Seven Threadly Sins (19 page)

I corrected myself. “Somebody
else
who stinks.”

She turned the steering wheel and heaved a huge sigh. “I’m not likely to smell anything
but
skunk for a long time. But you both told me you smelled the skunk after you heard the head-banging. A long time after, if you took time to walk the dogs home. I’m guessing the attacker was long gone by the time the skunk delivered his message.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Poor Paula. That skunk somehow went into the carriage house and added insult to injury.”

Vicki pulled up in front of In Stitches. “There are holes in that building big enough for skunks, and who knows what else, to get in. Maybe Paula was blocking the way to its den.” She shuddered. “That woman got the worst of everything tonight.” She turned to look at me. “I guess I’d better open that door for you, Willow, or you’ll be riding around with me all night.”

“That’d be okay,” I teased, “if you opened all the windows and drove very fast. The circulation to my feet stopped about two blocks ago.”

But she let me out, and Haylee was able to open her own door. Vicki drove off, and Haylee and I said good night and headed for our apartments.

Not wanting to odorize In Stitches any more than I had to, I went around to the patio and let my animals out. All four of them thought that sniffing me was more intriguing than doing their duties, and I was beginning to worry that Tally-Ho might mistake my legs for a fire hydrant that had been anointed by a skunk, but he finally wandered off to water a bush, instead. All of them followed me inside with more eagerness than usual.

Maybe my pets would love me more and follow me everywhere if I wore skunk cologne all the time.

I stripped, showered for a very long time with lots of soap and shampoo, then threw my outfit into the washer.
It was about three when I was finally ready to crawl into bed. Except for my hair, I wasn’t too overly skunky. I checked my phone. A text had come in when I was on the line with the dispatcher, and in the excitement in the carriage house and afterward, I hadn’t noticed it.

Clay had asked me to text him when I got home.

It was late, but I did, and I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear back from him until the first thing in the morning. He called while my animals and I were eating breakfast. “Any chance of getting together this evening after work?” he asked.

I
still smell like skunk.

“Sure,” I said.
Maybe I could take three more showers before meeting him . . .

“It’s supposed to be warm. How about if I bring a picnic we can eat on the beach? Your dogs can join us.”

We’d be outside in the fresh air, and I could try to keep him away from me, and upwind.
“That sounds great. What should I bring?”

“The dogs. Meet you at one of those tables at the west end of the swimming beach?”

“Near the cottage colony?”

“That’s it. I can park close to the beach with my truckload of picnic. How does seven sound?”

Truckload? Who else was coming?
“Great.”

“See you then.” His voice held its usual warmth. After we disconnected, I didn’t know whether to dance and sing in anticipation, or worry that he had invited a crowd, including Loretta.

I looked down at my dogs. Their beautiful brown eyes brimmed over with adoration. “Maybe I can blame you
two for the skunky smells.”
Nice way to reward the darlings for their unconditional love.
They wagged their tails.

Maybe I didn’t stink. I pulled a hank of my hair to my nose and took a deep breath.

I did stink.

Maybe no one would notice. I took the dogs and the morning’s coffee, cider, and cookies upstairs. I unlocked the front door of In Stitches, turned the embroidered
Come Back Later
sign in my glass front door to
Welcome
, and sat down at my computer
.

Georgina was the first of the morning class to enter In Stitches. “I smell skunk,” she said.

So much for no one noticing. The day—and the evening—should be fun.

Georgina glanced past me to the dogs in their pen. “What did you two get into?”

They wagged their tails, and I had to confess that I was the one who had been too close to a skunk. Other women came in and asked questions, but I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t think Vicki would want me telling last night’s story. I felt a brief moment of sympathy for Paula, and what she must have suffered with that stabilizer stuck to her skin while a skunk gave her the full force of his opinion of her.

Had Antonio’s killer attacked Paula? If so, it was no wonder that she’d looked terrified.

Had the killer returned later to do something even more drastic to Paula and been stopped by a militant fur ball? And then we’d come along and saved her from the killer?

Kent? And did he still reek? I imagined him staying away from TADAM today because he couldn’t rid himself of the smell.

“Wash your hair in tomato juice,” Rosemary suggested.

Georgina objected, “That might turn it red. Take a bath in hydrogen peroxide mixed with baking soda.”

Another woman piped up. “That would be too corrosive. I’ve heard that vinegar works.”

I laughed. “I can think of better ways of getting pickled.”
Like this evening, on the beach with Clay and a bottle of wine . . .

Again, we worked on upside-down crewel work. I wasn’t watching what Rosemary was doing, so I didn’t see her project until she took her hoop off her machine, turned it over, and shouted, “Ta-da!”

Everyone in the store laughed, and I had to, also. Using thick thread with hairs wisping from it in the bobbin, she had embroidered a darling and rather fuzzy skunk. “I made use of the fragrance permeating your shop,” she explained.

During lunchtime, word must have gone around Pier 42 that embroidering skunk designs would be appropriate at In Stitches. At the afternoon workshop, three more women chuckled over what they insisted on calling “scratch and sniff” embroidery motifs.

After school was over for the day, Ashley came in. Her smile was the widest I’d seen on her face in a long time. “Skunk!” she shouted. “Did the dogs get sprayed, Willow?”

“Not the dogs,” I said. “But I went too close to where a skunk had recently been.”

Ashley made an exaggeratedly pouty face. “I have some bad news for you. I’ve decided I don’t want to go to TADAM. I’ll probably go away to college, so I won’t be able to keep working here after next summer.”

“I’ll miss you, but I really don’t think TADAM has much to offer you.”

“And there’s good news.” She clapped her hands. “My dad was offered a job, and it’s nearby. We won’t have to move.” She hopped around in a little dance, and so did everyone else in the store, including me. From their pen, Sally and Tally yipped gleeful songs of their own.

After our customers left, Ashley helped close the shop. I asked her, “Do you remember the curtained-off storage area behind the podium at the fashion show?”

She nodded. Her shining brown curls bounced. “Loretta kept those briefcases back there.”

“Did you see anyone else going into and out of that storage area?”

“Paula, for sure. Kent may have gone there after the fashion show. I don’t think he could have been in that storage area during the rehearsal. He was at the foot of the runway taking our pictures. But right after the show itself, I saw him rush through the backstage, like he was in a hurry or angry, but I didn’t see where he went.”

That agreed with my memory, except I had seen where he went—directly onto the stage. And the video had shown him bursting out between the curtains.

However, that didn’t prove that he hadn’t slipped a candy-coated almond into Antonio’s pockets, only that he’d had fewer chances to do it than Loretta, Paula, and the rest of us.

“Macey told me something suspicious about Paula,” Ashley told me.

“You’ve been talking to Macey?”

“She hardly knows anyone here. She’s lonely. She’s very nice.”

Seems
nice, I thought to myself.

Ashley continued, “We both like to run, and it’s good to have a running partner. Safer, too. But I wasn’t with Macey when she went out jogging a few hours after Antonio collapsed. She said she saw Paula come out of the conservatory. That surprised Macey. She thought Paula would still be in Erie with her husband. So what was Paula doing roaming around at that hour?”

“Vicki drove Gord and Paula home around one thirty.”

“Why would Paula go back to the conservatory?”

I wish I knew.

After Ashley left, I sat down at my computer.

Ben had sent Haylee and me copies of files that he had retrieved from Kent’s thumb drive.

Kent had sent e-mails to Antonio. Kent had asked to be paid, politely, at first, and then more firmly. Antonio had answered that Kent could either stay at TADAM or take his chances with the sort of reference that Antonio would give him. Antonio had made it clear that although he’d been ignoring Kent’s criminal record, other schools wouldn’t.

Ben wrote to Haylee and me, “I think we should turn these files over to the police. What do you two think?”

I sent a message agreeing with him that we should, and that I would call Vicki. I did, and asked Vicki if I should forward her the files. She said she’d come see them.

While I waited, I phoned Mona. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? You don’t have to worry about me being in danger from Kent. He’s a great guy. Except he never showed up for his thumb drive last night. Maybe he’ll come tonight.”

Vicki’s car pulled up outside my shop, so after giving Mona another warning, which I knew she would ignore, about staying away from anyone who’d had anything to do with Antonio, I said good-bye.

Vicki stomped into the shop. “Do I smell skunk?”

I made a show of sniffing in her direction. “I suspect you do. And you were smelling it before you came in here.”

“Tell me about it.” She patted her stomach. “These vests aren’t washable. All I could do was dab at it with a damp cloth.”

I couldn’t help laughing.

She gave me the evil eye. “AND I had two smelly people in my cruiser last night.”

“Did you go to Loretta’s and Kent’s apartment building last night to sniff out if either of them had been sprayed?”

“That would be one for the record books—go to a judge in the middle of the night and ask for a warrant to search for the remnants of skunk spray. Besides, if I’d gone snooping around apartment buildings or anywhere else, all I’d have smelled was myself. In addition, it wouldn’t have proven a thing. Lots of people ended up smelling like skunks last night. Me, for instance, and the investigators from the state police.”

“Investigators?” I asked. “Plural? So they think Paula’s attack could be connected with Antonio’s murder?”

O
ur police chief cocked her head. “Do
you
believe the attack on Paula had something to do with the murder of her late husband?”

“Yes, but I’m not an officer of the law.”

She opened her notebook. “Good to hear you admit that. I’m going to write it down in case we ever become confused about it in the future.” But she didn’t write anything, and I heard the teasing note in her voice. “Where are these files you said you found?”

“Ben and Haylee dredged them up.” I led her to my computer and showed her the correspondence between Kent and Antonio.

“Anyone could have written that stuff,” she pointed out. “Why are Haylee and Ben interfering?”

“Haylee and Ben are naturally concerned because initially, Paula accused Dora Battersby and me of murdering Antonio. Paula has since apologized, saying she now knows that Antonio wasn’t killed by someone hitting him, but still, what if the state police are investigating Dora and me instead of the real culprit?”

“Maybe one of you
is
the real culprit. Maybe you didn’t
like being called a glutton and Dora didn’t like Edna being accused of greed.”

I scoffed. “Neither of us would harm anyone.”

Vicki scrutinized my face for uneasy seconds, then returned her attention to my computer screen. “How did Haylee and Ben unearth these e-mails?”

“They were on a thumb drive that Kent lent us so we could watch a video of the fashion show. A few minutes ago, Mona told me that Kent has not picked up the thumb drive from her yet.”

“The staties have the video of the fashion show.”

“Kent had another copy. Maybe he’s not picking the thumb drive up on purpose. Maybe he doesn’t want the investigators to see the correspondence he had with Antonio, so in case anyone searches his apartment, he’s keeping it hidden by letting Mona hold on to it. He had deleted the file with the correspondence in it, but Ben was able to open it. If he could, the state police could, and Kent might have known that.”

She scribbled in her notebook.

When she looked up, I said, “Mona had already told us that Kent had a criminal record, for touching a model, and that a TADAM student had accused him of the same thing. Mona couldn’t remember the student’s name, but I suggested Macey, and Mona thought that was the girl’s name.”

Vicki asked, “The Macey I met?”

I nodded. “That one. The one that Antonio pinched. As I told you, I heard Macey slap someone in her cubicle right before the dress rehearsal, and I guessed from his artificially lowered voice that it could have been Antonio, but I wasn’t sure. It could have been Kent. However, later Macey told me that she had slapped
Antonio
. If she’s now saying that it was Kent who touched her before the dress rehearsal, she’s changing her story. I don’t know about you, but that sounds suspicious to me.”

Vicki did her usual thing of avoiding answering by changing the direction of her questions. “Describe what Macey did after Antonio pinched her at the reception.”

“I didn’t see him actually do it. Ashley squealed, and then I saw her shove Antonio’s hand away from Macey’s rear end.”

“Did you see Macey touch him?”

“No.”

“Not even push him away?”

“No. Did you find her fingerprints on, say, that smooth, shiny belt buckle he wore?”

“We don’t have the fingerprint results back yet.”

“Who did you fingerprint? Everyone at TADAM?” They hadn’t fingerprinted me or any of my friends, as far as I knew, and Ashley would have told me if they’d fingerprinted her.

Vicki wrote in her notebook. Whenever she ignored my questions, I suspected that she was too professional to tell me I might be right. Police officers could be a pain.

I suggested, “Just because I didn’t see Macey slap Antonio or bat him away doesn’t mean that she didn’t.”

Vicki continued writing without looking at me.

I guessed aloud, “Maybe Macey changed her story about who touched her at the rehearsal because she was afraid of being accused of harming Antonio. After the fashion show, I saw Macey leave her apartment building and jog toward the lake. A short time later, I saw Kent outside the conservatory. This evening, Ashley told me that Macey said that while she was jogging that night, she saw Paula come out of the conservatory in the wee hours of Sunday morning.”

“Hearsay,” Vicki scoffed. “Circumstantial.”

I defended myself. “I thought you’d like to know so you could ask Macey herself.”

“Okay, sure, but we probably already got that information from her.” She jotted something in her notebook, anyway.

I pressed on. “However, if Macey was out in the wee hours of Sunday morning, she could have been in that conservatory, also. She could have planted the evidence in my cubicle. She could have made up her story of seeing Paula come out of it.”

“You’re really fond of jumping to conclusions, aren’t you, especially if you can contort those conclusions to fit into one of your many theories.”

I defended myself. “All of them—Paula, Kent, Loretta, and Macey—were near the conservatory around one thirty. One of them could have put the candy-coated almonds and the vial of allergy medicine with my things. Didn’t you drop Paula off at the TADAM mansion around that time? Maybe Antonio’s key ring included one for the conservatory.”

“Where
do
you get all this information?”

“Edna knew when Gord came home and that you’d dropped him off before you took Paula to TADAM.”

“And you were out wandering the village at that hour, too.”

“Yes, but even if I, for some strange reason, had planted the evidence among my belongings, why would I have gone out of my way to report finding them there?”

“Some investigators might say you were trying to deflect suspicion from yourself.”

“My fingerprints are probably on the candy package and on the medicine vial, and maybe even on the briefcase. That proves I didn’t put them in my own cubicle. If I’d been trying to implicate someone else, I’d have wiped off my own fingerprints.” I didn’t mention that I would have wiped them if I hadn’t heard someone coming.

Vicki stared at me like I’d flown in from outer space. “Maybe. But if you’d been trying to implicate someone else, you might have left all the earlier fingerprints in place.”

I shook my head as if to clear lingering skunk fumes. “You give me too much credit. Someone, not me, attacked Paula last night, and I’m betting it’s the same person who arranged Antonio’s death. Were they able to remove that stabilizer from Paula’s skin?”

“Yes. Her skin was a little red. It may burn or itch, but she’ll heal.”

“So? Who did she say attacked her?”

Just as I feared, Vicki didn’t answer my question. Instead, she asked, “Has any of your stabilizer gone missing?”

I slapped my forehead. “I was tired after that late night. I forgot to check.”

My inventory was computerized, so it was easy to tell how many rolls of that kind of stabilizer I should have. I went into the storeroom and counted, then came back out to the rack where I displayed it. I counted twice. Three times. I heaved a big sigh. I didn’t want the assault against Paula to be connected to In Stitches, but it was. “One roll is missing,” I admitted.

“Could you have taken it yourself, maybe downstairs to work on a project?”

“No. I keep good records.”

“I thought so. What do you imagine happened to it? And when?”

“I can’t tell when, but the theft had to have been recent. I ordered that kind of stabilizer for the first time a month ago. I’m guessing it went missing yesterday when Paula and her students were here. I believe that Paula hid a folded sheaf of papers, Antonio’s business plan, underneath a bolt of fabric. Either she or one of her students could have taken the roll of stabilizer. I didn’t watch all of them the entire time they were here. And she was carrying a bag big enough to hide it in.”

“What about your other customers?”

“My regulars have never shoplifted, although I suppose stranger things have happened. And I didn’t creep around spying on new customers.”

She glanced up at my white cathedral ceilings. “No security cameras?”

“No.”

“Maybe you need some.”

“Close the barn door after the horse is stolen? Luckily, stabilizer isn’t as expensive as a horse.”

She stroked the top of a sewing machine. “How much is a roll of that kind of stabilizer?”

I told her and she whistled.

I justified it. “Aren’t the things we need supposed to be expensive, to prove that we’re doing something important?”
I added in sly tones, “Like police cars and equipment?” Acting afraid that she was about to swat me with her notebook, I scooted to the cutting table and opened a drawer. Of course my engraved scissors weren’t there. I kept them downstairs in my guest room closet. At least, that was where I’d last seen them. I asked, “Were you able to figure out whose scissors those were?”

“Three guesses.”

“Mine should be downstairs. Paula took her students to Haylee’s shop yesterday, also. Someone left a business plan there. Kent visited The Stash later. Paula or her students or Kent could have hidden the business plan and/or picked up Haylee’s scissors.”

Vicki merely tilted her head and raised an eyebrow.

“They were Haylee’s,” I concluded. “Engraved with her name.”

Again, Vicki refrained from either affirming it or denying it. Looking down at her notebook, she asked, “Was Kent in your store yesterday?”

“Not unless he was here while Rosemary took over during my lunch hour.” Rosemary often worked in the Threadville shops while we had our lunch breaks. In return, we gave her an employee discount plus wages. She spent more in our shops than she earned, however, so it was a win for everyone.

“Can you give me Rosemary’s name and address?”

“Sure. She lives in Erie.”

“All the better for the staties. They’re based there.”

Was Kent guilty of both Antonio’s death and the attack on Paula? Maybe both cases would be wrapped up this evening. I asked, “Did the scissors have fingerprints on them?”

Vicki didn’t answer.

“I guess that means they’d been wiped,” I hazarded.

Again, no answer from Vicki. Did that mean I’d guessed right?

I tried another question. “How about the plastic packaging for the stabilizer?”

“Wouldn’t you expect your fingerprints to be on that?”

“Yes, and maybe the prints of anyone who handled it before it was shipped to me, and from customers who examined it. But what about inside the packaging? Someone ripped the backing from the stabilizer, wadded up the backing, and tossed it on the floor. Did they wipe off every fingerprint? Or from the stabilizer itself that they pressed over Paula’s mouth and around her wrists and ankles?”

“That’s a little more complicated. The lab’s working on it. We won’t get those results soon, either.”

“Let me guess. The doorknob on the carriage house had been wiped, but they found nice clear prints on that. Those will be mine.”

“Should I send the fingerprint tech to take your prints?”

“You can. I have nothing to hide.”

“Where were you and Haylee at nine last night?”