Threaded for Trouble (32 page)

I dashed around vehicles toward Chief Smallwood.

Its siren howling and horn blasting, Elderberry Bay’s other tanker truck, with an enraged-looking Plug at the wheel, made its way toward the fire. People scurried out of the way. A floppy-headed giraffe, a short clown, and a purple furry bear toddled away from the group around Smallwood. In her clown suit, Edna pointed ahead and up, at the Ferris wheel. Its lights twinkled against the night sky.

I texted Haylee and asked what her mothers where doing.

She answered that they were planning to search for Russ by riding the Ferris wheel. Haylee was following them to keep them out of trouble.

I looked back at the fire. The evening’s breeze fanned it toward the parking lot, not toward the Ferris wheel, but I didn’t blame Haylee for her caution.

Keeping an eye on the fire’s spread, I hurried toward Chief Smallwood.

A firefighter skulked away from the fire.

He was about Russ’s height. His hands were bare, but he was wearing the rest of his uniform, including mask and respirator.

That was odd. Was Russ so afraid of his father that he wouldn’t take time to remove the unwieldy gear before fleeing? The outfit had to be slowing him down, and it certainly made him stand out in a crowd.

But most people were too busy gawking at the fire to notice him.

He didn’t head toward his pickup truck, which made sense considering the way the fire was going.

My breath caught in my throat. Unless I was mistaken, he was following Haylee.

Furiously, I sent her a warning text. I turned my phone to vibrate, and stalked after him. I stayed in shadows, but probably didn’t need to. He was obviously concentrating on Haylee.

He’d seen Haylee and me a few minutes before. We were dressed alike, with our hair hidden under our hats, and our waistlines curving in the wrong direction. Did he know which one of us he was following? Not that it mattered. I couldn’t let him harm her.

Finally, I was close to the Ferris wheel. Its calliope music blared above the merry-go-round’s organ ditties. The giraffe, clown, and the fuzzy purple bear, crammed together in one swaying seat and facing forward, ascended.

Russ disappeared into a tent at the base of the Ferris wheel.

An empty seat rose above the tent, and then Haylee, alone in her seat, moved upward. At the top of the wheel, her mothers waved at the world in general, three peculiar creatures having a great time. Haylee looked down as if scanning the grounds below her. The Ferris wheel carried her up to the top.

A blue flash and a loud pop came from inside the tent where Russ had gone.

I froze. A gunshot?

I no longer heard music from the Ferris wheel, and the merry-go-round was blaring again. The Ferris wheel’s passengers shrieked. Silhouetted against the sky, Haylee and her mothers waved at each other. The great wheel had stopped turning, and its lights had gone dark.

That “shot” I’d heard must have been Russ shutting off the power to the Ferris wheel. I was sure he’d seen Haylee board it. Maybe he didn’t want her to disembark until after he made his getaway.

Now, would he take off for his truck?

I flattened myself next to the tent flap. Haylee and her mothers were immobilized on the Ferris wheel. Clay and Isaac must be hosing down the smoldering remains of a hayfield. It wasn’t a life-or-death situation, so there was no point in phoning 911, and I hadn’t programmed Smallwood’s non-emergency number into my phone.

I would stay put. When Russ came outside, I would watch where he went, then go find Chief Smallwood and tell her.

Where was Russ?

I heard no sounds inside the tent, which wasn’t surprising, since people on the Ferris wheel were yelling and the ride’s operator was shouting at them to sit still.

Haylee texted that she had seen someone creep out the other side of the tent and head west along Cabbage Court. That would be away from the fire and toward the handcrafts tent.

Was it Russ?

She didn’t think so.

Was he wearing a firefighter’s uniform?

He wasn’t.
Be careful,
she added.
Acting sneaky. Like staying out of sight of people on ground.

So who had just left the tent? Could someone else have been in the tent when Russ entered? Had this other person found a way of silencing the boy in the fireman suit? Cautiously, I peeked into the tent. I caught a whiff of ozone. Shadows moved when I pushed at the flap, allowing light from beyond the Ferris wheel to seep in.

A fireman was lying, all jumbled up, in the middle of the tent.

I
MANAGED NOT TO SCREAM. THE FALLEN firefighter lay beside thick electrical cables running along the ground from the tent wall nearest the Ferris wheel to a large electrical panel mounted on a pole.

Schooling myself not to go anywhere near those cables, I tiptoed to the firefighter and nearly wept in relief.

The “firefighter” was only a pile of firefighter’s gear, apparently dumped in haste. No one else had been in here with Russ. In fact, Russ probably hadn’t been in here at all, and I’d been following someone else. Who?

Wednesday night, someone wearing a firefighter’s outfit had left a fire while it was still going. Could the same person have done something similar just now?

I set down the baby doll that Detective Gartener must have won with his sharpshooting and picked up the firefighter’s jacket. EVFD was stenciled across the back of the jacket. Hadn’t I seen those same initials on the gloves we’d found where Felicity had been attacked? I’d been too rattled to question it then, but the gloves and the jacket were missing a letter. They should have been stenciled E
B
VFD for Elderberry Bay Volunteer Fire Department. I shined
my cell phone at the label inside the jacket.
Property of Emblesford Volunteer Fire Department
.

Maybe Elderberry Bay had bought used equipment. The person who had left this gear here had been wearing a full firefighter’s ensemble except for gloves.

Because he’d accidentally left the gloves behind after he clobbered Felicity?

I texted Haylee that I was going to follow—very carefully, I added to myself—the person she’d seen creeping away.

I rushed outside. Only the tent I’d left, the Ferris wheel, and a few of the games and rides near them were dark. The rest of the Harvest Festival continued as if nothing had happened. Smoke lingered from the grass fire, but no flames licked up toward the cloudy night sky. The merry-go-round played its organ-grinder tune. Bumper cars bumped. People laughed and shouted. Carnies delivered their spiels.

I turned west on Cabbage Court.

Far ahead, near Brussels Sprouts Boulevard, a figure edged along, staying close to tent walls.

He wore jeans and a light shirt. Russ had been dressed that way. So had Jeremy Chandler.

There was something feminine about the way the person moved.

I couldn’t imagine either Jeremy or Russ masquerading as a woman, especially in a poufy blond wig.

The person’s furtiveness slowed him down, and I gained on him. That was no wig, and the person wasn’t a man. I recognized that fluff of platinum hair.

Mimi.

M
IMI?

Was I following the wrong person?

I turned around and scanned Cabbage Court and the tents lining it. No one was behind me. Most of the people attending the fair were either watching the firefighting or enjoying the rides, games, and food.

Quickly, I texted Haylee. She confirmed that I was following the person who had dodged out of the tent near the Ferris wheel. She agreed that the person was blond and did resemble Mimi.

Mimi
had been fighting the fire but stopped to follow Haylee? When Haylee boarded the Ferris wheel,
Mimi
had ducked into the tent and disconnected the ride’s electrical power?

Mimi, not Russ?

Russ might have had a good reason to flee Plug, and I could have understood if he had gone after Haylee in hopes of keeping her from turning him over to the police. Slowing her progress by stranding her on the Ferris wheel would have worked for a while, especially if she hadn’t ended up at the top with her cell and a clear view of most of the fairgrounds.

Why had Mimi been wearing a firefighter’s outfit and apparently helping fight the fire? She didn’t belong to the Elderberry Bay Volunteer Fire Department.

Where was Emblesford?

Why had Mimi fled when
Plug
arrived? Other firefighters besides Plug could have recognized that she was an intruder. Maybe she simply didn’t want to be around when the firefighters started taking off their outfits.

Mimi couldn’t have known where Haylee was heading, so she couldn’t have preplanned turning off the Ferris wheel and marooning Haylee on it. That must have been pure luck.

What did she hope to accomplish while the power was out?

Haylee would keep close track of me from her perch on the Ferris wheel and she’d phone for help if I got into trouble. I tiptoed after Mimi, who was several tents ahead of me

When I had dragged Felicity outside, she had yelled for help, saying that I was trying to kill her. And she’d thought I was a man, probably because of the firefighter’s equipment and mask hiding my identity. I was about six inches taller than Mimi, but that might not have been obvious to Felicity, lying half conscious on the floorboards of the porch.

A few minutes ago, I had mistaken Mimi for Russ.

In her gear, Mimi had been close to the size of the firefighter I’d seen ducking into a car as I’d arrived at the fire at the Coddlefields’. I already suspected that person of having attacked Felicity and Tiffany.

Mimi would know that cotton fabric would burn away to ash.

But why would she have wanted to murder Tiffany and Felicity?

Because they knew or might figure out something about her, something worth killing over. Like that she had been responsible for Darlene Coddlefield’s death.

Mimi could have expected to ambush Tiffany at the
Coddlefields’. If Felicity had remembered correctly, Felicity had surprised Mimi attacking Tiffany and encouraging the Chandler Champion to flare up. Mimi might have thought she had no choice besides putting Felicity out of commission, too.

Ahead of me, Mimi edged along tent walls. I stayed near the tents, too, clambering over ropes and stakes, but the tents were white and my outfit was black. If Mimi turned around, she would see me.

But she didn’t, and with my longer legs, I closed more of the gap between us.

When Darlene had received the certificate announcing her as the winner of the Chandler Challenge, she had cast a look of malicious triumph toward people in the back the audience.

Lots of us had been in that vicinity, including Mimi.

Mimi knew enough about sewing machines to disable the first Chandler Champion. And she’d helped Georgina figure out that an outlet in my shop had a loose connection, so she probably understood wiring well enough to cause the second Chandler Champion to short out and start a fire.

And I was positive that, a few moments ago, she had shut off the Ferris wheel’s power.

In the clue on her cardboard interfacing, Felicity had accused me of tampering with the first Chandler Champion. She had also mentioned “that woman who wins all the embroidery contests.” Smallwood and I had assumed that Felicity had been referring to me, even though I hadn’t won any major ones. Jeremy had said that he hired Felicity because of her encyclopedic knowledge of embroidery competitions. Maybe Felicity had suspected
both
me and Mimi.

Mimi’s machine embroidery ability had been inconsistent. The day after Darlene died, Mimi had been the only student in my classes besides Georgina and Rosemary to have no problem transforming a photo to an embroidery design, but later in the week, when we were practicing hooping and rehooping to create allover embroidery
designs, Mimi hadn’t been able to line up her work, though other students had managed the feat easily.

During another lesson, she’d been doing an expert job with her embroidering, then had made a show of threading a machine wrong and throwing out embroidery that she could have easily fixed.

She had turned in excellent embroidery as her IMEC entry. What her hummingbird and flower design lacked in originality, it made up for in perfect tension and stitching. She hadn’t clipped her seams well when she attached the backing, though, and the resulting doily was bunchier than it could have been.

Maybe some of her intermittent incompetence had been an act. Maybe she had tried, when she remembered, to hide her skills from the rest of us. So we wouldn’t guess she’d held a grudge against Darlene for beating her in contests?

Mimi crossed Brussels Sprouts Boulevard, turned left, and disappeared, either into the handcrafts tent or behind it.

I texted Haylee, but she couldn’t see the entrance to the handcrafts tent and wasn’t sure where Mimi had gone, either.

Beyond the tent, a car started.

If Mimi drove off, I had no hope of catching her unless I hopped into my car and chased down country roads after her. And then what would I do, follow at a discreet distance until the police caught her? With a bolt of fabric wrapped around my waist, I wouldn’t fit behind my steering wheel.

Maybe I was letting Mimi get away, but as various people, including Clay, had told me, I was supposed to leave the investigating, chasing, and catching of suspects to the police.

Well, maybe not the investigating.

There were methods that wouldn’t involve confronting suspects.

The Internet. And I had my phone.

I slunk to the doorway of the handcrafts tent. It was dark inside. Nothing stirred, and there were no sounds except a car bumping away from the parking lot behind the tent.

H
AYLEE TEXTED ME THAT A DARK SEDAN had left the parking area behind the handcrafts tent. On Wednesday night, the mystery firefighter, who could have been Mimi, had been near a dark sedan.

I eased into the handcrafts tent, tiptoed to the back of the Threadville booth, and sat down in a low folding chair.