Thread and Buried (5 page)

9

G
AZING INTO DETECTIVE GARTENER’S
angry eyes, I imagined and discarded about a thousand ways to evade telling him the truth about Chief Vicki Smallwood. I came up with a lame, “You don’t have to
haul
us anywhere for questioning.”

“I could arrest you both!” Judging by those piercing eyes, he wasn’t bluffing.

Downstairs, Sally barked, two sharp yelps. Tally spun away from me and raced toward her.

I balled my hands into fists and hid them behind my back. “I do know where Chief Smallwood is,” I conceded, “but she asked me not to tell anyone.”
Especially Detective Gartener.

He probably thought I was crossing my fingers. He stepped closer. “I’ve reported her to the state police as possibly missing, Willow. You could be in a lot of trouble.”

“She’s sick,” Haylee said.

Gartener moved a smidge away from me.

“Chief Smallwood, I mean,” Haylee corrected herself.

“She doesn’t want anyone to see her,” I added desperately, still trying not to break my promise.

Gartener stood straighter than ever and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m afraid I’m going to
have
to see her. Or arrest you.”

Finally, when I was considering going to jail to prevent myself from betraying Vicki Smallwood’s secret, she hollered from downstairs, “I’m fine, Toby. Leave them alone.”

Gartener rushed toward the doorway to my apartment. I didn’t try to stop him. Not that I could have.

Vicki yelled, “Don’t come down here, Toby!” A door slammed.

Gartener thumped down the stairs. Jumping over every other one? Was I going to end up looking after a sick police chief
and
a detective with broken arms and legs?

Haylee and I pounded down after him.

At the bottom, Gartener stood with his face mere inches from my closed guest room door. His feet had to be a dog’s width away from the door, however. Sally had positioned herself where she would enter the guest room before he could. “Vicki, let me in.” Gartener’s order had a hard edge that would be hard to ignore. He rattled the doorknob.

Vicki had locked the door.

Sally whimpered and sniffed the crack between the door and the jamb. Tally stood nearby, his tail down and his toffee brown eyes worried.

Vicki shouted, “No! Stay out. I’m fine. I mean I’m
not
fine, I’m sick, but Haylee and Willow didn’t kidnap me. They’ve been keeping me alive.”

It was an overstatement, but at least it took the fight out of Gartener’s posture. “Your cruiser’s parked out on the street where anyone can get to it.”

“Move it for me?” she asked him. “Put it in my garage?”

“And it’s got rotting food in it,” he added in genial tones. “Crawling with maggots.”

Sally wagged her tail. She probably liked the satisfied sound of his voice. And maybe what he was saying, too. I wasn’t sure that I did.

Vicki retorted, “It’s too soon for maggots.” Apparently, she was feeling better. “Get every last bit of that food tested. Something made me sick. And bring me a clean uniform. They’re hanging in the closet in my bedroom.”

“Give me your keys.”

Her answer was far from gracious. “Go away! Willow can bring them to you.”

I nodded my agreement at Gartener and, to make everything perfectly clear, pointed at the stairs.

He marched up toward my shop. His radio crackled. He said very distinctly, “Call off that SWAT team.”

Haylee and I traded horrified glances. Had he really believed we would have kidnapped our police chief, or anyone else?

The guest room door opened a crack. Vicki whispered, “Is he gone?”

“Yes,” I said.

Tail wagging madly, Sally wedged her snout between the door and the frame.

Vicki thrust a jangling set of keys at me. “Can you please give these to him, Willow?”

“Okay, but are you sure you don’t want to talk to him yourself?”

“Positive. I look horrible!” Gently, she pushed Sally aside and closed the door.

With Haylee right behind me, I trotted upstairs and handed the keys to Gartener.

“Thanks, Willow. The next time you kidnap a police officer—”

“I did no such thing!”

He raised an eyebrow, but I finally recognized a spark of humor in the depths of those dark eyes. “Try not to
appear
to do it ever again. But I’m sure that Chief Smallwood appreciates your loyalty.”

“Maggots,” I scolded. “How could you say such a thing to someone whose stomach is upset?”

He tossed Vicki’s keys in the air and caught them. “How was I supposed to know what’s wrong with her? She deserves it, don’t you think, for involving you in a crackpot scheme that could have landed you in jail?”

“No, I don’t agree that she deserves it. If you’d seen how sick she’s been, you’d have been more considerate.”

He looked serious then. “I was very worried about her.” He gave us a slightly apologetic smile. “Sorry for mentioning maggots—call it cop humor. I’m sure the chief understood. And will find a way to get me back. Driving her cruiser after she left fried fish in it for a few hours on a warm evening won’t be pleasant. She’ll get her revenge.”

Haylee asked, “Do you need someone to follow you to her place and bring you back to your own car? My truck’s across the street.”

He actually gave her a nice grin. “Thanks, but I called for backup when I was trying to find the chief. State Trooper Jeffers is already in the area. She can give me a lift. She often takes over on Chief Smallwood’s days off.”

I folded my arms. “And that was your SWAT team? One trooper?”

“Two, counting me.” His nice grin turned wicked. “Gotcha!”

“I knew he was joking,” Haylee murmured, but Gartener couldn’t have heard. With a wave over one shoulder, he was out the front door and running down my porch steps.

I tapped my toe on my beautiful walnut floor. “I hope he has to personally clean the leftover fish out of her cruiser.”

“And that there
are
maggots,” Haylee added.

We high-fived each other.

Our celebration was short. Gartener raced back into my shop.

“Hey, you two!” He looked from me to Haylee. “Come with me.”

10

W
HY WAS GARTENER ORDERING US TO
go somewhere with him? Wrinkles creased his forehead and his lips were thin with something like stern disapproval, but I could have sworn he was trying not to smile.

“I can’t go anywhere,” I apologized. “Chief Smallwood may need me.”

“Your dog is doing an excellent job of making certain that no one goes near her,” Gartener said drily. “Okay, then, Haylee,
you
come with me.”

He opened the front door for her and they went outside and turned toward the beach.

A few minutes later, Haylee breezed in by herself. She was laughing. “Go down to the chief’s cruiser, Willow. You’ve got to see this. I’ll stay here and listen for her. I’ll tell Opal to meet you there.” She pulled out her cell phone and punched buttons.

“Opal?” I asked.

She waved me toward the door. “Go on.”

I hesitated. “Maggots?”

“There are no maggots. Go!”

I ran outside, jumped over my porch steps, and dashed down Lake Street. All vestiges of the picnic had been cleared away.

However, between the almost full moon and the streetlights, it was easy to see what was going on. Mona, the curvaceous and flirtatious forty-something divorcée who owned the home décor shop, Country Chic, was laughing with Ralph from Disguise Guys. Ralph’s son Duncan was there, too, beside Gartener and a tall, redheaded female state trooper. I’d seen her patrolling Elderberry Bay on Vicki’s days off. She had to be Trooper Jeffers.

Both Ralph and Duncan made costumes. Ralph, who was about ten years older than Mona, was short, round, and garrulous. Duncan was about my age, which made him about ten years younger than Mona. Tall and all angles, he barely resembled his father, and seemed too shy to say more than a few words. While Mona and Ralph laughed, Duncan stood back, staring at Vicki’s cruiser as if bewildered.

And no wonder. The cruiser was completely engulfed in a car-sized sweater.

I’d heard of yarnbombs, but this was the first one I’d seen. Yarnbombs were art installations, often crafted offsite so they could be thrown over something public, like a statue, in only moments, and then the yarnbombers could flee the scene without being caught.

The people who had decorated Vicki’s cruiser must have been watching for an unattended car, and they had lucked out and found an actual police cruiser.

The sweater resembled, sort of, a police car. Although it was knit of haphazard diagonal stripes of red, taupe, turquoise, black, purple, and pink, the passenger door was white, with
PEACE
embroidered in black yarn on it. The roof was white except for a scarlet section covering the light bar.

The trooper snapped photos of the car.

Opal ran down the hill. I asked her, “How’s Edna?”

“Trying to keep water down. Naomi’s with her.” She peered beyond me. “Yarnbombing! I never expected this in sleepy little Elderberry Bay.”

Gartener walked closer to her. “Also known as
Thread
ville. Do you recognize any of this yarn, Opal?”

Opal shook her head with certainty. “Those are cheap craft yarns. I sell quality yarns, much too expensive for yarnbombing.”

“Can you ladies help me remove it?” Gartener asked. “Can we pull a thread and unravel it?”

Between guffaws, Ralph gasped. “Don’t do that! Give it to Duncan and me. We can turn it into a costume that four people can wear together.”

Now
that
would be something.

Gartener apologized to Ralph and Duncan. “Sorry I can’t give it to you. We may have to file charges.”

Duncan folded his arms and stared mutely at the car.

I told Gartener, “These things are designed to be thrown on quickly, so we can probably just lift it off.” I couldn’t help admiring the yarnbombers’ crafty work. “But you don’t have to take the yarnbomb off the car to drive it. The yarnbombers thoughtfully left openings for the windshield and windows.” I walked around to the driver’s side. “Check this out—” I fingered the “button,” about the size of a doorknob, but covered in crocheting, just below the driver’s window. “They fixed it so you could open the door, get in, then reach out the window, button the sweater again, and drive off.” Someone had crocheted a nice big yarn loop to go over the enormous button.

Without taking his eyes off me, Gartener shook his head. His mouth twitched.

I added sweetly, “Wouldn’t it be nice to leave Chief Smallwood’s car decorated like this in her garage? As a welcome-home surprise when she gets back?”

That got him. He laughed. “Sorry, I can’t. She might need to respond to an emergency.” A glimmer of mischief crept into his eyes. “But don’t tell her about this, okay? I may be able to arrange something that won’t slow her down.”

“You’ll be there when she finds it, right?” I suggested. “So you could drive her anywhere she might need to go?”

He grinned. “You’ll have to help make sure that
I’m
the one who takes her home.”

I agreed. I was certain that Vicki wouldn’t mind having him as her chauffeur when she was well enough to leave my apartment.

I had been right—removing the yarnbomb was easy. Careful not to dislodge the side mirrors, Opal and I, plus Ralph, Duncan, and Gartener, lifted the gaudy creation off Vicki Smallwood’s shiny black and white cruiser.

Gartener turned to the trooper. “Let’s put it in your car, Jeffers. We wouldn’t want all this yarn to absorb the odors of spoiled fish that might be in hers.”

We all helped shove the recalcitrant car sweater into Jeffers’s backseat. I asked Gartener, “Was that thing on the car earlier, like immediately before you came to my shop looking for Chief Smallwood?” Surely, he would have mentioned it.

“It appeared during the ten minutes or so while I was talking to you.”

I persisted. “Did anyone see the yarnbomber? Maybe he or she arrived in a truck that blended in with other trucks that came to collect tents and things after the picnic.”

“I didn’t see anyone,” Mona said quickly, managing to ogle Ralph, Duncan, and Detective Gartener all at once. “I was in my shop.”

Jeffers closed the back door of her squad car. “As far as I know, all of the trucks had left by the time I arrived, but I did see someone in a floor-length cape run to a motorboat down by the river and zoom away. The cape had a hood, pulled up. I didn’t see the person’s face. He ran like a man.”

“What kind of motorboat?” Gartener asked.

“Small,” she answered. “A rowboat equipped with an outboard motor. No windshield or anything like that. Just basic aluminum. And I don’t think it had running lights.”

“What color was the cape?” I asked Jeffers.

“It was too dark to be sure. Some light color. Maybe gray. Kind of splotchy.”

Detective Gartener watched me as if guessing what my next question would be.

“What kind of fabric?” I asked.

Detective Gartener hid a laugh with a cough. I shot him a quelling look.

Jeffers bit her lip. “It was too far away, and, as I said, it’s dark out here.”

“Did it shine like plastic or float like cloth?” I probed. “Or could it have been stiff, like paper?”

“Cloth,” she answered.

“Which way did the motorboat go?” Detective Gartener asked.

She pointed north. “Toward the mouth of the river.”

“And then?” he prompted.

Jeffers’s blush showed up under the streetlights. “I’m sorry, I should have taken the guy’s picture, but all I could think of was capturing the squad car on film. I mean pixels. Thinking back on the sounds I heard, though, I think the boat turned west after it got to the lake, and then accelerated, you know, that sound of the hull crashing between waves.”

Detective Gartener focused on me again. “What’s west of here?”

“A long sandy beach lined with cottages, then the main harbor, the fishing wharf, and the marina. Beyond the harbor, the Elderberry Bay Lodge has its own beach and, I’ve heard, a new, long dock. West of that are sandy bluffs, no beaches, and nowhere to moor a boat or pull it up onto the sand.” Opal nodded as I mentioned each feature.

Gartener turned to Jeffers. “Let’s go have a look.” In an overly theatrical gesture, he pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger before opening Vicki’s car door. He shut himself in, turned on the ignition, opened the windows, and sped off, with Trooper Jeffers in her state police cruiser right behind him.

Opal and I walked up Lake Street together. “That yarnbombing can’t have been done by my regulars,” she said. “They’re much too practical and well-behaved.”

She looked tired. I asked how she felt.

“Fine. But in case this thing is the flu, not food poisoning, you and Haylee need to be careful. Naomi and I will take turns keeping Edna hydrated, starting with little sips of water. Tell Haylee not to join us.”

I asked, “What if
you
get sick?”

“Edna will be well by then, I hope. Right now, all she wants to do is lie there and moan.”

That did
not
sound like Edna. Ordinarily, she complained only if she ran out of rhinestones or beads to trim garments she was making for herself.

Opal rushed off to force a quarter teaspoon of water on her.

At In Stitches, Tally-Ho greeted me like I’d been gone for weeks. Haylee told me she hadn’t heard a peep from Vicki or seen a hair of Sally-Forth. I relayed Opal’s message about staying away, but Haylee ignored it and headed toward Edna’s.

I peeked downstairs. Sally gazed up at me and wagged her tail, but she didn’t budge from her post.

Finally, I could play with my embroidery software. I kept my own, private computer in the part of the shop that had been penned off for the dogs, where no one could accidentally tamper with my embroidery designs. Tally settled near my feet. I checked my e-mail first. Two new commissions for embroidered wall hangings had arrived. One customer had e-mailed me a formal photo of her multi-turreted home, and the other had sent a snapshot of an adorable golden retriever puppy with a ball of yarn. I’d begun my machine embroidery business by selling my own original designs online, and those designs still provided a substantial percentage of my income. I opened my embroidery software and began transforming the photos into embroidery designs.

Someone knocked on the glass of my front door. Sally barked but didn’t come upstairs. Tally galloped to the door and whimpered. On the front porch, Trooper Jeffers held Vicki’s uniform on a hanger in one hand and a cosmetic bag in the other.

I opened the door and accepted Vicki’s things. “How long will you be taking over for Chief Smallwood?” I asked.

She leaned forward to pet my exceedingly friendly Tally-Ho. “Until she’s well enough to come back to work. I have the first shift, and other troopers will take over until she’s better. Don’t worry, we’ve always got you covered.”

I saw her out, locked the door, turned off the shop lights and went downstairs. Beside the guest room door, Sally thumped her tail on the floor.

I tapped gently. No answer. Giving the dogs a hand signal to stay, I opened the door. The dogs sat. Tally wagged his tail, but Sally looked up at me pleadingly, as if asking to be let in to wash the chief’s face.

“Willow?”

I hoped Vicki was stronger than her voice. “Yes. May I come in?”

“Just you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said.

Sally gave me very reproachful looks as I shut her out of my guest suite.

Vicki had left her uniform on the floor, replaced it with a bathrobe, gotten back into bed, and pulled the duvet up almost to her shoulders.

I set her bag near the bed and hung her clean uniform in the closet. “How are you?” Silly question. Of course she was not all right.

Perspiration gave her greenish face an unhealthy sheen. She struggled up onto her elbows. Her eyes were bloodshot. Wayward tendrils of her usually neat hair sprouted from her ponytail. “I heard your voice. Were you talking to Toby Gartener again?”

“No.”

“Don’t let him come in. I look terrible.”

“I’m sure he’s seen worse.”

She fell back on the pillows. “Yes, but they were
already
dead.”

Illness hadn’t taken much of a toll on her sense of humor. “Can I get you anything? A tiny sip of water?”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust, but agreed to try it.

I dumped an entire half teaspoon of water into a pretty liqueur glass and took it to Vicki. I didn’t realize that Sally had followed me into the sickroom until I heard her tongue washing Vicki’s hand. “Sorry, Vicki,” I said. “I didn’t mean to let the dog in.”

“That’s okay. Your dogs are sweet.” She sipped a little water, then let her head loll back. “I’d like more, but let’s just see . . .”

“Do you mind if I leave your door ajar so I can hear if you call? The dogs may come in.”

She rubbed Sally’s ears. “That’s fine.”

I went to bed and set my phone to wake me up in half an hour. Before its alarm went off, however, Sally came whimpering to me. She and I gave Vicki another sip of water.

In the kitchen, I poured ginger ale into a glass, then I went back to bed. I forgot to reset the alarm, but I didn’t need it. Sally got me up and led me to our patient. I started Vicki on flat ginger ale.

The next time Sally woke me up, she went and looked out the patio door. The poor doggie had been inside with her patient for so long that she probably needed exercise. Without turning on lights, I let her out and crossed my fingers that she wouldn’t encounter a skunk.

In his machine-embroidered doggie bed, Tally muttered in his sleep.

A few minutes later, Sally-Forth pawed to be let in. Everything, both inside and out, was dark and silent. I stumbled to the door and slid it open. Sally trotted into Vicki’s room. I snuggled underneath my duvet.

With more whimpering, Sally came out of Vicki’s room and batted the patio door with a front paw. She had to be suffering. Usually, she didn’t need to go out at night even once. Yawning and blinking in the darkness, I let her out, and then back in a few minutes later. Once again, she headed straight for the guest room. At least Vicki was sleeping. Tally-Ho, too. This time, he didn’t stir.

But it turned out that Vicki wasn’t sleeping, after all. She was . . . sobbing?