Threaded for Trouble (2 page)

“That’s for me to know.” A trade secret—fine. “Now, unpack that machine and put it here for everyone to admire.” For the first time, she seemed to notice the chairs I had lined up for our audience. Another little scream. “You’ll have to put most of those chairs away. Fewer chairs filled with people will make a better impression than lots of unoccupied chairs, and Mr. Chandler should already be here.” She looked about to go into a panicked tailspin.

Mr. Chandler? The owner of the company? Felicity should have warned me. Not that I would have arranged my embroidery boutique differently or cooled a magnum of champagne, but it would have been nice to know what to expect. What other surprises did this woman have up her brown polyester sleeve?

I didn’t give her a chance to tell me. I said, “Many of the women from the Threadville tour will attend the presentation.”

“Why do you call this town Threadville? The maps call it Elderberry Bay.”

“Everyone, locals and tourists, started calling the village Threadville when fabric and needlework shops opened here.”

“Threadville.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice.
“Tourists.”

She’d see. I wasn’t about to argue with her, but I also wasn’t about to put the chairs away, only to need to set them up again. I pointed out, “We should move the prize Chandler Champion closer to an outlet.”

She looked to her left as if she had a friend beside her who would agree that I was impossible. “Fine, if you can’t be bothered to dig up an extension cord. But hurry. Our winner is due any minute.” She rummaged in a large vinyl bag.

Her last name, Ranquels, pronounced “rankles” without irony on her part, suited her, but her first name didn’t. A Felicity should have been…bubbly. Not only was she dour, she was short and thick, with ankles like tree stumps.

I’d expected a Chandler Sewing Machine Company representative to be decked out in the latest techniques of sewing and machine embroidery. Felicity’s skirt and blouse were polyester, off the rack. Maybe she thought their muddy hues would hide the dirt. Maybe she didn’t know she had dribbled toothpaste down her front.

Her jacket did look homemade. Not handmade, homemade. She’d used one of those sew-it-in-an-evening patterns. No cuffs, collar, buttons, or pockets. It did have lapels, the type that fold back to show the facing. It wasn’t a bad pattern if done right, but she hadn’t trimmed or clipped her seams. They were bunchy, and what should have been corners appeared to have been stuffed with balled-up candy wrappers. The front plackets stood out stiffly, as if she had used cardboard instead of interfacing. She had embroidered a bouquet of flowers, all in brown, where the right front pocket would be, if the jacket had pockets. I recognized the bouquet. It was one of the embroidery motifs that came with the Chandler Champion.

I hoped my outfit looked better than hers did. I loved playing with my embroidery software and machines. Luckily I had a good excuse for wearing embroidered clothing—I wanted to inspire my students and customers to buy machines and supplies from me, and to try new techniques.
I was proud of the touches of embroidery on the T-shirt, fitted jacket, and denim miniskirt I’d worn for the morning’s presentation. Yes, I was tall and my legs were, like the rest of me, willowy, but skirts that ended below mid-thigh never quite suited me.

I moved the table close to an outlet and began unpacking the Chandler Champion. It was the heaviest sewing machine I had ever lifted.

Felicity pulled a cell phone from her bag. She turned her back to me, but I heard every word. “Mr. Chandler has not arrived. When will he be here?” Silence, then, “I arranged for a limo to pick him up at the Cleveland airport. So what’s the problem?”

By now, my friends in their shops across the street could probably hear her, too.

“You call me the minute you find out.” Steam was practically puffing out her ears. “The ceremony is scheduled to begin in a half hour.”

I plugged in the Chandler Champion. Felicity elbowed me aside and turned it on. The machine contained a powerful computer, complete with a color, high-definition touch screen.

Felicity fingered the screen. “You’ve been using this.”

“Yes, we tested it.” I didn’t mean to let my irritation show, but at least I didn’t add,
as you ordered.
It was true that testing a new machine was fun, but still…couldn’t she be nicer?

Apparently not. “You put ten hours on it.”

I defended myself. “It already had more than a hundred.” Closer to two hundred, actually.

“That’s different. Factory testing. We have to make certain that each machine is perfect. However, our manufacturing standards are high, and we have not encountered a flaw during the entire year since we first went to market.”

Well, whoop-de-do. “I guessed the machine had been a floor model, or perhaps used and returned, before you offered it as a prize.”

“Mr. Chandler would never do that.”

He might not, I thought uncharitably, but someone on his staff might, and I suspected I was looking at that person.

She glared at one of the pot lights in my shop’s ceiling. “You need to re-aim that light. Lucky thing you didn’t put your ladder away like I told you to.”

“My ladder doesn’t go up that high.”

“You’re tall. You hung the banner.”

“The ceiling’s much higher.”

“Stand on the top step.”

And fall off and break seventeen bones. What a superb idea. “I’ll bring a floor lamp to the machine, instead.” Not that we needed it. Morning sunshine poured through the shop’s rear windows, backlighting the Chandler Champion. Besides, Threadville tourists tended to be enthusiastic about sewing machines. They wouldn’t fail to notice this one perched on a table in the middle of the pen where my dogs usually were.

“Don’t you know someone with a better ladder? What about the other shopkeepers? I see a fabric store across the street. At least I
assume
that’s what The Stash means. We simply
must
re-aim that light.”

The light chose that moment to burn out. With a pop.

Great.

Felicity paled as if about to faint, but her voice didn’t lose a decibel of its frantic volume. “Find a ladder!”

It was a perfect excuse. If I didn’t talk to one of my friends that very minute, I would either explode or collapse in a giggling fit. I ran out the front door. The other Threadville shops were across the street on the ground floor of a gorgeous Victorian building. Its red brick and limestone exterior had stayed fresh and bright all these years in this sweet little village on Pennsylvania’s Lake Erie shore. Next to Haylee’s fabric shop was the yarn shop, then the notions shop, then the quilting shop. The proprietors lived in apartments above their stores.

There’s nothing quite like the sense of anticipation a fabriholic feels when entering a fabric store, and The Stash never disappointed me. Haylee was arranging autumn-toned
stretch poplins near her front door. People often mistook us for sisters. Her hair was blond, though, while mine was light brown. Her face was rounder than mine, and her eyes were a purer blue than my grayish ones. Today, she wore a navy linen shift she’d made. She always said that since we were the same size, I could borrow the outfits she hand tailored for herself. I would never dare. My strong desire to decorate everything with thread usually overcame my fondness for elegant simplicity.

As soon as I was certain that Felicity had not followed me across the street, I did explode. In a giggling fit. “You have to come to the presentation in my shop this morning,” I managed.

One of Haylee’s many sterling qualities is that she laughs with me, even when she doesn’t know what’s funny. “Why?”

“You’ll see.” I was almost out the door before I remembered the real reason for my visit. “Do you have a taller ladder than the one I’ve seen you use?”

Her eyes widened as if she thought the need for a ladder could be part of the joke. “No.”

“That’s okay. I wasn’t the one who wanted it.”

Haylee contemplated my grin, which had to hint at mischief. “Want me to tell the other Threadville store owners to come to your presentation?”

“Yes, please. And bring your customers. They’ll enjoy the show.” Still giggling at the impression Felicity’s histrionics would make on the Threadville community of creative yet sensible textile artists, I headed back across the street.

I felt a thrill of pride whenever I approached In Stitches. The shop was on the main floor of a converted Arts and Crafts–style bungalow, with deep eaves and a homey roof sheltering its wide front porch. My customers often sat on that porch, in comfy handcrafted rocking chairs next to tables sporting books, magazines, and pots of flowers. The women discussed their projects, the homework I had assigned, and life in general while sipping fresh lemonade or iced
tea. Often, while out there admiring Threadville shops, they realized they needed to purchase a few more crafting necessities, even when they lived in the village or were returning to it the next day.

Today, no one was on the porch, and the most prominent displays in my twin front windows were the linen banners I had embroidered with the words
Welcome, Winner!
The front door, glass surrounded by metal, clashed with the architectural style of the building, but the shop was homey, especially after I turned the sign in the door from
Closed
, embroidered in red satin stitches over puffy foam on white linen, to
Welcome
, embroidered in green letters with three-dimensional vines and flowers twining through them. I opened the door, setting my pretty sea-glass chimes jingling.

“Where’s that ladder?” Felicity bellowed.

Hiding impending giggles with a nonchalant expression, I strolled around the folding chairs toward her. “Nobody has one tall enough.”

The chimes jangled. A teenaged boy slouched in and plunked himself on a chair in the back row. With his long forelock and practiced sneer, he looked like a fifties rock star. I tossed him a welcoming smile.

“What are you doing here?” Felicity demanded. Did she know him?

The boy blushed. “My mom said I had to come.”

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” she asked.

I reminded her, “School doesn’t start until after Labor Day.” Why was a teenager spending a morning of his last two weeks of summer vacation in an embroidery boutique? He could be with friends, perhaps exploring the riverside trail or enjoying the village’s wide, sandy beach. He obviously didn’t want to be here.

He ducked his head. “I dropped out.”

“Well,” Felicity snapped, “did you learn enough before you dropped out to change a light bulb?”

The boy looked at the floor as if hoping it would open up and swallow him.

I tried to take the pressure off the poor kid. “That light’s
too high,” I said. “I won’t be able to find a tall ladder before the presentation.” Felicity was the one who had been harping about being ready for the winner’s arrival.

The boy jumped out of his chair, which promptly folded onto the floor. Apologizing, he set the chair up again. “I know where to get a ladder.” Pushing buttons on a cell phone, he bolted out the front door. Maybe I was lucky that Felicity had insisted on moving my bistro table away from the door. If she hadn’t, the teenager might have swept the table ahead of him out onto the porch, and it could be rolling around, banging into rocking chairs and flower pots.

Minutes later, a red pickup truck parked beside the curb in front of In Stitches. A tall, athletic man got out and began pulling a long extension ladder from the truck bed.

Uh-oh. Clay Fraser.

C
LAY HAD RENOVATED THIS BUILDING before I bought it. Whenever I had a problem, I called him, and he always came. For a while, I’d thought we might become friends, or maybe more than friends; then I’d made some rather rash accusations, and though he’d seemed understanding, my embarrassment over my behavior had kept me more or less away from him. Lately, I hadn’t needed his help, which was just as well.

He and the boy carried the ladder into the shop. Clay was wearing jeans that were just tight enough. The sleeves of his light blue shirt were rolled up, revealing tanned and muscular forearms. The hair on them was the same dark brown as the hair on his head.

The Chandler Champion with its embroidery attachment looked ridiculous and top-heavy on a too-small table in the dog pen. My dogs whined from the other side of my apartment door. Unlike me, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho weren’t shy about showing their desire to be near Clay. He frowned toward the dogless pen and the closed apartment door.

Penning the dogs in the back of my shop where they could be with me and my customers without causing problems
had been Clay’s idea, and he’d designed and built the pen, a railing with a gate, in dark-stained oak that matched shelves he’d constructed for my shop. It all worked perfectly for me and the dogs. Would Clay think I no longer liked him and that was why I’d stopped using the pen for the dogs?

The color of his eyes reminded me of melting chocolate, and the concern in them made me consider just plain melting. “What’s wrong, Willow?”

“Light bulb.” Such astounding wit caused my face to flame. I gestured toward the ceiling and reached even greater heights of conversational ability. “Burned out.”

Felicity was in the ladder’s way. She had dragged one of my bistro chairs to the sewing machine and was adding yet more minutes to its run time. With maddening slowness, she turned off the machine and stood up.

The boy asked Clay, “Can I climb the ladder, Mr. Fraser?”

Clay bit back a grin. “Maybe we should get a new bulb, first, Russ. You steady the ladder. I’ll run next door to The Ironmonger. Be right back.”

Russ and I both said, “I’ll go.”

Clay glanced from me to Felicity and back again. “It looks like you have your hands full.” He turned to Russ and asked, “Do you know which bulb to ask for?”

Russ blushed. Hair fell over his eyes, but he was holding the ladder with both hands and couldn’t do anything about it. “No,” he admitted. He tossed his head, but the lock of hair stubbornly went back to hang in his face.

Poor kid. I was tempted to trim his hair. I had lots of scissors, pairs I owned and even more pairs for sale. None of them were meant for haircutting, but I’d make do. “Me, neither,” I admitted, smiling at Russ.