Dire Threads (6 page)

“What did you say his last words were?” Opal asked Uncle Allen.

“That woman did this. Get her.”

“What woman?” I asked. Hadn’t he reported before that Mike said, “did it,” not “did this”? A little part of my mind said
unreliable witness
. What was I doing, preparing my own defense? I’d physically fled Manhattan and the stresses related to working in a company after Haylee and I successfully testified against our boss. He had funneled funds from his clients—and ours—to his own accounts. Mentally fleeing was more difficult. Was I always going to automatically defend myself, justify my actions and my words? Plan my testimony? This time, I thought with a jolt of panic, I could be the one being tried. For murder.

Edna asked, “Mike accused some woman of doing something? Who, and what was it?”

Uncle Allen pointed at me. “Her. Mike said she beat him up. I can believe it. Yesterday, a bunch of witnesses reported to me that she threatened to kill him.”

“I didn’t mean it that way!” My vocal chords frayed like worn thread.

Uncle Allen ignored me. “This is her property, and she already admitted that the murder weapon is her canoe paddle.”

By now, Dr. Wrinklesides stood beside the other old man. “Uncle Allen.” It would have been a gentle reminder if Dr. Wrinklesides hadn’t shouted.

Uncle Allen glowered at him. “You don’t have to yell. I’m right here.”

Dr. Wrinklesides reached a hand toward Uncle Allen. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

Naomi crowded into me. I put an arm around her and hoped she wouldn’t rub her green facial masque against the white snowman I’d embroidered on my parka.

The corners of Uncle Allen’s mouth turned down, like he was playing bad cop. It looked more like sad cop. “All of you women are now murder suspects. I have to question you all.”

“Now?” I asked. “What about that pickup truck we saw when you arrived? Shouldn’t you go after them?”

“They could be anywhere by now.”

My point, exactly.

“And besides,” he went on, “half the village drives trucks like that. I’ll get to them. First, I need to question you women. Separately.” He singled me out with a sour look. “You first. The rest of you, go wait in different corners of her yard, and do not speak to each other until I’m done with all of you.”

“It’s too cold to stand out here,” Haylee objected. “We’re not dressed for it.”

I wasn’t sure anyone could dress for this cold. Pressed against me, Naomi and Opal were trembling so much I couldn’t be certain whether or not I was shivering, too.

An ambulance chugged along the riverside trail and stopped behind Uncle Allen’s cruiser. Paramedics leaped out.

“Go tell them what to do, Doc,” Uncle Allen ordered.

“Don’t stay out in the cold any longer than you have to, Uncle Allen,” Dr. Wrinklesides retorted. Standing vigil, the doctor began to sing, a dirge from an opera, I guessed. He had a good voice, warm and deep.

He was bundled up, but Uncle Allen risked frostbite by wearing neither a hat nor a scarf.

I suggested, “Why don’t we all go inside, if we promise not to talk to each other?”

Uncle Allen must have been as cold as he looked. He agreed.

Sally and Tally were overjoyed at receiving company so early in the morning. I turned on the lights in my great room.

Naomi looked at my shoulder and gasped. “I’m sorry about your jacket, Willow. I hope my facial masque doesn’t stain.”

Opal, staring at my right sleeve, kicked her in the ankle. Naomi covered her mouth and turned around. “Your kitchen is lovely, Willow.” Her voice shook. It had to be obvious she was changing the subject.

The shoulder of my pale gray parka was smudged in green matching Naomi’s face.

The sleeve, however, had a reddish brown streak down it.

“Take off your coat, Willow,” Opal ordered. “We should rinse that makeup out right away. In cold water.” Shooting meaningful looks at her friends, she emphasized the last two words. They would know that cold water had the best chance of preventing blood from staining.

Unfortunately, Uncle Allen understood, too. “That blood proves she’s the killer. Give me your coat for evidence. Do you have a plastic bag—”

Edna corrected him. “It should be paper, for—”

Opal kicked her in the ankle, too. If this kept up, The Three Weird Mothers were going to be The Three Limping Mothers.

Edna raised her rounded little chin and stared at Uncle Allen. “Blood on her jacket doesn’t prove a thing. She found him.”

I hadn’t touched Mike. My dogs must have transferred his blood to me, but I wasn’t about to mention it. Defending myself would be less heart-wrenching than defending my two sweet, innocent dogs against charges of murder.

I folded my jacket into a plastic garbage bag and handed it to Uncle Allen.

“Your beautiful jacket,” Naomi wailed.

“I make more coats than I can wear,” I admitted. In addition to embroidering everything in sight, I suffered from sew-too-much syndrome.

Haylee and the mothers nodded their heads. All of us usually had more than one project on the go and made most of our own clothing.

Uncle Allen looked around unhappily. “There’s no space in here to isolate everyone.”

I didn’t want anyone to have to spend more time outside. We worked it out that Haylee would go upstairs to In Stitches, Opal would wait in my bedroom, Naomi would hide in the guest room, and Edna would barricade herself in the laundry room. It was an odd arrangement, but at least we were warm and farther from the sad scene at the foot of my backyard.

Uncle Allen sat at my dining table and swept aside a white linen placemat, hemstitched and embroidered tone on tone with sprigs of thyme. I perched on a chair across from him, with Sally and Tally curled around my feet. Uncle Allen searched through his wallet until he found a yellowed piece of paper. He fumbled to unfold it. “I’m to read you your rights.”

My rights? I’d seen such things on TV and in movies, but didn’t know for sure what it meant. Surely, he couldn’t be arresting me.

I told myself to calm down. Maybe Uncle Allen had to read me my rights simply to ask me questions. Besides, he was an unreliable witness.

He was unreliable at more than witnessing. He took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and put his glasses back on. “I can’t read the thing. You’ll have to read it to yourself.” He handed it to me.

Rights? These looked more like wrongs.

“Read it out loud,” he demanded.

Hadn’t he just said to read it to myself? “Carrots,” I said haltingly. “Onions, potatoes. Milk.” Helplessly, I looked up at him.

Not surprisingly, he was staring at me like I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. He grabbed the scrap of paper and pried at its edges with cracked and dirty nails. He shoved the paper back at me. “It’s still folded. You have to finish unfolding it.”

I managed to open the small square of paper. It was creased, and the handwriting was tiny, faded and blurred.

“Read that,” he directed. “So’s I can hear it.”

I tried. “You have the right to something something.”

“Remain silent,” he barked.

I clamped my mouth shut.

“Go on,” he said.

“You said to remain silent.”

He took a deep breath. “It says you have the right to remain silent. And . . . what else does it say?”

That I have the right to throw you out of my apartment,
I considered snapping, but I didn’t think he’d go for that. This afternoon, he had displayed a strong disregard for search warrants. “It says, ‘anything something something can something something something the right to an attorney something something—”

Edna popped out of the laundry room. “The right to an attorney! You can’t question us without our attorneys present!”

Haylee clattered down the stairs from my shop, and Opal and Naomi flew out of their assigned bedrooms. Barking, the dogs danced around, jumping on everyone except Naomi, whose green face apparently made them wary, and Uncle Allen, who looked dumbfounded at the incursion of noisy women and dogs into his interview.

“I’m only asking questions,” he said. “I need answers now, while everything is fresh in your minds.” His lower lip trembled. “Someone killed a young man I’ve known since he was a baby, and I would think that any good citizen would want to help me put that person behind bars.”

Opal, Naomi, and Edna examined each other’s faces, then mine and Haylee’s. They raised and lowered eyebrows, cocked heads, and puffed cheeks in a language that only they understood.

They must have reached a consensus. Opal said, “Of course we’ll help every way we can. C’mon girls, back to our hidey holes.” She seemed to be enjoying herself a little too much.

They scampered away, leaving me bewildered. But not Mirandized, which may have been their plan. If the attending policeman didn’t read us our rights properly, perhaps nothing could be used against us in court.

I didn’t have much to tell Uncle Allen, anyway. “Mike must have been riding his ATV on the trail. The noise woke me up. The dogs barked, and we went outside. Both of my gates were padlocked, but Mike was lying in my bushes. I called 911, and Dr. Wrinklesides came first, then you. While I was gone, my canoe paddle appeared beside Mike’s head. Then, when you arrived, we saw that pickup truck.” Uncle Allen made me recite it all about a hundred times, probably in hopes of tripping me up, then sent me upstairs to trade places with Haylee.

I didn’t bother closing the door at the top of the stairway. Despite the dogs panting and tap dancing beside me, I heard everything the other four women said, and it was all the same. Uncle Allen’s siren woke them up. They came to my place to find out what was wrong, and he knew the rest.

When he was finished, I went downstairs. The dogs got there first.

Opal and Edna kissed me good night.

Edna whispered to me, “Don’t worry about the blood on the jacket. He put it in a plastic bag. Plastic compromises organic compounds.” She was already thinking up ways my mythical defense attorney could have me acquitted?

Naomi hugged me.

Haylee, obviously having trouble controlling new giggles about the green smudge Naomi had just added to my sweatshirt, kept her head turned away from Uncle Allen.

I threw on another of the coats I’d made, a burgundy wool one. Before assembling it, I had embroidered the collar and cuffs with a simple burgundy design in varying widths of satin stitch. Maybe I had a tendency to embroider everything possible, but I did occasionally restrain myself.

All of us, except for two dejected dogs, who would have welcomed any excuse for an outing, went outside. Calling quiet good-byes, the women went uphill toward the street. Uncle Allen’s flashlight hadn’t become any brighter in the warmth of my apartment. I guessed Elderberry Bay’s law enforcement budget didn’t allow for an adequate supply of batteries. Shining my light ahead of us, I let him lean on my arm while we negotiated our way down the hill. The ambulance was gone.

I pointed toward the dark woods on the other side of the river. “What’s over there?”

“Trees.”

Helpful. “Who owns them?”

“It’s a state forest.”

“So Mike’s attacker could have crossed the river and escaped through the state forest?” And would be far away by now.

Uncle Allen let out an exasperated sigh. “No one can cross that river. They’d be crushed by shifting ice or fall in. They’d drown.”

It wouldn’t be easy to cross all that moving ice, but it was possible, especially for a desperate risk-taker like the person who had assaulted Mike. I asked, “What are you going to do about Mike’s ATV?”

“I’ll go over that in daylight. It’s close to dawn already.”

I held out my flashlight. “Take mine and go over it now.”

“That wouldn’t be enough. And don’t forget I need to go check up on every dark pickup truck in the county.”

Most of the time, Elderberry Bay was probably fine with only one police officer, but tonight he needed backup. I suggested, “The state police could send investigators and check up on everyone around here who owns dark pickup trucks. I think it was black.”

“It was too dark to be sure.”

He was right. I offered, “I could help you guard the crime scene until state troopers arrive.” They shouldn’t take long, should they?

“You are to stay away from the crime scene. Stay out of your backyard. Don’t touch anything on your way inside.”

I asked, “Do you have some of that yellow police tape in your cruiser?”

“I’ll bring some.” He shuffled to the ATV and held something up. “Got the key.”

Taking the key might keep someone from driving off on Mike’s ATV. It wouldn’t keep anyone from tampering with evidence.

Uncle Allen shut himself into his cruiser and started it. His horn began honking again, as if he couldn’t turn it off. With any luck, it would wear itself out like the siren, which was now only moaning. That cruiser needed some serious repairs. He backed slowly down the trail to a wide spot. Holding my breath for fear he would skid down the bank into the river, I watched him turn around. He headed uphill toward Lake Street. The cruiser’s barnyard sounds passed the front of In Stitches, then whooped off into the icy distance.

Relocking my gate, I couldn’t help glancing into the bushes where Mike had died. How had I missed seeing my canoe paddle underneath those bushes when the dogs and I first found Mike? I hadn’t let Sally and Tally out of my sight after we discovered him until I locked them in my apartment, so I knew they hadn’t moved it. I hadn’t, either. How had it suddenly appeared near Mike?

I shuddered from lack of sleep, creeping horror, and freezing temperatures. My quaint little Blueberry Cottage had become frightening and forbidding. Maybe I would have it bulldozed, after all. As if being chased by a million murderers, I ran up to the other gate, locked it, then dashed back to the apartment.

Cuddled together in Sally’s bed, the dogs barely lifted an eyelid.

Why did Mike Krawbach drive his ATV to my place and climb over my fence? Maybe he had attempted to torch the cottage, became giddy from gasoline fumes, tried to climb out of my yard, fell off my fence, and sustained terminal injuries. Or my canoe paddle failed as a pole vault.