Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery) (9 page)

“W
illow?” Vicki prodded. She knew me too well. She probably guessed I didn’t want to cast suspicion on a certain person, and may have read my glance toward Clay correctly—or worse, incorrectly. Clay was wearing jeans and a blue shirt, no jacket, but what if Vicki or Detective Neffting thought I suspected Clay of pushing Isis into the river?

I muttered, “It could have been Clay’s cousin. Actually, I think he’s his second cousin—Dare Drayton.”

“Not Dare Drayton, the author.” Neffting clearly didn’t believe me. “A guy who wrote a ton of bestselling thrillers wouldn’t be anywhere near here, much less pushing people into rivers.”

What an annoying man. What an annoying
detective
. I answered quickly, “Clay’s cousin said he was the author. He’s in town doing research for his next book.”

Neffting became animated. “You’ve got to be kidding! I have all of his books. I’ll have to get him to autograph them. He would never risk his career by getting involved in something like this.”

Just what we needed, a detective who refused to be objective. I didn’t want Dare to be a murderer, because he was related to Clay, and Clay and his family could be affected, but Detective Neffting was dismissing a possible suspect without first weighing all the evidence.

Vicki did not look impressed, not favorably, anyway, but she did untighten her lips enough to ask me, “Did you see or hear anything else, Willow?”

I scrunched up my face, trying to put all the events in order. “Floyd the zombie showed up a few minutes after I heard that person running south on Lake Street. Floyd came from the north, from near the beach, but he could have circled from the bandstand and then behind the shops on the other side of Lake Street, if he’d sprinted the whole distance.”

Vicki didn’t look up from her notebook. “Didn’t you say you saw wet footprints on the concrete boat ramp?”

“Partial footprints led from the river up the ramp and toward the grass. They’ve probably dried by now.”

Vicki corroborated, “They were nearly gone when I looked for them.”

If Neffting leaned farther toward me on that slope, he’d topple over. He asked me, “What size shoes, approximately?”

“They weren’t entire footprints. I’m guessing they were from the toes of someone’s shoes.”

“Not heels?” he asked.

“I figured that someone pushing someone else into the river would be more likely to get his toes than his heels wet.”

Neffting pointed his pen at Vicki. “Let’s go take a look.” The pen swung around to aim at Haylee and me. “You two stay here.”

He and Vicki strode to the boat ramp and shined their lights on it. Vicki’s camera flashed several times.

They returned to us. “No footprints now,” he said. “A few bits of glass—”

“Thin, like from broken lightbulbs?” I asked.

Behind Neffting, Vicki nodded decisively.

Neffting only hedged. “Could be.” He looked at Vicki. “Let’s go see that bandstand.”

He lifted the yellow tape and marched uphill outside the crime scene. His long legs moved jerkily, reminding me of Floyd.

I had recognized Floyd by his zombie gait, and Floyd had criticized Lenny for not staying in character. However, if Floyd had wanted to commit a crime, he could have disguised himself by moving normally. He could have slunk toward his victim before the crime and then run away afterward.

Vicki hurried to catch up with Neffting. They hadn’t told Haylee and me to stay behind, so we followed.

Edna and Mrs. Battersby must have become tired of watching, or they’d been unable to see through the fog. Or maybe they’d gotten cold. I hadn’t dressed for the damp chill of midnight in early October, and had to fight involuntary tremors.

Without going inside the crime scene tape, Haylee and I joined Vicki and Detective Neffting on the uphill side of the bandstand. I aimed my light at the quilted white satin label on the bandstand’s plank floor. We could easily read the embroidered words:
Edna’s Wedding Skirt
. I explained, “A ribbon was strung through the loops on that label and tied in a bow around the top of the skirt.”

The two police officers only looked at each other. What did that mean?

I moved my light to the handful of willow wands. “Those sticks are all about the same length and look like someone placed them here very carefully. They weren’t here when we installed the big overskirt. As I left afterward, I saw Isis down by the river. I thought she was pruning a willow tree.”

Neffting frowned as if perplexed.

Vicki photographed the sticks and the label. After her camera flashed, the bandstand seemed darker than ever, except for the spool of glow-in-the-dark thread.

“What’s that weird, bright spool thing?” Neffting asked.

“Glow-in-the-dark thread,” I told him.

He beamed his flashlight on it, and the thread looked dull white, but when he shut off his light, the spool resembled a convention of fireflies. “Whatever is it for?”

Haylee explained, “We don’t need a reason for owning different types of thread, but this is great to use on kids’ Halloween costumes to make them more visible in the dark.”

“Thread,” he repeated. “How’s a driver going to see a
thread
, especially if it’s a dark and stormy night?” His eyes gleamed, probably from the thrill of reciting the clichéd first line of mysteries.

He probably didn’t want to listen to an entire lecture about machine embroidery. I condensed it to, “We can mass it together, like in embroidery, and it shows up.”

He muttered, “I should have known to stay away from
Thread
ville.”

Again ignoring what might have been another wisecrack, Vicki asked Haylee and me, “Does either of you sell this kind of thread in your shops?”

“I do,” I answered, “as of today.” It was past midnight, already Friday. “I mean yesterday. And I’ve sold a lot of it to other people, too.”

Vicki rubbed her forehead with her wrist. “Who bought it?”

“Some of my regular customers, plus two zombies, Floyd and Lenny, the lifeguard who went into the river to search for the victim and hung around afterward.” I glanced around the park. Lenny was gone.

Neffting stared expectantly at Vicki.

“I got his statement, and then a volunteer fireman drove him back to the Elderberry Bay Lodge so he could change and warm up,” Vicki told Neffting. “At the time, he was carrying a towel, but as far as I could tell, he was wearing only bathing trunks underneath his emergency blanket. What about when he arrived, Willow? Was he wearing dark slacks and a jacket?”

I shook my head. “Only surfer shorts, flip-flops, and his towel.” And that horrid, frayed rope around his ankle. “He keeps his wallet in a pocket sewn to the inside of the towel.”

Vicki laughed. “I saw that when I asked for his ID. Nothing like a well-prepared zombie. He’ll be at the lodge all weekend, but I got his home address, also. Did anyone else buy the thread, Willow?”

“I did, both for the store and for myself. The woman who sells it is staying with me.”

Vicki looked surprised. I hadn’t seen her in the past couple of weeks except when she drove past in her cruiser, so she didn’t know which of the Threadville shopkeepers were housing guests, or who our guests were.

Neffting asked, “Was some of that glow-in-the-dark thread on that death contraption?”

Haylee answered, “Yes.”

I pointed out the glowing strand snaking from the spool to the edge of the bandstand floor. “I suspect this thread didn’t come off the wedding skirt, though. It’s probably connected to the thread I saw going up the riverside trail past my place, just after the person skulked along the trail.”

“Skulked,” Neffting repeated. “That’s a good one. Dare Drayton uses words like that.” He shook his head in apparent wonder. “
Dare Drayton
is visiting this area.”

Vicki paid no attention to the detective’s google-eyed awe. “Where on the trail did you see the thread?” she asked me.

“Some of it went upriver from my place, and it came this direction, too. I didn’t pay much attention to it, because of the woman yelling.” Imagining Isis’s last minutes and hoping that she hadn’t suffered long, I couldn’t help rubbing my own throat.

Neffting nodded toward the end of the trail. “Let’s have a look.”

Although we avoided the taped crime scene, we saw the strand of pale, glowing thread snaking down the hill nearby.

When we reached Clay and my dogs, Vicki told him and Haylee, “We’re done with you two for tonight, but we may need to talk to you tomorrow.”

The other volunteer firefighters had walked back to the fire station, leaving the big red fire truck behind.

“Race you to drive it back,” Haylee teased Clay.

She got a head start while Clay gently looped the handles of my dogs’ leashes over my wrist. Even though she was tall and fast, I was sure he could have made it to the top of the hill first if he had really tried. I wished I could go with them instead of hanging out with a police chief and a detective.

I moved my light around where we’d seen the strand of thread, then snapped the flashlight off. In the sudden darkness, it was easy to pick out the glowing thread draped across the lawn and trembling whenever a breeze snagged a leaf or a blade of grass.

“Ugh,” Vicki exclaimed. “It’s like it’s pulsating.”

“Pulsating,” Neffting repeated. “You two must have been around Dare Drayton a lot.”

“Never met the man.” Vicki continued to stare at the thread. “It looks like a long worm, maybe a slimy one.”

I laughed. “It’s only thread.”

She shuddered. “As if zombies weren’t bad enough.”

I knew her well enough to tell she was exaggerating.

Apparently, Neffting didn’t. “Zombies aren’t
real
,” he informed her in a know-it-all way that irritated me. I was cold, tired, and verging on cranky.

Vicki folded her arms. “If they go around scaring babies and little old ladies, I’ll . . . I’ll make them go back underground.”

And if they go around murdering people, too,
I thought, picturing Floyd and his apparent fear of Isis and her powers.

Neffting put out a hand to keep us from approaching the thread leading down the riverside trail. “We’ll have to close off this as part of the scene, also.” He stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle.

I jumped about two feet into the air. Sally and Tally yelped.

Neffting yelled to a state trooper, “Bring me another roll of that tape!”

“We can move what I already strung up,” Vicki said. She detached the tape from the nearby willow tree. We all walked uphill a few feet. Vicki retied the tape to a bush above the trail, blocking the entrance to the trail.

Neffting turned to me. “Can you take us to see the other end of the thread?”

“I don’t know where it is,” I said, “but it must be upriver from my place.” I gestured toward the yellow tape. “Since this end of the trail is now part of the crime scene, and I saw the thread south of my place, we’ll have to go up Lake Street and around to the other end of the trail.”

Vicki nodded.

“Walking or driving?” Neffting asked.

“It’s not far,” Vicki said. “And I have a radio.”

A trooper pelted down the hill with a roll of crime scene tape. Neffting only stared at him as if wondering what he was doing. Vicki held out her hand, took the roll of tape, and thanked the man. He sprinted back toward the people surrounding the stretcher.

Vicki and I led Neffting up to Lake Street, then south to where the trail came out near the highway bridge.

Although I shined my light around in an attempt to fire up the thread’s glow, we couldn’t spot any.

We walked slowly north, shining our lights on both sides of the trail and glancing off into the darkness beyond our flashlight’s beams.

We didn’t catch sight of the thread until we were behind my fence.

The thread came from the direction of the park and ended underneath my gate in a glow-in-the-dark tangle.

I
burst out, “Someone moved that thread into my yard!”

Detective Neffting and Chief Smallwood only looked at me as if the glow-in-the-dark thread might be sprouting from my head.

I pointed to the section of the trail south of us, where we’d been searching for the thread. “When I left with my dogs around nine this evening, the thread was coming from upriver.”

My dogs strained toward the closed gate. They probably knew who had wadded up the thread and pushed it underneath my gate. Wishing they could tell us, I held them back.

Vicki tied a piece of crime scene tape from my fence to a silver maple on the riverbank, blocking off the trail behind the downriver half of my property. The crime scene already covered most of the riverside park. Now it encompassed the trail from the park all the way past my gate.

Neffting stared down at the heaped-up thread. “You won’t be able to use your backyard tonight. We’ll have a look by daylight, and will probably be able to clear it for your use again quickly.”

I thanked him absentmindedly. When I shined my light on the thread, it looked dull and gray, but underneath it, I glimpsed a silvery glint. Without touching anything I wasn’t supposed to, I moved my flashlight back and forth while I bobbed my head up and down. “There’s something else with that thread,” I told the officers. “It looks like the thread nippers I left in the fire station with a spool of glow-in-the-dark thread and a packet of needles.”

“Next thing you know we’ll be looking for needles in haystacks,” Neffting deadpanned.

I was beginning to believe the man did have a sense of humor, but I took my cue from Vicki, who acted like she hadn’t heard him.

She looked up at me. “If those are your thread nippers, could the spool of thread we saw in the bandstand, which may be attached to this mess, be yours, too?”

I nodded. “I wasn’t the only one with a spool of thread like that, but yes, that spool could be the one I left in the fire station with the other things.”

Vicki asked, “Who has access to the fire station besides firefighters?”

I admitted, “Clay and I left the fire station unlocked for about ten minutes this evening while we rolled the wedding skirt down to the bandstand.”

Vicki demanded, “Why? Trying to make extra work for me? What if someone vandalized the fire trucks or disabled them, and they couldn’t get to an emergency? You have garage door openers. And closers. You should learn to use them.” She hadn’t lost her sarcastic touch.

My excuse wasn’t great. “We were eager to get that wedding skirt in place so we could surprise Edna. And we were near the fire station.”

She echoed my thoughts. “Not near enough.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Neffting asked.

He’d met Clay briefly. I explained to him that Naomi and Opal were two of Haylee’s mothers. He had me spell their names.

Vicki must have seen me shiver. She asked me, “Can you get into your apartment through your shop?”

I felt in my pocket for my keys. “Yes.”

Keeping to one side of the trail and examining it by flashlight, we retraced our steps up the trail. Near the bridge, Tally lunged toward what looked like a scrap of paper in tall grass. I pulled him to me.

Vicki and Detective Neffting focused their lights on the thing. It was a tiny envelope with a windowed front. Silver metal gleamed inside the square opening.

As if finding sewing needles beside a hiking trail were a common occurrence, I said, “That’s probably my packet of needles.”

“In tall grass.
Almost
in a haystack.” Neffting shook his head as if in admiration, but I didn’t think he was admiring Tally and me for sniffing out this piece of evidence, or whatever. “Did you leave it there yourself?” he asked.

“No. Last I knew, it was at the fire station.”

“One package of needles might look like any other,” Neffting cautioned. “Just like one spool of thread and one pair of nippers could look like any other.”

I nodded. “Yes, but it would be quite a coincidence for an identical trio of sewing supplies to show up somewhere besides the fire station tonight. I wonder if that man I saw skulking along the trail dropped all three things.”

I couldn’t blame Vicki and Neffting for looking skeptical.

“Accidentally,” I added. “Maybe he didn’t realize the thread was unwinding?”

Vicki frowned. “How could that happen, Willow? Thread should be too light to unreel from a spool by itself. If you guessed that the
spool
was caught in the bandstand, which it didn’t seem to be, and that the thread had unwound itself while someone unknowingly carried one end of it all the way from the bandstand to your gate, I could almost believe it.”

Quickly, I came up with a theory. “Maybe the thread had become tangled in my nippers, and the nippers fell out of his pocket and acted like a sort of anchor, and the thread started unwinding.”

“Describe those little nippers,” Neffting ordered. “They were too buried in thread for me to comprehend what they were.”

“They’re forged from one thick strip of steel, shaped in a U with the two legs flattened and sharpened into blades.”

“So your little nippers are what cut the ruffle partially off the death contraption.” He stated it as if it were fact, but he didn’t look at me. Was he trying to put words in my mouth, or fishing for information?

Whichever it was, I took the bait. “Thread nippers don’t offer enough leverage to cut through that many layers of fabric—”

He interrupted me. “Only one.”

I repeated what I’d told him before. “The fabric was gathered, that is, bunched up closely, before it was cut. And even if someone had enough strength to make those nippers cut through all that fabric at once, the blades are short. That frill had been hacked off messily, but not as messily as if it had been done by short blades.”

Vicki asked Neffting, “The lab will be able to tell all that, don’t you think?”

“Could be.” Without looking up from his writing, he asked me, “And how would those little nippers and that mass of thread have ended up in your yard?”

I stared out over the river, flowing past in the dark like black silk. “What if the man was oblivious to the thread unspooling, like it was in the pocket of that loose jacket, as he walked—”

“Skulked,” Neffting corrected me in a murmur.

I went on, “—and the thread unwound all the way to the bandstand, and when he got there, Isis fought with him, causing the spool to come out of his pocket. Maybe he realized then that he might have left a trail of thread leading to him in the bandstand, but he was too busy pushing Isis toward the river to pick up the spool and go back for all of the thread.”

“You’re coming up with some wild and tangled explanations,” Neffting complained. “So why didn’t your bad guy simply pick up the spool of thread in the bandstand after he pushed the woman into the river, and then come here from there, grabbing his errant thread as he went?” He waved his hand to take in the entire area between the lake, the river, the bridge, and Lake Street. “Why did he go out of his way, all around the block, to get to the other end of the thread?”

I guessed, “By then, I was shouting, and in his way on the riverside trail. He wouldn’t have dared retrace his steps for fear I would see him.”

Neffting persisted. “So even if he did come from the other end of the trail, why didn’t he keep going past your gate, picking up his thread all the way back to the bandstand? Why did the thread end up underneath your gate?”

“Maybe he was afraid I was still on the trail or coming back? Or he didn’t dare go to the park for fear of being seen and connected with his crime? So he shoved the thread he’d collected underneath my gate, turned around, and fled back toward the bridge.”

Neffting shook his head. “Whoa, there. You’re stringing things together that maybe don’t belong in the same thread.”

Well, he had asked. I gave him a weak smile, but he stared at me coldly. “He didn’t have to leave the thread and nippers in your yard. He could have used those little nippers to cut the thread. Then he could have gone off, taking the wadded-up thread and nippers with him. You said you and the dogs got tangled in leashes on the way to the park. Are you sure you weren’t tangled in thread?”

“Yes.”

Not quite looking at me, Neffting continued his interrogation. “And you’re sure it was a man you saw on the trail?”

“No, but I thought it was. Or a tall woman.”

“Hard to tell when they’re
skulking
.”

I had a feeling I was going to hear that word from him many more times before this case was solved, if it ever was. Vicki snapped pictures of the needle packet and its surroundings. Her lens zoomed in and out. She was taking close-ups of the packet as well as photos showing the entire scene.

Sniffing, Tally-Ho pulled me toward a spot near the needle packet. He whimpered. Both dogs edged their noses toward the ground. I shined my flashlight, but the dogs were in my way. Vicki took their leashes and pulled them back.

I bent closer to what they’d been trying to investigate.

Two small slashes in the ground were about the same distance apart as the blades on my thread nippers.