Hanging by a Thread

by Margaret Evans

  “They’re on their way,” she told the group, wondering why making a simple phone call was such a difficult decision for any of these folks to make. It was also probably why they’d assigned so many of the tasks to her, Jenna and Erica because they couldn’t figure out what to do next. She wondered how they made progress on their tasks at their respective jobs or if they were just as inept and indecisive as they were on this committee.

  The fire truck arrived shortly with a police cruiser behind it, and Laura saw Officer Sam Larsen behind the wheel. She had known there would be a cop with the fire truck; it was standard procedure, her father had always told her, especially when they didn’t know what they were going to find inside a building.

  Jenna pulled into the lot with Kelly just as Jade handed over the keys to one of the firemen. She parked next to Laura.

  “What’s going on?” Jenna asked, lowering her window.

  “There’s a bad smell coming from the warehouse,” Erica answered. “Like a big rotten piece of meat. Miles thought it could be a dead bear.”

  “Yikes!” Kelly spoke up, opening her passenger door. “Weren’t we all here checking things out a few days ago? Everything was okay then. All the floats were here, at least we could see them through the window, and—oh, I think I can smell it!” She ducked back into the car and shut the door, putting her hands over her nose.

  They all watched as the fireman with the keys took a flashlight and shone it through the broken window. He turned and motioned for Officer Larsen to join him. The pair went into the warehouse and were back outside in short order. Sammy returned to his car, put in a call on the radio.

  Then Sammy gathered everyone in the crowd and asked what they were all doing there and why they wanted to get into the warehouse. Jade Olson Wilkin explained it all, as if she were in charge of the committee.

  Larsen asked them all to step back behind their cars to make room for other police vehicles that were about to arrive, which they did in a few minutes. Soon bright-blinking SUVs, one a canine corps vehicle, and an ambulance pulled into the lot.

  Laura’s skin began to crawl. She put a hand to her throat.

  Her three friends looked to her for the answer to all this; her father had been a cop. Laura always knew what everything meant.

  “Somebody’s dead in there,” she said.

  •••

  The SPDP&G committee members were getting restless.

  Soon the area was filled with sirens, cops, blinking lights everywhere, and yet the committee folks were all looking at their phones, checking watches, and asking questions of each other that no one could answer. They wanted to leave, but the police wouldn’t let them. They complained they had places to go and things to do, but their complaints were ignored.

  Laura and her friends were the only ones who weren’t checking phones or begging to leave. Kelly had rejoined them outside the car, and the four women just stood there, following Laura’s lead, waiting to find out what had happened and what the police would need from them.

  The dog was led into the building, and soon there was loud and excited barking. More time passed, and the canine officer led the dog back to his SUV, patting and praising him on the way. Then the dog received his reward inside the SUV, doors were closed, and the unit left.

  Then the white-suited forensics team took over, bringing in a gurney and their kits of various examination and collection tools. More time passed, and the committee grew even more impatient.

  Everyone was interviewed and told to put their phones away some thirty minutes later when the body was brought out on a gurney, draped over, and loaded in the ambulance which left shortly thereafter. The forensics team had released the body but were still working inside the building when the police chief’s car pulled up.

  Laura had never met Chief Arthur Mallory, but she had seen his picture in the station and recognized that this was the man exiting his car. She turned back toward the scene but kept him in her peripheral vision and noticed he had looked around at the crowd and settled on her group of friends. He stared at them a moment then strode off toward the warehouse door. Once inside, he turned back once more toward the four women then shut the door.

  “Did you see that?” Kelly asked.

  “Yes, I did,” Erica said.

  “Do you know Chief Mallory, Laura?” Jenna asked.

  “Nope. Never met the man. Saw his picture on the station wall.”

  “Why was he so interested in us?”

  “Maybe he knows you and Connor are dating?”

  “Maybe he knew your dad back in the day?”

  Laura shook her head and shrugged, mystified at his interest, but glad she had not totally imagined it.

  When Charlie Kovacs and his news crew pulled into the lot, Laura tried to shrink behind Erica who had a couple of inches on her. She did not want to find her picture in his newspaper or on the Raging Ford Bulletin’s website. Too many people were thinking she was working with the police on cold murder cases on a regular basis, and she didn’t need the publicity that a cold case grown hot could bring. She wanted to run her thrift shop and her tax return business and date Connor Fitzpatrick. Solving her parents’ double murders came after that. Getting involved in other cold murder cases was at the very bottom of any list she would ever think of writing. At this point, she didn’t think Mallory would approve of her being a consultant, so no worry on that.

  Charlie found her anyway.

  “Turn off the camera and microphone or I’m not talking to you.”

  He did so.

  “I don’t know anything about this. I’m on the SPDP&G committee, and we were just meeting here to look at the parade floats, but…”

  “But what?”

  “There was a smell—”

  “A really bad smell,” Erica interjected.

  “I called the fire department and that’s all I know.”

  Charlie stared at her.

  “Is it possible I know more than you do for a change? The body they found in the warehouse is Jessica Wright from the bank, and she has been here for several days. Probably murdered. She was hidden inside one of the parade floats rolled up in a rug. Is she connected in any way with your committee?”

  The four women shook their heads in unison. None of them had ever met or known Wright other than to hear she’d gone missing. But they were all shocked to hear that Wright was dead and likely murdered, and not only that, but her body had been hidden inside a parade float! How crazy was that?!

  After Kovacs left to interview others and get statements from the police, Laura gathered her three friends in a huddle.

  “Yes, I know. It’s a dreadful thing to happen, and right here in our town, but I strongly urge all of you to not discuss this with anyone.”

  “Why not, Laura? It’s exciting.”

  “We don’t know what happened or what’s going on. The police are going to ask everyone a lot of questions, and the less we put out to the world as guesses, I think the easier their task will be, and the sooner it will all be cleared up. Then we’ll have our answers.”

  “Spoken like the daughter of a cop,” Jenna said.

  “Or the girl friend of one,” Kelly added, winking.

  “Okay, we’ll be good. But we can talk about this among ourselves, right?” Erica asked hopefully.

  twenty-eight

  Back at Second Treasures—finally—Laura was pouring coffee for Jenna, Kelly, and Erica. Nearly two hours had passed before police interviews were completed and the SPDP&G committee members were allowed to leave. By that time, Charlie Kovacs and his news crew weren’t the only press on the scene. It took another thirty minutes for the unhappy team to weave their cars through the growing crowd.

  Even with yellow police tape roping off most of the warehouse parking lot and completely surrounding the warehouse, curious townsfolk surrounded the area on
foot. Cars pulled over and blocked throughways and intersections. Police were called in from Eagle Junction to help control the crowd and clear the roads.

  “Laura, why did Connor interview you last?”

  “Connor always interviews me last.”

  “How come?” Kelly asked.

  Laura shrugged.

  “Maybe he puts more value on getting everyone else’s memories. I don’t know.”

  She knew he trusted her version of everything best, so he deliberately asked the others first what they saw, heard, experienced, and remembered. That way her clear, concise and logical remembrance could not color theirs. It was not necessary to share that with her friends.

  “Boy, was that a shocker!” Erica continued, shoving one of Laura’s fresh batch of brownies in her mouth. “Dead body in one of the St. Patrick’s Day floats. Sure is a lot of excitement with you around, Laura. Man, are these brownies good. You put those butterscotch or caramel niblets in them, didn’t you?”

  Laura stood in the doorway between the back room next to the kitchenette and the shop, keeping an eye out for any customers, whether it was likely or not to happen in the wake of a murder discovered right smack in town. Saturday was usually very busy.

  She turned to her trio of friends.

  “Look. I don’t bank there. I don’t know the missing guy, I have never met Jessica Wright, and I’m terribly sorry she’s dead but I wouldn’t have known her on the street, plus I just opened a shop here a few months ago. I haven’t even seen everyone I used to know since I came back…yet.” For once, she was grateful for Harry’s Rules.

  “Well, Dotson’s coat showed up in your shop, didn’t it? Somebody put it in a box or something?” Kelly asked.

  “Does everybody know that?” Laura asked in frustration.

  The trio nodded in unison.

  Laura sighed.

  “I have no control over anybody leaving things here. People do it all the time. Somebody left an old, broken washing machine once, all rusted and gross. I had to pay the trash company to take it away. I never know who drops off the stuff. They do it in the dead of night while I’m sleeping. So explain how I could possibly be implicated in a situation where I had not even met the people involved.”

  Of course, no one could explain it, but that didn’t stop the speculation. The center just shifted away from Laura.

  “I wonder which float it was,” Kelly said.

  “Whichever one it was, I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole!” Erica rejoined.

  “I don’t think that will be a problem, Erica,” Jenna posed. “The police forensics unit will be all over it for a while. I’m pretty sure it won’t be in the parade.”

  Everyone’s phones beeped a text message, almost simultaneously.

  “The committee wants to meet tonight about today,” Kelly said.

  “Where and when?” Laura asked. She had tax returns to do. “Will they notice if I’m not there tonight?”

  “Rina will have a cow,” Erica said. “Why can’t you come?”

  “I have tax returns to work on.”

  “You don’t have to go, Laura,” Jenna said. “Everybody will understand.”

  “Everybody except Rina,” Erica snorted.

  But Laura was drawn to a scene on top of the cash register on her shop counter.

  Empress Isabella was staring her down, head lowered, and tail straight up.

  “Okay, I think I’ll go,” she told the group.

  •••

  The local police were swarming through Jessica Wright’s apartment. They noticed was that everything in the apartment was frugal; nothing was expensive, nor did anything look as if there had been an influx of money at any time.

  Furniture was well cared for but old and relatively cheap. Jessica had been a good housekeeper, apparently, as the layer of dust on the furnishings was very little, certainly no more than a week’s worth. A few cushions had been tossed about, a chair tipped, but the rest was clearly well kept. It almost looked deliberate.

  Her personal ornaments were few, including a ballerina music box that looked to be from her childhood, as well as a couple of figurines and vases with silk flowers. Matching lamps with dusted lampshades flanked her small couch which was positioned in front of an older television. Her drawers held neatly folded clothes and smelled of lavender.

  When Corporal Mauricio Sanchez reached her closet, he smelled the lavender again, and started a cursory search through each of the hanging garments, moving one at a time from right to left as he proceeded through the closet from left to right. She had them shaded as from a rainbow beginning with infrared and ending with ultra violet. When he got to the end, he found something hanging that had been shoved way into the corner and definitely out of color sequence.

  He took it out and hung it on the closet door. When he found nothing further of interest in the closet, either on the floor or the shelving, he pulled out his phone and called his sergeant. As he was talking with Connor Fitzpatrick about what he had found in the closet, Officer Sam Larsen approached, looked at the garment, smelled it.

  “Hey,” he said, “this gold dress doesn’t smell like lavender. She doused everything here in lavender, but this dress couldn’t have been here more than a few days or it would have picked up the smell. Everything else here reeks of it.”

  The officers looked at the dress together and advised their boss of the lack of odor on it. Fitzpatrick told them to handle it very carefully and bag it. They noticed something else.

  The beautiful, super-expensive, golden-threaded garment had had the hem and a seam pulled loose and threads made of pure gold were coming undone. They knew they were looking at a dress that probably cost twice both of their salaries combined, and it had been snipped up for some reason. Nothing this well made would have come apart on its own.

  Who would have done such a thing to a work of art like this?

  twenty-nine

  The committee met in Miles Gunnarsson’s basement. His wife wouldn’t let him use either her front sitting room or the dining room, so the basement room it was. A decent and comfortable paneled room met them at the bottom of the steps where Miles usually watched the Vikings’ football games with his friends. Cozy leather chairs, a little too masculine for Jade’s taste as everyone could tell from her face, were ringed around a central, round coffee table. Miles had cleared the table before everyone arrived, but he couldn’t get rid of the “drink rings” in the wood surface from a decade of cold beer cans. He had pulled out several more folding chairs.

  It had a wet bar.

  And it was a little dusty.

  Miles laid out ice-cold bottles of water and soda pop on the table.

  “Okay, Rina,” he directed. “Read us the list of what I called you about a little while ago.” He immediately picked up his phone to check for messages but glanced at Rina when she didn’t immediately speak.

  “Rina?”

  She was red in the face, couldn’t sit on the dusty chairs, nor did she seem capable of not straightening the furniture to exact right angles. Her hands were on everyone’s chairs and everyone’s shoulders, pushing them around until everything in the sitting area of the room was orderly. Then she stared at the table with drinks…and all the cold drink rings. She sat in a relatively dust-free chair with her hands on her lap and said nothing.

  “Rina?” Miles prompted again.

  Rina just shook her head.

  Aaron Nilsson grew tired of the show.

  “We’re here to talk about the unfortunate incident today, that, tragic as it was, is going to cause our committee a problem. We’re short one float for the parade. Any suggestions?”

  Laura and her three friends were grouped together in a corner of the room. She couldn’t understand how Rina could function in the world, let alone why she didn’t get help for her problems and why everybody
worked around her.

  “Which float was it?” Jade asked.

  “The Girl Scouts float,” Miles responded.

  “Oh, too bad it wasn’t the Boy Scouts,” Erica said. “They would have enjoyed a float with a murdered dead body in it, after the body was removed, of course.”

  “Erica, even if that had happened, you know the police wouldn’t release it to us in time to clean it up or repaint it for the parade. They’re still looking for clues,” Aaron commented.

  “Darn.”

  Miles was trying to take over again from Aaron.

  “What are your suggestions as to how we solve the problem for the Girl Scouts?”

  “Well, could we help them build another float?”

  “Is there time for that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We could drop the hardware store snow blower group.”

  “No, we can’t. They’re already working on their stuff.”

  “Well, what can we do, then?”

  “I don’t know. Anybody got any good ideas?”

  “We’re running out of time, folks,” Aaron said, gaining control from Miles.

  Laura’s mind drifted off to the tax returns awaiting her and the hours of the day evaporating. She noticed her three friends were talking among themselves, hashing over suggestions for the Girl Scouts, and gave up listening to the rest of the group that seemed incapable of figuring anything out on their own, let alone having the two alpha males fighting over leadership of the committee.

  Bryce turned to talk with Jade about the keys.

  “It’s too late to build a float,” Laura proposed. “So let’s look for where we can get something quickly that the Girl Scouts can use. Does anyone here know anybody who has a flatbed truck or an extra long bed pickup they can loan us for a few days? We could all help decorate it.”

  Everyone knew somebody who had a pickup truck, but no one knew if any of the owners could spare their truck for a few days to decorate and use in the parade. Most of them had snow plow skirts still on the front ends because snow was always possible before the cold season was done sometime near the end of April.