Threaded for Trouble Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Dire Threads

  “Newcomer Janet Bolin embroiders a lovely tale of Willow Vanderling, her pooches, and her shop, In Stitches, in charming Elderberry Bay, Pennsylvania. Dire Threads will have you saying Tally-Ho and Sally-Forth as you venture back to Threadville again and again.”

  —Lorna Barrett, New York Times bestselling author of the Booktown Mysteries

  “A wonderful debut, embroidered seamlessly with clues, red herrings, and rich detail. And though the mystery will keep you guessing until it’s sewn up, Willow and her friends will leave you in stitches.”

  —Avery Aames, author of the Cheese Shop Mysteries

  “A deftly woven tale embroidered with crafty characters who will leave you in stitches!”

  —Krista Davis, author of the Domestic Diva Mysteries

  “What a great start to a new series. Janet Bolin has stitched together a colorful cast of characters and wound them up in a murder. The cop car alone is worth the read. Lots of fun and machine embroidery, too.”

  —Betty Hechtman, national bestselling author of the Crochet Mysteries

  “Quirky characters, charming town, and appealing sleuth are all beautifully stitched together in this entertaining first mystery.”

  —Mary Jane Maffini, author of the Charlotte Adams Mysteries

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Janet Bolin

  DIRE THREADS

  THREADED FOR TROUBLE

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THREADED FOR TROUBLE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / June 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Janet Bolin.

  Cover illustration by Robin Moline.

  Cover design by Annette Fiore Defex.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58095-0

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  To volunteer firefighters—past, present, and future

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Welcome to Threadville!

  And thanks to Lorna Barrett, who coined the slogan.

  Thanks also to mystery aficionados Jan and Bill Mustard, who served the meal and the wine that night (and others) and also helped brainstorm the original proposal. And Bill suggested a “killer” sewing machine…

  As always, my incredible critique partners, Krista Davis and Avery Aames, helped hone and tweak this manuscript. What’s it been now, eleven years that we’ve critiqued each other? You two deserve special badges for putting up with me this long! In addition, Avery got me thinking about the embroidery project at the back of the book.

  My editor, Faith Black, amazes me with the magical way she knows what needs to be fixed and turns a manuscript into a book.

  And my agent, Jessica Faust of BookEnds, is always there for me.

  A lot of credit goes to my cover artist, Robin Moline, for painting scenes that make me want to walk into them. In her case, a picture is worth eighty thousand words. Thanks to Annette Fiore Defex, who is responsible for the great cover design, and Tiffany Estreicher, who designed the interior text.

  Thanks to Joyce of Joyce’s Sewing Shop in Wortley Village, Ontario, for the first tip at the end of the book.

  I appreciate the camaraderie of the Sisters in Crime, especially the Guppies and Toronto chapters. And thank you to Crime Writers of Canada—more camaraderie from very helpful people.

  As always, my family and friends have cheered me on.

  Last but not least, thanks to everyone who read Dire Threads and is returning to see what Willow and her friends are up to now. And to new readers, too.

  Welcome to Threadville!

  Table of Contents

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  1

  FIRST, FELICITY BANISHED MY DOGS.

  Naturally, I objected. “When In Stitches is open, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho always stay in their pen.” They could wag their plumelike tails at shoppers or trot downstairs to the apartment whenever they wanted a nap, snack, or drink.

  Felicity glanced at my name tag, embroidered in willowy green script on white. “Willow—” She scrunched up her nose as if my name smelled. “Our guests may have allergies.”

  Most of our gues
ts would be my usual customers, ladies who came on the Threadville tour bus four days a week to shop and take classes in all of the crafty stores. Threadville tourists loved my dogs and had never complained about allergies.

  However, Felicity was my guest—sort of—and I would have to put up with her only during the first part of the morning. Hiding my annoyance, I gave in and herded my two active dogs, a brother and sister, one of whose parents must have been a border collie, into the stairway to the apartment and closed the door.

  That’s when the real reason for their banishment became clear. Felicity informed me that their vacant pen would be a perfect stage for our speeches.

  Speeches? True, I had memorized a short one about how happy I was that someone from this corner of Pennsylvania—not that I’d ever met her—had won a top-of-the-line sewing and embroidery machine in a national contest. I supposed Felicity might want to say a few words as she presented the carton to the winner.

  But no. Felicity was not handing over a carton. “Why is our Chandler Champion not yet unpacked?” she demanded. “Did you not test it as instructed?”

  I attempted a smile, but my teeth clenched together, which could not have looked either friendly or professional. “We checked it thoroughly. It works well. It’s a great machine. I got up early and packed it—”

  “No, no, no, no, no!” Felicity didn’t really need to say no that many times. I caught the gist before the second one. “It must be seen and admired. We do want to sell more of them, don’t we.” It was a command, not a question.

  I gestured to the row of sewing machines behind me, which included a Chandler Champion exactly like the one in the carton, and two other, more modest Chandler models.

  Felicity gasped. Actually, it was more like a shriek. “We must, simply must, hide all of your machines except the Chandlers. Before our audience arrives. We wouldn’t want them looking at Chandler’s competitors, would we.” Another command.

  But not one I was about to take. “They’ll want to compare,” I pointed out, “feature for feature.”

  She folded her arms and tapped the toe of one scuffed brown shoe against my shop’s beautiful walnut floor. “And price for price. Okay, they can stay. Our business plan at Chandler is to make the best machines for the best price.” Yes, it was also their motto, printed in huge red letters on the white plastic banner she’d had me string above my display of natural fabrics. Call me snooty, but if I had been in charge of making that banner, I would have used my machines to embroider it. On canvas or ripstop nylon.

  She marched toward the front of the store. “Let’s bring that small table…” She shoved aside my two cute bistro chairs, then lugged my round metal table, complete with the tablecloth I’d embroidered, toward the back of the store. She was careful not to clank against the Chandlers, but I had to steer the table’s legs past the other sewing machines and racks of dazzling embroidery threads.

  She banged the table down in the middle of the dog pen, wadded up my tablecloth, and thrust it in my direction. “Get rid of that. Those aren’t Chandler motifs.”

  I had designed those autumn leaves myself, using photos I’d taken and software from another manufacturer, one of my favorites. “Is Chandler planning to produce digitizing software?” Best software at the best price? That would be good.

  “That’s for me to know.” A trade secret—fine. “Now, unpack that machine and put it here for everyone to admire.” For the first time, she seemed to notice the chairs I had lined up for our audience. Another little scream. “You’ll have to put most of those chairs away. Fewer chairs filled with people will make a better impression than lots of unoccupied chairs, and Mr. Chandler should already be here.” She looked about to go into a panicked tailspin.

  Mr. Chandler? The owner of the company? Felicity should have warned me. Not that I would have arranged my embroidery boutique differently or cooled a magnum of champagne, but it would have been nice to know what to expect. What other surprises did this woman have up her brown polyester sleeve?

  I didn’t give her a chance to tell me. I said, “Many of the women from the Threadville tour will attend the presentation.”

  “Why do you call this town Threadville? The maps call it Elderberry Bay.”

  “Everyone, locals and tourists, started calling the village Threadville when fabric and needlework shops opened here.”

  “Threadville.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice. “Tourists.”

  She’d see. I wasn’t about to argue with her, but I also wasn’t about to put the chairs away, only to need to set them up again. I pointed out, “We should move the prize Chandler Champion closer to an outlet.”

  She looked to her left as if she had a friend beside her who would agree that I was impossible. “Fine, if you can’t be bothered to dig up an extension cord. But hurry. Our winner is due any minute.” She rummaged in a large vinyl bag.

  Her last name, Ranquels, pronounced “rankles” without irony on her part, suited her, but her first name didn’t. A Felicity should have been…bubbly. Not only was she dour, she was short and thick, with ankles like tree stumps.

  I’d expected a Chandler Sewing Machine Company representative to be decked out in the latest techniques of sewing and machine embroidery. Felicity’s skirt and blouse were polyester, off the rack. Maybe she thought their muddy hues would hide the dirt. Maybe she didn’t know she had dribbled toothpaste down her front.

  Her jacket did look homemade. Not handmade, homemade. She’d used one of those sew-it-in-an-evening patterns. No cuffs, collar, buttons, or pockets. It did have lapels, the type that fold back to show the facing. It wasn’t a bad pattern if done right, but she hadn’t trimmed or clipped her seams. They were bunchy, and what should have been corners appeared to have been stuffed with balled-up candy wrappers. The front plackets stood out stiffly, as if she had used cardboard instead of interfacing. She had embroidered a bouquet of flowers, all in brown, where the right front pocket would be, if the jacket had pockets. I recognized the bouquet. It was one of the embroidery motifs that came with the Chandler Champion.

  I hoped my outfit looked better than hers did. I loved playing with my embroidery software and machines. Luckily I had a good excuse for wearing embroidered clothing—I wanted to inspire my students and customers to buy machines and supplies from me, and to try new techniques. I was proud of the touches of embroidery on the T-shirt, fitted jacket, and denim miniskirt I’d worn for the morning’s presentation. Yes, I was tall and my legs were, like the rest of me, willowy, but skirts that ended below mid-thigh never quite suited me.

  I moved the table close to an outlet and began unpacking the Chandler Champion. It was the heaviest sewing machine I had ever lifted.

  Felicity pulled a cell phone from her bag. She turned her back to me, but I heard every word. “Mr. Chandler has not arrived. When will he be here?” Silence, then, “I arranged for a limo to pick him up at the Cleveland airport. So what’s the problem?”

  By now, my friends in their shops across the street could probably hear her, too.

  “You call me the minute you find out.” Steam was practically puffing out her ears. “The ceremony is scheduled to begin in a half hour.”

  I plugged in the Chandler Champion. Felicity elbowed me aside and turned it on. The machine contained a powerful computer, complete with a color, high-definition touch screen.

  Felicity fingered the screen. “You’ve been using this.”

  “Yes, we tested it.” I didn’t mean to let my irritation show, but at least I didn’t add, as you ordered. It was true that testing a new machine was fun, but still…couldn’t she be nicer?

  Apparently not. “You put ten hours on it.”

  I defended myself. “It already had more than a hundred.” Closer to two hundred, actually.

  “That’s different. Factory testing. We have to make certain that each machine is perfect. However, our manufacturing standards are high, and we have not encountered a flaw during the entire year since we first we
nt to market.”

  Well, whoop-de-do. “I guessed the machine had been a floor model, or perhaps used and returned, before you offered it as a prize.”

  “Mr. Chandler would never do that.”

  He might not, I thought uncharitably, but someone on his staff might, and I suspected I was looking at that person.

  She glared at one of the pot lights in my shop’s ceiling. “You need to re-aim that light. Lucky thing you didn’t put your ladder away like I told you to.”

  “My ladder doesn’t go up that high.”

  “You’re tall. You hung the banner.”

  “The ceiling’s much higher.”

  “Stand on the top step.”

  And fall off and break seventeen bones. What a superb idea. “I’ll bring a floor lamp to the machine, instead.” Not that we needed it. Morning sunshine poured through the shop’s rear windows, backlighting the Chandler Champion. Besides, Threadville tourists tended to be enthusiastic about sewing machines. They wouldn’t fail to notice this one perched on a table in the middle of the pen where my dogs usually were.

  “Don’t you know someone with a better ladder? What about the other shopkeepers? I see a fabric store across the street. At least I assume that’s what The Stash means. We simply must re-aim that light.”

  The light chose that moment to burn out. With a pop.

  Great.

  Felicity paled as if about to faint, but her voice didn’t lose a decibel of its frantic volume. “Find a ladder!”

  It was a perfect excuse. If I didn’t talk to one of my friends that very minute, I would either explode or collapse in a giggling fit. I ran out the front door. The other Threadville shops were across the street on the ground floor of a gorgeous Victorian building. Its red brick and limestone exterior had stayed fresh and bright all these years in this sweet little village on Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie shore. Next to Haylee’s fabric shop was the yarn shop, then the notions shop, then the quilting shop. The proprietors lived in apartments above their stores.

  There’s nothing quite like the sense of anticipation a fabriholic feels when entering a fabric store, and The Stash never disappointed me. Haylee was arranging autumn-toned stretch poplins near her front door. People often mistook us for sisters. Her hair was blond, though, while mine was light brown. Her face was rounder than mine, and her eyes were a purer blue than my grayish ones. Today, she wore a navy linen shift she’d made. She always said that since we were the same size, I could borrow the outfits she hand tailored for herself. I would never dare. My strong desire to decorate everything with thread usually overcame my fondness for elegant simplicity.