Dire Threads

by Janet Bolin

  “The only thing I saw,” Herb said, “was that spool of red thread Irv gave Willow.”

  “Me, too,” Smythe agreed.

  Still sitting on the floor, Irv said nothing.

  I handed Uncle Allen a paper bag. He surfaced and held it open for me to see inside. The button was black walnut, almost identical to the one I’d found in the sink of Blueberry Cottage. Frayed brown threads trailed from the button’s two holes. I called to Clay, “Come see this.”

  He peeked into the bag. “The grain is similar to the one we found in your cottage, isn’t it?”

  Edna squeezed in for a look. “The forensics lab will be able to tell if it was cut from the same piece of wood as the button you found and the buttons still on Mike’s coat.”

  Irv’s face reddened even more. He rose from the floor and towered over Uncle Allen. “I gather that one of Mike’s buttons was found in Willow’s cottage and now this one was in her shop. Shouldn’t that be enough for you to arrest her for Mike’s murder?”

  I shot back, “Those buttons were deliberately placed on my property.” I pointed at the bag in Uncle Allen’s hand. “That one was put there only moments ago. While you were under the table.”

  Irv seemed totally unrattled. “Smythe must have planted it.”

  Uncle Allen glowered at Irv. “You were the last one to come up from underneath that table.”

  Irv pointed at me. “No, she was.”

  Actually, Uncle Allen was. He asked Irv, “When did you last wear these boots?”

  “How am I supposed to remember that? I wear them around the farm, and on days like this morning, hiking in the cold.”

  I asked Uncle Allen, “Do you think we saw Irv’s pickup driving slowly through the village the morning Mike died?”

  “Can’t rule it out,” Uncle Allen said. “Especially if the print of Irv’s boot matches the one the state police carried off with your porch floorboards. They’ll check for Mike’s blood in Irv’s pickup, also, transferred from Irv’s clothes.”

  Irv’s wife’s face froze in a deer-in-the-headlights stare.

  “Do you know something about the outfit he wore that morning?” I asked her. “The jacket he has on today looks brand new.” The plastic tie that must have held the price tag still stuck out like a needle from the side seam.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Don’t be an accessory after the fact,” Edna warned her. “The forensics lab will test everything. If the paint on your husband’s shoe matches the paint found at the scene . . .”

  Irv’s wife snapped, “I can’t be expected to keep track of every item of my husband’s clothing.”

  She had a point, but I had a feeling she was lying and had told the investigators her husband was home all night Tuesday night, when he hadn’t been.

  Edna bobbed her head. “It will all come out in court.”

  Opal asked Irv’s wife, “Did Irv perhaps dig a hole since last Wednesday morning and bury his clothes?”

  Irv looked at Opal with a superior sneer. “The ground’s frozen. It didn’t thaw that much during the rain we had Saturday night.”

  Opal went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “Or build any fires?”

  Irv’s wife’s voice was so quiet we could barely hear it. “He burned the trash on Wednesday, just like he always does.”

  Irv snapped, “Shut up, Skippy.”

  Skippy.

  Maybe Irv had another motive for killing Mike besides the theft of valuable timber. I turned to Uncle Allen. “I have something else to show you. Don’t go away.”

  I dashed downstairs. Outside, a normal police siren sounded. I ran back upstairs with the chest that the flood had brought me.

  State Trooper Gartener and the petite blonde I’d seen on Lake Street who must be Trooper Smallwood were standing just inside the door, looking perplexed by the large and noisy gathering in my shop.

  Before I could turn the box over to display the inscription, Rhonda burst through the crowd and ran toward me. “How did you get my jewelry box? Did Mike make you one, too?” She reached for it. “Or did you steal mine?”

  “It came down the river with other flotsam. I washed off some of the mud, but didn’t quite get it all.” I held it so everyone in the room could see the carving on the bottom.

  His face now verging on purple, Irv snarled, “Mike only started making those a couple of years ago. And we’ve been married for how long, Skippy? A lot longer than that. I couldn’t believe it when I found that in Mike’s workshop after Smythe killed him.” He took a step toward her, but Smythe held him back.

  Haylee and I traded glances. Now we knew who had searched Mike’s house before we got there.

  Skippy gasped. “That’s not mine. I never saw it before. Me and Mike?” Her shudder looked real. “Never! I have no idea why he would have such a thing in his workshop. He never gave it to me.”

  Irv must have jumped to the conclusion that crossed my mind. Maybe Mike had been planning to give it to Skippy and hadn’t done it yet.

  The female trooper said, “The deceased had a whole shop full of those boxes when we searched his place, didn’t he?” Trooper Smallwood’s voice was as soft and sweet as it had been over the phone.

  Stern as ever, Gartener didn’t look at her. “I’ve been going through photos of all of them, figuring out the inscriptions. A whole bunch of women’s names. Skippy was definitely not among them.”

  Skippy repeated, “I never saw it before in my life.”

  Looking up at Gartener beneath fluttering eyelashes, Rhonda reached for the box again. “If it’s like mine, it has a secret compartment.”

  What a show-off.

  Gartener came close to Rhonda. She looked about to swoon. He asked her, “How did you get aqua paint on your thumb?”

  She hid her hand behind her back like a stubborn child.

  Gartner just stared at her, like he had all day for her confession.

  Finally, she admitted in a small voice, “I wanted to see if the paint on the porch of Willow’s cottage was dry. I did it after you took the crime scene tape down. I swear.”

  Aunt Betty pulled Rhonda farther from Gartener. “I was with her. We’d heard about the paint and were just checking.”

  They’d heard about the paint from her husband, no doubt. And were snooping on me. They must have climbed my fence to get in. If the occasion had been less serious, I might have laughed.

  Gently, Gartener removed the box from my hands and set it on the table in front of Rhonda. “Does this one have a secret compartment?”

  She tossed her head, which didn’t do anything to show off her hair, since her hood had matted it rather drastically. “Probably not. Mike said mine was special.”

  It took both troopers, under the supervision of Rhonda, to discover that the box did have a false bottom. They lifted it out, along with a bunch of sodden papers.

  Trooper Gartener put on white cotton gloves and moved the pages, one by one, into another pile. I saw the word “deed” on one.

  And the name of a logging company on another. I quickly looked at the bottom of a column of figures, and saw an amount close to two hundred thousand dollars, and even closer to the amount I’d seen listed in Mike’s bank account. I didn’t dare mention that I’d seen Mike’s bank books. The investigators would surely notice without my help that the figures and the timing matched.

  One of them seemed to. “Huh,” the garrulous Trooper Gartener said.

  Trooper Smallwood moved closer to Gartener. “These could have come from those empty files we found in the deceased’s house.”

  I carefully did not look at Haylee. We’d seen empty files marked Deeds and Sales.

  Smallwood eyed Irv. “Someone broke into that house before we arrived. You’ve already admitted you found the wooden box on the deceased’s premises. It’s easy to believe that you were the one who put these papers into the box.”

  Irv quickly denied it. “I’ve never seen those papers before. I didn’t know the box had a
secret compartment.”

  Smallwood clicked a fingernail down on the table next to the wet pages. “There must be something in here that someone didn’t want anyone else to see. I have a feeling that when we read these papers, we’ll have a pretty good guess about who might have hidden them in the box and dumped it.”

  Trooper Gartener grunted and began one of his long, dark-eyed stares at me.

  I did my best to look completely innocent, but all I could think of was the rabies tag he’d found in Mike’s yard, evidence that my dogs and I had done some illicit sleuthing.

  “You’ll have to show us later, Miss Vanderling,” he said calmly in that deep, warm voice, “where you found this box.”

  “On the riverbank,” I answered. “In front of Blueberry Cottage.”

  “Any idea how the box, and its contents, got into the river?”

  “Somebody must have thrown it into the river thinking it would sink or be washed out into the lake.”

  “Who would do that?”

  I answered his question with a question. “Someone who didn’t want the world to find out about grudges he held against the deceased?” I stared directly at Irv. “You said Mike wasn’t smart enough to set Smythe up to burn down my cottage and injure Smythe so that I’d be blamed for everything. Who did come up with the scheme? Smythe?”

  Irv lifted his chin. “Are you kidding? Smythe?”

  And yet Irv had said Smythe was making it all up . . .

  Herb called out, “Irv’s the smart one in the bunch, at least to hear him talk.”

  Skippy defended her husband. “He is smart. He’s our mayor, after all. None of the rest of you could do that job, not even Mike.”

  Irv growled again, “Shut up, Skippy.”

  But Skippy wouldn’t be quiet. “Did it never occur to you that Mike might have carved that inscription just to make trouble between you and me?” Huge tears welled from her eyes.

  Naomi, Opal, and Edna flurried to console her.

  Uncle Allen took Irv’s arm and summarized the evidence we’d collected about Irv, the paint on his boots, the possibility that his boots would match the print found in the paint, the noisy snow tires, the theory I’d come up with earlier about the theft of the timber, and this latest evidence that Irv might have believed something was going on between his wife and Mike. And to top it all off, the evidence the police hoped to find when they read the papers they’d discovered in the box.

  Herb called out, “Mike got the last laugh, Irv. Even after his death, he proved you aren’t as smart as you like to think.”

  That must have been too much for Irv. “He’s the one who ended up dead.” He glared at me. “It would have all worked out fine if she hadn’t stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong. She humiliated Mike in front of the whole town. He couldn’t have that. I told him so. I told him he had to get even. Didn’t take much convincing, either. He wanted to take her down a peg or two. Her and all her weird, crafty friends over there.” He gestured at Haylee and her mothers. “I told him to bring Smythe along so we could leave him behind to take the blame, like we used to do as kids.”

  Irv had orchestrated Tuesday night’s entire fiasco and had involved Mike. But all along, he’d had an agenda he’d hidden from Mike. Even before he’d found the box with the name Skippy carved on it, Irv must have harbored suspicions about Mike and his wife, suspicions that, judging by Skippy’s behavior, could have been false, could have been fostered by Mike for the “fun” of making Irv angry. And Irv had been ready to be angry. He had to have known that Mike had stolen the timber from him, including the beloved old tree and its nostalgic tree house.

  Mike had been too arrogant to realize that Irv’s plan was really for Mike to end up dead, and for Smythe or me to be blamed.

  Irv had succeeded in killing Mike and had nearly succeeded in sending Smythe or me to jail for the crime.

  Uncle Allen relinquished Irv to the state troopers. “You’ll need to question him further, impound his truck, and search his premises, especially where he burns his trash. You’ll also need to Mirandize him. I’ll come along to help as soon as I get a ride back to my cruiser and, um, get it started.”

  Trooper Gartener drilled into him with his policeman eyes. I winced on Uncle Allen’s behalf and offered Gartener a half smile. He gave me the barest hint of an unsmiling nod. From that taciturn man, it nearly amounted to a declaration of friendship.

  The two state troopers escorted Irv, in his stocking feet, toward the door. As they passed Haylee, something jingled near Trooper Gartener’s boot. He bent over, picked the object up, and handed it to Haylee, saying very courteously, “Ma’am, I think you dropped something.”

  Haylee’s eyes went wide, and she started to shake her head, then closed her fist on the thing, and thanked him. I tried to catch her eye, but she seemed to be avoiding looking anywhere near me.

  The troopers went outside and helped Irv into a sparkling, new cruiser.

  I had one more question for Smythe. “Did you hide inside Opal’s store Friday night, eavesdropping on our storytelling?” I was fairly sure he hadn’t, unless he’d borrowed a black pickup truck.

  Smythe tilted his head as if confused. “I came straight inside the moment I arrived and gave you honey, remember? Then I left with Rhonda and Aunt Betty.”

  A dawning softness on Rhonda’s face said that Smythe had a chance with her, now that Mike was gone. “That’s right, he went out with us.”

  Smythe looked away from her. He was probably considering confessing to Mike’s murder and asking for a sentence that would end only after Rhonda found herself a different man.

  “Did you let someone into Tell a Yarn when you went out the door?” I persisted.

  Aunt Betty put her hands on her hips and stared at her husband.

  Uncle Allen cleared his throat and shuffled his boots.

  Hugging her notebook, Edna advanced on him. “No search warrant?”

  Uncle Allen looked up without seeming to focus on anyone. “I had a murder to investigate,” he growled.

  Aunt Betty tripped over her snowmobile suit pant legs in her rush to her husband. “I’ll take you to your car and jump-start it for you again.” She placed her fists on her hips. “You’ve been saying for years that you’d retire after you solved a big case. Now’s your chance.”

  Uncle Allen squinched up his mouth. “Maybe.”

  Dr. Wrinklesides boomed, “Think about it, Uncle Allen!”

  Uncle Allen boomed back, “Are you going to retire anytime soon?”

  Dr. Wrinklesides laughed. “Can’t. Too many patients.”

  Uncle Allen retorted, “And I’ve got too many criminals.”

  Uh-oh.

  Uncle Allen looked his wife up and down. “If I retire, I won’t be able to wear my uniform jacket anymore, and I’ll need my snowmobile suit back.”

  “What will I wear?” Aunt Betty asked. “I don’t have anything else as comfortable or warm.”

  Rosemary had the answer for that. “Haylee gives classes where you’ll learn to make scrumptious coats. Naomi can help you quilt them, and Edna and Willow will help you embellish them.”

  “Speaking of which,” Opal said, “we’d better go.” She and Naomi and Edna led their students outside.

  Belting out an aria, Dr. Wrinklesides carried his package down the street. Luther, Jacoba, Herb, Rhonda, Aunt Betty, and Uncle Allen left.

  Twisting his hat between his hands, Smythe came to me, with Haylee beside him. Haylee opened a drawer in my cutting table and thrust something jingly inside. I caught only a glimpse of the object, but it looked a lot like Sally’s lost rabies tag. With a conspiratorial grin, Haylee shut the drawer.

  I was stunned. Gartener should have passed that “evidence” to the rest of the crime investigators. Why hadn’t he? Because he wanted to confront me with it first to see what I said, and I had come across as totally innocent? How had I managed that?

  I realized Smythe was talking. “Sorry to have caused you so much
trouble, Willow. I’ll bring your camera back.”

  I said, “You didn’t cause me nearly as much trouble as I caused you just now with my false accusations. I didn’t want to believe you were a murderer, couldn’t believe it, really, but I kept finding all these clues that pointed to you. I’m really sorry, Smythe.”

  He looked down at his hat. “Don’t be. If I’d confessed my part in Mike’s scheme from the beginning like I should have, the false accusation would have come from Uncle Allen, and I’d be in jail for Mike’s murder now, but thanks to you, I’m free. Except for—” He made one of his funny faces. “I think they can charge me with . . . something.”

  Haylee touched his arm. “They won’t.” Throwing me a smile that said she would have done the exact same thing if I’d been the one hanging around someone she suspected of murder, she headed for the door. Smythe and her students followed her.

  Clay gave the dogs good-bye pats and climbed over the railing. This morning, for once, he hadn’t asked me what was wrong the moment he arrived, but he had to have realized something had been terribly wrong when our bus sped past him, and he had, as always, come to my rescue.

  “Thanks, Clay,” I said, knowing it was inadequate.

  “Anytime.”

  “I guess we won’t be able to renovate Blueberry Cottage until we can get permits,” I began. With Irv in custody, who could act as zoning commissioner?

  “We’ll figure it out.” He nodded toward the Threadville tourists preparing for this morning’s embroidery lesson. “It looks like you have work to do. Talk to you later.”

  Haylee had known me for years and obviously understood why I had accused Smythe. If she’d suspected I was dating a murderer, she’d have exposed him for what he was. Smythe, who was entirely too trusting, seemed to have forgiven me, too. Someday, maybe, I could forgive myself.

  But what about Smythe’s friend, Clay? He was kind and helpful like Smythe, but not as trusting, which was probably a good thing—he wasn’t likely to get into the sort of predicament that Smythe had gotten himself into. Clay and I might get to know each other—and to trust each other—one of these days, maybe when we renovated my cottage together. It was something to look forward to . . .