Threaded for Trouble (8 page)

I tried to look like someone who would never dream of scolding a recently widowed man for grabbing a kiss.

Pulling her car keys from a pocket, Edna stalked around me, past him, and to her driver’s door. I strode to the passenger side and shut myself in.

“Take it easy driving,” I whispered. “We don’t know what he could have done to your car.”

She turned the car around. “Nothing
feels
wrong with it.” She drove down his driveway and out onto the road. “But…”

How long had Plug been near her car? Five minutes, tops. What could he have done, slashed a few tires? I peered into the mirror on my side. “Both tires on this side look okay.”

“I’ll pull off so we can check everything, but I don’t want to stop near Plug’s house. He might follow us.” Now she had no trouble staying in her lane. “That man.” The anger in her voice was enough to set fire to the field beside us. “With a girl that young.”

“She could be twenty-five,” I pointed out. “And she didn’t appear to mind.” I fiddled with the window button. “But, how terrible! His wife died last night.”

Edna threw me a knowing look, her eyebrows arched high. “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Dr. Wrinklesides said Darlene’s death appeared to have been an accident.”

“Maybe she saw her husband with Tiffany and had a heart attack.” She tightened her hands on the steering wheel and gasped.

A vehicle was racing toward us.

In our lane.

E
DNA AND I WERE ABOUT TO BE CRUNCHED into a metal sandwich.

Her knuckles white, she swerved her car onto the shoulder.

Russ Coddlefield’s pickup zipped past, only inches from us.

Russ veered back into his own lane and sped down the highway. His laughter blew back on the hot, dry wind.

His mother had died the night before, and now he was amusing himself by forcing us off the road. Last night, he had driven recklessly around Elderberry Bay. What other dangerous pranks could Russ have pulled?

Muttering choice phrases that I’d never heard from her before, Edna turned off the engine. “Let’s see if that boy’s father damaged my car.” She got out. I did, too.

We met at the rear bumper. “Nothing looks out of place.” The usual cheer was gone from her voice. We each continued our own circle, then Edna reached into the driver’s side and popped the hood. I lifted it. Together we peered underneath it. I understood sewing machines, but the workings of a car baffled me.

Edna seemed equally perplexed. “I’m not sure I’d know if anything has changed, but it looks okay to me.”

She slammed the hood. If Plug had closed it, he had done it more quietly. Then again, we hadn’t heard much besides the children’s anguish.

We climbed back into the car. Edna was probably as eager as I was to return to the safety of Threadville.

Ahead, Lake Erie and the sky above it were hazy blue, a perfect contrast with the golden fields, the dark green evergreens, and the yellowing leaves of late summer.

Edna asked, “Was Plug threatening us another way, besides acting like he might harm my car? If one of our shops caught fire, would the fire department take its time arriving?”

“Our shops won’t catch fire. Our apartments, either. We’re careful. But let’s make certain that our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors have fresh batteries. We’ll have to tell the others to check their batteries, too—Haylee, Opal, Naomi, and Susannah. And Mona, also, in case he lumps her in with the rest of us.”

Mona
. I hadn’t taken the application she’d given me seriously, but maybe, for the sake of all of us with textile shops, Haylee and I should become volunteer firefighters. I wasn’t going to tell Edna, Opal, or Naomi, though. They’d try to dissuade us.

“Plug may think that Mona’s shop resembles ours,” Edna said. “I don’t. The rest of us give classes twice a day, four days a week. She doesn’t offer even one class a week. Nearly everything in Country Chic is already finished and decorated.”

“She sells home décor fabrics,” I said.

“She hasn’t a clue how to make draperies or upholstery. And do people hop off the Threadville tour bus and head to Country Chic? No. They divide themselves among In Stitches, The Stash, Tell a Yarn, Buttons and Bows, and Batty About Quilts.” She tapped out a rhythm on her steering wheel. “Still, you may have a point. Our philandering fire chief could simply ignore calls from any of us, including Mona.”

And what about Sam the Ironmonger’s hardware store, between my shop and Mona’s? I would hate to see Sam come to harm. Maybe he wouldn’t. He had owned that hardware store since long before Plug was born, and everybody loved him. “We’re probably being silly,” I said.

“Silly can save lives.”

“Sounds like a motto. I’ll embroider it in a candlewicking stitch for the Harvest Festival.” That broke the tension. We laughed, and she pulled into Threadville.

While the dogs wrestled in my backyard, I dug out the fire department’s flyer. Mona had thoughtfully given me two applications. I shut Sally and Tally into my apartment and ran across the street to Haylee’s.

She was sewing in the huge classroom on one side of her shop. I handed her an application. “Here’s a new way for us to have fun.”

She glanced at it and understood immediately. “What a great way to learn more about Plug Coddlefield and the death of his wife!”

I told her about Plug’s possible threat to all of us. She said she’d remind everyone to make sure they had fresh batteries in their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. I described Plug and his young nanny.

Haylee wrinkled her nose. “Ewwww. Two people who might have wanted to murder Plug’s wife.”

“Dr. Wrinklesides said Darlene’s death was an accident.”

“What if it wasn’t? What if a murderer is running around loose? We should catch him, or them, before they kill someone else. Like us.”

It was as good a justification for joining the fire department as any, which was to say it wasn’t very good.

The applications didn’t require much information besides our names, addresses, and phone numbers. Small print warned of exams that would test our firefighting knowledge and physical fitness. “Push-ups,” Haylee guessed.

“Ugh. I’d better practice, though Mona is convinced that you and I must be strong from heaving bolts of fabric around.”

Haylee flexed her muscles. She had substantial biceps.

I copied her. To my surprise, I had substantial biceps, too. “Wow.” I squeezed my right arm with my left hand. “Running a store really is better exercise than an office job was.”

“It’s better than everything about that office job.” She never tired of reminding me that I’d been reluctant to give up the security of a salary and bonuses for the uncertainties of retail sales. Security hadn’t been quite the right word for our jobs at Quinlan Financial Management, though. Together, we had investigated our boss and had been instrumental in putting him behind bars for stealing money from his—and our—clients.

Haylee had started the first of the Threadville shops shortly after Jasper Quinlan was arrested, and her mothers had joined her and opened their own shops. I’d stubbornly continued working at Jasper’s old firm, under new management, until after his trial and incarceration. Then, thanks to those bonuses and to my growing online embroidery business, I’d moved to Threadville and opened In Stitches. New customers discovered us every day. Best of all, Haylee and I both loved living and working here.

We finished filling out our applications. I went home, leashed the dogs, then walked them down Lake Street and around the corner to the fire station. It was closed up tight. I dropped our applications in the mail slot.

After a quick supper on the patio while the dogs played around me, I examined the cords and trims I’d purchased from Edna.

One way to create more authentic candlewicking stitches would be to zigzag over the trims with matching thread so the stitches would hardly be discernible, but I really wanted to find a way of forcing my embroidery machine to do the work, or most of it.

Unable to come up with a method I liked, I went to bed.

The inevitable siren from the fire hall woke me up in the wee hours. What was burning this time, another dry field?

Fortunately, I didn’t belong to the fire department yet
and didn’t have to race off into the darkness, even if it might mean riding on a fire truck. I allowed myself to lie comfortably, imagining different ways of representing candlewicking. Drifting off to sleep, I pictured using the puffiest of the cording I’d bought from Edna, and satin stitching over it every quarter inch to squish it down. The unsquished parts would be similar to the lumps in knotted candle wicks.

In the morning, freshly confident with my nighttime idea, which, though labor-intensive, might work, I felt ready to tackle almost anything, including becoming a volunteer firefighter. I flopped down on the floor and tried push-ups. I could have done more if I hadn’t been laughing at Sally’s determination to lick my face. I collapsed in a heap with my two wriggling dogs, then took them upstairs and began sweeping the shop floor.

Susannah helped in my shop on Fridays, and came in wearing an orange linen shirt. I complimented her on it. Before she’d assembled it, I’d helped her embroider the fabric in an allover design of small, pretty flowers.

“I love working with linen.” Shadows under her eyes showed that she’d probably spent another night grieving over the death of her marriage.

I knew something that might cheer her up a little. “We’ve received another shipment of linen, heavier for fall and winter.”

She ran to the storeroom and dragged out a bulky package of multihued bolts, all shrink-wrapped together.

A lanky man ambled in and introduced himself as Isaac Sonnenberg, deputy fire chief. “Congratulations, Willow,” he said, his long face a picture of earnest solemnity. “We’ve accepted your application to join the fire department.” His straight brown hair seemed to grow every which way. That, combined with the questioning pale blue eyes and the long arms and legs made him charmingly boyish, though I suspected he was in his mid-thirties at least.

“Haylee, too?” I asked.

He nodded. “Both of you.”

Susannah straightened from unwrapping the bolts of
linen. Her lips and forehead puckered. I wished Isaac had brought the news when I was alone. Susannah might tell Haylee’s three moms that Haylee and I were joining the fire department. They wouldn’t approve.

Isaac tilted his head. My reaction was apparently too slow.

“That’s great,” I lied. “We have physical fitness and written exams to pass first, don’t we, before it’s official?”

He flapped his big, bony hands toward the floor as if my concerns could be swept away with my broom. “You’ll do fine.” He pulled a folded sheaf of papers from the back pocket of his jeans. “Here’s the manual. It covers all the questions that will be on the test, like ‘What is a fire truck?’” His gave his head a shake to show he was joking. “Training’s Tuesday evening. I’m sorry it’s such short notice, but if you can’t make it, maybe another time?”

He was offering me a way out. I told myself to snatch it.

“I can make it.” I was never very good at heeding my own warnings.

Isaac was as tall as I was, maybe taller. I could look directly into his eyes. He gave me the manual and told me to go to the old ball field near the state forest at six on Tuesday evening. “Will you need a ride?” he asked.

“I have a car.” I raised my chin. “It will get me to fires, too.” Or Haylee and I could ride together in her appropriately red pickup truck.

He blushed. “That wasn’t part of the test. I figured you wouldn’t have applied if you had to run to fires.” He scuffed his shoes against the floor like I’d forced him to stay after school. “Or walk,” he added. He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a business card. “Here, in case you need to get in touch with me without phoning 911.”

He was barely off my porch when Susannah asked, “What are you doing applying to the volunteer fire department? That could be dangerous.”

Susannah used to be full of fun. Her caution since her divorce saddened me.

“I’ll stay out of danger.” Slipping the card like a
bookmark into the manual, I dislodged a bright pink flyer for a flea market during the Harvest Festival.

Laughing, I showed Susannah the ad. “Now I understand why they’re recruiting new members. They’re raising funds for new fire-fighting equipment and need volunteers to run the flea market.”

“Fine,” Susannah retorted. “Help with that. But don’t go fighting fires. It’s not safe.”

“I’ve heard that by the time the fire trucks arrive in rural areas, there’s hardly anything to do besides watch.”

She stepped back. “There’ve been lots of fires lately. People are saying they may have been set.”

“We’ve had barely a drop of rain all summer. The fields are tinder dry. Anything sets them off, including the lightning that zaps out of thunderclouds without bringing us any water.” The story was the same all over the Midwest. “I want to help. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

Susannah looked down at her hands, which were clutching each other in seeming desperation. “It’s just that—” She raised her head and met my gaze. I was certain I saw the remnants of fear in her eyes. “Our house burned down when I was eight. I don’t think people realize how powerful and terrifying fires are. They scare me just thinking about them.”

The day’s students came pounding into the shop, eager to start our lesson. Susannah, who was a very accomplished seamstress, was still learning about embroidery. She helped wherever needed, but like the other students, she took her turn on one of our wondrous machines and stitched the design she’d created during the week.

She must have been silently fretting about fires all afternoon. Before she left for the evening, she pointed at the outlet in the dog’s pen, the one that had malfunctioned on Wednesday. “Did you get that outlet fixed?”

I hid a sigh. “Not yet. I guess I should.”

“Definitely. Call Clay Fraser. It could start a fire.” Then as if a fire were beginning that very moment, she ran outside.

Great, call Clay and act needy again. I liked him, but I’d had a chance with him and lost it.