Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery) Page 16

  “And you be careful,” Haylee said. “I don’t like you staying here alone with Juliette. Come over to my apartment for a sleepover with Edna and her mother. You, too, Willow. Everything you’ve told me about that Brianna person gives me the willies.”

  “Patricia could have been the one to murder Isis,” I said, remembering how satisfied the shy sewing machine historian had looked when apparently thinking about Isis’s final fate. “Opal should join us.”

  Naomi objected, “They can’t all be murderers.”

  “Great,” Haylee said, “we’re gambling that none of them are. I have only Edna and Mrs. Battersby, but the rest of you could be harboring desperate houseguests!”

  I laughed. “I am gambling that none of our houseguests are murderers. Good night, Naomi!” Racing down the stairs, I reminded Haylee, “Floyd the zombie scared Isis. And they threatened each other. Most of all, Floyd acted guilty last night. He arrived at the scene almost as soon as I did, but after the fire engine started, he made himself scarce, as if he feared emergency workers and police. And he was definitely wearing a dark suit right after Isis was pushed underwater. His jacket was buttoned, but he could have skulked along the trail with it loose and flapping, and then buttoned it before walking like a zombie again.”

  “So Ben may be harboring a dangerous guest at the Elderberry Bay Lodge.” Haylee opened the door to the parking lot. “I should go warn him, right now!”

  “I’ll come, too! Clay’s supposed to be at the lodge, listening to Dare read.”

  We were both tempted to give up our sleuthing mission and hop into Haylee’s pickup truck—which was almost beside us—to go find Clay and Ben.

  But when would we have a chance to search Patricia’s room?

  Haylee asked, “What are we going to do if Mrs. Battersby still refuses to go back to my apartment?”

  I pulled her to a stop, pointed at the quilted bag Naomi had lent me, and whispered, “Naomi told Opal to go into her shop where she can’t see her back door. You go in first and tell Mrs. Battersby that you and I have to match some fabrics to Opal’s couch because we plan to surprise her with a new pillow, and Mrs. Battersby is not, under any circumstances, to let Opal follow us. I’ll sneak this into Opal’s kitchen, and go upstairs.”

  Haylee giggled. “That should be fun! Mrs. Battersby will probably send Opal up to join us!”

  “All the better,” I said.

  “Unless Mrs. Battersby comes, too. I can just imagine her telling Vicki Smallwood that we’ve been snooping where we shouldn’t be.”

  I groaned. “Even though the mud on Juliette’s jeans may not have anything to do with Isis’s death, how are we going to convince Vicki to search Juliette’s room and find the jeans?”

  In the flower garden behind Opal’s dining room, I stepped between plants and peeked through the window. Mrs. Battersby had her back to me, but I could see the side of Edna’s face. Opal was nowhere in sight.

  Haylee opened the door, tiptoed to Mrs. Battersby, and whispered in her ear. Mrs. Battersby craned her neck around and stared up at Haylee with something like amazement.

  Edna glanced toward the window where I stood. Surreptitiously, she gave me a thumbs-up. Opal must have managed to caution her to stay put and keep Mrs. Battersby entertained, which wouldn’t be too difficult as long as Mrs. Battersby had not yet finished the cap she intended to knit that night.

  I tiptoed into Opal’s dining room. Finger to lips, I caught Mrs. Battersby’s eye, then scooted into the kitchen and up the stairs to the rest of Opal’s apartment, a huge living room and several bedrooms and bathrooms.

  Haylee was right behind me.

  We found Patricia’s guest room on the second try. It was much neater than Juliette’s had been. Haylee reached the computer first. “Look at this. Patricia really is writing The Book of the Treadle. Here’s the manuscript. ‘The Book of the Treadle: A Historian’s View of Treadle Sewing Machines by Patricia Alayna Aiken.’” She scrolled down. “She has a file of pictures she intends to include, too.”

  One by one, Haylee highlighted the names of Patricia’s folders. Near the bottom was a folder titled Isis Crabbe. Haylee sat up straighter and clicked on it.

  I held my breath.

  Haylee clicked on a subfolder labeled Photos. A bunch of thumbnail images came up. The first one was a woman’s face. Haylee clicked on it, but she didn’t need to enlarge it. I’d recognized the woman from the tiny photo.

  Patricia knew Isis’s last name and had been collecting photos of her.

  Haylee and I stared at each other in amazement.

  I said, “At the fire station, Patricia and Isis seemed to have met each other before, and to already dislike each other.”

  Haylee clicked back up the chain. The folder labeled Isis Crabbe had not been revised since a month before either woman arrived in Threadville. “Patricia definitely knew who Isis was before they came here,” Haylee concluded.

  Now I needed to see if the hems of Patricia’s jeans were muddy. Her jean jacket was in her closet, but I couldn’t find the jeans. “Was Patricia wearing blue jeans tonight?” I asked Haylee. “With her beautiful white turtleneck?”

  “Probably.”

  Voices sounded on the stairs. “Those girls are up to something, I tell you!”

  Mrs. Battersby.

  Leaving Haylee madly clicking the mouse to return Patricia’s computer screen to the way we’d found it, I dashed out to the living room, leaned over Opal’s couch, and pulled a bit of a fabric out of the bag. The bright orange batik was a little startling among Opal’s blue and gray furnishings.

  Grinning, Opal came into the room first, followed by a red-faced Mrs. Battersby and a slightly worried-looking Edna.

  I made a show of punching the fabric into it the bag.

  Opal managed to sound stern. “I didn’t see you come upstairs, Willow.”

  I plunked onto the couch and hugged the bag to my chest. “I came with Haylee. We—” I waved my hand vaguely toward the other part of the apartment.

  Edna loudly finished the sentence for me. “Wanted to wash their hands before we all tidied up your kitchen.”

  Haylee must have heard Edna’s explanation. She came down the hallway rubbing her hands together as if she hadn’t quite finished drying them.

  Mrs. Battersby detained me at the foot of the stairs while the others went on into the kitchen. “That neon orange won’t do for Opal’s couch,” she whispered. “If you want a pop of color to go with that grayish blue, try something more subdued, like burgundy or purple. Or maybe pale yellow.”

  I thanked her, agreed that the colors she suggested would look much better with Opal’s things, and opened the door to the kitchen. Mrs. Battersby went into the dining room with the others. I was about to follow her, but Edna carried a tray from the dining room into the kitchen.

  I quickly asked, “Edna, is it possible that you could have been the intended victim when Isis drowned?”

  Grinning, she ran her fingers through her metallic-looking hair. “No way. Isis’s hair was mousy brown. No one could have mistaken that woman for me!” She became serious. “Willow, you could be in danger if the killer thinks you could identify him. Come stay at Haylee’s with my mother and me until that thread distributor leaves.”

  I laughed. “I’m not keen on letting Brianna roam around my apartment by herself. You might try getting Opal and Naomi to join you at Haylee’s, though. We found things in both of their guest rooms that worried us.”

  “What?”

  The others came in with loaded trays.

  I murmured to Edna, “Ask Haylee when you get a chance.”

  I washed Opal’s beautifully gleaming bone china cups and saucers while the others rinsed, dried, and put them away.

  Haylee and Mrs. Battersby were the first to leave. Edna and I said good night to Opal and dawdled near t
empting yarns and patterns in Tell a Yarn. “I’ve got to try these beaded yarns,” Edna crowed.

  I admired skeins of hand-dyed yarns in scrumptious color combinations.

  Out on the sidewalk, Haylee was grilling Mrs. Battersby about the needs of preemies. Haylee was an expert tailor. Imagining extra-tiny newborns in tuxedos, I grinned. I guessed that many of us were about to switch from our previous knitting projects to knitting sweaters and caps for preemies. They were a little beyond my ability, but I’d learn.

  Edna, Haylee, and Mrs. Battersby headed to The Stash, and I started across the street.

  Down toward the lake, the park was no longer lit by temporary lights, and no police vehicles were visible. Yellow tape fluttered, rustling in the wind.

  Brianna’s car was parked in front of In Stitches, and music boomed from my apartment.

  Grumbling to myself, I strode down the hill and went inside through my patio door. I let my pets out of my room and into the backyard for a few minutes, then shooed them all inside and locked the door.

  Shut inside her suite, Brianna laughed and talked over the sound of her music. A light on the phone showed she was on my landline.

  My mother’s election, I reminded myself. Considering that I wasn’t very helpful in my mother’s campaigns—wasn’t helpful at all, in fact—and never went back to South Carolina to arrange fund-raisers and dinners as she asked, the least I could do was try to be polite to her supporter’s daughter.

  Brianna wouldn’t stay much longer, would she? She hadn’t made her sales pitch to Haylee yet, and I doubted that she’d approached Naomi, but surely she would soon, and in only two days, after the craft fair ended, Brianna would surely move on.

  And I would be gracious, no matter how much gritting of teeth would be involved, until I could finally bid Brianna good-bye, except for ordering thread from her. From a distance, preferably.

  I wanted to learn more about Patricia Alayna Aiken and the late Isis Crabbe, but I was exhausted. Besides, Haylee and I had found out Isis’s last name rather easily. If we could, detectives from the Pennsylvania State Police could, also, and probably had. If there was a connection between Isis and Patricia, investigators had probably found that, too.

  I couldn’t very well tell Vicki about the mud-specked jeans we’d found in Juliette’s room, either. Vicki would scold me for interfering.

  Brianna had eaten and left her dirty dishes on the counter. I put them in the dishwasher, turned off the light above the stove, and locked my menagerie into my suite with me. The dogs and I went to bed while the kittens conspired to keep us awake.

  I fell asleep anyway, and it wasn’t the kittens who startled me out of sleep. It was one sharp bark from Tally-Ho, a bark that usually meant he’d heard something and wanted Sally-Forth and me to help him investigate.

  Shivering in the dark, I listened. Bass notes still pounded from Brianna’s suite, but she wasn’t talking. The piece of music ended, and I detected the sound of my patio door sliding closed.

  I had locked that door when I came in.

  25

  More loud and jarring music began in Brianna’s room, but between pieces, I had definitely heard the patio door close.

  Who had closed it? Brianna? Had she been going out or returning?

  Or had someone else come in?

  I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth, which did nothing to slow my racing pulse. I wanted to lie in the dark under my warm comforter and not think about intruders, but Tally-Ho was whining at my bedroom door.

  Was someone on the other side?

  “Speak,” I whispered to Sally-Forth, but she didn’t. I pushed the comforter aside, fumbled for my pink fuzzy slippers and robe, and staggered to my bedroom door. I halted the onslaught of pets with one hand while easing the door open with the other.

  The light above the stove was on again. I had turned it off.

  Leaving my pets shut in my bedroom suite, I slipped through the great room to the patio door. Someone had unlocked it.

  I was tempted to lock it in case Brianna had gone out without her key, but if someone else was inside, I wouldn’t want to slow his or her exit.

  My phone’s light showed that the line was in use, but I didn’t hear Brianna’s voice.

  I put my nose almost on the glass and shielded both sides of my face to block out the light above the stove, but I didn’t see anyone outside. Had someone gone up through the side yard to the street?

  About the only complaint I had about my apartment, other than my current houseguest, was that I couldn’t see the street from it.

  I crept upstairs and opened the door a crack. In Stitches seemed to be the way I’d left it, with one night-light burning. If intruders were inside my shop, I couldn’t see or hear them, though for me to hear intruders over Brianna’s music, they’d have to stomp, shout, and throw things.

  I tiptoed between rows of fabrics to a front window.

  Brianna was on the other side of Lake Street.

  Her hand on the doorknob of Edna’s front door, she was peering through the glass.

  I was all set to traipse across the street in my pink fuzzy robe and slippers and ask her what she wanted in Edna’s shop, which had closed for the night long ago, but Brianna turned around, trotted to the sidewalk, and hurried down Lake Street toward the beach.

  If she wasn’t going to listen to her music, I shouldn’t have to, either. I ran downstairs and knocked on her door. I didn’t know who I thought might answer. No one did.

  I opened the door. Every light was on. I strode down the hallway into the bedroom. Aghast, I stopped in my tracks. She was worse than Juliette. How could anyone create such a mess in less than forty-eight hours? She’d thrown candy papers and torn-off crusts from buttered toast on the carpet. No wonder she’d fled even though it was the middle of the night.

  Groggily rubbing my eyes, I stepped over and around clothes, shoes, CDs, and cases of thread. I wanted to turn the music off, but she’d only turn it on again, so I lowered the volume to a level that might not sound loud in my suite.

  My phone was on the night table. I picked it up. Someone was reciting the weather forecast for Sydney.

  Sydney?

  Australia, I guessed, judging by the accent. Was this Brianna’s method of creating alibis for herself? Dial a number that would stay on the line for hours, and then go out and do whatever she wanted? Glad I had a toll-free long-distance plan, I set the cordless phone down without disconnecting it. She would discover I’d been in her room and had turned her music down, but she didn’t need to know I’d listened to her call.

  I was about to sneak out when I saw a checkbook.

  Okay, that was really snooping, but about an hour before Isis was pushed into the river, I’d seen Brianna hand her something that could have been a check.

  Nervously listening, wishing I had locked the patio door, I opened the checkbook. It was the kind that created carbon copies of checks.

  The most recent check had been made out to Isis Crabbe for two hundred dollars. In the portion marked Memo, Brianna had written, Curse against WV.

  “WV” could have meant lots of things, but those were my initials. My mother’s, too.

  Feeling angry, violated, and hurt, I no longer wanted Brianna to take the hint about the loud stereo. I didn’t want her to know I’d been in her suite, not that she couldn’t have guessed I might enter it whenever I wanted. I turned the volume up, but not quite to the ear-splitting levels where she’d left it.

  What if she was on her way back? She could be near the patio door. She would see me leave her suite.

  I skedaddled as quickly as my pink-slippered feet and the mounds of her belongings on the floor let me.

  Leaving the light on above the stove, I dashed into my suite, locked the door, sank down on the carpet with my back against my bed, and cuddled Sally-Forth and Tally-H
o. Mustache and Bow-Tie jumped around on the bed and swatted at my hair.

  Why had Brianna paid Isis two hundred dollars to write or utter a curse, possibly against me or my mother? The two-hundred-dollar curses on Isis’s price list had been the bad ones. Earlier, I’d guessed that the pieces of willow that Isis had cut might be for a boat to “drown” a toy zombie, but maybe she’d planned to cast spells against me. Or against both Floyd and me.

  Brianna had disliked me from the moment I went outside to help her unpack her car. I hadn’t treated her like a long-lost best friend, but I’d given her a place to stay, had provided meals and snacks, and had cleaned up after her. I’d invited her to sell thread at our craft fair. It wasn’t that I needed to be liked, but I didn’t understand why she would want to harm me or my mother.

  I wanted to go out into my great room, put the bar across the patio door, and let Brianna in only if she promised to pack her things and drive far, far away.

  But I could imagine what my mother would say.

  The longer I huddled on the floor with my warm pets, the sillier I felt for being upset over a curse. If Isis had been as powerful as she’d seemed to think she was, she could have prevented her own death. She couldn’t have hurt me or my mother. Or Edna or Gord or Floyd the zombie.

  The dogs fell asleep with their heads on my lap, and the kittens gave up attacking hair that barely attacked them back. Purring, they sat at my shoulders like sphinxes guarding a pharaoh’s tomb.

  I gently crawled out from under my slumbering dogs and climbed into bed. Brianna’s music thumped on the other side of the wall. I listened for her to come in, but if she did, I didn’t hear her.

  I didn’t know how long I’d slept when my smartphone rang.

  Apparently, Vicki was on duty. In a businesslike voice, she identified herself as Chief Smallwood. “Your landline’s busy,” she said.

  “Brianna must be talking to her boyfriend again.” I tried not to sound half-asleep, but was sure I didn’t succeed.