Threaded for Trouble (27 page)

“Please, take my other Chandler models and have them tested.”

Smallwood nodded. “We may do that.”

Two customers ran up to my porch and greeted me. Any minute now, a crowd would gather in and around my rocking chairs and I’d never pry more information out of Chief Smallwood.

Maybe she wanted to learn more from me, too. When I suggested a walk down the street, she agreed. We passed her cruiser. Waving at Sam inside his hardware store, The Ironmonger, I asked Smallwood, “Did you learn anything more from Felicity?”

“No, unfortunately. She’s still unconscious. They had to operate right away to relieve pressure on her brain from internal bleeding. She’s being kept in an artificial coma.” Smallwood was still carrying the evidence bag. She raised it to eye level. “All we have until she wakes up is what she wrote on this cardboard and what she said early this morning—a fireman attacked Tiffany, then pushed Felicity down and dragged her out of the house. Apparently she doesn’t remember someone breaking her skull and tying her to a bed.”

Mona peered out Country Chic’s door as if hoping to lure customers to visit her home decorating boutique. We waved at her, then strolled silently past The Sunroom.

Bashing Tiffany and Felicity with a point presser hadn’t been enough for their attacker. He had been determined that neither of them would escape before the smoke or fire finished them off. What did the two women have in common, other than that they both had some experience, maybe, with sewing, and both had known Darlene? Presumably Tiffany hadn’t harmed herself, so maybe she
hadn’t engineered Darlene’s death, but the culprit almost had to be another member of the Coddlefield household.

I didn’t like Plug and wasn’t about to absolve him of fatally harming his wife, but I could not believe he would allow a fire to rage in a home where his children were sleeping. His daughters had said he’d found Tiffany and carried her out of the house. Maybe he did that to make himself look like a hero, but why tie her up, and why leave the fabric evidence on her wrist when he carried her out?

We climbed the stairs to the bandstand in the park where the river met the lake. The bandstand’s recent coat of white paint nearly blinded me in the afternoon sunshine. “Did Tiffany see anyone?” I asked Smallwood. “Hear anyone creep up behind her?”

“Tiffany’s concussion was worse than Felicity’s. She needed the same emergency operation. She’s still unconscious, too.” She squinted at me. “Could Felicity have attacked Tiffany, then blamed a fireman?”

I bit my lip. “It’s possible, but she wouldn’t have tied herself to the leg of a bed, unless she wanted to commit suicide and make it look like murder, but why drive all the way here to do that? She could have stayed in Cleveland. And how did she bash herself in the back of the head with a point presser, by falling on it? Did you find it on the second floor, or upstairs in the sewing room?”

“Second floor.”

“That fits with what she told us about the fireman following her down there,” I said. “How do you police officers manage to keep this all straight?”

She waved her notebook at me. “Notes. I’ll meet with Gartener and the others and go over all this. Thanks for your help.”

I couldn’t remember her ever being this grateful before.

She quickly undid the goodwill by adding, “Don’t leave the county without telling me first.” Head high, she trotted down the bandstand steps and strode toward her cruiser, leaving me gaping after her.

I
REMINDED MYSELF THAT CHIEF SMALL-WOOD hadn’t said I needed her permission to leave the county, only that I had to
tell
her if I was going. It was a small distinction, and an even smaller consolation.

I returned to In Stitches only seconds before Susannah was supposed to be back at Tell a Yarn. I walked out to my front porch with her and asked, “Did I see you driving around early this morning about the time of the Coddlefield fire?”

“What were you doing out then?”

Not really an answer…I said, “I went for on-the-job firefighting training.”

She shuddered. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

I asked boldly, “Why were
you
there?”

“I wasn’t sleeping. But I didn’t go to the fire.” She pleated the hem of her shirt between her fingers. “I didn’t set it, either.”

“Have you told Smallwood about that letter yet?”

“It’s too late. She must already know about it. Or it was destroyed in the fire.” She put on a faked hopeful smile.

“Not much was destroyed in that fire. Tell her, anyway.”

“Okay, okay!” She stormed off my porch and across the street.

The Threadville shops closed at six on Thursdays. When my last customer left, I let my dogs out in the backyard. I couldn’t help smiling at the way they attacked each other, gnashing their teeth in play, but neither of them ever got hurt.

Had the police found Russ yet?

Maybe Clay would know. I called his cell, but he didn’t answer. Was he still at the hospital with Tiffany? I texted him to call me.

I phoned Isaac. He didn’t know where Russ was, either. His voice took on foreboding overtones. “Plug’s looking for him.”

“Why?”

“He
said
he was going to kill him. But you know how fathers can be.”

Mine had not said anything remotely like that, even in teasing, when I was a teen. On the other hand, as an adult, I had gotten into a lot of trouble for making a threat like Plug’s. I hadn’t meant it, though. Had Plug?

I called Smallwood and told her what Isaac had said.

“That could explain why the boy hasn’t shown up,” she said. “Some parents! We’d like you to show us where you found Felicity, now, Willow. Meet you at the Coddlefields’ in fifteen minutes?”

I agreed, though I really didn’t want to return to that smoke- and water-damaged house, didn’t want to be involved in anything to do with the Coddlefields’ life or the investigation into Darlene’s death.

It was a little late to stay out of it, however.

Maybe, I told myself as I shut the dogs into my apartment, the police were on the verge of solving the crimes and would soon tell me they’d arrested a culprit, and I would be able to leave the county if I wanted to without telling Chief Smallwood first. Not that I particularly wanted to. I loved Threadville.

I drove south into the countryside. The golden haze
hovering over fields would have been lovelier if I hadn’t been on my way back to the Coddlefields’. I slowed to turn into their driveway. A car coming from the opposite direction stopped to let me go first. Detective Gartener lifted one finger from the steering wheel in greeting.

He followed me down the driveway and parked behind me. The Coddlefields’ farmhouse looked empty and forlorn with that gaping black hole in the roof and glass missing from the third-floor windows. Yellow police tape was draped from tree to tree. Everything reeked of smoke.

Chief Smallwood’s cruiser was near Tiffany’s car, but Plug’s SUV and Russ’s pickup were nowhere in sight.

Smallwood, Gartener, and I got out of our vehicles. Gartener wore a T-shirt and jeans, so it was easy to tell he wasn’t wearing a Kevlar vest, but he walked with his usual take-no-nonsense bearing.

Smallwood had found time for a shower and a fresh uniform. Maybe a nap, too, but she always glowed when Gartener was around. She greeted him first, then me. “Willow, we want to see where you found Felicity Ranquels tied to a bed…”

One of Gartener’s eyebrows rose.

“The leg of a bed,” I corrected her. “She was on the floor.”

Smallwood waved her hand in front of her face. “Wherever.”

“Retrace your steps for us,” Gartener said in that warm voice that didn’t go with his wary eyes. “From the moment you arrived here last night.”

“I parked out on the road, then ran up the driveway.” I showed them where the children had been sitting when I talked to them, and where I’d collected firefighter’s garb from the fire truck. They had me lead them through the woods the way I’d gone to the back of house. We ducked under the yellow tape. Unlike the night before, the kitchen door was closed. Smallwood had a key.

The smell of smoke was worse inside. They wanted to know how I knew my way around the house, and I felt like
a museum guide. Here was where the children were crying instead of eating their snack. Here was where Edna and I saw Plug kissing Tiffany. Here was the late Darlene Coddlefield’s collection of framed antique linens, now stained by smoke and water.

And…I balked. There were the stairs that Tiffany and I had climbed, huffing and puffing under the weight of the second killer sewing machine, the same stairs I’d dragged Felicity down in the dark of night, with smoke billowing and water dripping. I asked, “Are these stairs safe?”

“You weren’t worried about that last night,” Smallwood scolded.

“The local fire officials”—Plug and Isaac?—“have said they are,” Gartener assured me. “And state fire investigators concurred.”

“Lead on,” Smallwood ordered, a little too cheerfully.

Bracing my shoulders, I trudged to the second floor. I pointed through open doorways to bedrooms, the pink frilly one and the blue cars-and-trucks one, with quilts missing from bunk beds and blankets pulled onto the floor. The quilt was still on the bed in the master bedroom. Everything was wet. “I checked these rooms, first.”

I didn’t have to touch the tiny bedroom’s door. It was open, the way I’d left it. “Did you fingerprint this door?” I asked. “Felicity was lying there, on the floor, early this morning.”

“Everything was checked for prints, right, Toby?” Smallwood asked the tall detective.

He looked down at me. “Did you touch the door last night?”

I thought back. “I was wearing firefighter’s gloves.”

Smallwood pointed behind the door. “Those?”

Two firefighter’s gloves, with the letters EVFD stenciled on them in red, were almost out of sight under the bed. I stared at the gloves in bewilderment, and then at my bare hands. “I don’t think so. I’m sure I left them on, even when I was dragging Felicity out. I put mine away where they belonged on the fire truck. Those must be—”

Gartener was one step ahead of me. He scooped up the
gloves and dropped them into an evidence bag. “Felicity said her attacker was dressed as a fireman.”

But I’d discovered a new horror. Thickened blood. I backed away. “Felicity’s head was just about there,” I managed.

“We figured,” Gartener said.

“The loop around her wrist was under this leg,” I said.

Smallwood took photos and made notes.

Except for the bloodstain and a tiny, yellowed scrap of paper on the floor near where the gloves had been, Tiffany’s room was sparse and neat.

“What’s that piece of paper?” I asked Gartener.

He picked it up. “A return address label for Darlene Coddlefield.”

“Think it matches that small rectangle of glue on the weapon?” Smallwood asked him.

“We’ll find out.” He placed the sticker in an envelope.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Darlene Coddlefield put return address labels on her sewing things.”

“Bingo,” Smallwood said.

“So the point presser you found was hers?”

“Two for two,” she said.

“Did you find her point presser in this room?”

“Three for three,” Smallwood said.

“Ever think of joining the state police?” Gartener asked in that voice that might have made me consider doing all sorts of uncharacteristic things.

But maybe not becoming a cop. “I’ll leave investigating to you experts.”

“Good,” Smallwood snapped. “It’s about time you learned that. We’re done here.” She started down the soggy, carpeted stairs.

Following her, I asked, “How are Felicity and Tiffany?”

“Still being kept unconscious,” Smallwood said.

“Is anyone with them?” I asked.

Behind me, Gartener answered, “State troopers.”

“Is Clay Fraser still with Tiffany?” I asked.

I couldn’t see Gartener’s face, but he sounded surprised or amused. “No.”

Where was Clay, and why hadn’t he returned my call or text?

Smallwood led us out the back door and locked it, and we walked around the side of the house beside zinnias and petunias, still blooming and mostly, except for a few trampled ones, undamaged by firefighters.

At our cars, I asked, “Have you found Russ Coddlefield yet? The sixteen-year-old?”

Smallwood and Gartener exchanged looks that I couldn’t read. “No,” Gartener answered.

“If you find out where he is, or think of anything you haven’t told us, let us know,” Smallwood added.

I drove home and let the dogs have an extra-long romp in the backyard. Clay didn’t return my call. He’d been up most of the night, then could have worked all day.

Maybe he knew where Russ was and didn’t want to be put on the spot about it.

I would have to leave Clay alone.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS FRIDAY, SUSANNAH’S day to help in my shop. She came in early with a spring in her step, and smiled with obvious relief. “I don’t have to tell Chief Smallwood about the letter.”

“She knew?”

“She has a suspect.” Susannah lowered her voice as if we already had customers in the store. “Not me. Russ Coddlefield, Darlene’s son. He ran away from home, and the police are looking for him.”

The morning’s students bounded into the store, so we couldn’t continue the discussion.

Watching Susannah patiently explain why the correct stabilizer and tension were crucial to machine embroidery, I couldn’t believe that anyone ever could have suspected her of harming Darlene. I still worried that her refusal to confess about the letter would come back to bite her.

It was hard to concentrate on anything for very long. All day, our customers were excited about the Harvest Festival, which would begin later that night. Susannah confessed that she was a fall fair junkie and could hardly wait for lights, music, and rides. “And the fireworks,” she crowed.
“Tonight at nine.” It was great to see her acting like herself again.

I tilted my head. “You like
fire
works?”

She pushed her hair back. “I know. It makes no sense. Fire scares me, but fireworks don’t. Maybe because they’re more controlled.”