Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery)

PRAISE FOR THE THREADVILLE MYSTERIES

Thread and Buried

“This is a great story that I could not put down and I look forward to more crime-solving in the next book in this charmingly appealing series.”

—
Dru’s Book Musings

“I have loved each and every trip to Threadville. Bolin just keeps getting better and better at keeping us In Stitches. This time she pulls out the stops with a village legend that gives us a mystery tangled in another mystery and then some.”

—
Escape With Dollycas

Threaded for Trouble

“A wonderful amateur sleuth that
showcases the close relationships between the small village shop owners who watch out for one another as friends and as a smart business model . . . The heroine’s actions make for an enjoyable whodunit.”

—
The Mystery Gazette

“Willow is smart, witty, and charismatic, and the amusing banter between her and her group of friends will keep you in stitches.”

—
Two Lips Reviews

“Filled with all the elements of a perfect cozy and a perfect escape.”

—
Escape With Dollycas

Dire Threads

“With a winning cast of characters, Bolin should be able to stitch together quite a series for Willow and her fellow shopkeepers.”

—
Library Journal

“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, national bestselling author of the Cheese Shop Mysteries

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

—Krista Davis,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Domestic Diva Mysteries

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

—Mary Jane Maffini, national bestselling author of the Charlotte Adams Mysteries

“[A] winner right from the beginning. With a vast cast of personable, likable characters populating a lively, mesmerizing story line, Bolin keeps the action moving along and the humor bubbling as well. This will certainly be a great, fun series to keep your eye out for.”

—
Fresh Fiction

“
Dire Threads
has everything a cozy lover wants in a read! A craftily clever mystery, an engaging amateur sleuth who leaves you wanting more, a cast of memorable secondary characters, the dogs, the tips, and of course . . . a really fun read.”

—
Mystery Maven Canada

“A must read for those who love mysteries with a ‘craft’ theme . . . [A] lighthearted mystery full of eccentric women who have a great time turning their hobbies into a livelihood.”

—
The Merchant of Menace

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Janet Bolin

DIRE THREADS

THREADED FOR TROUBLE

THREAD AND BURIED

NIGHT OF THE LIVING THREAD

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

NIGHT OF THE LIVING THREAD

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

Copyright © 2014 by Janet Bolin.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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

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

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-62377-0

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / June 2014

Cover art by Robin Moline.

Cover design by Annette Fiore DeFex.

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.

To everyone who lovingly creates one-of-a-kind wedding gowns for themselves, their friends, or their family members

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Welcome back to Threadville again, and thank you for returning!

Many thanks to Krista Davis and Daryl Wood Gerber, who also writes as Avery Aames, for the friendship and support dating all the way back to when all three of us were unpublished but hopeful—and stubborn. Oops, I mean
determined
. Special thanks to Daryl, the punning title guru, who came up with the title
Night of the Living Thread
. And thanks to all my mystery writer friends. You are some of the most helpful people around.

Again, many thanks to my friend Sergeant Michael Boothby, Toronto Police (retired), for his excellent comments and suggestions. I’m afraid that my characters do not always follow Mike’s advice . . .

Jessica Faust of BookEnds, LLC, continues to be my dream agent.

Berkley Prime Crime is a wonderful publisher. Thanks especially to my editor, Faith Black, and to the department that comes up with cover ideas. Robin Moline’s paintings of Threadville are fabulous. If I didn’t already “live” in Threadville—I often feel I do, anyway—I’d want to dive into her paintings.

Many members of the Berkley Prime Crime team help turn my manuscripts into books and put them onto the shelves of stores and libraries, and I thank all of them. Annette Fiore DeFex created the cover design, and Tiffany Estreicher designed the interior text.

Thanks to Threadologist Gail Heller Robertson for an entertaining and educational day with thread.

I had a wonderful time at needlework retreats at Brentwood on the Beach, hosted by the incomparable Joan and Peter Karsten. I loved the camaraderie of the other attendees. We laughed a lot. It was sort of like being a Threadville tourist. Besides, the other “tourists” were fabulous listeners to my readings.

I also greatly enjoyed reading at the Bony Blithe Gun Club & Quilting Bee Gala Award Reception and at the Scene of the Crime Mystery Festival, where they also let me babble about one of my favorite subjects, writing. Thank you to the organizers of both of those events.

Thanks to all of my friends, the new ones I’ve made during this writing and publishing journey, and those who have stuck by me through all my years of being stubborn. I mean determined.

Most of all, many thanks to my readers for returning with me to Threadville. Welcome back.

“G
ord?” A woman’s heartfelt plea fluted through the misty night.

Who was calling Threadville’s favorite doctor in that flirtatious tone? In less than a week, Gord was marrying Edna.

That voice was not Edna’s.

Dropping to a crouch behind the branches of a weeping willow, I put my arms around my two dogs, a brother-and-sister pair who were part border collie. Taking their cues from me, they remained silent, but they tensed against me.

“Gord!” The second plea was still bell-like, but now it was a command.

Mist drifted away, and the fairy lights in the gazebo-like bandstand on the hill above us were bright enough for me to see the woman on the riverbank.

I had never met her, but I knew who she was. She called herself Isis. Like many others, she was in Elderberry Bay for the Threadville Get Ready for Halloween Craft Fair. Halloween was just over four weeks away, and Threadville tourists and customers were keen to create costumes and decorations.

Isis bound books by hand, books she titled
The New Book of the Dead
, which, she claimed, tied her craft to Halloween. To me, it seemed like a bit of a stretch.

Was Isis in costume? Despite the evening’s foggy chill, she wore a sleeveless white gown with a gold cord tied around the empire waistline. She raised both hands, palms up, toward the sky. I squinted, but the fog kept me from figuring out what those small objects on her palms were.

I could have gone closer and introduced myself as Willow, one of the craft fair organizers, and also the owner of In Stitches, Threadville’s machine embroidery boutique. However, I was curious about Isis’s weird behavior. Okay, maybe I was just plain snoopy. I stayed hidden with my dogs, where we could watch without being seen.

Isis glided down the concrete boat launch ramp until water had to be lapping at the toes of her sandals. She stooped, placed the object from her right hand on the surface of the river, and intoned, “When your time comes, you will go to the afterlife I have chosen for you. I will join you there, eventually.” Then she raised her voice and called out in raspy, doom-filled tones, “Edna!”

As far as I could tell in the wispy mist, Edna was nowhere near. I held my breath. Quivering in my embrace, my dogs stared toward Isis.

She thrust the object from her left hand onto the water, pushed it down, and held it underwater. “Go,” she ordered, “to the deepest, darkest river! Go to the bowels of the Earth. Fall apart. Scatter. Go where you will never rise!”

The fog thickened, hiding Isis and enveloping the dogs and me in a cold gray cocoon that would keep Isis from seeing us. I shuddered. The little scene had turned nasty.

Hanging on to their leashes, I let the dogs pull me away from Isis and toward the dark trail that would take us along the river to our hillside apartment underneath In Stitches.

Isis’s voice rang out again. “Who’s there?”

I thought Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho might bark and give us away, but they only lowered their plume-like tails and increased their pace. No one answered Isis, but I heard footsteps, as if someone were running up the wooden access ramp leading to the bandstand, up the hill from me. I stopped the dogs and turned around. Distorted in the foggy glow, an elongated shadow flew through the mist in the bandstand. Isis, or someone else?

Farther away, down toward the beach, the fog parted, revealing a figure walking with a jerky gait, his arms held stiffly in front of his body, wrists bent, and palms down. He shambled up the hill toward where I’d seen Isis. He wore a dark suit with a 1930s silhouette, broad at the shoulders, narrow at the waist and hips, and lots of fabric in the pant legs. I couldn’t make out details of his black hair or whiter-than-white face, other than he appeared to have a large wound near his chin.

For the past couple of days, zombies had been booking into the Elderberry Bay Lodge for what they called a zombie retreat.

The zombies were . . . unusual.

They weren’t half as creepy as Isis.

Seeming totally freaked out, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho tugged me to our apartment underneath my shop. The building was on a steep slope, so the apartment was mostly aboveground.

I gave the dogs extra treats, praised them, and, with Sally’s help, gave my half-grown black-and-white tuxedo kittens, Mustache and Bow-Tie, an outing in the backyard. Sally had taught the kittens from an early age to stay close to her when outside. She supervised them while they did their duties, and then herded them to the patio door.

For once, I was too worried to relax, wind down, and play with my four pets.

Isis had just threatened Edna, who was one of my favorite people.

And Isis was Edna’s houseguest.