Dire Threads (12 page)

“Yep, that’s it. He’s been gone ever since.”

Dejected, I tried one last question. “Do you know anyone around here who drives a black pickup truck?”

I could see him struggling not to laugh. “Just about everyone. It’s easier to think of who doesn’t. That contractor guy, Clay Fraser, for one, with his red truck. And Dawn Langford drives a red Valiant. I sold it to her. Sure do miss it.” He looked me straight in the eye. “I stopped driving ten years ago. If I can’t walk where I need to go, I can always find some kind soul to take me.”

Babbling that he could always count on me for a ride, I said my good-byes and went home, where I set the alarm for eleven forty-five and took a much-needed nap.

At five minutes to midnight, the dogs and I, all of us yawning, left In Stitches. Haylee’s shop was dark. Wearing all black, she slipped out her front door and joined us. We didn’t talk until we were in the car and I had steered quietly away from the shops on Lake Street.

Haylee directed me south of the village. “What did you learn tonight?”

“Uncle Allen hasn’t even called the state police for help,” I reported, disgusted. “And Dr. Wrinklesides doesn’t hear well, so Uncle Allen could have made up Mike’s last words.”

“No wonder he keeps changing them.”

“My neighbors at the General Store didn’t hear anything, except maybe that noisy ATV, before Uncle Allen’s siren. Sam didn’t hear anything.” I drove and drove. “How far away is it?” I asked.

“About ten miles from Elderberry Bay.”

“How could the zoning commissioner have lived so far away?”

“Elderberry Bay is the closest village, so our political boundaries include his farm and all the others out this way.”

“And Uncle Allen’s jurisdiction stretches all the way out here?”

“It should. There’s Mike’s driveway.”

I slowed.

Haylee leaned forward. “I don’t see any police tape or vehicles, but keep going.” She had me drive down a dirt road running along the east side of his acreage. “Let’s make certain no one’s parked on the track cutting in from this road, either.”

No one was. I stopped the car. “Shall we go back to the driveway?”

“Can you drive on this track without getting stuck?”

“Probably, since the ground is frozen. My tires shouldn’t leave prints, either.” I eased the car onto the track. The dogs must have sensed my nervous excitement. They sat up on the backseat and panted.

I found a place to park out of sight of the road.

Haylee told me, “Mike said people use this spot as a lovers’ lane. He liked to hide in the woods and scare them by firing a rifle at the trees above them.”

“I wonder if he ever ‘accidentally’ hit one of their cars.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

We got out and leashed the dogs. Haylee shined a pocket-sized flashlight at the ground. Dogs straining at their leashes, we followed the trail. It emerged from the woods, then ran between the woods and a south-facing hill where tiny grapevines inched toward wires strung between posts. Mike’s straggling, struggling vineyard.

The trail branched off, part of it staying alongside the vineyard. Haylee pointed at the section that turned into the woods. “We’re getting close,” she whispered.

The woods ended close to Mike’s back porch. She snapped off her light.

There was no sign of yellow police tape.

And Mike’s back door was standing wide open.

11

I
WHISPERED, “LET’S GO HOME.” THE DOGS didn’t bark or growl, but anyone inside Mike’s house might hear their panting or the jingling of their collars and tags.

Haylee leaned forward in that stubborn stance I remembered from when we went to our office after midnight to sort through Jasper’s files. “Let’s watch and listen.”

We did, for agonizing minutes. The dogs lay down as if planning to snooze. Holding up a hand to signal we should stay behind, Haylee left us. Tally wanted to go with her, but I kept a firm grip on his leash. Bent over out of sight of windows, Haylee crept to the front of the house, turned the corner, and disappeared. Tally whimpered. I knelt and hugged both dogs.

Haylee reappeared around the other side of the house, ran back to us, and spoke in a normal voice. “There’s no sign of anyone or any vehicles in his driveway, either, except Mike’s truck.”

“Maybe we should call Uncle Allen.”

“To do what?”

I gestured at the back door. “Check out why this door is open.”

“And how would we explain seeing it?”

She had me.

“I’m going in,” she said. “You and the dogs can warn me if . . .” Without waiting for my reply, she was gone, through that open doorway. I had dressed warmly, but shivered, anyway.

She was back in minutes. She held up her hands. “I kept my gloves on and didn’t move a thing. But someone has obviously searched the place.”

“Uncle Allen?”

“This is more like a ransacking. But guess what?”

I was afraid she’d say she’d found a body. “What?” I faltered.

“Whoever was searching seemed most interested in Mike’s filing cabinet. Follow the money! That’s something we can do.” She didn’t have to crow about it. “Let’s go.”

I wanted to take the dogs inside with us but didn’t know what sort of ruckus they might cause. I tied them to a clothes pole and followed Haylee inside. Despite the open door, the house was warm. The furnace fan whined like it was straining to keep up with the cold air blowing in the back door.

Old bank books were heaped on the rug in Mike’s office. Haylee laid the flashlight on the edge of Mike’s desk chair. We sat on the floor next to it. Clumsy with our gloves on, straining to see in the gloom, we paged through bank books.

I found a deposit for almost two hundred thousand dollars about a year ago. Pulse pounding, I showed it to Haylee. “What crop might he have been selling in December?”

“Maybe he was paid late for it, whatever it was. But I got the definite impression he hadn’t harvested anything for ten or so years, since he decided to switch to growing grapes.”

“An inheritance?” I guessed.

“Maybe.”

We checked more bank books. Most of the time, Mike’s income had been small, a few deposits here and there, none of them very large. Outside, my dogs grunted and playgrowled while their collars clinked and clashed. They were having one of their usual tussles. I went out to be sure they weren’t tangled in their leashes. They were fine. I patted them and told them we’d be finished soon and to lie still and stay. They flopped down, panting, tongues lolling, tired and happy, so I reluctantly went back into Mike’s silent house.

“Pay dirt,” Haylee exclaimed. “Well, sort of. Ten years before that big deposit you found, Mike made an earlier one, about a hundred thousand dollars. In December, also.”

We could find only two years of banking history before that. Those years, he had made more or less regular deposits during the harvest season and had not deposited much during the rest of the year. “Typical for farming,” Haylee said.

“When did his parents die?” I asked.

She gazed off into the distance. “They died in a plane crash on their way home from a vacation, shortly before these bank books started, about two years before that first large deposit. Those amounts could have been from inheritances, if the wills took a long time to settle.”

“Did he have other property that he might have sold?”

“Not that I know of, and if he had information like that, it’s gone.” She picked up a folder labeled
Deeds
. It was empty. So was one called
Sales
.

I flipped through one of the recent bank books. “Uncle Allen said he had debts and mortgages, but I don’t see any regular repayments, do you?”

Haylee pondered another bank book. “None. Do you suppose he received government grants or subsidies?”

Maybe that explained the two large deposits.

Outside, Tally whimpered, the sound he made when he was separated from me for too long. I heard a vehicle out on the highway. “We’d better go,” I urged.

Haylee jumped up. “I don’t want to be found in this mess.”

We carefully tiptoed over scattered papers and outside to the dogs, waiting where I’d told them to. Of course they had to announce to the entire countryside that we were with them again.

I shushed them, detached their leashes from Mike’s clothes pole, and we all hurried back through the woodland trail. I half expected to find Uncle Allen, perhaps accompanied by the entire Erie detachment of the Pennsylvania State Police, waiting for us beside my car. No one was there.

We scrambled into the car. I sped down Mike’s lane, back to the dirt road, and finally back to Shore Road. Haylee reminded me, “We solved a crime before with the help of financial records. We can do it again.”

I pointed out, “But that crime
was
a financial one . . .”

She grinned. “Yeah, and we investigated the criminal and the extent of his crimes that time, not the victim.”

“It complicates things, doesn’t it, not knowing who the villain is?”

“Sure does.”

I parked the car where it had been before the night’s excursion. Silently, we tiptoed up the hill to our shops and waved good-bye to each other.

Back in our apartment, exhaustion carried me off while the dogs were still stomping their beds into nests.

When we went out to the front yard in the morning, I was careful not to peer under bushes. If the unlucky person who spotted a murder victim was going to be accused of doing the foul deed, I would have to work hard at never finding another one.

For all I knew, though, victims could be piling up in my backyard, giving a whole new meaning to the words “crime scene” on the yellow plastic tape woven through my fence.

I took the dogs inside, closed them into the apartment, and set out cookies and cider. The phone rang. I pounced on it. “I’ve got good news for you,” Trooper Smallwood said in her gentle, girlish voice. “We’ve convinced Detective DeGlazier to accept our assistance.”

Uncle Allen was a detective? Trooper Smallwood took my address and ended the call.

To inspire potential customers, I had embroidered lots of garments to wear in my store. Today’s was a fleece vest featuring an embroidered spray of elderberries in honor of Elderberry Bay. The morning’s students admired the design, one of my computerized originals, of course. They practically jumped up and down with excitement when I showed them the range of commercial designs they could try during the lesson, and if they ever wanted to, could buy. Several had great difficulty deciding whether to embroider something cute for a grandchild or sophisticated for themselves. Many personalized their motifs with initials or names.

While they worked, I was gratified to see several investigators, wearing baggy coveralls over their clothing, in my backyard with Uncle Allen.

I told my students to create a sewing project using the designs they’d stitched and to bring their work to the next day’s class. In hopes of encouraging more of them to purchase embroidery machines, I handed out a list of websites where they could shop for more designs, including mine, of course, plus a few others offering free designs. I also asked them to bring fleece scarves to tomorrow’s class, and we’d embellish them with embroidery.

Rosemary clapped her hands. “We’ll make the scarves ourselves.”

Discussing their projects, they trooped off to Pier 42. I took the dogs outside for a leashed romp through the front yard, then we went downstairs to the kitchen, where we ate lunch and I listened for my chimes.

The afternoon class went even better than the morning’s. The woman who had bought a sewing machine on Tuesday gleefully purchased the embroidery attachment for it. The desire to compete flared in several pairs of eyes, and I saw more sales in my immediate future.

A uniformed state trooper strode past my front door toward The Ironmonger. Without slowing, she seemed to take in every detail of In Stitches, inside and out. I waved, but she kept moving.

The Threadville tour bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for an hour after the afternoon class ended, and its passengers shopped while they waited. I sat down at my computer and loaded the design I’d made showing the man in the camouflage jacket and orange neon hat disappearing between trees. For the stumpwork look I wanted to achieve, I created steps in the software similar to the process of appliquéing with an embroidery machine.

I kept having to stop my work on the design for the best of reasons—customers. Chattering, they bought stabilizer, felt, and more thread than they could possibly use in a year. Whenever they didn’t need me, I went back to my embroidery.

I filled a bobbin with dark nylon lingerie thread and inserted it. I had learned through trial and horrendous error to try out new designs before stitching them on expensive fabrics. Like every fabriholic, I had a stash that kept growing no matter how many projects I concocted that might contribute to using it up. Working and living across the street from Haylee’s aptly named store didn’t help. I unearthed a large scrap similar to the linen I planned to use for the commissioned wall hanging. I tightened the remnant with stabilizer in my largest hoop, one I could actually jump through, and fastened the hoop to the embroidery machine.

My first instruction to the embroidery machine had it baste around the shape of the man and several trees near him. The machine stopped, leaving stitches that showed me where the puffy foam was supposed to go. I placed gray foam on the hooped linen and restarted the machine. It obediently tacked the foam down, perforated around the edges of the man and the trees, and stopped again for me to tear off excess foam.

Now I was ready to stitch the actual design. As always, I took the thread colors I needed from my sales display. Since I never put partially used spools back where customers might accidentally purchase them, my personal supply kept growing.

I threaded the design’s first color, olive green, and started the embroidery machine. First, it stitched the underlay, a simple pattern that held the fabric in place and prevented it from being distorted by the smaller, denser stitches of the actual design. Then it did the fun part, machine embroidery stitches more intricate than anything our great grandmothers ever dreamed of. It stopped for me to change colors, then punched away at the design again. The picture began to come alive, raised portions and all.