Thread and Buried (14 page)

I blurted, “Did Neil die of food poisoning?”

Vicki shook her head.

“He was poisoned, all right,” Gartener said.

“Tests showed he had the same thing that poisoned me.” Vicki looked a bit green again. “Manure—ick! But the food poisoning wasn’t what killed him. No, our friend Neil ingested something more deadly.”

“What?” Haylee demanded.

Vicki looked at Gartener as if asking his permission to answer.

“Rat poison,” Gartener said.

26

I
FELT SICK. “HOW DID NEIL MANAGE TO ingest
rat poison when he probably didn’t feel like eating anything?” I asked Vicki, remembering how she’d barely been able to down flat ginger ale.

She thinned her lips.

And then the obvious explanation hit me. “Let me guess,” I said. “Neil was sick to his stomach like you were, Vicki, and, unlike me, Neil kept medicine on hand for settling stomachs. And someone added rat poison to the medicine. And he took it.”

Vicki’s and Gartener’s neutral expressions were a dead giveaway that I’d come up with a good theory—maybe one that was the same as theirs.

“I’m just guessing,” I told them quickly. “I have no way of knowing how the rat poison was . . . er . . . administered.”

Vicki seemed to stare right through my eyes and into my brain. Surely she didn’t think I’d had anything to do with poisoning Neil.

“Feel free to search my premises for rat poison,” Haylee offered.

“Mine, too,” I echoed, possibly too late.

Vicki pinned us with a look she might have given rookie cops. “More likely we’d need to sift through everybody’s garbage for empty containers.”

I grimaced as if I would be the one assigned to delve into bags of smelly trash. “Have you searched the bakery? Maybe the poison was there.”

“If it was,” Gartener answered, “it’s long gone. Except for—” He gave me a curt nod. “Except for upstairs in Neil’s apartment, in the dregs of that medicine bottle you suggested.”

“Lucky guess,” I managed in a weak voice. “Whose fingerprints were on the bottle?”

“Nobody’s,” Gartener said. “The outside of that bottle was cleaner than if it had come out of a dishwasher. And the bottle was wrapped in tissue in the middle of a wastebasket.”

I stared at Gartener in something like shock. Someone had cleaned the outside of the medicine bottle and hidden the bottle in the trash, and I doubted that Neil, who must have been very sick when he took the medicine, would have done all that. The strange disposal of his body pointed to murder, but now I was convinced. Again, I wondered who could have done such a thing to the baker that everyone seemed to like, and again, I felt very sad about Neil’s life being cut short.

Gartener had been watching my face as I thought it all through, but he didn’t comment. He stood and handed Yolanda’s and Cassie’s phone numbers to Vicki. “Here, you might like to follow up on these. Let me know if you need help from the state police.”

She gave him a radiant smile, then turned to us with a much less radiant look. “And you two—no more playing detective.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We were only curious about what caused everyone’s flu-like symptoms. Now we know. Thanks for telling us.”

They gathered their things.

“Wait,” I said. “Didn’t you say you had questions for us?”

“We got our answers.” Vicki could be very stern.

Gartener softened it with a smile. “We were curious about what you might have learned about the Brubaugh pair. And what other gossip . . . um . . . information you might have picked up.”

Gartener and Vicki thanked us for our time and left Haylee’s shop.

The moment the door closed behind them, I burst out, “What do you suppose they came to find out? How we reacted to Neil’s being killed by rat poison?”

“Probably, and when we didn’t immediately confess, ‘Oh, officers, you found us out!’ they realized we weren’t the culprits.”

I squeezed my face between my hands and moaned, “And then I had to go and guess how someone gave Neil the poison in the medicine! I was sure they were about to arrest me.”

“Vicki may never consent to be your houseguest again, especially if she may need medicine.” Haylee could always make me laugh. She dropped the sarcastic tone and asked what I was wearing to the gala.

“I don’t know.” I gazed at the perfectly made outfits hanging around The Stash. “Are you wearing one of these?”

“I’m already tired of seeing them. Probably not.”

“Come check out my sample dresses at In Stitches. Maybe we could make a trade for that evening.”

At In Stitches, Haylee fingered the hem of a white linen dress I’d made and embroidered with cutwork around the neckline. “You could wear this. Maybe Clay will think wedding bells.”

“On our first date? A date that is not really a date?”

“Want me to
not
come?”

“No! Sorry for shouting. You have to come. But think of it as three friends going somewhere together. Not a date for any of us.”

She sighed. “Sure, sure.”

“Besides, white linen cutwork might only make him think of his grandmother’s dresser scarves.”

“What do you know about his grandmother’s dresser scarves?”

“Nothing. But my grandmother had white cutwork dresser scarves and doilies, inherited from her mother. Every time I look at that outfit, I think of those.”

“Well, at least you’d be what they call a snappy dresser.”

I groaned.

She pointed across the shop to another dress I’d made in fuchsia dupioni silk embellished with simple touches of silver machine embroidery. “You’d be stunning in that. I can’t wear that color. It shows up the red in my cheeks. And I refuse to wear black in the middle of the summer. I have some periwinkle silk that would make up beautifully. I’ll go start it now.”

It was Tuesday evening, nearly eleven. Wednesday night would be partly taken up by that very necessary trip for ice cream. Haylee would have to finish the dress Thursday night.

If anyone could do it, she could.

And sure enough, on Wednesday afternoon, some of my students who had attended morning classes at The Stash reported that Haylee had shown them a beautiful periwinkle silk dress she’d already begun piecing together.

And by the time I leashed the dogs for our after-dinner stroll, Haylee confirmed that the dress she was making would easily be ready by Friday night, and of course she could take a break for ice cream.

Instead of following the water’s edge, we strolled along Beach Row, the lane leading past the cottages that had backyards on the beach. Naturally, we hoped to see the white van that Yolanda had driven away the night of the community picnic.

We didn’t.

But I did find the little gray cottage between a pale yellow one and a two-story robin’s-egg blue one. While many other cottages were obviously occupied, with bikes and toy trucks in sandy front yards, towels and swimwear hanging over clotheslines, and barbecues standing open on front porches, the gray cottage where I’d caught a glimpse of someone resembling Cassie had an air of being abandoned, and there was no vehicle of any sort in the driveway. However, Sally and Tally had to sniff the edge of its front yard, exactly as they had all the others.

Vicki was right that walking my dogs gave Haylee and me excellent opportunities to snoop while we waited for the dogs to figure out which animals had passed that way. I tried to look like a casual observer as I stared at the windows of the gray cottage. No faces.

Haylee said out of the corner of her mouth, “Look at the address.”

Surprise, surprise, a house number on the front door matched the address we’d found for the phone number that Cassie had given Mona for Yolanda, the mysterious salad lady who may have given food poisoning to Vicki, Edna, Neil, and a whole bunch of other people.

I mumbled, “You know, firefighters in Elderberry Bay are supposed to help people check the batteries and best-before dates on their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors whenever they ask. Do you think the owners of this cottage could be encouraged to ask?”

“I’m sure they could.”

Sally lifted her head and tested the air. She whimpered. Haylee braced herself to keep the determined dog from going up the small gray cottage’s front walk. “Sally pulled toward the back of this cottage Monday night, too, when we were on the beach.” Her arms jerked as Sally-Forth tugged at her leash. “Did Tally want to investigate it?”

“No, but he was anxious to catch up with you and Sally.”

Looking mulish, Sally stiffened her legs and wouldn’t move her feet.

I jogged ahead with Tally. It was enough. Sally gave in. She and Haylee quickly caught up with us.

By the time we got to the ice cream stand, I had not made up my mind what to order. How could I, when I didn’t know what flavors they might offer, and everything I’d ever tried at that stand had been delicious?

However, when I saw the evening’s latest new flavor—roasted garlic and caramelized onion—I decided to go for an old favorite, dark chocolate with bits of candied ginger sprinkled through it.

Having learned not to try to walk with leashed dogs while we ate our gourmet ice cream, we sat at one of the bistro tables on the patio outside the ice cream stand. The dogs were very good about lying down and not begging.

The ice cream was even yummier than I remembered. We finished and continued west to the entrance of the Lazy Daze Campground. Leaving Haylee holding both leashes, I started into the office.

“No dogs,” the woman behind the counter barked.

Either two women in Elderberry Bay had long blond scraggly hair and ropy muscles like that, or this was the woman who had fought with Yolanda at the sidewalk sale.

27

I
SHOWED THE WOMAN MY EMPTY HANDS. “I
left the dogs outside.”

“We’re full up,” the helpful woman announced, pointedly returning her gaze to her TV.

“I’m looking for a friend,” I said. “Cassie. How do I get to her campsite?”

The woman stared at the TV. “If she’s your friend, she’ll tell you where to find her.”

“She said she was staying at Lazy Daze. She gave me her cell phone number, but she said she often keeps it turned off, and when it wasn’t on, I could ask for her here.”

The woman hunched one tanned, bony shoulder, effectively creating an invisible wall between us. “That’s your problem.”

I tried, “Do you know where I can find Yolanda?”

Impatiently, she drummed long nails on her counter. “I don’t know of any Yolanda registered here, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you or anyone else. Our guests have the right to privacy.” Intent on a yogurt commercial, she ordered, “Get those mutts away from my door. They’ll scare people away. And don’t slam that screen on your way out. It will come off its hinges.”

Having been thoroughly put in my place, I slunk out of the office and carefully shut the screen behind me.

The score was Campground Woman—1, Willow—0.

An RV had just pulled into a parking space outside the office, and a cheerful middle-aged woman with wavy red hair jumped out of the driver’s seat and headed toward the office. With an apologetic smile, she raised a hand to stop me and murmured, “Is she okay?”

Dumbfounded, I asked, “Who?”

Haylee inched closer with the dogs. I could tell she was listening.

The woman’s shorts and matching blouse were creased as if she’d driven all day with the RV’s air conditioner off. She stared toward the screen door I’d just closed. “Her. Bitsy. I heard her ex-boyfriend was recently murdered. When I was here last summer, she told me she regretted breaking up with him and wanted to get back together with him, even though I got the impression it had been a few years since they broke up.”

“I don’t know.” All sorts of possibilities and conjectures suggested themselves.

“I’d better go pay for my campsite.” She dashed up the stairs to the office and carefully let herself in through the screen door.

I collected Tally-Ho’s leash from Haylee. “I couldn’t pry one bit of information out of the woman in the office,” I muttered.

Haylee grinned. “But I overheard her name from the lady in the RV. It’s Bitsy.”

“Yep!” With Tally’s help, I led the way back toward Beach Row. “I’m sure Bitsy is the woman who had the spat with Yolanda at your sale table last Friday evening.”

“Vicki and Gartener might be interested in that information.”

“That
gossip
,” I teased. “Bitsy informed me that even if a person named Yolanda was registered here, she wouldn’t tell me. We’ll
have
to sic Vicki and Gartener on her.” The idea, I had to admit, pleased me.

“And also tell them what the woman from the RV said. Neil and Bitsy were once a couple! And Bitsy wanted to get back with him.”

“I can see why he didn’t go for that,” I said. “He was much nicer than Bitsy.”

“I wonder if he dumped her, and she waited until she thought people might have forgotten about her relationship with him before she did him in.”

“With,” I guessed, “help from Yolanda.”

Agreeing that our theories had merit but that our favorite police chief and detective would pooh-pooh them since we had no tangible evidence, we sauntered toward home along the beach. When we reached the part of the beach near the small gray cottage’s backyard, Sally-Forth stopped to sniff. Wagging her tail, she looked at Haylee and me with an expression that seemed to ask why we were so stubborn about not letting her barge into someone’s cottage. “Maybe,” I said to Sally, “if we ever see a vehicle in the driveway, we’ll ring the bell. Meanwhile, don’t you want to return home to the kittens?”

Heaving a heartfelt sigh, she plodded along the beach with the rest of us.

I wanted to know more about the cottage where I’d seen Cassie, the one that really seemed to interest Sally, but the June evenings were long and the sun hadn’t set. I grinned at Haylee. “Now that Vicki knows we drive around most evenings after dark, shouldn’t we take time off from driving, and
walk
to do our snooping later tonight?”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes. The beach after dark should be glorious. The moon won’t quite be full, but it should give us lots of light, even if we decide to bypass Bitsy’s office and venture into the campground with its shade trees.”

“And in the meantime,” I added, “you have that periwinkle silk to work on.”

“It’s nearly done.”

We returned to our shops to sew and embroider until after dark. Just before eleven, I changed into black slacks, pulled on a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and hid my hair under a black sun hat. I left my face and hands pale.

But what could I do about the dogs? Normally, we took them on our snoopy drives or walks, but their patches of white fur would shine in the moonlight. Someone in the cottages would be sure to notice us.

However, Sally-Forth had seemed determined to investigate that gray cottage, so as a compromise, I put a leash on her. Tally obviously wanted to come along, but I told him to stay. With a sad and confused expression on his cute brown and black brindle face, he did.

Naturally, Haylee was also dressed in black. At the beach, far from streetlights, we considered using the flashlights we’d brought, but the moon peeked between clouds, rimming their edges in silver. We meandered through soft sand to the water’s edge where waves had darkened and hardened the sand underfoot. Wind gusted from the north across the lake, pushing clouds past the moon and frothing waves into whitecaps. Laughing, we jumped away from spreading, hissing water.

As I’d hoped, lights were on in many cottages, and if people had drapes or blinds, they hadn’t pulled them. At the cottage colony, almost everyone knew what everyone else was doing, anyway.

The gray cottage was completely dark, and as far as I could tell, no drapes were pulled. Sally sniffed and turned toward the cottage.

I let her pull me closer.

We were still officially on the beach when Haylee grabbed me and whispered, “Were those things on those chairs earlier?” The wind and waves were so noisy I could barely hear her.

She pointed at a small wooden deck outside a sliding glass door.

A striped beach towel hung from the back of one lawn chair. A shirt was draped over another.

Sally cooperated and pulled me almost to the deck.

Haylee came, too. Near the deck, she flicked her flashlight on for the briefest of seconds.

I recognized the shirt.

It was pink plaid and short-sleeved, either the one we’d seen Cassie wear or one exactly like it.