Dire Threads (34 page)

Acting like a flustered shopkeeper, I asked Herb to check underneath my cutting table in case any spools rolled under there. With a smiling salute, he got down on his hands and knees. Smythe and Irv joined him. Their hands patted the floor. Spools clicked and clattered as they rolled away from the men.

The soles of Herb’s and Smythe’s boots had a little mud in the treads.

The sole of one of Irv’s boots had a little mud in the treads, too, next to an aqua outline so broken up that it looked more like thread than paint. Most of the paint must have rubbed off, but it was obvious that it had originally been one solid blotch, roughly the shape of Ohio.

35

H
ERB AND SMYTHE STOOD AND HANDED me spools of thread. I thanked them, set the spools on the counter, and whipped Smythe’s map from my pocket. In the brightly lit store, I saw things I hadn’t noticed in the cold dawn.

Boundary lines and names.

The upper two-thirds of the map showed Smythe’s farm and was labeled with his last name, Castor. The bottom third was divided roughly in half, with grapes on the section labeled Krawbach, and sheaves of wheat on the section labeled Oslington, Irv’s last name. The woodlot covered the area where the three farms met. The main feature in the Oslington section of the woodlot was a drawing of a gigantic tree with every child’s dream tree house perched among the branches. That must have been the tree house that Irv had said Smythe loved.

I’d figured out the motive but had assigned it to the wrong person. That valuable tree must have belonged to Irv, and Mike had sold that tree and probably a few others of Irv’s to a logging company.

But why would Irv kill him over that? Why not report the theft and let the authorities deal with Mike?

Had Mike known something that Irv couldn’t let the rest of the world know, something that could end Irv’s career, perhaps land him in jail?

Pete DeGlazier was staring at me. He couldn’t help nodding. Maybe Mike and Irv had worked together to steal Pete’s fishing hut and equipment and sell them. Or they had pulled other similar “pranks” together.

Irv was still under the cutting table, presumably collecting spools.

I grabbed Uncle Allen’s arm and pointed at the sole of Irv’s boot. Uncle Allen bent over. Slowly, he rose, and I saw understanding in his eyes, along with apology and a great deal of hurt. He was going to have to arrest the mayor of Elderberry Bay. When Mike and Irv were teens, Uncle Allen had done all he could to keep the boys out of trouble. And now one of them had murdered the other. I wondered if Uncle Allen had always been afraid of just such an outcome. Maybe after the younger men outgrew their teens, Uncle Allen had relaxed, but the animosities between the two men had continued to fester . . .

Irv crawled out from under the table and handed me a spool of thread as red as his face.

“Irv,” Uncle Allen said gently, “give me your boots.”

Irv rolled his eyes as if to say that Uncle Allen had finally lost it, but he sat on the floor and dragged off his boots, one by one, and set them where Uncle Allen could reach them.

Irv had been underneath that table for a longer time than the other two men, but had come up with only one spool of thread. What had he been doing? I squatted to peer underneath the lowest shelf.

A wooden button lay near one of the table legs. I had vacuumed carefully the night before. I jumped up. “Detective DeGlazier, look at what appeared just now underneath my table.”

With much creaking, he flattened himself to look. His voice came out muffled. “Get me a bag, Miss Vanderling.”

Edna leaned forward as if she could see through the table. “A paper bag, Willow. What’s under there?”

“The only thing I saw,” Herb said, “was that spool of red thread Irv gave Willow.”

“Me, too,” Smythe agreed.

Still sitting on the floor, Irv said nothing.

I handed Uncle Allen a paper bag. He surfaced and held it open for me to see inside. The button was black walnut, almost identical to the one I’d found in the sink of Blueberry Cottage. Frayed brown threads trailed from the button’s two holes. I called to Clay, “Come see this.”

He peeked into the bag. “The grain is similar to the one we found in your cottage, isn’t it?”

Edna squeezed in for a look. “The forensics lab will be able to tell if it was cut from the same piece of wood as the button you found and the buttons still on Mike’s coat.”

Irv’s face reddened even more. He rose from the floor and towered over Uncle Allen. “I gather that one of Mike’s buttons was found in Willow’s cottage and now this one was in her shop. Shouldn’t that be enough for you to arrest her for Mike’s murder?”

I shot back, “Those buttons were deliberately placed on my property.” I pointed at the bag in Uncle Allen’s hand. “That one was put there only moments ago. While
you
were under the table.”

Irv seemed totally unrattled. “Smythe must have planted it.”

Uncle Allen glowered at Irv. “You were the last one to come up from underneath that table.”

Irv pointed at me. “No, she was.”

Actually, Uncle Allen was. He asked Irv, “When did you last wear these boots?”

“How am I supposed to remember that? I wear them around the farm, and on days like this morning, hiking in the cold.”

I asked Uncle Allen, “Do you think we saw
Irv’s
pickup driving slowly through the village the morning Mike died?”

“Can’t rule it out,” Uncle Allen said. “Especially if the print of Irv’s boot matches the one the state police carried off with your porch floorboards. They’ll check for Mike’s blood in Irv’s pickup, also, transferred from Irv’s clothes.”

Irv’s wife’s face froze in a deer-in-the-headlights stare.

“Do you know something about the outfit he wore that morning?” I asked her. “The jacket he has on today looks brand new.” The plastic tie that must have held the price tag still stuck out like a needle from the side seam.

“No,” she answered.

“Don’t be an accessory after the fact,” Edna warned her. “The forensics lab will test everything. If the paint on your husband’s shoe matches the paint found at the scene . . .”

Irv’s wife snapped, “I can’t be expected to keep track of every item of my husband’s clothing.”

She had a point, but I had a feeling she was lying and had told the investigators her husband was home all night Tuesday night, when he hadn’t been.

Edna bobbed her head. “It will all come out in court.”

Opal asked Irv’s wife, “Did Irv perhaps dig a hole since last Wednesday morning and bury his clothes?”

Irv looked at Opal with a superior sneer. “The ground’s frozen. It didn’t thaw that much during the rain we had Saturday night.”

Opal went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “Or build any fires?”

Irv’s wife’s voice was so quiet we could barely hear it. “He burned the trash on Wednesday, just like he always does.”

Irv snapped, “Shut up, Skippy.”

Skippy.

Maybe Irv had another motive for killing Mike besides the theft of valuable timber. I turned to Uncle Allen. “I have something else to show you. Don’t go away.”

I dashed downstairs. Outside, a normal police siren sounded. I ran back upstairs with the chest that the flood had brought me.

State Trooper Gartener and the petite blonde I’d seen on Lake Street who must be Trooper Smallwood were standing just inside the door, looking perplexed by the large and noisy gathering in my shop.

Before I could turn the box over to display the inscription, Rhonda burst through the crowd and ran toward me. “How did you get my jewelry box? Did Mike make you one, too?” She reached for it. “Or did you steal mine?”

“It came down the river with other flotsam. I washed off some of the mud, but didn’t quite get it all.” I held it so everyone in the room could see the carving on the bottom.

His face now verging on purple, Irv snarled, “Mike only started making those a couple of years ago. And we’ve been married for how long, Skippy? A lot longer than that. I couldn’t believe it when I found that in Mike’s workshop after Smythe killed him.” He took a step toward her, but Smythe held him back.

Haylee and I traded glances. Now we knew who had searched Mike’s house before we got there.

Skippy gasped. “That’s not mine. I never saw it before. Me and Mike?” Her shudder looked real. “Never! I have no idea why he would have such a thing in his workshop. He never gave it to me.”

Irv must have jumped to the conclusion that crossed my mind.
Maybe Mike had been planning to give it to Skippy and hadn’t done it yet.

The female trooper said, “The deceased had a whole shop full of those boxes when we searched his place, didn’t he?” Trooper Smallwood’s voice was as soft and sweet as it had been over the phone.

Stern as ever, Gartener didn’t look at her. “I’ve been going through photos of all of them, figuring out the inscriptions. A whole bunch of women’s names. Skippy was definitely not among them.”

Skippy repeated, “I never saw it before in my life.”

Looking up at Gartener beneath fluttering eyelashes, Rhonda reached for the box again. “If it’s like mine, it has a secret compartment.”

What a show-off.

Gartener came close to Rhonda. She looked about to swoon. He asked her, “How did you get aqua paint on your thumb?”

She hid her hand behind her back like a stubborn child.

Gartner just stared at her, like he had all day for her confession.

Finally, she admitted in a small voice, “I wanted to see if the paint on the porch of Willow’s cottage was dry. I did it after you took the crime scene tape down. I swear.”

Aunt Betty pulled Rhonda farther from Gartener. “I was with her. We’d heard about the paint and were just checking.”

They’d heard about the paint from her husband, no doubt. And were snooping on me. They must have climbed my fence to get in. If the occasion had been less serious, I might have laughed.

Gently, Gartener removed the box from my hands and set it on the table in front of Rhonda. “Does this one have a secret compartment?”

She tossed her head, which didn’t do anything to show off her hair, since her hood had matted it rather drastically. “Probably not. Mike said mine was special.”

It took both troopers, under the supervision of Rhonda, to discover that the box did have a false bottom. They lifted it out, along with a bunch of sodden papers.

Trooper Gartener put on white cotton gloves and moved the pages, one by one, into another pile. I saw the word “deed” on one.

And the name of a logging company on another. I quickly looked at the bottom of a column of figures, and saw an amount close to two hundred thousand dollars, and even closer to the amount I’d seen listed in Mike’s bank account. I didn’t dare mention that I’d seen Mike’s bank books. The investigators would surely notice without my help that the figures and the timing matched.

One of them seemed to. “Huh,” the garrulous Trooper Gartener said.

Trooper Smallwood moved closer to Gartener. “These could have come from those empty files we found in the deceased’s house.”

I carefully did not look at Haylee. We’d seen empty files marked
Deeds
and
Sales
.

Smallwood eyed Irv. “Someone broke into that house before we arrived. You’ve already admitted you found the wooden box on the deceased’s premises. It’s easy to believe that you were the one who put these papers into the box.”

Irv quickly denied it. “I’ve never seen those papers before. I didn’t know the box had a secret compartment.”

Smallwood clicked a fingernail down on the table next to the wet pages. “There must be something in here that someone didn’t want anyone else to see. I have a feeling that when we read these papers, we’ll have a pretty good guess about who might have hidden them in the box and dumped it.”

Trooper Gartener grunted and began one of his long, dark-eyed stares at me.

I did my best to look completely innocent, but all I could think of was the rabies tag he’d found in Mike’s yard, evidence that my dogs and I had done some illicit sleuthing.

“You’ll have to show us later, Miss Vanderling,” he said calmly in that deep, warm voice, “where you found this box.”

“On the riverbank,” I answered. “In front of Blueberry Cottage.”

“Any idea how the box, and its contents, got into the river?”

“Somebody must have thrown it into the river thinking it would sink or be washed out into the lake.”

“Who would do that?”

I answered his question with a question. “Someone who didn’t want the world to find out about grudges he held against the deceased?” I stared directly at Irv. “You said Mike wasn’t smart enough to set Smythe up to burn down my cottage and injure Smythe so that I’d be blamed for everything. Who did come up with the scheme? Smythe?”

Irv lifted his chin. “Are you kidding? Smythe?”

And yet Irv had said Smythe was making it all up . . .

Herb called out, “Irv’s the smart one in the bunch, at least to hear him talk.”

Skippy defended her husband. “He is smart. He’s our mayor, after all. None of the rest of you could do that job, not even Mike.”

Irv growled again, “Shut up, Skippy.”

But Skippy wouldn’t be quiet. “Did it never occur to you that Mike might have carved that inscription just to make trouble between you and me?” Huge tears welled from her eyes.

Naomi, Opal, and Edna flurried to console her.

Uncle Allen took Irv’s arm and summarized the evidence we’d collected about Irv, the paint on his boots, the possibility that his boots would match the print found in the paint, the noisy snow tires, the theory I’d come up with earlier about the theft of the timber, and this latest evidence that Irv might have believed something was going on between his wife and Mike. And to top it all off, the evidence the police hoped to find when they read the papers they’d discovered in the box.

Herb called out, “Mike got the last laugh, Irv. Even after his death, he proved you aren’t as smart as you like to think.”

That must have been too much for Irv. “He’s the one who ended up dead.” He glared at me. “It would have all worked out fine if she hadn’t stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong. She humiliated Mike in front of the whole town. He couldn’t have that. I told him so. I told him he had to get even. Didn’t take much convincing, either. He wanted to take her down a peg or two. Her and all her weird, crafty friends over there.” He gestured at Haylee and her mothers. “I told him to bring Smythe along so we could leave him behind to take the blame, like we used to do as kids.”