by Lea Wait
“I warned her about dangerous plants. I didn’t tell her how to kill people with them!” He looked around the room. “Especially not water hemlock! She’d told me her family’s camp was on a lake, and there was swampy land nearby. I figured it was the right environment for water hemlock. I remember telling her it looked like Queen Anne’s lace, but she should be careful not to pick it. Or dig it up, for that matter. The roots are its most poisonous part.”
“And she found it. Maybe she did her own research, after you’d warned her. She made a solution from the sap in the roots. She filled one of the old pill bottles she’d cleaned out of her parents’ house, and she waited for a good time. A time she could poison her husband.”
“She was carrying a bottle of poison around with her?” Sarah asked incredulously.
I nodded. “She didn’t want Caleb to find it until she was ready. So she hid it in her purse. And when you were all meeting with Lattimore, she decided to test it. See if it would make him sick. So when you were all focused on what Lattimore had done, and what you were going to do next, Lauren poured a little of the solution into his teacup.” I sat back. “You all know what happened then.”
Dave kept shaking his head. “I never, never thought she’d kill anyone. Never.”
“I believe you,” said Ruth, patting Dave’s hand. “Life works out in strange ways, doesn’t it?”
“In any case, that’s what happened. Caleb’s dead and Lauren’s in jail, but Mainely Needlepoint will go on. Between Gram and me we’ve computerized all the files. Next I’m going to contact all of our former customers to ask them what we can do for them. Those of you who still have jobs outstanding, make sure you finish them up, because I’m hoping to have new work for us soon.”
Smiles around the room.
“I’m also going to design a brochure advertising our services that we can leave with designers and decorators and gift shops, and hand out with our products. On it we’re going to include two new services. There are going to be lessons in needlepoint, which Gram has agreed to schedule, and identification, conservation, and preservation of old textiles, especially embroideries of various sorts. Sarah’s going to head up that effort. But we’ll all have the opportunity to help out with the classes, if they become as popular as I hope, and to learn about the needlework our ancestors did, here in Maine and, I hope, in other places.” I looked around the room. “Thank you all for trusting me. For giving me a purpose. And a reason for staying in Haven Harbor.” I paused. “Any questions?”
“Only one,” said Sarah. “Why don’t you offer us some tea?”
Later that afternoon, after everyone had left, I found a package on our porch wrapped in pink floral gift paper. An envelope with my name on it was attached.
“Do you know what this is, Gram?” I asked as I brought it into the living room, where we’d been sitting, enjoying a little wine. We had a lot to think about and talk over: what had happened during the last week, the future of the business, Gram’s wedding.
“I have no idea,” she answered. “What does the note say?”
I opened the envelope. Inside was a piece of creamy thick stationery:
Dear Angie, This, I think, was meant to be for you. Unlike the twig, you struggled with your past, and grew straight and tall. I’m proud to know you, and look forward to working with you. I’ve done the best I can with this, but, together, I hope we’ll be able to discover and conserve many other pieces of the past.
Your fellow Needlepointer,
Sarah Byrnes
Inside the package was the small piece of needlework Sarah had shown Gram and me a week ago, cleaned and lined and framed.
I read the verse again: Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined. Perhaps. But now I knew Mama hadn’t left me. She’d tried to save me. And a twig could also grow toward the sun.
Acknowledgments With thanks to everyone who contributed, knowingly or unknowingly, to the writing of Twisted Threads: John Talbot and John Scognamiglio and Barbara Ross, who suggested I write a book centered on needlepoint. Robin Cook and Stephanie Finnegan, for their close reading and copyedits and keeping all the details of Haven Harbor life straight.
Mary Anne Tomlinson Sullivan, who suggested the poison my killer used. The real Sarah Byrne, a charming young woman who still lives in Australia, and who won a Bouchercon auction to name a character in Haven Harbor. Elayne Star, Kennebunk, Maine, antique dealer extraordinaire, who shared her collection of Ouija boards with me. Kathy Lynn and Sandy Emerson for their knowledge of the world of crime fighting in Maine.
My fellow bloggers at www.MaineCrimeWriters.com, past and present, for their advice, support and enthusiasm: Kate Flora, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Barbara Ross, Dorothy Cannell, John Clark, Paul Doiron, Gerry Boyle, Vicki Doudura, Sarah Graves, James Hayman, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Susan Vaughan, Al Lamonda, and Jayne Hitchcock.
Pamela Parmal and Meredith Montague of the Boston Museum of Fine Art’s Textile and Fashion Arts division, who spent time with me explaining conservation concerns related to antique needlepoint. Janet Palen, owner of Stitcher’s Corner in Wiscasset, Maine, who introduced me to needlepoint. And Barbara Hepburn, president of the Maine Chapter of the Embroiderers Guild of America, for correcting my errors.
Any remaining mistakes, in any area, are solely my responsibility.
And, as always, to my husband, Bob Thomas, for listening, loving, and giving me time and space to live in my fictional worlds.
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Lea Wait’s next Mainely Needlepoint Mystery
THREADS OF EVIDENCE
coming in September 2015!
Chapter One
Evil enters like a needle, and spreads like an oak tree.
—Ethiopian proverb
One black Town Car, one blue Subaru, and a red pickup were parked in the driveway of the old Gardener estate. The massive Victorian had been empty ever since Mrs. Gardener, who’d lived there alone after her daughter’s death, had herself died.
I didn’t remember ever having seen anyone there. I remembered hearing stories about the ghosts who lived there. My friend Hannah, who was Catholic, had crossed herself every time we passed by. I remembered kids challenging each other to trick-or-treat there on Halloween, to see who—or what—would open the front door.
Even when Mrs. Gardner was still alive, I’d never heard of any boy or girl brave enough to walk through the wide gates that guarded the entrance to the drive, past the large cracked concrete circle, which had once been a fountain, to approach the actual door of the house.
When I’d asked Mama about the house, she’d just shaken her head and said that some places drew evil to them. That someone should tear the old place down.
But no one had. And I’d never seen a FOR SALE sign there. The house seemed fated to someday collapse in on itself, keeping its secrets within its peeling and faded walls.
A couple of times in my teens, I’ll admit I’d made use of a broken window in the estate’s carriage house, which had its own entrance farther down the road. For a few months that window was an open invitation to the caretaker’s apartment, which, while drafty and damp, was equipped with a bed. No caretaker had lived there for a while, and mice and bats had made it their own.
After someone replaced that pane no one was brave enough to break another window.
But today several people were walking through the uncut field that had once been a manicured lawn. They were looking at the house, pointing at it, and ignoring the blackflies and ticks that lurked in tall grasses on an early June day in Maine.
I turned my small red Honda into the Winslows’ driveway across the street and parked by their barn. I was pretty pleased about my new (to me) car. It let me set my own schedule. During the first weeks I’d been back in Haven Harbor, living with Gram, I’d borrowed her car. But having my own wheels was really a necessity. I had to pay calls on the shops and decorators and private customers who’d commissioned work from Mainely Needle
point, the business I’d taken over from Gram. And I couldn’t leave Gram without a car; she had her own life to live, her own future to plan.
Becoming the director of Mainely Needlepoint had been a challenge, but the business was now well on its way to paying its debts. I even had hopes we’d be making a profit before the summer was out. Turned out the expertise I’d gathered working as the assistant to a private investigator in Arizona was standing me in good stead in Maine. So far, I’d had no trouble locating the business’s customers, despite having inherited a motley and incomplete set of books from both Gram and my predecessor, the agent who’d driven the business into financial trouble.
Life was going on. That agent was gone, the swallows had returned from their winter down south and were refurbishing their clay nests under the roof in our barn; Gram was busy planning her wedding to Reverend Tom.
A few folks around town had whispered that Tom could have found someone “better suited” as his life mate, but he and Gram were ignoring the gossip. If they didn’t care that he was thirteen years younger than she was, why should anyone else?
They’d gone ahead and set the last Saturday in June as their wedding date . . . only three weeks off. Reverend Tom had found a retired minister, who summered nearby, to fill in for him during the two weeks he and Gram were planning for their (location still unknown, at least to me) honeymoon. Gram and I had spent a day at the Maine Mall in South Portland and found her a pale blue silk dress and jacket to wear for the ceremony; and, although I hadn’t found anything suitable to wear for my role as maid of honor, I wasn’t panicked. After all, I still had three weeks to shop.
I picked up the package I was delivering to Captain Ob and his wife, Anna, glancing over one more time at the Gardener estate. Whatever was happening there, I figured I’d hear about it soon enough.
When changes are made in a small Maine town like Haven Harbor, word gets around fast.
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2015 by Lea Wait
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ISBN: 978-1-6177-3004-7
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: February 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-005-4
eISBN-10: 1-61773-005-X
First Kensington Electronic Edition: February 2015