Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery) (13 page)

H
oping to calm my obviously upset houseguest, I asked quietly, “Explain what?”

Brianna pointed to the glass. “This black stuff all over one of the glasses from the dishwasher—that’s fingerprint powder, right?”

So she did know what a dishwasher was. “Yes.”

Her forehead wrinkled and frown lines appeared beside her mouth, not a great look on her otherwise pretty and girlish face. “You had them fingerprint your door, and also one of the glasses I used?”

“I—”

“Don’t you know I have the right to privacy?”

I gestured with my head toward the apartment door. “Let’s go downstairs to discuss this, just the two of us.”

She sneered. “So your customers won’t know what you’re really like? Investigating murders. Maybe even causing—”

“That’s enough!” Rosemary barked.

I flashed Rosemary an appreciative smile before raising my head again to speak seriously to Brianna. “You told the police last night that someone may have come into the apartment. The fingerprint guy needed your prints to distinguish them from mine and from those of possible intruders. That’s all.”

Leaving the glass behind, she turned around. “I still don’t think you have any right.”

She headed toward Sally and Tally’s pen. They came to the railing and wagged their plume-like tails.

Brianna stopped about a half yard away from them. “How do you expect me to get back to my room with them in the way?”

Georgina, a regular customer who lived within walking distance of the Threadville stores, marched to the gate, opened it, grabbed both dogs by their collars, and led them to the far corner of the pen. She smiled at Brianna—with her mouth only, not her eyes. “Here you go. But they don’t bite.” Georgina wore mauve slacks and a matching tunic. She’d made the outfit in Haylee’s classes after embroidering the fabric with mauve hearts and curlicues at In Stitches.

Brianna only sniffed, stalked to the stairs, and pulled the door shut behind her.

Rosemary murmured to me, “Why are you letting her stay with you?”

I grinned. “Mother’s orders.”

Rosemary waggled her eyebrows. “That explains everything. Not.” She glanced at my racks of thread. “But she does have nice thread for sale.”

“Here’s the good news,” I told her. “I think she’ll be selling them at the craft fair, too.”

“Good,” Rosemary said. “That should keep her out of your hair.”

Georgina often helped in the store and was going to work at the In Stitches table at the fair. She came close, bent toward Rosemary, and whispered, “But maybe not out of mischief.” Georgina straightened and patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Willow, I’ll be watching her at the craft show.”

A light on my phone showed that someone was using my landline. No one in the shop was on the phone.

Shortly after the light went out, my shop phone rang. I answered.

“Willow? It’s Mother.”

“I’m at work.”

She let out a little laugh that her constituents might think was empathetic. I recognized a certain knifelike edge to it. “I know. That’s why I called your store. I’ll make it short.”

I clutched the receiver more tightly.

“What are you doing up there, Willow?”

“Waiting on customers.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve gotten yourself mixed up in another murder, haven’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.” I peered toward the closed apartment door as if I could see through it. “What gave you that idea?”

“It’s all over the news.”

“What do people in South Carolina care about what goes on in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania?”

“Your last name, honey. Vanderling. Are you trying to sabotage my campaign?”

I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me. “There was a death. It barely made the news in Erie. I doubt that anyone in Pittsburgh or Cleveland has heard about it.”

“Well, it could harm my campaign if we weren’t working hard down here on damage control.”

Had Brianna’s father sent Brianna to spy on me? “What’s Brianna been saying?” Too bad I couldn’t make an allegation sound like a compliment the way my mother could.

“That you’ve involved yourself in a murder and have been accusing her.”

“First, I’m not involved in a murder. I may have heard the victim scream, and I was first on the scene.”

My mother gasped. “Whatever for? You should stay away from situations like that. They’re dangerous, in more ways than one. You could be hurt. You could be suspected of committing crimes.”

“Mother, someone
screamed
. How could any decent person not want to help?”

“You could have called emergency.”

“I did. I’m also one of our first responders, so I needed to attend the emergency anyway.”

“That’s very admirable of you, Willow, honey, as long as you stay out of trouble.”

“I do.” I plowed on, answering one of her earlier statements. “And, despite what Brianna may have reported, I have not accused her of anything. If her father’s worried about her, maybe he should tell her to come home.”

“She’s an adult, Willow.”

She didn’t act like one. But I didn’t want to say that and prolong an argument that might cause an unmendable rift between my mother and me. She always wanted to run everything, but she loved me and meant well, and I was learning to bite my tongue. And to change the subject. “She sells excellent threads,” I managed. “Everyone wants some. I’ve told her she can have a table at our craft fair.”

My mother’s voice warmed. “That’s wonderful, Willow, honey. This should help her get her business off the ground.”

“She hasn’t accepted.”

“You need to act like you really want her to. Don’t put her off or frighten her. She’s young, only twenty-two.” Very sweetly, she said she wouldn’t keep me any longer and ended the call.

I slowly replaced the receiver in the charging station.
Danger averted
, I told myself.
For now . . .

It wasn’t very hospitable of me, but I looked forward to the day that Brianna packed up and went home, whenever that might be.

As usual, my students cheered me up, and by the time they left, I was in a good mood again.

I took the dogs and the black-powdered drinking glass downstairs to the apartment underneath In Stitches. Brianna’s room was quiet. I put the glass into the dishwasher again, gave all four animals an outing, then shut them into my room so they wouldn’t bother Brianna if she came out of her suite while I went shopping with Haylee.

Outside, Brianna’s car was gone. It was probably too much to hope that she’d left for home.

Haylee was waiting beside my car in the lot behind her three mothers’ shops. She frowned. “You look exhausted. Are you sure you want to drive?”

I opened the driver’s door. “Sure.”

Buckling her seat belt, she gave me a worried look. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Enough.” I pulled out onto Lake Street. “How are you doing? And how are Edna and Mrs. Battersby?”

“We’re all fine. Gord’s taking Edna and her mother out to dinner tonight.”

“He’ll win Mrs. Battersby over yet.”

Haylee grinned. “Yep. What happened after you left with Chief Smallwood and that detective last night?”

I told her all about my activities with the two police officers during the night, the initial confrontation with Brianna, my disturbing discoveries on the beach during my morning dog walk, the additional information that Vicki had given me before lunch, and the latest confrontation with Brianna after lunch.

Haylee agreed that the person I’d seen on the trail had to have been the murderer or have witnessed the murder, and the fact that he—or she—hadn’t come forward as a witness made him highly suspect. “And that zombie, Floyd, was enraged about those curses.”

“He’s my prime suspect,” I said. “But there are others besides him and Dare. You weren’t with me when Juliette and Patricia came off the riverside trail. Patricia was in jeans and a matching jacket, an outfit like the skulker wore. Juliette was wearing a long skirt and blouse. She had her blouse on backward.”

Haylee snorted. “That must have looked good.”

“A peasant blouse is easier to wear backward than some blouses. I don’t know if she had been wearing it like that all evening, and the tag chose that moment to slip out, or if she’d changed out of it into a pantsuit and then back into the skirt and peasant blouse in a rush.”

We cautioned each other about staying a safe distance from Dare, Floyd, Patricia, and Juliette.

“That Brianna sounds like a real horror,” Haylee added. “Wearing your shoes outside and then pretending she had never borrowed them! Acting like you owe her privacy in your apartment! Even if she hasn’t killed anyone, she’s hiding something. Don’t trust her.”

“I don’t.”

“And anyone, including Brianna, could have helped themselves to your thread, needles, and thread nippers when the fire station was unlocked.”

“What worries me most,” I said, “is the way Detective Neffting seems to have decided that Edna is the most likely culprit. Or Gord.”

Haylee sighed. “And their alibis are only from each other. We’ll have to prove Detective Neffting wrong.”

I reminded her, “Vicki doesn’t want us sleuthing.”

“I don’t want Edna to go to prison.”

“We’ll be careful with our snooping, then, so Vicki won’t know.”

“We always are,” Haylee said.

I pulled into the grocery store parking lot. “And Vicki always seems to find out.”

“She won’t this time.”

I wished I had Haylee’s confidence. But one thing was certain. Neither Edna nor Gord would have harmed Isis, or anyone else.

I stocked up on foods like frozen pizzas that Brianna might be able to prepare if she wanted a meal when I wasn’t around to fix it. I also bought everything I would need the next night for the barbecue, when Haylee, Clay, and the local innkeeper, Ben, were coming to help me decide how to finish the interior of Blueberry Cottage.

With Clay as his contractor, Ben had done a fabulous job of restoring the Elderberry Bay Lodge, the previously boarded-up Victorian inn that he’d bought. Haylee and I had worked with Ben to choose which of the old photos he’d found in the lodge to display, so Ben felt he owed me. He didn’t. Haylee and I had loved sorting through photos dating from the 1890s to the 1980s.

Haylee thought Ben was just about perfect, but Ben had been widowed a couple of years before and was still grieving his wife, and Haylee was afraid he would never be interested in another woman. I suspected that he would, eventually, and I didn’t mind giving him little pushes toward Haylee. I also didn’t mind that Clay had the same goal, since that could mean something resembling double dates, and I’d see more of Clay. Finally, tomorrow night, the four of us could have dinner together. The Haunted Graveyard was later in the evening. Maybe we could all go.

Meanwhile, I bought plenty of food for the barbecue. I wouldn’t be as gracious as my mother would expect me to be, but if Brianna was around when I was cooking and serving the meal, not inviting her would be more awkward than inviting her.

In a way, I was hoping to win the young woman over. She’d seemed to dislike me from the moment she’d met me. Somehow, I doubted that my pink fuzzy bathrobe and slippers had caused her attitude. But what had? Maybe by being as nice as my mother urged, I could undo the damage.

Brianna’s car was still gone when I parked in front of my gate. Haylee and I agreed to meet again in about an hour at the storytelling event that Opal held most Friday nights at Tell a Yarn. I quickly put away my groceries, cooked one of the frozen pizzas, made a Caesar salad, and set two places at my eat-in counter, but Brianna didn’t return before I left for Opal’s.

Tired as I was, I looked forward to a comfortable evening surrounded by friends.

Friends?

Maybe not.

I should have guessed that Opal would invite Patricia and Juliette, two of the people that Haylee and I had just cautioned each other about possibly being murderers.

O
pal’s dining room was as lovely as usual. Fall flowers in vases decorated the mantel and the center of her large oval table. Opal’s cat purred on the hearth near a blazing fire.

Unfortunately, however, storytelling night couldn’t possibly be as relaxing as I’d hoped, not with Juliette and Patricia there. If one of them was a murderer and I showed even the teeniest suspicion, I could endanger myself and my friends.

In a hand-knit white turtleneck sweater, Patricia seemed to shrink behind her thick-rimmed glasses. She didn’t seem to notice that she was scrunching up one of Opal’s hand-crocheted place mats.

Juliette sat beside Patricia. She’d knit only about two rows so far, so I couldn’t guess what her project might be. I complimented her on her yarn’s pretty shade of midnight blue. The ends of her needles kept snagging the voluminous sleeves of her metallic gold, red, and purple gown.

Beside Juliette, Naomi used a pencil and ruler to draw quilt blocks on paper.

Edna and Mrs. Battersby were already back from their dinner with Gord. Apparently, Mrs. Battersby didn’t need to look down at the tiny sweater she was knitting, maybe because no one could focus on fingers and needles that were flying that quickly. Edna stopped beading a length of white satin and smiled at me.

Between Edna and Mrs. Battersby, Haylee waved her knitting needle, complete with knitting, at me.

Opal was handing around plates heaped with date bars, lemon bars, meringues, and gingersnaps. I loved them all, but Opal’s date bars were my downfall.

The only other people in the room were Elderberry Bay’s librarian, our postmistress, and Georgina. Everyone had a bone china cup and saucer and a silver spoon.

Handcrafts could wait. We ate gooey treats and drank tea, then trooped off to Opal’s restroom to wash our hands. Finally, we were ready to return to our knitting, crocheting, sewing, mending, and whatever else we’d brought to keep our hands busy during one of Tell a Yarn’s storytelling nights.

Opal put on a pair of white gloves. Except for the hand-knit slacks and crocheted apron, she could have passed for someone at a 1940s tea party. She lifted a large book from the top of her buffet and laid it gently on the table, then sat in the empty seat beside me. The book was handmade, its birch bark covers laced together with thin strips of rawhide.

The book’s title had been scribed into the birch bark with a wood burning tool.

The New Book of the Dead.

Edna leaped out of her seat and leaned over the table. “That’s one of Isis’s books! She had a dozen or so of them in my apartment so she could sell them at the craft fair, but that detective took them all for evidence.”

Haylee’s eyes danced with merriment. “How did you get that book, Opal? Steal it out from under the detective’s pointy nose?”

Opal stroked the birch bark. “Haylee! Of course not. Isis was supposed to tell stories about ancient Egypt tonight. She dropped the book off with me last week. She didn’t come near it afterward, so I don’t see how any detective, with or without a pointy nose, can claim it’s evidence. I thought that as a tribute to Isis, we could read from it tonight, and
then
I’ll offer it to him. Or to Chief Smallwood, instead, since she’s more approachable.” She patted the book. “Wait until you hear what Isis wrote!”

I looked at my knitting to hide a smile. Haylee’s three mothers could be as naughty as Haylee and I were at rationalizing a tiny bit of sleuthing that might possibly upset the police. But how could this handmade book that Isis had dropped off several days before her death offer the police any real clues about who her murderer was? The police already had similar books that they’d found in Edna’s apartment.

Isis’s murderer could be in the room with us while we learned more about Isis and her book. Was that helpful, or could we be putting ourselves in peril? Hoping it was the former, I didn’t say anything, and leaned forward to listen to Opal. My knitting had improved since I’d moved to Threadville, but I was still making simple scarves, and whenever one of the evening’s tales became scary, my knitting loosened and I dropped stitches. Opal had taught me how to go down the ladder of stitches and retrieve them with a crochet hook, but I wasn’t good at it, and I hoped that Opal wasn’t about to read anything too frightening.

First, she gave us background information about ancient Egyptian beliefs and legends, which had evolved over centuries. She told us that Isis—the original one—was one of the most important Egyptian goddesses. Isis symbolized motherhood, and also protected the dead. And, in some myths, she protected sailors.

Thinking of those tiny boats and the upside-down bride doll, I tried not to shudder.

Finally, Opal opened the massive tome. “Isis seems to have retold ancient legends and added touches of her own. Maybe a lot more than
touches . . .
As Dare Drayton said the other night in the fire station, the original Book of the Dead wasn’t a book. It was a collection of spells for ushering people into the afterlife. Many were written in tombs.” She elbowed me. “Carved in stone.”

I made suitable groaning noises.

Opal held the book up for everyone to see. “Isis’s incantations are written in ink.” The calligraphy appeared to be flawless.

Opal set the book down and turned pages. Almost all of them featured at least one pen-and-ink sketch. Opal stopped at an illustration of boats floating, one after the other, down a dark river. The title on the page was
Guide to an Afterlife with the Sun and in the Company of the Person Issuing the Spell.

I asked, “Can you read that page to us, Opal?”

She read, “Weave a willow-wand boat by moonlight, and in the boat, tie an amulet representing the person with whom you wish to spend eternity on the sun. The amulet must lie on cushions of flowers and face the sky. On a dark night, launch the boat on a flowing river close to where it enters a larger body of water. Chant these words to the sky.” Opal murmured a bunch of syllables in a spooky voice. I thought I heard the name of the Egyptian sun god, Ra, several times. She marked the words with her finger and looked up at us. “And here’s Isis’s English version: ‘Using my magic, you and I will reincarnate ourselves, and we’ll cross the sky together every day in our own blaze of glory. Go, now, to the afterlife where I will join you.’”

Edna asked, “Joining the sun in the sky was considered a
good
afterlife in Egyptian mythology?”

Haylee laughed. “The ancient Egyptians must not have understood how hot the sun actually is.”

Opal lifted pages and turned them with loving care. “There’s more.”

We all commented on Isis’s artistic talent. One picture showed a mummy case and a bunch of crockery urns. “What’s that one about?” I asked.

Opal scanned the article. “The dead had to be able to put all their body parts back together, and to do that, they had to be mummified, while specific organs were placed in specific jars.”

Juliette piped up, “Ugh! Wouldn’t it have made life, I mean death, easier for the dead people if they’d left the organs where they were in the first place?”

Winding yarn around the tip of her needle, Patricia shivered as if she were cold. But how could she be? She was closer than any of us to the fire, and she was wearing that heavy turtleneck sweater, besides.

Opal answered, “They believed the organs had to be preserved differently from the rest of the body, and if they couldn’t reassemble themselves, they wouldn’t be able to go to any sort of afterlife. In ancient Egypt, mummification was for the upper classes.” She read silently for a moment, and then summarized, “Isis makes a point that her book is for everyone. We can all, she claims, cast spells for ourselves and for others.”

She read a few incantations, both in English and in phonetically spelled translations of authentic-looking hieroglyphs.

Opal came to another illustration of boats on a river.

I asked her, “Would you read that one, too?”

She said, “Isis seemed particularly fond of tailoring other people’s afterlives for them. This incantation is for sending someone to an afterlife different than your own, for people you don’t want to spend eternity with.”

Mrs. Battersby turned her little sweater to start a new row. “That’s the best idea that woman has come up with yet.”

Naomi looked wide-eyed at her. Haylee and I exchanged grins.

Opal went on as if Mrs. Battersby hadn’t interrupted. “She says to craft a willow-wand boat by moonlight, tie an amulet representing the unfavored person head down in a boat, call out that person’s name, launch the boat into a stream or river near where it flows into a larger body of water, and hold it underwater while reciting the spell.”

Remembering Isis on the riverbank Wednesday night in the mist, I felt a little seasick. Maybe I shouldn’t have been paying such close attention to my moving knitting needles.

Opal read a bunch of other syllables in a ghostly voice. This time, I heard the sun god’s name, Ra, only once. And then, in a flatter voice devoid of her usual humor, Opal read the English translation. “Go to the deepest, darkest river! Go to the bowels of the earth. Fall apart. Scatter. Go where you will never rise!”

I set my knitting down, or I’d have dropped stitches for sure. I’d heard Isis shouting parts of this spell. And I’d found the boat with the upside-down amulet representing Edna. The groom doll had been tied facing the sky, as if Isis had planned to spend eternity with Gord, maybe the two of them blazing across the sky with the sun.

Edna must have recognized the horror on my face. “It means nothing, Willow,” she said.

Opal gave a grim laugh. “Isis even included ‘Helpful Hints’ in sidebars for some of the curses and spells. The Helpful Hint for the upside-down amulet curse says, ‘For best results in taking someone else’s place in an afterlife of your choosing and consigning them to a different one, wear or carry something belonging to that person.’”

I grabbed the edges of my chair seat to keep myself from toppling onto the floor. Isis must have followed her own advice and put on Edna’s super-decorated, heavy wedding skirt. And Vicki had told me that Isis had been found with a piece of one of the skirt’s frills in her pocket.

Isis had to be the person who had carried Edna’s scissors to the bandstand.

“‘What goes around comes around,’” Patricia quoted.

Mouth dropping open, I stared at her, but only for a second. I didn’t want her guessing that I had detected a note of satisfaction in her voice. What did Patricia know about Isis’s threats against Edna? Or was she merely making guesses based on Isis’s having been inside that giant skirt?

Opal plucked a printed sheet of paper from inside the back cover of the book. “A price list. Wow, she was charging several hundred dollars for each of her books.”

“The books are worth that,” Georgina guessed, “to people who collect handmade books like this.”

Edna commented in a soft voice, “Her work was amazing.”

“What?” Haylee teased. “I don’t see any crystals glued to the book.”

Edna tapped Haylee’s arm. “I’m sure she would have added crystals if she’d had time. She could have bought perfect ones from me. I’d even have given her a discount.”

I picked up the price list. “She was selling more than books. She has individual prices for personally casting her curses, incantations, and spells.” I checked the numbers. “She charged twice as much for ‘everlasting damnation among the palace slaves’ as she did for ‘gentle escort into a pharaoh’s afterlife.’” Had she been serious? At a hundred dollars per spell, even the “gentle escort” prices were steep.

Mrs. Battersby flung the tiny sweater, already completed, down on top of an equally tiny pom-pom cap. “What a bunch of hooey.” She began casting on another project.

“What are you making?” Juliette asked her.

“Sweaters and caps for premature babies.
Some
one has to do it.”

Opal picked one up. “They’re beautiful, Mrs. Battersby. I remember watching you knit when I was a child, and that’s what got me started, but in all the years since, I’ve never seen anyone else knit so well so quickly. Do you have a pattern for the sweaters and caps? An address where we could send any that we knit?”

“I’ve made so many of the things I no longer need a pattern, but I can find you the website with the information.”

We all agreed that we wanted that website address, and maybe it was my imagination, but Mrs. Battersby’s frown may have softened.

Patricia looked at her watch, gasped, and pushed her chair back.

Looking startled, Juliette asked her, “Is it time to go?”

Patricia nodded. “We’d better hurry.”

The rest of us looked mystified.

Juliette rose from the table. “Dare Drayton is giving a reading at the Elderberry Bay Lodge at nine.”

“Isn’t that rather late?” Mrs. Battersby asked.

Georgina stood. “Is it open to the public?”

Juliette said it was, and that Dare was hoping someone besides zombies and his cousin would show up.

Clay was going? I shoved my knitting into my bag.

The librarian and postmistress decided to go to the reading with Patricia, Juliette, and Georgina.

Haylee and her three mothers began tossing each other meaningful looks.

I knew these women pretty well. They were not leaving.

And then I understood. Now was our chance to snoop around Opal’s guest room, where Patricia was staying, and around Naomi’s guest room, where Juliette was staying. I sat back and let Patricia, Juliette, the postmistress, Georgina, and the librarian go without me. I’d see Clay the next night anyway.

Edna cast a sideways glance at her mother.

I read that look, also.

Edna and her friends did not want to include Mrs. Battersby in their sleuthing.