Dire Threads (31 page)

According to the women who threatened me in the ladies’ room at the roast beef dinner, Mike had loved beautiful things made of wood. Mike had wanted to bulldoze Blueberry Cottage, which was built of irreplaceable hardwoods. Had he loved beautiful wood enough to condemn my cottage so he could take the lumber for his own projects?

Enough to steal a tree from Smythe? Many trees?

Lots of trees had been cut down in that section of Smythe’s woodlot, and in Mike’s woods next to it, but not in other parts of Smythe’s forest where hardwoods grew. Had Mike logged his own forest and part of Smythe’s, fooled the timber company into believing he owned it all, and pocketed the proceeds? There had been about ten years between the two huge deposits in Mike’s bank account. The timing seemed odd for blackmail, but not impossible. Timber probably couldn’t be harvested that often if the woods were totally cut down each time, but in Smythe’s woodlot, only selected trees had been felled, including an enormous black walnut that might have netted tens of thousands of dollars by itself.

And Smythe, reputedly as sweet as his honey, may have said nothing about the theft. Not then.

There was a fly in the honey. Smythe had left for the Honey Makers’ Conference the evening before Mike died, and hadn’t returned until Friday. I’d assumed he’d done the obvious thing and stayed in Erie all that time.

That had been a silly, unthinking conclusion, the sort Uncle Allen might jump to. In fact, Uncle Allen had jumped to it. Surely, I could reason better than that.

Smythe could have waited until Wednesday morning to leave for Erie, he might have never gone to the conference, or maybe he left Erie during the night and made it back to the hotel before the conference’s first morning meetings. It would have been daring, though. His amber truck would be recognizable among all the black ones in and around Elderberry Bay.

Maybe he borrowed someone’s black pickup truck. Mike’s? Or he’d come with Mike on Mike’s ATV, and walked home, shortening his time away from the conference by cutting through Dawn’s farm.

I needed to take another look at the photo I’d taken last Wednesday morning of the man in the orange hat disappearing into the woods. The only hat I’d ever seen on Smythe was his whimsical yellow and black striped stocking cap, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have worn an orange one, especially if he didn’t want to be recognized. Had I taken a photo of a killer walking home after beating Mike?

I discovered another fly in the honey. I realized with a shock that all of the photographs I’d taken that morning were missing. Someone had deleted them.

There was no reason to do that unless the killer feared that my photos could provide evidence against him. It was a stretch. When I’d photographed the man, he’d been almost ten miles from the scene of the crime, and Mike had been dead for almost three hours.
Long enough for someone to walk that distance . . .

But if the killer knew he was the person I’d photographed, it wouldn’t have seemed like a stretch to him. He could be afraid that my evidence might point straight to him.

And he could have easily heard about the photographs I’d taken. The local amateur sleuths had snooped around my computer and informed Uncle Allen, and probably everyone else in Elderberry Bay, that I had a picture of
Mike
, but when I took the photo that was now missing, Mike was already dead.

If the man in the photo was a murderer, he might fear that, sooner or later, someone would examine that photo and discover the time and date the picture was taken. They would know that the man in the photo couldn’t be Mike.

To prevent anyone from identifying him and figuring out that he had been fleeing the scene of the crime, the killer could have stolen my camera, turned on my computer, and erased all of my photographic evidence.

All?

He wouldn’t have known to search through my embroidery portfolio. Trembling, I loaded my embroidery software.

Sure enough, I’d saved the best photo where only an embroiderer would look.

The man was taller than Herb or Irv. As tall as Pete or Smythe.

Or Clay.

The break-in had occurred while I was at the roast beef dinner, which Clay hadn’t attended. But Clay couldn’t be a murderer, I told myself, repeating Haylee’s confident assertion from the night before.

Smythe had attended the roast beef dinner. I’d seen him when we were lining up for food, but not before or after. He could have arrived at the dinner late or departed early, could have broken into my shop, stolen my camera, and deleted my photos. I didn’t want Smythe to be a murderer, either, but I’d seen that shiny padlock hanging from one of his sheds.

In hopes of figuring out for sure who the man was, I enlarged the photo on my screen. The resolution wasn’t great, but I could make out a bit of yellow and maybe some black on the man’s right hand.

Could that be one of Smythe’s hand-knit yellow and black striped gloves? I hadn’t seen those gloves since before Mike’s death. Smythe had been bare handed or wearing work gloves ever since. He had worn the hat and socks that matched the gloves, however.

Although I couldn’t positively identify the man in the photo, I renamed it and saved copies in unrelated files. To be extra safe, I also saved a copy to a thumb drive and jammed the tiny drive deep into the front pocket of my jeans.

Haylee, Opal, Naomi, and Edna were with Smythe. None of them believed Smythe could be a murderer. What if Haylee’s mothers decided to leave the young lovebirds alone?

Dialing Haylee on my cell phone, I rushed to my front windows.
Closed
signs were still displayed in all of the Threadville boutiques across the street.

Haylee didn’t answer. I texted her to return to her shop as soon as possible. If she was too busy to answer her phone, would she look at her messages?

I didn’t take time to power off my computer. I closed the dogs into their pen, ran out the front door, locked it, and dashed to my car.

A black pickup truck was parked in front of the General Store.

I pressed down on the gas pedal and careened around Cayuga Avenue. I zigzagged through village streets to Shore Road. No one was following me.

I accelerated. To the speed limit. Above it.

Dawn’s farm looked the same as it had a half hour earlier, and so did Herb’s house. No vehicles in their driveways.

I barreled onto Smythe’s road, then zoomed to the
Hap-Bee Hap-Bee
sign that marked the end of his driveway, and turned in.

The driveway curved. Curved again. Smythe’s house came into sight.

All of the vehicles, including Edna’s and Haylee’s, that had been parked in front of it were gone. No pickup trucks.

Not even Smythe’s.

Haylee and her mothers must have driven home the other way, and we had passed each other on roads a mile apart. They were probably warmly ensconced in their boutiques, ready for the day’s students and shoppers. I didn’t have to rescue anyone, after all.

I didn’t want Smythe to be a murderer. I much preferred Irv, Pete, or possibly Herb. And maybe one of them was.

A potential method of ruling out Smythe dangled with other keys from my car’s ignition. I parked the car, grabbed my keys, and tiptoed around behind Smythe’s house. If he showed up, I’d say I was hunting for . . . a lost glove. I thrust one of my gloves into the pocket with Smythe’s map and dashed to the shed that was locked with a gleaming new padlock.

The key went easily into the lock. It turned.

The padlock popped open.

32

M
Y THROAT DRY, I STARED AT THE padlock in my hand. Smythe had a key that would open my locks. He could have beaten Mike, dragged him into my backyard, and fled, locking the gate behind him.

Smythe, sweeter than his honey. A murderer?

Out on the road, brakes squealed.

Tires crunched on the gravel in Smythe’s driveway.

My car was in plain view. If anyone came around the corner of Smythe’s house, he’d see me.

I had to get out of sight quickly. There was only one place to hide, and it was right in front of me.

I yanked the padlock off the door, pocketed it and my keys, pulled the shed’s extra-wide door open, slipped into the shed, and closed the door. I let go of the door. It inched open by itself. I yanked it shut.

Maybe someone had driven to Hap-Bee Hap-Bee Lavender Farm hoping to see Smythe, would realize he wasn’t here, and go away.

The vehicle’s engine turned off.

A door slammed, a
thunk
of metal on metal. My ungloved hand cramped on the icy door handle. If the new arrival was Smythe, and he was a murderer . . .

Would he recognize my car in front of his house? Someone clomped up the porch steps. The screen door screeched. My teeth chattered. I huddled my chin into my scarf.

I was nicely hidden in Smythe’s shed, but if whoever it was came out to look for me, they might notice that the shed door wasn’t completely closed and the padlock was missing.

Being discovered skulking in a shed could be a bit embarrassing. If a murderer was doing the discovering, however . . .

My left arm tense across my chest, I grabbed the door handle with my gloved hand and thrust my bare right fist into my pocket. By the time my eyes adjusted to the dim shed, my hands were warm enough to dial Uncle Allen on my cell phone.

“Come out to Smythe Castor’s farm,” I whispered.

“Why?” He sounded sleepier than usual.

I didn’t want to explain. I needed to listen for sounds from Smythe’s house. “I’ll show you when you get here,” I whispered.

With a grumpy grunt, he disconnected.

I shoved my phone into my pocket and let my gaze drift around the inside of the shed.

What I saw turned my bones to ice.

A camouflage jacket and an orange ball cap hung on a hook near the door. The cap had been professionally embroidered. Under purple grapes were the words
Krawbach Vineyard
. Mike’s cap? A scrunched up pair of yellow and black striped gloves lay on the dirt floor. Why would Smythe lock his coat, gloves, and Mike’s hat in his shed? Was he hiding evidence until he figured out how and where to destroy it? Again, it seemed like a farfetched theory, but a murderer might only be thinking of ways of saving his own skin, and would destroy or hide every bit of evidence anyone might ever pin on him.

If he found me here, he would know that I knew, and he’d put me where only the coyotes would find me. I didn’t dare run to my car. He would see me from his windows and catch me before I could reach it.

I sagged backward, nearly letting go of the door. Reflexes jerked my bare hand out of my pocket. I caught my balance against smooth metal.

A lawn tractor.

A key was in the ignition.

I saw it as a sign.

I peeked outside. No one. My car was on the other side of Smythe’s house, and the newcomer’s vehicle must be, also. I couldn’t see it. The screen door hadn’t screeched again. The person had to be inside the house, and he had to be Smythe. With any luck, he wouldn’t hear the noise I hoped to make.

Smythe’s tractor started with a deafening, and very satisfying, roar.

I put it into gear and accelerated into the shed door. It swung open on its hinges. Giddy with success and dread, I steered the lawn tractor out of the shed, through a gap in the evergreen windbreak surrounding Smythe’s farmyard, and into the cornfield.

I had driven lawn tractors in spring, summer, and fall when I was a girl living at home with my parents, but I had never driven one in winter, much less on frozen furrows. Riding the thing was bone- and teeth-jarring. Aiming the wheels as best I could into furrows, I gunned the motor. The lawn tractor sprang forward. Trust Smythe to buy a really fast one.

Not fast enough.

I looked over my shoulder at the expanse of cornfield I’d already crossed.

A man wearing a bright yellow parka and a yellow and black striped stocking cap dashed out through the gap in the windbreak. Arms flailing above his head, he sprinted into the cornfield.

I needed to get to a road where I could urge the lawn tractor to its top speed. The relatively smooth road leading to Shore Road was just beyond a line of trees. The field had been plowed parallel with the road. I hauled at the steering wheel. Crossing the furrows was like sewing sideways on wide-wale corduroy, though, and I nearly beached the tractor on ridges.

I hauled at the steering wheel again and took a gentler angle across the field. The tractor moved marginally faster, but I would have to drive it farther on bumpy ground to reach the road.

At the edge of the field, I squeezed the tractor between spindly trees. Luckily, there was no fence.

There was, however, a ditch. A deep one.

Picturing myself flying over the steering wheel or rolling the tractor, I drove straight down into the ditch. The tractor bottomed out, and crawled, much too slowly, up onto the road.

Letting out a triumphant whoop, I glanced back. Smythe had closed some of the distance between us, but I was now driving faster than any man could run.

Jolting along with my teeth bared to the wind, I was about to freeze.

Jolting. Uh-oh.

The road wasn’t that uneven.

A flat tire or two? Like a bicycle racer, I bent low to improve my aerodynamics. Nothing, not even speeding along on the rims with sparks flying, was going to keep me from driving all the way home.

Nothing.

Except Uncle Allen in his cruiser.

The tractor was so noisy that I hadn’t noticed the cruiser’s siren or horn. The cruiser cut in front of me.

I had never been happier to see Uncle Allen. He had taken me seriously enough to break speed limits. I pulled onto the shoulder and climbed off the tractor, which, now that no one was on the seat, promptly shut itself off. The right front tire was as flat as freshly ironed damask.

Hands on holsters, Uncle Allen swaggered to me. “Get back on that thing.”

I could barely hear him. As usual, he hadn’t shut off his siren, and the ever-persistent horn had not quite worn itself out yet.
Hoot, bloop, hoot, bloop.