by Janet Bolin
Neffting stared down at the heaped-up thread. “You won’t be able to use your backyard tonight. We’ll have a look by daylight, and will probably be able to clear it for your use again quickly.”
I thanked him absentmindedly. When I shined my light on the thread, it looked dull and gray, but underneath it, I glimpsed a silvery glint. Without touching anything I wasn’t supposed to, I moved my flashlight back and forth while I bobbed my head up and down. “There’s something else with that thread,” I told the officers. “It looks like the thread nippers I left in the fire station with a spool of glow-in-the-dark thread and a packet of needles.”
“Next thing you know we’ll be looking for needles in haystacks,” Neffting deadpanned.
I was beginning to believe the man did have a sense of humor, but I took my cue from Vicki, who acted like she hadn’t heard him.
She looked up at me. “If those are your thread nippers, could the spool of thread we saw in the bandstand, which may be attached to this mess, be yours, too?”
I nodded. “I wasn’t the only one with a spool of thread like that, but yes, that spool could be the one I left in the fire station with the other things.”
Vicki asked, “Who has access to the fire station besides firefighters?”
I admitted, “Clay and I left the fire station unlocked for about ten minutes this evening while we rolled the wedding skirt down to the bandstand.”
Vicki demanded, “Why? Trying to make extra work for me? What if someone vandalized the fire trucks or disabled them, and they couldn’t get to an emergency? You have garage door openers. And closers. You should learn to use them.” She hadn’t lost her sarcastic touch.
My excuse wasn’t great. “We were eager to get that wedding skirt in place so we could surprise Edna. And we were near the fire station.”
She echoed my thoughts. “Not near enough.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Neffting asked.
He’d met Clay briefly. I explained to him that Naomi and Opal were two of Haylee’s mothers. He had me spell their names.
Vicki must have seen me shiver. She asked me, “Can you get into your apartment through your shop?”
I felt in my pocket for my keys. “Yes.”
Keeping to one side of the trail and examining it by flashlight, we retraced our steps up the trail. Near the bridge, Tally lunged toward what looked like a scrap of paper in tall grass. I pulled him to me.
Vicki and Detective Neffting focused their lights on the thing. It was a tiny envelope with a windowed front. Silver metal gleamed inside the square opening.
As if finding sewing needles beside a hiking trail were a common occurrence, I said, “That’s probably my packet of needles.”
“In tall grass. Almost in a haystack.” Neffting shook his head as if in admiration, but I didn’t think he was admiring Tally and me for sniffing out this piece of evidence, or whatever. “Did you leave it there yourself?” he asked.
“No. Last I knew, it was at the fire station.”
“One package of needles might look like any other,” Neffting cautioned. “Just like one spool of thread and one pair of nippers could look like any other.”
I nodded. “Yes, but it would be quite a coincidence for an identical trio of sewing supplies to show up somewhere besides the fire station tonight. I wonder if that man I saw skulking along the trail dropped all three things.”
I couldn’t blame Vicki and Neffting for looking skeptical.
“Accidentally,” I added. “Maybe he didn’t realize the thread was unwinding?”
Vicki frowned. “How could that happen, Willow? Thread should be too light to unreel from a spool by itself. If you guessed that the spool was caught in the bandstand, which it didn’t seem to be, and that the thread had unwound itself while someone unknowingly carried one end of it all the way from the bandstand to your gate, I could almost believe it.”
Quickly, I came up with a theory. “Maybe the thread had become tangled in my nippers, and the nippers fell out of his pocket and acted like a sort of anchor, and the thread started unwinding.”
“Describe those little nippers,” Neffting ordered. “They were too buried in thread for me to comprehend what they were.”
“They’re forged from one thick strip of steel, shaped in a U with the two legs flattened and sharpened into blades.”
“So your little nippers are what cut the ruffle partially off the death contraption.” He stated it as if it were fact, but he didn’t look at me. Was he trying to put words in my mouth, or fishing for information?
Whichever it was, I took the bait. “Thread nippers don’t offer enough leverage to cut through that many layers of fabric—”
He interrupted me. “Only one.”
I repeated what I’d told him before. “The fabric was gathered, that is, bunched up closely, before it was cut. And even if someone had enough strength to make those nippers cut through all that fabric at once, the blades are short. That frill had been hacked off messily, but not as messily as if it had been done by short blades.”
Vicki asked Neffting, “The lab will be able to tell all that, don’t you think?”
“Could be.” Without looking up from his writing, he asked me, “And how would those little nippers and that mass of thread have ended up in your yard?”
I stared out over the river, flowing past in the dark like black silk. “What if the man was oblivious to the thread unspooling, like it was in the pocket of that loose jacket, as he walked—”
“Skulked,” Neffting corrected me in a murmur.
I went on, “—and the thread unwound all the way to the bandstand, and when he got there, Isis fought with him, causing the spool to come out of his pocket. Maybe he realized then that he might have left a trail of thread leading to him in the bandstand, but he was too busy pushing Isis toward the river to pick up the spool and go back for all of the thread.”
“You’re coming up with some wild and tangled explanations,” Neffting complained. “So why didn’t your bad guy simply pick up the spool of thread in the bandstand after he pushed the woman into the river, and then come here from there, grabbing his errant thread as he went?” He waved his hand to take in the entire area between the lake, the river, the bridge, and Lake Street. “Why did he go out of his way, all around the block, to get to the other end of the thread?”
I guessed, “By then, I was shouting, and in his way on the riverside trail. He wouldn’t have dared retrace his steps for fear I would see him.”
Neffting persisted. “So even if he did come from the other end of the trail, why didn’t he keep going past your gate, picking up his thread all the way back to the bandstand? Why did the thread end up underneath your gate?”
“Maybe he was afraid I was still on the trail or coming back? Or he didn’t dare go to the park for fear of being seen and connected with his crime? So he shoved the thread he’d collected underneath my gate, turned around, and fled back toward the bridge.”
Neffting shook his head. “Whoa, there. You’re stringing things together that maybe don’t belong in the same thread.”
Well, he had asked. I gave him a weak smile, but he stared at me coldly. “He didn’t have to leave the thread and nippers in your yard. He could have used those little nippers to cut the thread. Then he could have gone off, taking the wadded-up thread and nippers with him. You said you and the dogs got tangled in leashes on the way to the park. Are you sure you weren’t tangled in thread?”
“Yes.”
Not quite looking at me, Neffting continued his interrogation. “And you’re sure it was a man you saw on the trail?”
“No, but I thought it was. Or a tall woman.”
“Hard to tell when they’re skulking.”
I had a feeling I was going to hear that word from him many more times before this case was solved, if it ever was. Vicki sn
apped pictures of the needle packet and its surroundings. Her lens zoomed in and out. She was taking close-ups of the packet as well as photos showing the entire scene.
Sniffing, Tally-Ho pulled me toward a spot near the needle packet. He whimpered. Both dogs edged their noses toward the ground. I shined my flashlight, but the dogs were in my way. Vicki took their leashes and pulled them back.
I bent closer to what they’d been trying to investigate.
Two small slashes in the ground were about the same distance apart as the blades on my thread nippers.
15
Vicki was still holding my dogs. I asked Neffting to have a look at the two small holes in the earth.
First, he had trouble seeing them, and when he did, he made a sound between a laugh and a grunt. “Chief Smallwood thought she saw worms, so maybe you’ve found the front and back doors of an earthworm’s den.”
Was he serious?
Afraid he’d step on the holes and accidentally fill them, I stood in his way. “The gashes appear to have been made by something sharp and flat, like blades.”
Staying between him and the two tiny holes in the ground, I took my dogs’ leashes and let Vicki inspect the holes.
She moved her flashlight across them at several angles. Muttering that the photos might not turn out, she aimed her camera at them.
I pointed out that the holes were about eighteen inches from the packet of needles. “If someone crouched down to push the nippers into the soil, the package of needles could have fallen from his pocket.”
Neffting asked, “Why would someone stab your little nippers into the ground?”
I was tempted to suggest that they were attacking earthworms. “We were wondering how the loose end of thread would get so stuck that the thread could come unwound as someone walked. What if they meant to make a trail of thread? What if they tied one end to the curve between the blades and stuck the nippers down into the dirt like a big staple? As long as they didn’t tug on the thread, the nippers would stay in place, and they could make the sort of trail of thread we found.”
“But why would anyone do such a thing?” Neffting asked.
I admitted that I didn’t have a clue. “Your investigators could measure the thread that’s under my gate, and see if it’s long enough that the end could have been here. And while they’re at it, they could see if the thread was tied to the nippers or only tangled around them.”
By flashlight, Vicki’s grin was mischievous. “Are you feeling okay, Willow?”
I smiled back. “Probably. I guess that the person who carefully laid a trail of thread can’t be the person who pushed Isis into the river, though, because who would leave such an obvious trail to a crime?” I answered my own question. “Someone who didn’t plan the crime, but committed it on impulse. And then came back later to pick up the telltale thread.”
Vicki scowled. “At this point, we won’t rule anything out. But remind me, Willow, who investigates homicides?”
“Possible homicides,” Neffting corrected her.
She ignored him. “Who, Willow? Police or civilians?”
“Police,” I answered quickly. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep out of it. I’m only trying to figure out what could have happened with a bunch of sewing things and how they might tie into the . . . possible homicide.”
The way Neffting seemed to scrutinize me without looking at my eyes made me fidgety. Fortunately, holding the leashes of two curious dogs gave me the perfect excuse for not standing still.
Finally, Neffting shifted his attention from the side of my head. He radioed a request for a state trooper to come guard the end of the trail where we were.
The dogs and I went a few steps away while Neffting and Vicki put the packet of needles into an evidence envelope, left an orange marker where the needles had been, and covered the two gashes with another marker. Then they started unrolling yellow tape. When they were done stringing it between trees, the taped-off crime scene extended along the entire riverside trail from where we were near the bridge and included most of the park at the mouth of the river.
Neffting asked me, “Can you get us into the fire station to see if your thread, nippers, and needles might be there, and not scattered about the countryside?”
The man’s flare for drama and exaggeration might be a good trait in a detective. Or not.
“Sure.” Sally and Tally wouldn’t mind a longer walk.
Vicki reached for Sally-Forth’s leash. The dogs helped pull us up to Lake Street.
A state police cruiser pulled up beside the curb. A male trooper got out.
“Don’t go into the fire station without me,” Neffting ordered.
Vicki, the dogs, and I waited while he talked to the trooper, pointed him toward the crime scene down the hill near the bridge, and gave him what was left of the roll of tape.
After Neffting rejoined us, the three of us could almost have resembled friends walking two dogs, except that our slow pace was not really a companionable stroll. I wasn’t sure about the two officers, but I was still in evidence-searching mode, and Sally and Tally persisted in following possible clues.
“I wish I had a nose like a dog,” Vicki said.
I laughed. “Yours suits you better.”
Neffting ignored us.
In front of In Stitches, Vicki stopped and cocked her head. “Is that noise coming from your place, Willow?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“That’s not like you.” Her statement implied a question.
“It’s my guest, Brianna.”
Neffting eyed In Stitches, but didn’t say anything and continued walking down the street. Vicki, the dogs, and I caught up.
Several state police vehicles were now at the park, along with ominous-looking windowless vans. A noisy, smelly diesel generator supplied electricity to portable lights that haloed everything in mist. Investigators in white hooded coveralls swarmed lawns.
Maybe if the zombies caught sight of all this, they’d come back next fall, bring similar white coveralls, and stage an aliens-from-outer-space retreat.
We turned the corner. The fire station’s big garage doors were pulled down to the pavement. Clay and Haylee had locked them and the people-sized door. I pressed buttons on a keypad, opened the door, and switched on the lights. Tally-Ho and I led Vicki, Sally-Forth, and Detective Neffting through the garage, past the fire trucks, into the back room, and to the ledge where I’d last seen my thread nippers, spool of glow-in-the-dark thread, and pack of needles.
None of them were there.
We searched, including shining flashlights underneath fire trucks. The dogs seemed to think this was a wonderful game.
“And you’re not the one who moved them?” Neffting asked me.
“I left them here,” I repeated. “After we showed Edna her skirt in the bandstand, I went home for the dogs. I planned to come back here, pick up my things, and lock up again, but I got distracted.”
Neffting asked me, “Who else may have seen the things you say you left on that ledge?”
“Everyone who was in the fire station at the time could have seen them. Opal, Naomi, and a woman who calls herself ‘Madame Juliette’ used them when they sewed some of the thread to the skirt. Brianna, the thread distributor who is staying with me, was here, too, and so was a woman named Patricia who says she’s a sewing machine historian. The other people here besides Isis were Clay Fraser, Dare Drayton, and the zombie calling himself Floyd.”
“Anyone else?” Neffting prompted.
I couldn’t think of anyone else.
“You,” he said. “You were here.”
“Of course.” Or I wouldn’t have been able to tell you about the others. What an odd detective.
He underlined something in his notebook, snapped it closed, and led the way out.
Still wondering why he’d ma
de such a pointless point about my not stating the obvious, I checked the door. It had locked itself behind us.
Striding ahead of us and my investigating dogs toward the park, Neffting asked me over one shoulder, “Does anyone lock the fire station when the trucks are out on a call, like a fire or other emergency?”
Vicki gave me a sour look. “They do when they remember to use their door closers. One garage door was standing open when I arrived on the scene tonight.”
I excused my fellow volunteer firefighters. “We often leave it open so that late-coming volunteers can run in and read the chalkboard for the location of the emergency. It speeds up our response to the emergency, but I’ll mention the subject at our next firefighters’ meeting.”
“You’d better,” Vicki said.
Neffting let us catch up. “So,” he concluded, “the fire station could have been left unlocked and unoccupied twice this evening. First, when you took that death contraption to the park, and second, during the water rescue call. Your sewing things could have disappeared either time.”
“The nippers and needles, yes,” I agreed. “But if the thread strung along the trail was from the spool I left here, it was taken during the first time the fire station was left unlocked.”
“How can you be certain?” he prodded.
Hadn’t I explained all of this? Was he trying to trip me up on minor details? “I saw the thread on the trail before I heard the screams, before I called for emergency help.” Picturing Isis trapped and being wheeled down the ramp toward the river, I scolded myself for not using the woman’s name. “Before I heard Isis’s screams.”
He returned to a different question. “Are you sure it was Isis who screamed and not someone else?”
I repeated that I hadn’t been able to figure out whose voice I’d heard. “But it was a woman. She yelled, ‘Don’t push me!’ And Isis was the one stuck in the wheeled—” I fumbled for a word other than “contraption.”
Neffting had no such qualms. He supplied, “Death contraption.” He licked his lips as if savoring the phrase he’d coined for our once-lovely work of art.