Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery) (10 page)

V
icki was still holding my dogs. I asked Neffting to have a look at the two small holes in the earth.

First, he had trouble seeing them, and when he did, he made a sound between a laugh and a grunt. “Chief Smallwood thought she saw worms, so maybe you’ve found the front and back doors of an earthworm’s den.”

Was he serious?

Afraid he’d step on the holes and accidentally fill them, I stood in his way. “The gashes appear to have been made by something sharp and flat, like blades.”

Staying between him and the two tiny holes in the ground, I took my dogs’ leashes and let Vicki inspect the holes.

She moved her flashlight across them at several angles. Muttering that the photos might not turn out, she aimed her camera at them.

I pointed out that the holes were about eighteen inches from the packet of needles. “If someone crouched down to push the nippers into the soil, the package of needles could have fallen from his pocket.”

Neffting asked, “Why would someone stab your little nippers into the ground?”

I was tempted to suggest that they were attacking earthworms. “We were wondering how the loose end of thread would get so stuck that the thread could come unwound as someone walked. What if they
meant
to make a trail of thread? What if they tied one end to the curve between the blades and stuck the nippers down into the dirt like a big staple? As long as they didn’t tug on the thread, the nippers would stay in place, and they could make the sort of trail of thread we found.”

“But why would anyone do such a thing?” Neffting asked.

I admitted that I didn’t have a clue. “Your investigators could measure the thread that’s under my gate, and see if it’s long enough that the end could have been here. And while they’re at it, they could see if the thread was tied to the nippers or only tangled around them.”

By flashlight, Vicki’s grin was mischievous. “Are you feeling okay, Willow?”

I smiled back. “Probably. I guess that the person who carefully laid a trail of thread can’t be the person who pushed Isis into the river, though, because who would leave such an obvious trail to a crime?” I answered my own question. “Someone who didn’t plan the crime, but committed it on impulse. And then came back later to pick up the telltale thread.”

Vicki scowled. “At this point, we won’t rule anything out. But remind me, Willow, who investigates homicides?”

“Possible homicides,” Neffting corrected her.

She ignored him. “Who, Willow? Police or civilians?”

“Police,” I answered quickly. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep out of it. I’m only trying to figure out what could have happened with a bunch of sewing things and how they might tie into the . . .
possible
homicide.”

The way Neffting seemed to scrutinize me without looking at my eyes made me fidgety. Fortunately, holding the leashes of two curious dogs gave me the perfect excuse for not standing still.

Finally, Neffting shifted his attention from the side of my head. He radioed a request for a state trooper to come guard the end of the trail where we were.

The dogs and I went a few steps away while Neffting and Vicki put the packet of needles into an evidence envelope, left an orange marker where the needles had been, and covered the two gashes with another marker. Then they started unrolling yellow tape. When they were done stringing it between trees, the taped-off crime scene extended along the entire riverside trail from where we were near the bridge and included most of the park at the mouth of the river.

Neffting asked me, “Can you get us into the fire station to see if your thread, nippers, and needles might be there, and not scattered about the countryside?”

The man’s flare for drama and exaggeration might be a good trait in a detective. Or not.

“Sure.” Sally and Tally wouldn’t mind a longer walk.

Vicki reached for Sally-Forth’s leash. The dogs helped pull us up to Lake Street.

A state police cruiser pulled up beside the curb. A male trooper got out.

“Don’t go into the fire station without me,” Neffting ordered.

Vicki, the dogs, and I waited while he talked to the trooper, pointed him toward the crime scene down the hill near the bridge, and gave him what was left of the roll of tape.

After Neffting rejoined us, the three of us could almost have resembled friends walking two dogs, except that our slow pace was not really a companionable stroll. I wasn’t sure about the two officers, but I was still in evidence-searching mode, and Sally and Tally persisted in following possible clues.

“I wish I had a nose like a dog,” Vicki said.

I laughed. “Yours suits you better.”

Neffting ignored us.

In front of In Stitches, Vicki stopped and cocked her head. “Is that noise coming from your place, Willow?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“That’s not like you.” Her statement implied a question.

“It’s my guest, Brianna.”

Neffting eyed In Stitches, but didn’t say anything and continued walking down the street. Vicki, the dogs, and I caught up.

Several state police vehicles were now at the park, along with ominous-looking windowless vans. A noisy, smelly diesel generator supplied electricity to portable lights that haloed everything in mist. Investigators in white hooded coveralls swarmed lawns.

Maybe if the zombies caught sight of all this, they’d come back next fall, bring similar white coveralls, and stage an aliens-from-outer-space retreat.

We turned the corner. The fire station’s big garage doors were pulled down to the pavement. Clay and Haylee had locked them and the people-sized door. I pressed buttons on a keypad, opened the door, and switched on the lights. Tally-Ho and I led Vicki, Sally-Forth, and Detective Neffting through the garage, past the fire trucks, into the back room, and to the ledge where I’d last seen my thread nippers, spool of glow-in-the-dark thread, and pack of needles.

None of them were there.

We searched, including shining flashlights underneath fire trucks. The dogs seemed to think this was a wonderful game.

“And you’re not the one who moved them?” Neffting asked me.

“I left them here,” I repeated. “After we showed Edna her skirt in the bandstand, I went home for the dogs. I planned to come back here, pick up my things, and lock up again, but I got distracted.”

Neffting asked me, “Who else may have seen the things you say you left on that ledge?”

“Everyone who was in the fire station at the time could have seen them. Opal, Naomi, and a woman who calls herself ‘Madame Juliette’ used them when they sewed some of the thread to the skirt. Brianna, the thread distributor who is staying with me, was here, too, and so was a woman named Patricia who says she’s a sewing machine historian. The other people here besides Isis were Clay Fraser, Dare Drayton, and the zombie calling himself Floyd.”

“Anyone else?” Neffting prompted.

I couldn’t think of anyone else.

“You,” he said. “
You
were here.”

“Of course.”
Or I wouldn’t have been able to tell you about the others.
What an odd detective.

He underlined something in his notebook, snapped it closed, and led the way out.

Still wondering why he’d made such a pointless point about my not stating the obvious, I checked the door. It had locked itself behind us.

Striding ahead of us and my investigating dogs toward the park, Neffting asked me over one shoulder, “Does anyone lock the fire station when the trucks are out on a call, like a fire or other emergency?”

Vicki gave me a sour look. “They do when they remember to use their door closers. One garage door was standing open when I arrived on the scene tonight.”

I excused my fellow volunteer firefighters. “We often leave it open so that late-coming volunteers can run in and read the chalkboard for the location of the emergency. It speeds up our response to the emergency, but I’ll mention the subject at our next firefighters’ meeting.”

“You’d better,” Vicki said.

Neffting let us catch up. “So,” he concluded, “the fire station could have been left unlocked and unoccupied twice this evening. First, when you took that death con
trap
tion to the park, and second, during the water rescue call. Your sewing things could have disappeared either time.”

“The nippers and needles, yes,” I agreed. “But if the thread strung along the trail was from the spool I left here, it was taken during the first time the fire station was left unlocked.”

“How can you be certain?” he prodded.

Hadn’t I explained all of this? Was he trying to trip me up on minor details? “I saw the thread on the trail before I heard the screams, before I called for emergency help.” Picturing Isis trapped and being wheeled down the ramp toward the river, I scolded myself for not using the woman’s name. “Before I heard
Isis’s
screams.”

He returned to a different question. “Are you sure it was Isis who screamed and not someone else?”

I repeated that I hadn’t been able to figure out whose voice I’d heard. “But it was a woman. She yelled, ‘Don’t push me!’ And Isis was the one stuck in the wheeled—” I fumbled for a word other than “contraption.”

Neffting had no such qualms. He supplied, “Death con
trap
tion.” He licked his lips as if savoring the phrase he’d coined for our once-lovely work of art.

Thanks to the portable lights, the bandstand in the park was even more brightly lit than when the skirt had been flashing its lights and playing the “Wedding March.”

It was all tragic and unnecessary. Why had Isis clambered into that skirt? Had someone known she was going to wear it? Had that person come along to “help”? Or had the person arrived from the trail, found Isis wearing the skirt, and taken advantage of the situation?

Floyd, so afraid of Isis’s curses that he put a permanent end to them?

I expected Neffting and Vicki to join the investigators in the park, but they continued up the street with the dogs and me.

M
aybe Vicki was merely enjoying walking the dogs, but why did Neffting accompany us up Lake Street instead of joining the investigation in the park? He made me nervous.

He stayed with us all the way to the sidewalk in front of In Stitches, then asked me, “This Brianna that you said is playing the music that we can hear all the way out here—didn’t you tell us she sold you thread like we found under your gate? And you sold it to others? Did she still have some after you bought it?”

I nodded.

Vicki asked, “Could she have left thread along the trail
before
you saw the skulker?”

And the thread had nothing to do with Isis’s murder? Proving that my sewing supplies were not connected to a murder might be a good thing.

“Anyone could have,” I answered. “I didn’t notice that spool on the floor of the bandstand when we took that skirt there, but I could have missed it.” And the willow wands, too? “About a half hour later, when I went home for the dogs, the night was so foggy I could barely see where I was going, and someone could have been unwinding thread or doing nearly anything else on the trail ahead of me. I doubt that it would have been Brianna, though. I heard her voice as soon as I went into my apartment.”

Neffting stood with his head tilted to one side, as if waiting for something.

“Want to come inside?” I offered. “If Brianna’s still awake, you can talk to her.”

Vicki laughed. “How could she sleep with all that noise?”

I groaned. “She had it on all day while she napped.”

Vicki asked, “As loud as that?”

“Almost. It’s a shock. The only other guest I’ve ever hosted was perfect.”

Neffting wasn’t looking at Vicki. She shot me a scowl.

Grinning at her, I amended my praise to, “
Nearly
perfect. I didn’t expect her, either.”

Vicki looked pained. Maybe it wasn’t fair to remind her of the rough time she’d had that night.

Ordinarily, I would have unleashed the dogs the moment the door of In Stitches closed behind us, but we were heading for my apartment, where Brianna, who seemed frightened of the little darlings, could be wandering around. As always, Vicki was observant. Taking her cue from the way I hung on to Tally’s leash, she didn’t let go of Sally’s.

I turned on enough lights for us to negotiate the aisles of In Stitches. Neffting seemed to memorize everything. He even managed to zero in on my quickly arranged display of glow-in-the-dark thread. “Any spools missing?” he asked.

I did a quick count. Nineteen. “No.”

He demanded, “How can you be sure?”

I dragged Tally to my desk in the dogs’ pen, fished out my records, and showed that I’d bought thirty-six spools and had sold seventeen, including the one I’d sold to myself and taken to the fire station, which left nineteen in my inventory.

Neffting thanked me and wrote in his notebook.

What did he write?
“
Willow told the truth about at least one thing”
?

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go talk to this Brianna person.”

I opened the apartment door. We went downstairs, which wasn’t easy with two dogs, one police chief, and one state police detective all vying to be first.

We stopped at the foot of the stairs. I tightened my hand on Tally’s leash. Vicki handed me Sally’s. Both dogs wagged their tails happily.

Looking half awake and wearing a rumpled pink sweat suit, Brianna sat slumped on my couch with the cordless phone that was usually in the guest room next to her ear. The guest suite door was open, and music blasted from her room. “Oops, gotta go,” she hollered into the phone. “Miss you.” She made kissy noises, clicked the phone off, set it on an end table, rose slowly, and folded her arms. Her expression was stony and closed.

I shut the guest suite door so we could hear each other over her music, then introduced her to Detective Neffting and Chief Smallwood. Was it my imagination, or did Neffting become still and watchful when I said Brianna’s last name was Shrevedale?

Brianna challenged, “You officers are here without a search warrant?”

I answered for them. “They’re here with my permission, and they’re not searching for anything. Can you tell them who all we sold your glow-in-the-dark thread to?”

“Why?”

I said in a mild voice. “Long story.” Maybe I was a little abrupt.

“I sold a bunch of it to you.” Her tone was as flat as usual, but her mouth twisted scornfully, undoubtedly showing the officers what she thought of me. “
You
sold it to the others.”

Neffting asked, “Do you remember who she sold it to?”

“Two guys made up like zombies.”

“Floyd and Lenny,” I translated for the officers. I asked Brianna, “Anyone else?”

“A bunch of women. How would I know who they were? That’s your job.”

I listed the women I could remember and added, “I’ll get their last names for you tomorrow.”

Neffting cleared his throat. “We can find that out.” He turned back to Brianna. “Did you see or hear anything unusual tonight?”

Brianna lifted one shoulder in a gesture of dismissal. “No. Only . . .” She pointed at me. “. . .
she
wasn’t here, but maybe that’s common. I don’t know when and where she goes.”

Vicki asked her, “Did you see anyone in Willow’s backyard or down on the trail?”

“No. I was in my room until a few minutes ago. I was on the phone.”

Neffting asked her mildly, “Did you go outside at all?”

She gave him the look that bullies give kids on playgrounds. “No. Didn’t you hear what I said? I was in
that
room.” She made a speedy backhand gesture toward the door I’d shut.

Vicki and Detective Neffting studied her as if wondering why she was showing so much attitude.

I pointed to the dishes on the kitchen counter, which I’d left tidy after our supper. “You must have come out of your room long enough to fix yourself a snack.”

“So? Is eating a crime? It was dark outside. How would I see anyone out there?”

Vicki pointed out, “You said you’d been in your room the whole time until a few minutes ago.”

Brianna let out an exasperated sigh. “All but what, five minutes? And I’ve been on the phone ever since I came back from helping
her
at the fire station.” She stared boldly at Detective Neffting. “You can check her phone records.”

What a convenient alibi, I thought. And glib, too, as if she’d rehearsed it. And would it hurt her to call me “Willow” instead of “she”?

My phone records might show that the phone had been in constant use, but that wouldn’t prove that Brianna had actually been inside or on the phone.

Vicki must have been thinking similar things. “Some people take cordless phones outside while they’re talking.”

Brianna said, “Well, I’m not
some
people, and I didn’t. I never stepped foot outside. You got that?”

Neffting took out his notebook and wrote.

Brianna glared at him. “Listen here, you. I know my rights. You can’t come barging in here asking me questions.”

I held up both hands in a “halt” gesture. The loops on the dogs’ leashes slid down toward my elbow. “Brianna, I invited them in, and you’re right that you don’t have to answer their questions, but someone drowned tonight, and they’d like to know if you saw anyone outside. That’s all. No need to get on the defens—”

Brianna stared boldly at me. “Did you get yourself involved in
another
murder?”

Vicki began, “‘Involved’ isn’t quite the right word—”

A smirk played around Brianna’s mouth. “Yeah, well, lots of people might like to know what the right word is.”

Vicki asked Brianna, “Are you sure you didn’t go outside and . . . maybe move some thread around?”

Brianna made an outraged face. “Why would I do that? And why are you asking me all these stupid questions? I was on the phone. Got that? On the
phone
.”

What
I
got was that her repetition about being on the phone sounded more and more like a preplanned alibi. And I’d only said that someone had drowned. Why had Brianna immediately labeled the death a murder? Neffting and Vicki had avoided calling it that in my hearing.

Vicki stared at the sliding glass door to the patio. “Willow, I thought you always kept that door closed so your animals wouldn’t get out.”

As Vicki had learned, the dogs could wedge the door open with their noses. “I do.” I frowned at the teeny gap between the door and the jamb. “I’m sure I closed it and locked it when I went out around nine forty.” I started toward the door for a closer look.

Vicki yelped, “Don’t touch that, Willow. We’ll have to fingerprint it.”

Brianna paled. “Well, maybe I did open it, but I just stuck my head out to see if it was raining. My boyfriend asked me what the weather was like. I didn’t go out.” She flicked a challenging glance at me. “That door was already unlocked.”

Vicki asked me, “You say you locked it?”

I nodded.

Brianna sneered. “If she locked it, then maybe someone else came in after she went out. One of her friends. Or an intruder.”

She embellished the last word with sarcasm. Trying to make Neffting and Vicki doubt me and suspect me of anything and everything, including murder?

Vicki persisted. “Who else has a key, Willow?”

“No one, as far as I know, besides Brianna. I lent one to her.” I hoped Brianna heard my tiny emphasis on the word “lent.”

Neffting asked me, “May I borrow a knife?”

What a strange request from a detective. I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally managed, “What kind of knife?”

“A dinner knife. Or a fork.” He gestured at my patio door. “I don’t want anyone touching that door, but I also don’t want to leave it open tonight.”

I quickly got him a knife
and
a fork. With the knife barely touching the door and the lever, he closed the door and locked it. “I’ll get a fingerprint guy to have a look at that first thing in the morning to check for any intruders. Meanwhile, keep everyone out of your backyard tonight.”

Turning to put the knife and fork away, I kicked one of the clogs I kept underneath a bench by the door. My animals had been known to move those clogs, but Sally and Tally had been on leashes ever since we came inside, and the kittens were still shut inside the master suite.

I squatted and picked up one of the clogs. Damp earth filled part of the treads.

I hadn’t worn those shoes for at least a week.