It seemed impossible for Edna to be anything but cheerful for more than a half second. She thanked us all, and we said our good nights and left. Opal, Haylee, and Naomi appeared to be blown along the snowdrifted sidewalk toward their stores. I fought my way through blustering snow to let Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho out.
They were drenched by the time they tired of wrestling in the snow. I had embroidered their names and portraits on microfiber towels, tan to go with Tally’s brindle and white coat, and red to go with Sally’s gorgeous black and ermine fur. Tally wriggled when I dried him. Sally went all relaxed, like she never wanted the rubbing to end.
The dogs accompanied me upstairs to the shop, which the woodstove still kept toasty warm. I inspected the design I’d started on my practice remnant. I tried to tell myself it looked fine, but I had to admit that the stitches were too small and close together, creating a needle-breaking fabric with the approximate flexibility of plywood.
I went back to my embroidery software, fiddled with the photo, lowered the number of colors the design would use, and manually lengthened stitches.
I put stabilizer and another remnant from my stash into my largest machine embroidery hoop and began my second attempt. The improvements were just what it needed. The embroidery was neither puckered nor slack.
Now I could stitch the design on the homespunweight unbleached linen I’d bought for the finished product. By the time my machine began the cornstalks in the foreground, I couldn’t help smiling at how well the design was coming out, almost like a seventeenth-century tapestry. Okay, not really, since the camouflage and orange neon fabrics the man wore had not yet been invented. Maybe if I added one of Naomi’s unicorns? Maybe not.
While my favorite embroidery machine worked faultlessly, stopping and beeping to remind me to change threads, I looked through my photos for one that would show off my version of stumpwork and inspire Threadville tourists. I chose one of the fishing hut and ATV on the icy lake at dawn. I fiddled with the photo, trying one more thing to perfect it, then another and another until I lost count.
Meanwhile, my embroidery machine completed the design of the man disappearing into the woods. I still had to create three-dimensional cornstalks and trees.
When I thought my frozen lake photo was ready to be converted to an embroidery design, my eyes were too bleary to focus. The dogs and I went down to our apartment.
In the morning, the wind had died down, snow was no longer falling, and the sky was the color of frozen fog. Blueberry Cottage was charming, a pale teal gingerbread house underneath heaps of frosting. I snapped pictures while the dogs played tag.
When Sally saw me with the embroidered doggie towels, she trotted inside, lay down, and gazed imperiously at me, making it perfectly clear that she was ready for more rubbing. Wagging his tail and bopping Sally with his nose, Tally had to wait for his turn, then he wanted to bite his towel. By the time the two dogs were dry, I’d worked up a sweat. I showered, dressed, and fixed a yummy omelet stuffed with shredded sharp cheddar. Sally and Tally made certain they got their share before I went upstairs to In Stitches and locked the dogs in the apartment.
Lake Street had become an enchanted land during the night. Snow carpeted roofs. Tree branches resembled white lace. Evergreen boughs peeked out beneath soft white mounds. Lights inside the boutiques across the street made Threadville both cozy and inviting. I turned my cross-stitched sign from Closed to Welcome.
While the day’s cider sent cinnamon and apple aromas around the shop, I cut a scarf from red fleece. One of the fun things about sewing with fleece was that it wouldn’t unravel and didn’t need hemming. I hooped it underneath water-soluble stabilizer, which would keep the stitches from burying themselves in the fluffy fabric. I loaded my weeping willow design into my software, saved a new copy of the design, and deleted the green parts, leaving only the bare tree trunk and branches. Imitating the scenery outside, I added dollops of snow to the weeping willow. Later, it would be fun to create spring and autumn versions of the design. I stitched my new winter willow design in charcoal and white on one end of the red scarf.
The embroidery machine finished. In the sudden quiet, I heard shouts and laughter. I’d been afraid that the Threadville tour bus wouldn’t make it through the snow, but some of my students, along with village children who apparently had the day off school, whooped it up as they built a snowman in my front yard. I pulled on boots, coat, and mittens and ran out to join them.
Rosemary helped another woman lift a bulky snowball onto the snowman’s rounded shoulders. “Hi, Willow! We left early because of the snow on the roads, and got here long before classes. We didn’t want to bother you folks, so we’ve been having a little fun.”
The Threadville tourists and village children had erected a huge snowman in front of The Ironmonger. They’d built snowmen in front of The Stash, Tell a Yarn, Buttons and Bows, and Batty About Quilts. Snowmen decorated the front yards of the General Store, the vacant store that Edna suspected was a drug dealers’ lair, and the uncompleted restaurant. On the corner, Pier 42 boasted two snowmen, one in the front yard, and one on the side patio. Sisters-in-thread knew how to have fun, and they made it contagious. I’d have to talk to Haylee and her mothers about planning and giving children’s courses.
Finished with their outdoor sculptures, my students left the children to invent more fun for themselves, and trooped into In Stitches. Several of them wanted to stitch my winter willow design onto the scarves they’d made. I helped others create monograms, some with crests from a commercial design collection. The woman who had already bought an embroidery machine wanted to learn to use software to create her own designs.
“How about a snowman?” I suggested. I demonstrated creating three circles, big, bigger and biggest, and filling them with fancy stitching. We added eyes, a mouth and three buttons. Other students finished their stitching and gathered around to watch. Several muttered about needing embroidery machines and software for creating original designs.
Soon, I should be able to afford Blueberry Cottage’s renovations, downstairs and upstairs . . .
After I showed them how rinsing the scarves in hot water made the water-soluble stabilizer disappear, it was lunch time. They hurried away, some of them wearing their new scarves, complete with basted-on stabilizer.
I leashed the dogs and took them and my newly embroidered scarf to the front yard. Laughing, a boy pulled a toboggan loaded with smaller children down the snowy street. A family of two parents and five children, all of them with smiles so wide their teeth must have been cold, schussed past on cross-country skis.
I expected to have trouble hanging on to two lunging dogs while tying the scarf around my snowman’s neck, but my biggest problem turned out to be trying to force Sally and Tally close to the snowman. They planted their
feet in the snow, barked, and refused to look directly at the scary white creature. “It’s okay,” I told them, giving the damp scarf a toss. It draped itself precariously around the snowman’s neck. I considered it artistic.
The other four Threadville proprietors came outside, too, and added scarves to their snowmen. Haylee’s was a length of bright blue and green cotton. Opal must have knit her scarf that morning, using heavy yarn and huge needles. Edna tied a jaunty rainbow of ribbons around her snowman’s neck. Naomi, possibly with the help of this morning’s students, had sewn a row of quilt squares into a scarf.
We shouted to each other in voices as cheerful as the day’s sunshine. Wearing an orange ball cap and an olive green cardigan with leather elbow patches, Sam came out of the hardware store and stuck a length of copper tubing where his snowman’s mouth should be. Sam called to me, “He’s smoking a pipe.”
In case my groan wasn’t loud enough, I twisted my face in fake pain.
With a grin and a wave, Sam stumped inside.
Jacoba and Luther emerged from the General Store. Jacoba used strawberry whips to create a jolly smile for their snowman. Luther gave it a radish nose. Jacoba was covered in so many layers I couldn’t be certain, but I suspected that, a year from now, the couple would be trundling a baby around in a sled. I called a greeting. They waved, but I couldn’t hear what they said over the sound of the white truck roaring past.
It stopped in front of the vacant store.
As one, Haylee, Opal, Edna, and Naomi began walking toward the truck. The dogs and I started in the same direction on our side of the street. Sally and Tally pulled toward the curb, away from the snowmen.
A man climbed out of the truck. Edna demanded, “What’s going on in that building?”
The guy brushed past us, stomped up the unshoveled walk, unlocked the building, and stalked inside.
“Friendly sort,” snorted Edna.
“You’d think he’d have decorated his snowman,” Opal commented.
Haylee giggled. “Maybe that’s what he’s here to do.”
I pointed dramatically at the papered-over windows. “Anybody see a building permit?”