Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery) Page 4

  The guy could probably see in the dark by the twinkles in his eyes. Zombies wandering around Threadville could be fun.

  He pulled a wallet from a pocket sewn to the underside of his beach towel.

  Disheveled suit made a derogatory sound in his throat. “You should check the expiry date on his credit card. Surfer boy here drowned off the coast of California in 1975.”

  The surfer was a man, not a boy. The first name on his credit card was Lenny. The expiry date was in the future. Grinning at him, I ran the card through my reader.

  Disheveled suit handed me a ball of crumpled bills. Straightening them, I hid a shudder. Surely, those weren’t blood stains on the bills . . .

  “Floyd’s the name, liquor’s the game,” he told me.

  I stared pointedly at the red-rimmed “bullet” holes in the front of his jacket. “I can introduce you guys to a good tailor.”

  Lenny cracked a smile. Floyd stared at me coldly. Lenny handed me a stack of flyers. The two zombies stowed their wallets and spools of thread in their pockets, turned, and walked, if I could call it that, outside.

  The door closed behind them. My beach glass chimes were still jingling when everyone in the store except Brianna burst out laughing. Brianna bent over her display case, shut it, snapped the latch, and carried it out the front door.

  Rosemary picked up one of the flyers Lenny had left us. “This could be fun.” She read in a doleful voice, “Haunted Graveyard. Come to the Elderberry Bay Lodge Graveyard on Saturday night for an experience you’ll remember for the rest of your short life.”

  5

  We all agreed that a convention of zombies might put on quite a show at a haunted graveyard.

  I pointed out, “There’s no such thing as the Elderberry Bay Lodge Graveyard.”

  Rosemary asked, “Wasn’t someone buried on the grounds, though?”

  I hid a shudder. “A former owner of the lodge. But he wasn’t supposed to be there, and his remains have been placed elsewhere.” Not keen on reliving the events surrounding the discovery of the former innkeeper’s remains, I changed the subject back to 3-D lace machine embroidery.

  After Rosemary and her group left for the evening, I closed the shop, followed Sally and Tally downstairs, took all four animals outside, and made one of my favorite bare-cupboard suppers, macaroni and cheese.

  Music boomed from my guest room. The aroma of melting cheddar filled the apartment. Rubbing her eyes as if she’d had another nap, Brianna emerged from my guest suite. I offered her macaroni and cheese.

  “Okay.” We sat on stools at my kitchen island. Staring out the back windows, she asked, “Why is there a house in your backyard?”

  “It was one of the village’s original homes. It became a rental cottage after the house we’re in was built. When I bought this property, the cottage was much closer to the river. Every few years, the river floods, so I had the cottage moved up the hill.”

  “I could stay there instead of in here with all these animals.”

  I clenched my teeth, nearly breaking them on my fork. Ordinarily, “all these animals” had the run of the apartment. For Brianna’s sake, they were in my suite, behind a closed door. I extricated my fork from between my teeth, but sounded terse. “Blueberry Cottage is not ready for guests. It’s been gutted.”

  “Your animals could stay out there.”

  She wasn’t only “moving in”—she was also planning to take over? Although my mother had said something about Brianna helping with Edna’s wedding, I hoped Brianna wouldn’t be around that long. This was Thursday. The craft fair was Saturday and Sunday. The wedding would be Monday afternoon.

  In any case, I wasn’t about to let Brianna decide where my pets could live. “No. Animals would be in the way of the workers in Blueberry Cottage, and besides, someone might let them out.”

  “So?”

  “They wouldn’t be safe. I have to watch them carefully, especially the kittens, or they might scramble over or under my fence.” The dogs had never been unsupervised in my yard long enough to consider tunneling out, though to my horror, someone had once let them out.

  Brianna shrugged. Maybe she’d never had or loved pets. She ate glumly for a while, then demanded, “Is there anything to do around here?”

  “A bunch of us are going out tonight, only around the corner, to work on a surprise for a friend who’s getting married. Lots of Threadville people will be there, including shop owners, so you’re welcome to come along.”

  “Okay.”

  Not very gracious, but, as my mother would have observed, neither was my invitation.

  I tried to sound more welcoming. “You’ll meet Haylee, who owns the fabric store, and Naomi, who has the quilt shop. You’ll want to show them your thread before you go on to your next stop.” Okay, that hint was blatant. My mother would have been appalled.

  She yawned. “When are we going?”

  “After I clear supper away and give the animals another outing. About ten minutes.”

  “Okay.” She shoved her plate forward, edged off the stool, shuffled into her suite, and shut the door.

  She was young, I told myself, that’s why she didn’t clean up after herself.

  Or look me in the eye. I didn’t think she’d done it even once since she’d arrived early in the morning.

  And she avoided my gaze after I let my pets out, brought them back inside, and fed them. She was looking at the animals instead, as if afraid that if she didn’t watch them every second, they’d decide that she should be their dinner.

  I locked the sweet little critters inside the apartment and led Brianna up through my side yard and then down the street past my friends’ shops.

  I explained that Haylee’s store, The Stash, had been the first textile arts shop in Elderberry Bay, and that she’d encouraged her three mothers join her.

  Brianna didn’t react when I said that Haylee had three mothers, but I explained anyway. “Haylee was raised by three women—Opal, who owns the yarn store, and Opal’s friends, Naomi and Edna, who own the quilting and notions stores.” I didn’t tell Brianna that Opal had been only seventeen when she’d given birth to Haylee, and that each of Haylee’s three mothers were now barely over fifty. I added, “Opal, Naomi, and Edna have always called themselves The Three Weird Sisters, from Macbeth, you know?”

  “Oh.”

  I went on, “So Haylee calls them The Three Weird Mothers.”

  People usually laughed or commented, but Brianna remained silent.

  After we were far enough from Edna’s shop and apartment that she wouldn’t hear us even if her windows were open, I confided, “We’ve all been helping Edna with her actual wedding gown, and it may be the most decorated wedding gown in history.” Remembering the one we were about to finish, I corrected myself. “Well, maybe the second most decorated gown. She even embedded tiny flashing lights in the one she’s making. She wanted sound effects, too, but we convinced her not to.” I paused.

  “Oh.”

  Maybe it was all the encouragement I was going to get. I continued, “Tonight, we’re going to finish the alternative wedding gown we’re making to surprise her, the really decorated one. On this one, we’ve added everything she asked for on her real gown, and more, as a Threadville joke.”

  “Oh.”

  Brianna sounded so disinterested that I was surprised she stayed with me all the way to the fire station. The big garage doors were open. Light and laughter came from inside, toward the back. It was, I thought, very inviting.

  “Fire station?” she asked.

  I led her inside between our two big red trucks. “That’s where we’re putting the gown together. It won’t fit through an ordinary door.”

  Dragging her feet, Brianna followed me to the workshop in the back of the garage.

  The gown was really only an overskirt that Edna would be ab
le to wear over her real gown. When I caught sight of the enormous skirt, I had to smile.

  It was a thing of awesome beauty. Wider than it was tall, the skirt was decorated with almost every embellishment the denizens of Threadville had imagined—ruffles, pleats, crocheted and machine-embroidered lace, knit and quilted panels, flounces, sequins, crystals, and beads.

  And sticking out all over it like rhinestones on steroids. . . twenty-watt incandescent lightbulbs.

  Just as we’d planned, the skirt was totally over the top.

  It wasn’t plugged in at the moment, though, so the lighting and sound displays were dark and silent.

  However, even when not lit, those bulbs looked huge on the skirt. Some might call our creation ridiculous. We called it whimsical.

  Brianna asked, “Is that it?”

  “Yes.” What else could that vision of spangled, ruffled tulle be?

  “It’s ugly,” she said flatly.

  “Edna will laugh.”

  “Lotta work for a joke.”

  It was my turn to shrug. How could I explain Threadville and how we all went out of our way to have fun and ensure that everyone around us enjoyed life, too?

  Haylee wasn’t there. I led Brianna to Opal. Tall, thin, and blond, like Haylee, Opal wore a long, dove-gray, hand-crocheted dress. Brianna ignored Opal’s outstretched hand. Opal introduced us to the studious-looking woman beside her as her houseguest, Patricia. “She’s a sewing machine historian, and has come to participate in our craft fair.”

  A sewing machine historian? Trying not to show my skepticism over a craft that sounded even less like Halloween than Isis’s handmade books, I smiled and welcomed Patricia to Threadville.

  She blushed and looked down at her feet.

  Why the shyness? She looked about Haylee’s and my age, and our height, but even thinner.

  Brianna yawned.

  Edna wasn’t there, of course, and Brianna barely managed to cover another yawn as I introduced her to Haylee’s third mother, Naomi, who owned the quilt shop and would undoubtedly be interested in Brianna’s threads.

  Slender and pretty in a jacket and skirt she’d pieced and quilted, Naomi patted the arm of a woman wearing a long skirt made of gathered tiers of orange, turquoise, and red, each tier trimmed in white lace. Her ruffled peasant blouse matched her skirt. “This is Madame Juliette,” Naomi told us. “She’s staying with me during the craft fair.”

  Madame? What an odd thing for someone in her early thirties to call herself.

  Brianna didn’t bother covering more yawns. I ran the names of Haylee’s mothers’ guests through my mind to keep them straight. Isis, the woman fond of issuing midnight curses, was staying with Edna, and neither of them was in the fire station. Opal’s houseguest was the shy sewing machine historian named Patricia, and Haylee’s third mother, Naomi, had this very flamboyant Madame Juliette staying with her.

  I asked the woman, “Will you be selling outfits like the one you’re wearing at the craft fair, Madame Juliette? It’s very pretty.” Maybe she’d like to learn how to add touches of machine embroidery.

  Madame Juliette was almost as tall as I was, with long brown curly hair highlighted in auburn and blond. “Just call me Juliette. And thank you, I do sew, but I didn’t make my outfit. My table at the craft fair will be for telling people’s fortunes.”

  I tried not to look clueless.

  “It’s a good thing to know your fortune around Halloween, don’t you think?” she pressed.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Luckily, Juliette didn’t wait for me to answer. She explained, “I conduct séances, too.”

  Since Juliette had said she could sew and Brianna sold thread, I asked both of them if they’d help add some of my recently purchased glow-in-the-dark thread to a frill I’d embroidered and attached to the enormous hoopskirt.

  Brianna blanched and shook her head.

  Juliette and I approached the magnificent creation.

  “What’s it made of?” she asked. “Hula hoops?”

  I tapped the hip area of the skirt. The skirt swayed. “Good guess. We did tie one hula hoop to the underside near the top. The entire skirt is built on a wheeled frame.”

  She tilted her head. “How is your friend supposed to wear it?”

  I handed her the spool of thread, a packet of needles, and my small, tweezerlike thread nippers, and then lifted the tulle draperies at the back of the skirt. “You crawl into the back and step over the brace between the frame’s two back legs. Like this.”

  I crouched and maneuvered myself into the thing. Clay Fraser had contributed an old steel jigsaw stand as the skirt’s frame. He had also made the inside of the skirt a work of art. Cords, speakers, and batteries were neatly arranged on a shelf in the front, and a thick orange extension cord in a huge black plastic reel hung from one side.

  I battled my way up through the waistband and stood. Clay had cut the jigsaw stand’s legs short enough so that after he added casters, the top of the stand should be at Edna’s waist. We weren’t positive about that, though, since we were keeping the bizarre overskirt a secret from her.

  I could hardly wait to see her face when we revealed it.

  Taller than Edna, I had to cinch the drawstring around my hips. I grabbed flounces above the hula hoop, took a few dancelike steps, and moved the gown back and forth on its casters. They worked beautifully.

  Behind me, a woman snarled, “You can’t do that.”

  I whirled the giant skirt around.

  Isis, again in that flowing, gold-trimmed, white nylon jersey gown that looked for all the world like a nightie, glared up at me. “It’s not ordained that you should wear someone else’s wedding gown.”

  Not ordained? What could she mean?

  Stunned speechless for the second time in about as many minutes, I managed, “It’s not finished.” Staring down at her, I tried to come up with a polite way of asking her if she had removed my lace bride and groom dolls from my front porch.

  I couldn’t think of one.

  Scowling, she backed away from me.

  “Stay there, Willow,” Opal ordered. She plugged the overskirt’s cord into an outlet. Lights came on all over the skirt.

  Some of them shined up onto my face, probably turning me into a specter rivaling any of the zombies at the zombie retreat.

  And that was when Clay walked in.

  Clay always looked good, but tonight he was especially hot in jeans and a blue chambray shirt with Fraser Construction embroidered in red over the pocket. He had commissioned me to embroider shirts for him and his staff.

  Clay and Fraser Construction had done many of the renovations in Threadville, and had moved Blueberry Cottage up the hill for me. Between building entire housing developments, Clay and his employees were renovating Blueberry Cottage.

  However, no matter what Haylee might have hoped or believed, Clay and I each worked incredibly long hours, and hardly ever saw each other. Although we’d shared a few romantic moments in the past that may have given me some hopes and dreams, Clay and I were still only friends.

  Remembering those romantic moments, I felt my face heat and redden. I hoped he didn’t think I was wearing the wedding skirt as a hint.

  I ducked out of the skirt. Brianna watched me with scorn on her face. She wasn’t the world’s greatest houseguest, and she wasn’t much fun, either.

  Behind me, Isis shrieked, “You!”

  6

  Her incongruous nylon gown billowing, her hands at shoulder height, and her fingers curled outward, Isis raced toward Clay as if she were going to claw into him. She dashed around him, though, and confronted a man in the shadows behind him.

  The other man was dressed in black—slacks, turtleneck, blazer, loafers. He was tall and trim like Clay, although not as muscular, and his hair was a darker shade of brown.


  Clay’s eyes could warm a room. The other man stepped into the light and gave Isis a look that should have turned her to ice.

  Undaunted, she screeched, “How dare you!”

  He smirked. “How dare I what?” An amused undertone lurked in his deep voice.

  “Call your book The Book of the Dead.”

  He remained calm. “I’ll call my book whatever I want.”

  “But my book is The Book of the Dead.” The last word was especially loud.

  He drawled, “Last I knew, the Book of the Dead was not a book at all, but a collection of curses written in places like the inner walls of pharaohs’ tombs in ancient Egypt. You don’t look quite that old.”

  Isis ignored the insult. “And that’s why my complete title is The New Book of the Dead.”

  He demanded, “So what’s your problem?”

  She continued to hold her hands like claws in front of her. “Your thriller is cutting into sales of my book.”

  “I’ve never heard of your book,” he said.

  “See what I mean? You’re overshadowing everyone and everything.”

  He tossed a lock of hair off his forehead. “Can I help it if I’m a bestselling author?”

  Now I knew why Isis had recognized him. I also understood his ironic emphasis of the word “dare.” I’d seen his handsome face on posters in bookstores and in ads in Sunday supplements.

  Dare Drayton, the darling of booksellers everywhere, was with us in Elderberry Bay’s fire station.

  He looked down his hawklike nose at Isis. “No one’s going to confuse your psychic gobbledygook with literature.”

  I’d been wrong that Opal’s houseguest, Patricia, was timid. She walked right up to Isis and glowered down at the shorter woman. “I’m writing The Book of the Treadle. I suppose that will cut into your sales, also?” Patricia’s voice was harsh and trembling.

  With rage? Why? Was she trying to protect Dare? He seemed capable of looking after himself.