Seven Threadly Sins (20 page)

D
id Vicki think that Haylee and I had ganged up on Paula? My answer was a little heated. “Neither Haylee nor I would have bound and gagged anyone, with stabilizer or anything else. We were in The Stash with Opal, Naomi, and Edna.”

Vicki reminded me, “Those three are Haylee’s mothers, and they treat you like a daughter, too.”

“We were also with Ben Rondelson.”

“Would he lie for you or Haylee?”

“I doubt it.” Why would Vicki suspect that Haylee and I might have attacked Paula? Surely, Vicki knew we would never do anything even remotely like that. Had Paula blamed us? I guessed, “Paula may have heard our voices outside the carriage house when she was banging her head against the wall. Maybe she somehow connected us with the attack. But it had obviously happened earlier, or she wouldn’t have been inside the carriage house banging her head against a wall.” I tapped my fingernails on the butcher block counter. “How did she get into that predicament without noticing who put her there?”

“You’re sure she didn’t know who put her there?”

“If she says it was Haylee and me, she certainly did
not
.”

Vicki only watched me. Was she waiting for a confession?

She was going to wait a long time. I suggested, “What if . . . Paula somehow managed to wrap herself in stabilizer?”

Still, Vicki said nothing.

Okay, if I had to do all the talking, I would. “It doesn’t make sense for a murderer to immobilize Paula and trust that she’d still be there when he came back to . . . do whatever he’d planned to do to her.”

“He?”

“Or she. If Paula had figured out who killed Antonio, and then Paula threatened that person, wouldn’t the murderer have silenced Paula right then and there? Or at least made it harder for anyone to find her? That stabilizer is sticky. The adhesive is strong, and the stabilizer itself is tough. But I suspect that anyone with any strength at all could have gotten out of it. Paula was neatly sitting against a wall, in as comfortable a position as possible under the circumstances. Her hands were bound on her lap, not behind her. Again, comfortable. And there was that long piece of stabilizer stuck to the handle of the lawn mower, easily within her reach, as if she’d prepared it before she got her wrists and hands stuck together, and then she’d found that she didn’t need it.”

“That could have been the way the attacker worked,” Vicki responded. “If you were going to stick someone together with stabilizer or duct tape or anything like that, you wouldn’t want to be wrestling with the sticky stuff at the same time you were wrestling with your victim.”

“I don’t like your use of the word ‘your.’”

“One’s.”

“And you didn’t write down a word of my theory.”

“
Theory
,” she repeated. “No, I didn’t.”

“So, should we try it?”

“We? Are you planning to assault a police officer, or have one assault you?”

“Neither. I’ll put some of it on myself to see if I can do it, and then get out of it. Did you find out from the EMTs how to get the adhesive off skin?”

“Nope.”

I pictured myself arriving at Clay’s picnic with stabilizer around my ankles, wrists, and hands, and frowned. “I’ll stick the stabilizer to my socks and the hems of my jeans, which was how Paula’s ankles were bound together. But this is not my preferred use of my expensive super-sticky stabilizer.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” But she didn’t. Instead, she took photos of every step while I removed a roll of stabilizer from the rack, opened it, cut a four-foot-long length, peeled off the backing, then carefully wrapped the sticky mess around my ankles.

“Lucky thing for you that you’re a police officer,” I muttered. “Or I might accuse you of planning to post those pictures on social media so you and your friends could get a good laugh.”

She took another photo. “The only
friends
who will see them are in the state police.”

“How’s Toby Gartener? And why isn’t he the detective on this case?”

“He’s fine. He wasn’t on duty when Antonio’s death was ruled a possible homicide, so he didn’t get the case.”

I patted the stabilizer into place. “There.”

She asked in a sweetly encouraging voice, “Aren’t you going to try gagging yourself?”

“No way. I’m going to see if I can pull my ankles apart without
touching
them with my hands. Or banging my head against a wall.”

“She didn’t have that much of the stuff on her ankles.”

“Thanks for telling me that now that I’ve immobilized myself.”

“No problem. If this experiment doesn’t work, I’ll suggest that some rookie state troopers should try it, with only the amount of stabilizer Paula had around her jeans.”

First I tried to pull my ankles away from each other. It was harder than I’d guessed. As I’d already told Vicki, that stabilizer was tough. I looked up at Vicki.

She held her hands up. “Keep trying.”

“I wasn’t going to ask for help,” I said with as much dignity as a person sitting on the floor with her ankles bound together with super-sticky stabilizer could.

I tried pulling one foot toward my bum, but both feet moved together.

I rubbed my ankles up and down against each other, and before I had to humble myself to ask Vicki to pass me some scissors, the stabilizer began rolling onto itself and coming unstuck from my jeans.

Within minutes, I was free, and I hadn’t used my hands.

“Ha!” I shouted. “Paula could have rescued herself. But she didn’t. Either she’s the biggest wimp on earth, or she planned the whole thing, planned that she’d be discovered like that, and then she’d blame Haylee and me. I’m guessing that she’d already told Detective Neffting that we must have seen Antonio’s business plan and had killed him because of it. And this was after she’d hidden copies of his business plan in our shops. She’s trying to add more ‘evidence’ that we killed Antonio.” I raised one dramatic finger. “And why would she do that?”

Vicki only shook her head. She was still not writing in her notebook. But she did take a picture of me in that heroic pose.

If she wasn’t going to answer, I would have to. “To deflect suspicion from herself, because
she’s
the one who made certain that Antonio’s medicine wouldn’t be near him when he ate the almonds she placed in his pocket!”

Vicki didn’t write any of it down. Instead, she headed toward the front door. “See you, Willow. Stay out of trouble.”

I bent down and tried to pull sticky goo off my jeans. “Wah! I’m not sure how to get the rest of the adhesive off my clothes.”

“You’re the expert on fabric and fashion.” She aimed her camera at my gummy ankles, snapped several pictures in rapid succession, then left.

“Thanks!” I called after her.

She turned and waved.

I went downstairs to my apartment and put my jeans and socks in the laundry room to worry about later. I had just enough time for a quick shower with lots of lather in my hair. Knowing my hair would stink most when wet, I dried it thoroughly and then braided it in a tight braid in back.

In clean jeans and a sky blue sweater that Opal had knit for me, I leashed the dogs and took them out the patio door.

“Yoo-hoo!” Dora called from her porch.

I went closer.

“I smell skunk,” she said. She wagged her finger at the dogs. “Did you two get into mischief?”

“They didn’t,” I answered. “Haylee and I did. Last night.”

“Your dogs are on leashes. Where are you off to? I’d say I hoped it was to make up with your young man, but you’re going to have to wait until you smell better. That redhead may have the advantage over you at the moment.”

I had to confess to Dora that the dogs and I were on our way to a picnic with Clay. “He’s bringing the food.”

She folded her arms and a dreamy expression crossed her face. “No man ever brought
me
food. Have a great time. But don’t go near him.”

I laughed. “Since you detected the smell from so far away, I guess I’d better stay on the opposite end of the beach from him.”

She made shooing motions with both hands. “Run along. And have fun.”

I took the dogs out the back gate so we could walk along the hiking trail. I wanted to hurry to Clay, but the dogs had to sniff every bush and tree along the wide, shaded trail.

They didn’t speed their pace much when we reached
the sand at the shore of the lake, either, but I told them we might be late to see Clay. Hearing his name, they perked up their noses and their tails and let me lead them to the harder sand at the water’s edge, where we jogged.

Clay was already sitting at a table, which he’d covered with a cheerful yellow and blue plaid tablecloth and what looked like enough food for ten people. Was it a good sign that only two bottles of wine were visible?

My plan of not going close to him was ruined by the dogs, who yelped and rushed toward him, their tails waving madly. Dogs had to be leashed while on the beach, so I had to go along.

Letting them sniff his hands, Clay looked up at me with a rueful smile. “Better not come too close,” he said. “I smell like a skunk.”

C
lay had given me the perfect opportunity to confess that I smelled like a skunk, too, and it wouldn’t matter if I came closer to him. Instead, I fastened the dog’s leashes around the leg of the picnic table, scooted onto the bench across from him, and blurted, “What happened?”

He pointed at the bottles of wine. “White or red?”

“Red.”

“We’re having cold fried chicken.”

“Red.”

He grinned. “Good choice. I went a little heavy on the spices.”

“You made it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“It looks heavenly.”

He removed the cork from a bottle of Shiraz. “And probably smells like skunk.”

I repeated, “What happened?”

“Loretta asked me to come over last night and pick up more sketches. She’d gone over to the TADAM carriage house to check on her measurements, but she saw a skunk
go into the carriage house, so she stayed outside. And then it sprayed, and Loretta was still too close.”

I had to give him points for honesty.

But I wouldn’t give Loretta any. Had she really been planning to check on measurements? Or had she wrapped sticky stabilizer around Paula earlier, and then gone back to do something horrid to the woman? Maybe I’d maligned Paula by telling Vicki that Paula could have tied herself up.

Clay’s jaw tightened. “Loretta is one of those huggy types, always flinging herself at people and hugging them like they’re her long-lost friends. I backed away, but not far or fast enough.”

‘People’ had been Clay, and only Clay, as far as I’d noticed. “But aren’t you? Her long-lost friend from fourth grade?”

He handed me a glass. “Cheers.” We clinked.

“Cheers,” I repeated, though if Loretta was always flinging herself at Clay, I didn’t feel particularly cheerful. Except that Clay was a witness that Loretta could have been in Paula’s vicinity around the time that Paula ended up with sticky stabilizer all over herself.

Had Haylee and I interrupted Loretta as she was about to do more harm to Paula? Maybe Paula had been too scared to discover she could get out of her predicament by herself. And she’d been confused, too, if, as I’d guessed, she’d told Vicki that Haylee and I had ganged up on her. Maybe she’d thumped her head a little too hard against the carriage house wall.

Clay handed me a platter of crispy, perfectly browned fried chicken. “Loretta
says
I’m her long-lost friend. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

I bit succulent meat off a drumstick. “Yummmmm . . .” I closed my eyes. Any man who could cook chicken like this had to be kept. And kept safe from skunks. Like Loretta.

He spooned potato salad onto my plate. “I don’t think I met her before the reception at TADAM on Saturday night.”

I wasn’t terribly surprised, but my mouth was too full for me to say anything. The potato salad was delicious, also.

He handed me a large piece of corn bread. “I didn’t think I had, so I asked my mother. She keeps everything I ever brought home from school, and she scanned the class picture from fourth grade. There was no one even vaguely resembling Loretta. No one with hair like hers. Do you think she colors and curls it?”

The corn bread was moist and tasty. “The color and curls look natural, but I’m not sure. It’s beautiful, however she came by it.
She’s
beautiful.”

“It’s only a facade. It’s not important.” He saluted me with his wineglass. “I like beauty best when it’s inside, also.” He smiled into my eyes.

“Thanks, I think.”

“Why do you think she lied about knowing me before?”

I might as well return the compliment he’d just given me. “Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror?” I began regretting that I’d chosen to sit across the table from him instead of beside him.

“I’ve never had a woman absolutely throw herself at me like that. It’s an interesting approach, but it didn’t work for me. At least not when
she
did it.”

An invitation? I was tempted to jump up and sit next to him, very close.

But I wanted to hear more of what he had to say. I stayed where I was. “Why would she lie about knowing you? Maybe she knew another kid with your name in fourth grade.”

“We could give her the benefit of the doubt on that, but she couldn’t have known
me
. My mother checked the class list. There were no Lorettas. And I have not told Loretta where I grew up or the name of my grade school, and she has never said either one.”

“Did you have a best friend named Chief?”

“You caught that, did you? I did, but Chief never brought fire trucks to show-and-tell. He wasn’t allowed at school. He was a German shepherd.”

I couldn’t help snickering. “Maybe she thinks she remembers. What do they call that, false memories?”

“I don’t trust her.” He thinned his lips. “Antonio’s death is being investigated as a possible homicide. I can’t help wondering if Loretta set him up somehow to die, and then made certain she was with me when he collapsed.”

“I wondered the same thing.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

I helped myself to more potato salad. “She didn’t seem to be threatening you.”
Except with lipstick
. “Besides, if she was a fake, I knew you would figure it out.”

He stared at me for long seconds that made me blush and squirm. “She put that lipstick on me deliberately, almost the first moment we met. She ran right up to me and pressed her face into my shirt. I’d have dodged her if I could have in the crowded kitchen. But that lipstick made you think I was interested in her, and I didn’t help my case by not explaining it to you and everyone else who was present when she offered to remove the stain. And you’ve been keeping your distance from me ever since.”

I gave a noncommittal shrug. “You and I would still be . . . we
are
friends.”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, then opened it again and asked, “And we’re a design team, right, along with Ben, Haylee, and Dora Battersby?”

“Right.”

“So you’ll all protect me from her.”

“If you want us to.”

“I suspect you would even if I didn’t want you to. Dora, especially. She’s already warned me that Loretta was . . .
on the prowl
, I think she said.”

I couldn’t help laughing.

Clay grinned, stood up, and pulled his picnic basket closer. “I brought cake for dessert. Devil’s food with fudge icing, my mom’s recipe.”

“We’re
definitely
a team.” I scooped up the rest of my yummy potato salad.

He cut us each a square of delightfully chocolaty cake.
“Loretta wants to meet me tonight at eight at the carriage house to go over her plans again. But as I said on Tuesday, I’d need the rest of my design team there.”

I paused with a piece of cake on a fork halfway to my mouth. “You’re meeting her at the carriage house at eight this evening?” So much for a long walk on the beach after the delicious picnic.

“Please say you can come along, or I’ll have to postpone it.”

“Um, we’re supposed to have a rehearsal there at nine. Kent wants to turn the space into a theater.”

“Kent and Loretta can battle that one out. I’m not doing any work on that place until I know for certain that I’ll be paid. But if we have two reasons to go there tonight, I guess we’d better.”

“There’s one smallish problem.”

“If you can’t make it tonight, we’ll do it another time. No problem.”

“It’s not that. Last I knew, the TADAM carriage house, and TADAM, for all I know, is a crime scene.”

“Still? Because of Antonio?”

“That was just the mansion, but the carriage house was taped off last night.”

He was even more adorable when his eyebrows came together in a puzzled frown. “What happened?”

I told him the entire story, about Haylee and me finding Paula and calling for help. “And Paula had been sprayed by a skunk.”

He threw me a keen glance. “Was Loretta there?”

“We didn’t see her.”

He pulled at a wrinkle in the plaid tablecloth.

I had to be fair, even though it was Loretta we were talking about. “I suspect that Paula bound and gagged herself, before the skunk sprayed.”

“Bound and gagged herself? Why would anyone do that?”

I told him about the business plans we thought Paula
had left in our shops. “I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that Paula told Detective Neffting that Haylee and I had read those business plans before Antonio died, and that if he wanted ‘proof’ that we could have read them, the police should search our shops for them. And of course copies were in our shops, because she had put them there.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“She was probably afraid the police suspected her of harming her husband. And they probably do, for good reason, and so she’s been thinking of ways to throw suspicion on Haylee and me, which, to me, makes her seem guilty. Paula was the most likely person to know what Antonio’s allergies were, and to be able to slip a candy-coated almond into his pocket. And to know where he kept his allergy medicine, so she could hide it.”

“And she staged an attack on herself in the carriage house, and a skunk came along? That’s a first. A skunk administering justice.”

“Unfortunately, that skunk was pretty indiscriminate about the justice it administered.”

He made a pretense of sniffing his arm. “You can say that again.”

I merely grinned.

He caught on. “Wait. You said you and Haylee were nearby. Did you get sprayed, too?”

“We didn’t need to be
sprayed
.”

“You mean I’m not the only one at this table who stinks?”

“Thanks, Clay! But no, you’re not.”

“Why are we on opposite sides of the table, then?”

I smiled. I wasn’t sure I was capable of anything else.

He unfolded his lanky frame from the picnic bench, came around to my side of the table, and held out his arms. “Come here, Willow, please.”

I stood too quickly, bopped my knee on the table, and had to hop to catch my balance. He reached out, grabbed my arms, and pulled me toward him. “Willow . . .”

It was too much for Tally and Sally. Wagging their tails and barking, they leaped to their feet and nudged their way between Clay and me.

But that wasn’t the only interruption. From the other side of a row of willow trees separating the beach from the parking lot, a woman shouted, “Clay, where are you?”

Loretta.

Between our knees, Sally and Tally barked.

Clay swore, grabbed my chin, pulled my face toward his, and planted a swift and oddly fierce kiss on my lips, then pulled away and murmured, “We’ll continue this conversation later, okay?”

I could barely gasp, “Okay.”

He whispered, “I’ll get rid of her.” Dodging long, trailing branches of weeping willows, he dashed away.