Thread and Buried Page 24

  If we didn’t locate Vicki, she would eventually listen to Ben’s voice message.

  Naturally, if Haylee and I went searching for Vicki and happened upon another yarnbombing, no one could possibly accuse us of snooping.

  Ben must have been tired, also. After we scraped the last snapshot out of the box, he told us to leave all the photos in their piles, and he’d finish another time. He glanced at the antique wooden clock on the mantel. “Zara hasn’t brought my keys back yet. She said she wasn’t going far.”

  I could see Haylee struggling not to say something catty about her supposed cousin, and I wanted to tell Ben he was too trusting. Instead, I asked if she’d ever borrowed anything before, and if she’d been late bringing it back.

  “She’s gone out in lodge boats from time to time, but was never gone long enough to worry anyone. She’s not exactly late this time, either. I’m not worried, only curious.”

  “Boats?” The yarnbomber had escaped in a small motorboat. “Like rowboats?” I asked.

  “And motorized rowboats. Probably canoes, kayaks, and paddleboats, too.”

  “Could your truck have run out of gas while she was driving?” I asked.

  He had a wonderfully boyish grin. “Not this soon. The tank was half full.”

  I asked if he wanted to join Haylee and me in my car to search for her. “Maybe she had a flat.”

  He hesitated as if going with us appealed to him. “No, thanks. I have a car here, too, but I’m not leaving the lodge with only that one new hire out there at reception to look after everything. And Chief Smallwood may still show up. If she does, I’ll let her see the picture and what’s written on the front and the back. Thanks for all your time and work. After I go through everything again, want to help me decide which of these so-called ‘perfect’ photos are best, how they should be framed, and where to hang them?”

  “Sure,” I answered for both of us. “Anytime.” Maybe Clay would be able to join us for the entire evening next time.

  Come to think of it, when I could use my entire backyard again, I could have them all over for a barbecue, and Clay and I could ask Haylee and Ben for suggestions about finishing Blueberry Cottage. And Ben would walk Haylee home . . .

  Haylee and I said our good-byes and hurried toward the parking lot.

  “Did you call Vicki when you went outside earlier?” Haylee asked. “Is she looking for Ben’s truck, Zara, and a new yarnbombing installation?”

  I knew she had figured it out. I raised my hand and we did a self-congratulatory high five.

  We didn’t have to discuss what to do next. Of course Haylee would want to hop into my car and search for Ben’s truck, Zara, and a yarnbomb. And if we found Vicki, we’d send her to Ben.

  I drove to the top of the hill, where the road from the lodge, marina, and wharf met Shore Road.

  We had no problem deciding which way to turn. A glow hovered above a dip in the road between us and Threadville. Parts of the glow blinked brighter and dimmer, red, white, red, white . . .

  I turned toward it. The road sloped downhill toward a gully and a culvert that we knew all too well.

  Vicki Smallwood’s cruiser was parked, lights flashing, behind the Elderberry Bay Lodge pickup truck. The truck’s tailgate was down. The foot locker, its lid propped open, was on the tailgate.

  Vicki had turned on the cruiser’s interior dome light. Zara sat in the front passenger seat, talking quickly, it appeared, and gesturing with her hands while Vicki took notes. Zara had pulled a black stocking cap over her pinned-up hair.

  “My so-called cousin looks like a burglar,” Haylee said, obviously pretending that she never dressed in a similar way. “She must have been trying to pick up the cape, and it was, surprise, surprise, gone. Ha!”

  We high-fived again.

  I turned my car around, went back to the cruiser, and stopped in the road beside it. I pushed the button that opened Haylee’s window. I planned to tell Vicki to go see Ben.

  Vicki kept writing, and Zara kept talking. About the tenth time Zara glanced past Vicki to us, Vicki turned and scowled at us. She didn’t open her window. She waved her hand in a cop-like gesture that could mean only one thing.

  Get out of here.

  44

  OUR POLICE CHIEF REFUSED TO TALK TO us. Fine. I took my foot off the brake, pressed on the gas, and eased away from her cruiser.

  “What shall we do now?” Haylee asked.

  I accelerated, leaving our police chief and Zara Brubaugh behind. Because I’d turned the car around before attempting to talk to Vicki, we were heading back toward the lodge, and not toward home. However, we could return to the village and avoid passing our cranky police chief again if we drove past the lodge, the marina, the wharf, Lazy Daze Campground, and all the cottages along Beach Row. Naturally, I didn’t want to drive past the lodge. What if Clay showed up?

  I parked in the Elderberry Bay Lodge parking lot again.

  “Still hoping that Clay will find us?” Haylee teased.

  “Just being cautious.” Vicki would have noticed which direction we went. Maybe she would follow, which would lead her straight to Ben and the interesting photo.

  Haylee nodded at the lodge. “I suppose tattling to Ben that my delightful cousin was pulled over in his pickup truck might be seen as unkind, huh.”

  “Unkind to your delightful cousin, maybe,” I retorted, “but not to Ben. He might be staying awake worrying.”

  We tiptoed to the porte cochere. No lights were on behind the French doors leading to Ben’s office, and even without going into the lobby, we could see that Ben wasn’t there. The lights had been dimmed, and no one was near the registration desk. A bell to ring for service had been placed on it.

  We turned around and headed toward my car. “Too bad Ben didn’t accept my offer of a ride,” I muttered. “He’d have seen Zara after she’d been pulled over or whatever.”

  “I wonder what story she’ll tell him when she does bring the truck back.”

  “And wants him to carry that empty foot locker upstairs again,” I added.

  Haylee giggled. “She must have gone to that culvert looking for the bag she left there, and thanks to your quick call, Vicki got there in time.”

  I opened the driver’s door. “I wish I’d seen Zara’s face when Vicki showed up.”

  “I can just hear our police chief, ‘Did you lose something?’” Haylee imitated Vicki’s inflection perfectly.

  I wanted to hoot with laughter, but didn’t, for fear of waking people in the nearby lodge.

  Haylee slid into the passenger seat. “Do you see Max’s car anywhere?”

  “No. Clay’s, either. But I’m not going back home past our ornery police chief!”

  Haylee laughed. “She really got to you, didn’t she?”

  “Waving us on as if we weren’t important!” I exaggerated my complaining tone.

  At the foot of the hill, I steered into the potholed parking lot that served the marina and wharf. Breezes blowing off the lake through the car’s open windows smelled watery but fresh.

  Near the row of boathouses, something beeped.

  “What’s wrong with your car?” Haylee asked.

  Uh-oh. “I don’t know.” I stopped and listened. Another beep. “I don’t think it’s coming from my car.” I turned off the engine. After about a minute, we heard the beep again, distorted by wind.

  “Smoke detector,” we said in unison. It was either in a yacht or a boathouse.

  “As firefighters, we should investigate,” Haylee pointed out.

  “And help change the batteries if they need it.” The warning didn’t sound urgent, but we needed to figure out where it was coming from and notify the owners that one of their smoke or carbon monoxide detectors possibly needed new batteries. The yachts and boathouses were very close together. A fire in one of them could be disastrous. And carbon monoxide killed with no warning.

  Haylee grabbed my flashlight from the glove compartment. We got out and listened.
>
  The beeps drew us east. We stopped in front of Tom’s fish shack.

  The moon was three quarters, but since it had just risen, the earth’s atmosphere magnified it. Light from the lot’s only fixture slanted down onto a notice tacked to Tom’s front door: We will be closed on Monday to celebrate the life of our good friend, Neil Ondover. RIP, Neil, old buddy.

  I breathed out a mournful sigh. Neil’s death was all so sad and so needless.

  Another notice said that the door stuck and to push hard.

  I rammed it with my shoulder the way Tom had shown us.

  The door was locked.

  We peeked in through cobwebby front windows. “I think there’s a light on inside,” Haylee said.

  Both of us knew that meant nothing. We had night-lights in our shops, also.

  From this close, the beep was more like an angry chirp. If the batteries died and a fire started before new batteries were put in, I would have a hard time forgiving myself for not investigating. I suggested, “Let’s check around the back of Tom’s shack, where he parks his boats, and see if we can pinpoint where the smoke detector with the low batteries is.” Even if Vicki showed up, she couldn’t scold us for snooping. We were only doing our job as firefighters. And she could patrol the area frequently during the rest of the night until we managed to call Tom.

  “Okay.” Haylee handed me my flashlight. “And then let’s go home. This place gives me the creeps. Doesn’t the water lapping at the posts beneath the pier sound like something licking its lips before it pounces?”

  I smothered a laugh. “Not to me.” Haylee wasn’t usually a wimp. Maybe she just wanted to go back up the hill and take a few more longing looks at Ben’s lodge.

  I nearly chickened out, though, when I shined my light on the catwalk leading to the back of Tom’s shack. The line of wooden planks was barely wide enough for my feet, and the water below was a deep, ominous, oily black.

  And did Haylee have to mention that lip-licking sound again?

  I reminded myself that I’d heard of record-setting catfish and sturgeon in Lake Erie, but the lake couldn’t possibly harbor women-eating monsters.

  Gamely, Haylee followed me down the catwalk. Narrow boards sagged and creaked as we shuffled along them.

  Tom’s commercial fishing boat was moored to the wharf running along the shore ahead of us.

  The closer of the two garage doors at the back of Tom’s fishing shack was rolled all the way up. A motor launch swayed gently in the far bay of the boathouse, but nothing was in the nearer section.

  “Does Tom usually keep another boat in here?” Haylee asked. “Does he fish at night?”

  “Maybe he uses a smaller boat to commute to and from his home. Or he rents out space.”

  The catwalk running along the inside wall of the boathouse was almost as narrow as the one outside.

  The smoke detector chirped again. This time it sounded louder.

  From where we stood, trembling in the suddenly chilly evening, it was easy to tell that the smoke detector with the dying batteries was inside Tom’s fish shack, and not in the one beside it or on his fishing tug.

  Just one look, and then we’d go, I promised myself. I shined my flashlight around the interior of the boathouse.

  The door leading inside to the sales area was ajar.

  45

  SOMETHING GROANED. HAYLEE GRABBED my arm.

  I extinguished the light, but then we couldn’t see our way out of Tom’s boathouse. I heard the groan again and turned on the light. Had the door leading into the sales area of his fish shack moved?

  I dug in my bag for my cell phone.

  Our police chief’s answering system went straight to messages, but I didn’t feel like going through the entire rigamarole about investigating smoke detectors with low batteries after midnight on a Sunday morning—she would undoubtedly say we were snooping—and I didn’t leave a message. “I’m going to peek inside,” I said. “It’s probably only the door creaking in the wind, but what if Tom’s in there, and all he can do is groan? What if he fell off a ladder while trying to change the smoke detector’s batteries, and now he’s too injured to move or yell for help?” In that case, I’d call emergency. Bothering Vicki would be pointless. I thrust the cell phone back into my embroidered bag.

  “Okay,” my intrepid friend said. “I’ll come with you.”

  The smoke detector let out another loud beep.

  We tiptoed around coiled ropes, floats, nets, and cans of motor oil. I pushed the door open.

  Inside the boathouse, a restaurant-style sink and stainless steel counter dominated the first room on our right. That would be where Tom cleaned the fish.

  Another beep sounded, so we kept going, into the familiar shop, with its refrigerated display unit, counter, scales, and cash register. Between the wind, the smoke detector, and the eerie echoes in the fish shack, we couldn’t be sure where the groans originated.

  I whispered, “Tom?”

  No answer

  I opened the door beside me and found a small, shelf-lined storeroom. Something heaped on the floor made both of us jump and catch our breath, but when I shined my flashlight at the thing, we clutched each other in relief. It was only a fishnet made of thick green plastic rope.

  The smoke detector made another insistent beep. It was on the ceiling above the display case, too high to reach without a ladder, and there was no ladder in sight.

  Who had moaned? I went back into the storage room and shined my flashlight around the walls. No one was near the net on the floor, and the shelves along the walls were too narrow to hold anyone, groaning or not.

  Behind me, Haylee gasped.

  “What?” I didn’t see anyone.

  “Shine your light up to the right again.”

  I did.

  “See that small box?” she whispered. “That’s the box of water-soluble thread that went missing from the sidewalk sale.”

  “How did it get here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but . . .” She plucked the box from the shelf. A small paper packet like a seed envelope must have been underneath the box. The envelope drifted down and landed on the fishnet. “Shine your light on this box.”

  I did.

  “It sure looks like what I lost.” She turned the box over. Spools of thread fell out and bounced into some of the holes in the fishnet.

  “Oops.” Haylee added a few stronger words. “I should have checked if the box was closed before I tried to read the words on the bottom.” She stared down at the net. “I’m sure I had more spools than the few that fell out.”

  “So maybe it’s not your box of thread,” I said sensibly. “But we should pick them up, anyway.” I leaned forward, grabbed a spool, and handed it to her. She put it into the box. I couldn’t reach the next spool without stepping onto the mounded net.

  My foot slipped between the ropes of the net. I fell, and both my hands slid into holes in the net, too. This was getting ridiculous.

  “Here, grab my hand,” Haylee said.

  Flashlight and all, I forced my right hand out, and reached back toward her. She took the light and pulled at me, which helped extricate my left hand, but as I twisted toward her, pain shot through my right ankle, and to take pressure off it, I let my free foot land on the net. It slipped into the mess of connected ropes, too. Worse, my left foot was now pointing north while my right foot was pointing east. “Stop pulling,” I panted. “I hurt my ankle and we need to untangle this net so I can get my feet out.”

  She set the flashlight on one of the lowest shelves. Together, we tried to move the rope netting so we could squeeze one of my ankles out, but the ropes were thick and stiff and wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t wriggle out of my sandals, either. Both of my feet were stuck, and I couldn’t straighten one without causing a lot of pain in the other.

  Haylee shined the light at the storage room shelves. “Tom must have a knife.”

  Naturally, I had to be stubborn. “I’d like to get out of this
mess without damaging Tom’s net.” The smoke detector beeped again.

  Haylee grabbed my flashlight, jumped up, ran into the fish-cleaning room, and returned carrying a knife with a long, serrated blade. She handed me the flashlight, got down on her knees, and edged the knife between my right ankle and the rope. Holding the knife away from my ankle, she began sawing.

  After what seemed like an hour but, considering the number of times the smoke detector beeped—exactly once—had to be less than a minute, she rocked back on her heels and rubbed her wrist against her forehead. “Either this knife is duller than it looks or that fishnet is made of very tough ropes. And I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”

  Not worse than I’ve already hurt myself. I didn’t say it. Haylee would only worry and I needed her to think clearly, since, thanks to the pain in my ankle, my reasoning seemed fuzzy. “Let me try,” I said.

  She left the knife where it was, between my bare ankle and the rope. “I’ll call for help. Vicki Smallwood?”

  Despite my pain, I laughed. “That would be a last resort. She didn’t look very pleased with us.”

  “Well, she should have been. We found the yarnbomber. I know—I’ll call Ben! He can be here in a few minutes. I’ll tell him to bring sharp tools. Or a chainsaw,” she teased.

  “Ouch. Maybe I can free myself in the meantime.”

  “Do you know the lodge’s number?” she asked.

  “No, but information . . .”

  She stood and looked down at me doubtfully. “I don’t want to leave you here alone, but how about if I run up toward the lodge while I try to phone Ben? That way, if I don’t get his number before I arrive at the lodge, I can grab him and his chainsaw and we can zip back down here.”

  My bag was on a shelf high above my head. I nodded toward it. “Get my keys and take my car.”