Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery)

by Janet Bolin

  “First, I was merely curious about why the person I saw on the trail was acting furtive, so I ran up to my apartment, grabbed my flashlight and the dogs’ leashes, and ran back to the trail.”

  He scribbled some more. “How long did that take?”

  “Two or three minutes. I had to encourage the dogs to come with me, plus untangle my legs from their leashes, which delayed things. We didn’t make fast progress on the trail, either. The dogs seemed spooked and kept wanting to drag me home.”

  Vicki was writing, but I saw the ghost of a grin cross her face. She knew my dogs and their skittishness—or, perhaps, their common sense.

  I continued, “We’d probably been on the trail for a couple of minutes when I heard a scream and saw a largish glow that must have been the skirt moving down the hill in the fog.”

  “How far away were you?” he asked.

  “Close enough to hear the wheels on the concrete boat launch. They’re metal and made quite a racket. But between the fog and the low-hanging weeping willow branches, I couldn’t see much. It must have been about nine forty-five when the woman yelled ‘Don’t push me! Don’t—’ That scream ended suddenly, and then I heard a splash and what I thought were lightbulbs exploding.”

  He didn’t look up from his notebook. “What did you do?”

  “I came out from behind the willows and felt my way through the fog to the boat launch. I called for help. No one answered, but I heard someone run south on Lake Street. Whoever it was, his shoes made a slapping noise, like hard-soled shoes, and he didn’t come to help. I didn’t have time to chase him, though. I was more worried about the woman who had screamed.” I shuddered. “And then I saw the skirt underwater. It was a whitish blur, slowly drifting downstream.”

  Detective Neffting wasn’t as tall as I was, but he had maneuvered himself to stand higher on the slope. “You didn’t attempt to rescue the victim?”

  I looked up into his eyes. “I tugged at the extension cord attached to the skirt, but I thought I was only unwinding it, turning the reel it was on. Maybe I should have waded in, but I didn’t want to believe that anyone would be trapped inside that skirt, and Tally—my dog—acted like someone might be in the bandstand, so we dashed up there.”

  Vicki asked, “Who did you find?”

  I shook my head. “No one.”

  She shoved her hat up off her forehead. “What time did you last see the wedding overskirt in the bandstand?”

  How long had it taken me to get home from the park? About five minutes? “It would have been around nine twenty-five.”

  She asked, “And when did you hear that first scream?”

  I thought of everything I’d done after I’d let the dogs and kittens out around nine thirty. “I didn’t check the time. Do you know when I phoned 911?”

  Neffting stated definitively, “Nine fifty-eight.”

  “I’m guessing I heard that first scream around nine forty-five.”

  Nodding, Vicki wrote in her notebook.

  Neffting asked, “And the last scream?”

  “About five minutes later.”

  He took a step closer to me. “And you didn’t call emergency for at least eight more minutes?”

  I resisted the urge to back away from him. “It took me a couple of minutes to get from the trail to where the scream had come from, and then a few more minutes to assess the situation. Even then I thought, hoped, that I might be phoning in a false alarm.”

  Seeming to accept that, Neffting paged back in his notebook. “Earlier, you said you saw someone slinking along the trail near your yard. Can you give me a description?”

  “I thought it was a man, but I couldn’t be certain in the dark and the fog. He or she wore dark clothes, slacks, and a jacket, it looked like. The person could have been Floyd, a guy who’s wandering around this evening wearing zombie makeup and a 1930s black suit—”

  Neffting nodded. “Aha. Yes. The zombie retreat.”

  I told them about the night before, and Isis saying that a zombie had frightened her with his accusations about her spells. “Her description matched Floyd, the first person to join me at the boat ramp after the skirt went into the water. And earlier this evening in the fire station, Isis mentioned that Floyd had accosted her the night before, and he didn’t deny it. She warned him, and everyone else in the fire station, that her spells were potent. No one besides Floyd seemed to take her threats very seriously.”

  Vicki had been watching me closely. “Could the person you saw sneaking along the trail have been anyone besides this Floyd character, Willow?”

  I glanced uneasily toward Clay. His cousin had been in the vicinity and was distinctly unpleasant, but he was Clay’s cousin, and I hated to cast suspicion on the man.

  13

  “Willow?” Vicki prodded. She knew me too well. She probably guessed I didn’t want to cast suspicion on a certain person, and may have read my glance toward Clay correctly—or worse, incorrectly. Clay was wearing jeans and a blue shirt, no jacket, but what if Vicki or Detective Neffting thought I suspected Clay of pushing Isis into the river?

  I muttered, “It could have been Clay’s cousin. Actually, I think he’s his second cousin—Dare Drayton.”

  “Not Dare Drayton, the author.” Neffting clearly didn’t believe me. “A guy who wrote a ton of bestselling thrillers wouldn’t be anywhere near here, much less pushing people into rivers.”

  What an annoying man. What an annoying detective. I answered quickly, “Clay’s cousin said he was the author. He’s in town doing research for his next book.”

  Neffting became animated. “You’ve got to be kidding! I have all of his books. I’ll have to get him to autograph them. He would never risk his career by getting involved in something like this.”

  Just what we needed, a detective who refused to be objective. I didn’t want Dare to be a murderer, because he was related to Clay, and Clay and his family could be affected, but Detective Neffting was dismissing a possible suspect without first weighing all the evidence.

  Vicki did not look impressed, not favorably, anyway, but she did untighten her lips enough to ask me, “Did you see or hear anything else, Willow?”

  I scrunched up my face, trying to put all the events in order. “Floyd the zombie showed up a few minutes after I heard that person running south on Lake Street. Floyd came from the north, from near the beach, but he could have circled from the bandstand and then behind the shops on the other side of Lake Street, if he’d sprinted the whole distance.”

  Vicki didn’t look up from her notebook. “Didn’t you say you saw wet footprints on the concrete boat ramp?”

  “Partial footprints led from the river up the ramp and toward the grass. They’ve probably dried by now.”

  Vicki corroborated, “They were nearly gone when I looked for them.”

  If Neffting leaned farther toward me on that slope, he’d topple over. He asked me, “What size shoes, approximately?”

  “They weren’t entire footprints. I’m guessing they were from the toes of someone’s shoes.”

  “Not heels?” he asked.

  “I figured that someone pushing someone else into the river would be more likely to get his toes than his heels wet.”

  Neffting pointed his pen at Vicki. “Let’s go take a look.” The pen swung around to aim at Haylee and me. “You two stay here.”

  He and Vicki strode to the boat ramp and shined their lights on it. Vicki’s camera flashed several times.

  They returned to us. “No footprints now,” he said. “A few bits of glass—”

  “Thin, like from broken lightbulbs?” I asked.

  Behind Neffting, Vicki nodded decisively.

  Neffting only hedged. “Could be.” He looked at Vicki. “Let’s go see that bandstand.”

  He lifted the yellow tape and marched uphill outside the crime scene.
His long legs moved jerkily, reminding me of Floyd.

  I had recognized Floyd by his zombie gait, and Floyd had criticized Lenny for not staying in character. However, if Floyd had wanted to commit a crime, he could have disguised himself by moving normally. He could have slunk toward his victim before the crime and then run away afterward.

  Vicki hurried to catch up with Neffting. They hadn’t told Haylee and me to stay behind, so we followed.

  Edna and Mrs. Battersby must have become tired of watching, or they’d been unable to see through the fog. Or maybe they’d gotten cold. I hadn’t dressed for the damp chill of midnight in early October, and had to fight involuntary tremors.

  Without going inside the crime scene tape, Haylee and I joined Vicki and Detective Neffting on the uphill side of the bandstand. I aimed my light at the quilted white satin label on the bandstand’s plank floor. We could easily read the embroidered words: Edna’s Wedding Skirt. I explained, “A ribbon was strung through the loops on that label and tied in a bow around the top of the skirt.”

  The two police officers only looked at each other. What did that mean?

  I moved my light to the handful of willow wands. “Those sticks are all about the same length and look like someone placed them here very carefully. They weren’t here when we installed the big overskirt. As I left afterward, I saw Isis down by the river. I thought she was pruning a willow tree.”

  Neffting frowned as if perplexed.

  Vicki photographed the sticks and the label. After her camera flashed, the bandstand seemed darker than ever, except for the spool of glow-in-the-dark thread.

  “What’s that weird, bright spool thing?” Neffting asked.

  “Glow-in-the-dark thread,” I told him.

  He beamed his flashlight on it, and the thread looked dull white, but when he shut off his light, the spool resembled a convention of fireflies. “Whatever is it for?”

  Haylee explained, “We don’t need a reason for owning different types of thread, but this is great to use on kids’ Halloween costumes to make them more visible in the dark.”

  “Thread,” he repeated. “How’s a driver going to see a thread, especially if it’s a dark and stormy night?” His eyes gleamed, probably from the thrill of reciting the clichéd first line of mysteries.

  He probably didn’t want to listen to an entire lecture about machine embroidery. I condensed it to, “We can mass it together, like in embroidery, and it shows up.”

  He muttered, “I should have known to stay away from Threadville.”

  Again ignoring what might have been another wisecrack, Vicki asked Haylee and me, “Does either of you sell this kind of thread in your shops?”

  “I do,” I answered, “as of today.” It was past midnight, already Friday. “I mean yesterday. And I’ve sold a lot of it to other people, too.”

  Vicki rubbed her forehead with her wrist. “Who bought it?”

  “Some of my regular customers, plus two zombies, Floyd and Lenny, the lifeguard who went into the river to search for the victim and hung around afterward.” I glanced around the park. Lenny was gone.

  Neffting stared expectantly at Vicki.

  “I got his statement, and then a volunteer fireman drove him back to the Elderberry Bay Lodge so he could change and warm up,” Vicki told Neffting. “At the time, he was carrying a towel, but as far as I could tell, he was wearing only bathing trunks underneath his emergency blanket. What about when he arrived, Willow? Was he wearing dark slacks and a jacket?”

  I shook my head. “Only surfer shorts, flip-flops, and his towel.” And that horrid, frayed rope around his ankle. “He keeps his wallet in a pocket sewn to the inside of the towel.”

  Vicki laughed. “I saw that when I asked for his ID. Nothing like a well-prepared zombie. He’ll be at the lodge all weekend, but I got his home address, also. Did anyone else buy the thread, Willow?”

  “I did, both for the store and for myself. The woman who sells it is staying with me.”

  Vicki looked surprised. I hadn’t seen her in the past couple of weeks except when she drove past in her cruiser, so she didn’t know which of the Threadville shopkeepers were housing guests, or who our guests were.

  Neffting asked, “Was some of that glow-in-the-dark thread on that death contraption?”

  Haylee answered, “Yes.”

  I pointed out the glowing strand snaking from the spool to the edge of the bandstand floor. “I suspect this thread didn’t come off the wedding skirt, though. It’s probably connected to the thread I saw going up the riverside trail past my place, just after the person skulked along the trail.”

  “Skulked,” Neffting repeated. “That’s a good one. Dare Drayton uses words like that.” He shook his head in apparent wonder. “Dare Drayton is visiting this area.”

  Vicki paid no attention to the detective’s google-eyed awe. “Where on the trail did you see the thread?” she asked me.

  “Some of it went upriver from my place, and it came this direction, too. I didn’t pay much attention to it, because of the woman yelling.” Imagining Isis’s last minutes and hoping that she hadn’t suffered long, I couldn’t help rubbing my own throat.

  Neffting nodded toward the end of the trail. “Let’s have a look.”

  Although we avoided the taped crime scene, we saw the strand of pale, glowing thread snaking down the hill nearby.

  When we reached Clay and my dogs, Vicki told him and Haylee, “We’re done with you two for tonight, but we may need to talk to you tomorrow.”

  The other volunteer firefighters had walked back to the fire station, leaving the big red fire truck behind.

  “Race you to drive it back,” Haylee teased Clay.

  She got a head start while Clay gently looped the handles of my dogs’ leashes over my wrist. Even though she was tall and fast, I was sure he could have made it to the top of the hill first if he had really tried. I wished I could go with them instead of hanging out with a police chief and a detective.

  I moved my light around where we’d seen the strand of thread, then snapped the flashlight off. In the sudden darkness, it was easy to pick out the glowing thread draped across the lawn and trembling whenever a breeze snagged a leaf or a blade of grass.

  “Ugh,” Vicki exclaimed. “It’s like it’s pulsating.”

  “Pulsating,” Neffting repeated. “You two must have been around Dare Drayton a lot.”

  “Never met the man.” Vicki continued to stare at the thread. “It looks like a long worm, maybe a slimy one.”

  I laughed. “It’s only thread.”

  She shuddered. “As if zombies weren’t bad enough.”

  I knew her well enough to tell she was exaggerating.

  Apparently, Neffting didn’t. “Zombies aren’t real,” he informed her in a know-it-all way that irritated me. I was cold, tired, and verging on cranky.

  Vicki folded her arms. “If they go around scaring babies and little old ladies, I’ll . . . I’ll make them go back underground.”

  And if they go around murdering people, too, I thought, picturing Floyd and his apparent fear of Isis and her powers.

  Neffting put out a hand to keep us from approaching the thread leading down the riverside trail. “We’ll have to close off this as part of the scene, also.” He stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle.

  I jumped about two feet into the air. Sally and Tally yelped.

  Neffting yelled to a state trooper, “Bring me another roll of that tape!”

  “We can move what I already strung up,” Vicki said. She detached the tape from the nearby willow tree. We all walked uphill a few feet. Vicki retied the tape to a bush above the trail, blocking the entrance to the trail.

  Neffting turned to me. “Can you take us to see the other end of the thread?”

  “I don’t know where it is,” I said, “but it
must be upriver from my place.” I gestured toward the yellow tape. “Since this end of the trail is now part of the crime scene, and I saw the thread south of my place, we’ll have to go up Lake Street and around to the other end of the trail.”

  Vicki nodded.

  “Walking or driving?” Neffting asked.

  “It’s not far,” Vicki said. “And I have a radio.”

  A trooper pelted down the hill with a roll of crime scene tape. Neffting only stared at him as if wondering what he was doing. Vicki held out her hand, took the roll of tape, and thanked the man. He sprinted back toward the people surrounding the stretcher.

  Vicki and I led Neffting up to Lake Street, then south to where the trail came out near the highway bridge.

  Although I shined my light around in an attempt to fire up the thread’s glow, we couldn’t spot any.

  We walked slowly north, shining our lights on both sides of the trail and glancing off into the darkness beyond our flashlight’s beams.

  We didn’t catch sight of the thread until we were behind my fence.

  The thread came from the direction of the park and ended underneath my gate in a glow-in-the-dark tangle.

  14

  I burst out, “Someone moved that thread into my yard!”

  Detective Neffting and Chief Smallwood only looked at me as if the glow-in-the-dark thread might be sprouting from my head.

  I pointed to the section of the trail south of us, where we’d been searching for the thread. “When I left with my dogs around nine this evening, the thread was coming from upriver.”

  My dogs strained toward the closed gate. They probably knew who had wadded up the thread and pushed it underneath my gate. Wishing they could tell us, I held them back.

  Vicki tied a piece of crime scene tape from my fence to a silver maple on the riverbank, blocking off the trail behind the downriver half of my property. The crime scene already covered most of the riverside park. Now it encompassed the trail from the park all the way past my gate.