Dire Threads (21 page)

When our table could finally join the lineup, I discovered that Karen the librarian had been at the table next to us. We chatted with her in shouts to make ourselves heard over the hall’s clamor. The next thing I knew, Herb was standing beside me.

“Are you back for seconds already?” Karen hollered at him. She was probably thinking the same thing I was. How could we offer to help him carry his plate without insulting him? Or should we offer at all? His left arm was fine.

He said he’d only come over to keep us company. Smythe playfully shouldered him aside, and Edna, Opal, and Naomi backed up, obviously giving the young folks space to talk to each other. Smythe wasn’t wearing his bee-stinger stocking cap and had used mousse or something in an attempt to tame his rowdy blond curls. Fortunately, he hadn’t succeeded.

Karen asked him loudly if he really sang to his bees.

“I dance for them, too.” He demonstrated a wild combination of foot stomping and arm flapping.

We laughed.

Herb leaned close and yelled into my ear, “Save a dance for me at the fish fry dinner dance tomorrow?”

Another dinner?

Herb pointed at flyers taped to the wall. Tomorrow night’s fish fry dinner dance was sponsored by the nature club. Opal, Naomi, and Edna were ogling the flyers and sending Haylee and me pointed messages with their eyes.

“Okay,” I said to Herb, nodding in case he couldn’t hear me.

Probably content that Haylee and I had understood their latest nonverbal hints, Opal and her cohorts attempted to engage several older farmers in conversation. The men leaned away from them.

I couldn’t come up with questions to ask Herb without sounding like I was accusing him of murder. Fortunately, I didn’t have to try for long. Wails and howls burst from the sound system. A man in a western shirt and cowboy hat tamed the speakers, then announced that he was tonight’s disk jockey.

Dance music boomed. Giving up on conversing, Herb and I moved closer to Haylee, Karen, and Smythe. Herb appeared to ask Haylee something. To save him a dance tomorrow night? Smythe crowded between them, shook his head, and took Haylee’s arm. She looked surprised for a second, then nodded.

Herb moved to Karen and whispered in her ear. She smiled, showing her dimples. He gave her one of his big grins, twinkly eyes and all.

Everyone was pairing up with dates for tomorrow night except me. Although telling myself not to, I searched for Clay among seated diners. He would be head and shoulders above most of them. I didn’t see him.

At the buffet counter, apron-garbed men and women teased each other as they filled plates and handed them to us. I hadn’t needed to worry about getting enough to eat.

We said good-bye to Smythe, Herb, and Karen, and returned to our table with our overloaded plates. At least three hundred people were in the large room. Was a killer among them?

Across the table, Edna shouted questions to the woman next to her. The woman shouted back.

I hollered at the elderly man beside me, “How long have you lived in Elderberry Bay?”

He stabbed a fork into his baked potato. “Yes, very good.”

“Is your wife one of the cooks?”

“Love beef and potatoes,” he answered. “Always have.”

Coming tonight had been a mistake. We wouldn’t learn anything.

And tomorrow night’s fish fry dinner dance might be as bad.

Edna caught my eye, mouthed an unintelligible phrase, and focused on something behind me. I turned to look. Ladies’ room. When I faced her again, she was standing up. She covered her ears with her hands for a second, removed them, shook her head, and inched past Opal.

I poked a finger to my chest and mouthed, “Shall I come?”

She, Opal, and Naomi shook their heads. Edna held up one finger and pointed at herself, then at Naomi with two fingers, then at Haylee with three, me with four, and Opal with five.

Haylee translated. “We’ll take turns. Edna first. Then Naomi, then me, then you, then Opal.” Dramatically, she covered her ears and shook her head.

Okay, I got it. The room was too noisy with deafening music and hollering people. We would do our sleuthing, one by one, in the ladies’ room.

What fun.

Edna marched off. The rest of us lined up at the dessert table. Colored lights flashed and strobed.

I centered one largish piece of vanilla fudge on my plate. I liked my sugar in one immense hit. Back at the table, I nibbled at the fudge and sternly told myself not to go back for more, no matter how yummy it was. Naomi and Haylee did their sleuthing stints in the restroom, and then it was my turn.

How was I supposed to find clues in a restroom? I pushed open the swinging door. After the dim lighting in the dining hall, I was blinded by bare fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling and hot pink paint on concrete walls and metal stalls. The door shut behind me, blocking out most of the racket from the dining hall.

No one was at the sinks, but boots showed underneath two of the stall doors. Probably the best way to stay in here long enough to eavesdrop was to take up residence in a stall.

I did, which left only one empty stall. If other women came in and had to wait, I’d give up my post. Actually, there were other reasons I wanted to leave. One was the buzz of the lights. Another was the mothbally room deodorizer.

The silence almost made me want to scream,
Please, somebody, confess to killing Mike so I can get back to my friends.
I dug around in my bag for pen and paper. If anyone in the ladies’ room was going to confess, I would write it all down.

Finally one of the other women must have been similarly unable to stand the lack of conversation. She cleared her throat.

I held my pen at the ready.

“When’s her baby due?” she asked.

“Not until August.”

End of conversation. Nancy Drew would have had it easier. Someone would have written the murderer’s name on the door.

Many messages had been scratched into the stall’s paint, but none of the limericks, drawings, or phone numbers seemed to have a bearing on Mike’s death.

The other two women washed their hands and left the ladies’ room.

Ready to make my own escape, I stood up and poked my finger through the hole where the knob must have originally been. Just then, the ladies’ room door opened. Music crashed into the room.

I backed up, plunked onto the toilet, and fished through my bag for the paper and pen.

The door to the ladies’ room closed. Silence.

My fingers closed on the pen and paper. Was anyone in here with me? I bent forward and peeked out the hole in the latch. I saw only part of a sink. Cautiously, I exhaled my pent-up breath.

It was too soon to feel relief. Someone
had
entered the ladies’ room. Stiletto heels banged on floor tiles. Toward my hideout.

I yanked the paper and pen out of my bag again.

“They have their nerve, coming to Mike’s wake,” she announced in a thin, snarling whine.

I knew that voice. Rhonda.

21

W
AS RHONDA WHINING BECAUSE Haylee, The Three Weird Mothers, and I had bought tickets for what she called “Mike’s wake”?

“Yeah,” another woman sobbed. “I can’t believe we’ll never see him again.” It wasn’t Aunt Betty. This woman had a younger, higher voice.

Rhonda’s turn. “How could they have
done
this to us?”

“He was so great, so fun, so alive . . .”

“So gorgeous.”

“He loved everything beautiful.”

Mike? He hadn’t loved Blueberry Cottage.

Rhonda sighed and went on, “Remember those jewelry boxes he made?” Her voice took on a gloating tone. “I think he only made those for his really special friends.”

The other woman breathed, “Ahh, yes. Treasure chests, he called them. Mine has the cutest little—” She broke off.

Rhonda didn’t say anything.

The other woman went on, “Remember all his other artwork? His woodcarvings?”

Had he made wooden buttons and given them away to all of his
really special
friends, too? Rhonda?

The other woman sobbed, “You just know he was about to settle down and make some woman very happy.”

Rhonda paused before answering, “Yeah.”

“When is Uncle Allen going to arrest his murderers?”

“It can’t be too soon for me.”

“I know someone whose brother’s girlfriend works for the FBI or something.”

The woman’s voice got louder, as if she had turned away from the sinks and mirrors and was talking at the door of my stall. I wished I’d pulled my boots up where no one could see them. Now that I had something to take notes about, I didn’t want to write for fear Rhonda and her friend would hear my scratchings and guess I was jotting down what they said. I should have chosen a stall with a complete latch, if one existed. Any moment, an eye would press itself against the hole in the door.

“If Uncle Allen and the state police don’t arrest them soon,” the woman continued, “I’ll call my friend. The FBI will put them behind bars right away.”

Rhonda’s friend’s voice became venomous. “If I could get my hands on Mike’s murderer, like if she was in here, I’d make her sorry she ever laid eyes on him.”

Did they hope to frighten me with their threats?

They were succeeding.

Had Rhonda or her friend been last night’s intruder in Tell a Yarn?

“They’re not getting away with it,” Rhonda said. “Not if the respectable people in this village have anything to do with it.”

The mothball fumes were going to make me sneeze. Pressing my index finger hard against my upper lip, I dropped my pen. It landed with a click that sounded like thunder, rolled under the door and into the main room, probably to Rhonda’s feet.

Stiletto heels hammered into floor tiles again. The ladies’ room door opened. The music reached new heights of throbbing. My head did, too. The door closed, shutting out the din from the main hall.

Listening to lights buzzing and faucets dripping, I waited for about half a minute, then fled.

When I returned to our table, Opal stood up. I shook my head at her. She firmed her lips and marched off, duty-bound to take her turn at sleuthing. I moved my chair so I could watch the ladies’ room. I didn’t recognize any of the women who went in and out.

I was about to fly to Opal’s rescue when she emerged. Edna, Naomi, and Haylee gave her questioning looks. She shook her head, pointed toward the front door, and imitated someone shrugging into a coat. I was getting really good at understanding these women. Time to leave.

As we donned our coats, I eyed the hundreds of coats still in the coat rack. Was one of them missing one handmade wooden button? Checking all of them would be both time-consuming and extremely obvious. I followed the others outside.

Rain poured down. A cell phone pressed to his ear, Uncle Allen huddled against the wall underneath a porch light.

“You folks stay here,” Opal offered. “I’ll bring the car around.”

“That’s okay—” I started.

Edna held me back, rolling her eyes toward Uncle Allen. I nodded my understanding. While Opal fetched her car, the rest of us were to spy on him. Opal tore off into the rain. Standing very still, I tried to hear over rain pounding on the metal porch roof. Uncle Allen didn’t appear to be speaking. Listening, maybe. His coat had a new button where one had been missing. The new one was plastic, not wood, and almost matched the other buttons. He beckoned to us.

Uh-oh. Rhonda’s friend’s brother’s girlfriend had arranged for the FBI to arrest us already?

He spoke directly to me. “Ice on the river’s breaking up. That cottage of yours is likely to flood.” His eyes brightened. “Or get washed away. And you won’t get permission to build a new one on a flood plain.” He raised his forefinger toward the porch roof, and, presumably, toward the sky spewing water over everything. “Couldn’t be a better tribute to Mike.”

I opened my mouth to retort that no one could steal the land beneath the cottage from me.

Edna forced herself between Uncle Allen and me. “Did you get fingerprints from that button?”

He frowned. “They couldn’t find even a partial. But they did discover that the button matched the buttons on Mike’s coat.
Two
of them were missing, not just one.” He eyed us suspiciously.

“Aha!” Edna said. “You find Mike’s other missing button, and you’ll find a killer.”

Uncle Allen said what I was thinking. “Not necessarily.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You have more buttons than anyone else for miles around.”

I was going to have to keep Edna out of jail, too?

Opal’s car pulled up beside the porch steps. Naomi grabbed Edna’s arm. “C’mon. We’re late.”

“For what?” Edna asked, for once not cluing in to hints from her friends.

Haylee answered, “Beauty sleep.”

Edna made a rude snorting noise, but she came along.

The puddles in the parking lot had grown and deepened. Was Blueberry Cottage really in danger?

Edna hadn’t missed everything. As soon as we were all in the car, she asked, “What’s up?”

Naomi leaned forward on her tenuous perch between Haylee and me. “Sandbags. We all have fabrics we can spare. And more than enough sewing machines to go around. We’ll make sandbags, fill them at the beach, and place them around Willow’s cottage.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “The river must have flooded lots of times during the past eighty years. That cottage stood its ground.”

Haylee peeked around Naomi at me. “Never argue with The Three Weird Mothers. It would be like arguing with the river. If they decide to do something, they’re going to do it, no matter what.”

“They haven’t decided,” I countered. “And they’re not about to. We’d be up all night, and Sundays are busy in Threadville.”

“Yes, we have decided,” Edna declared. “Haven’t we, girls.”

Opal’s windshield wipers zipped back and forth, with limited success. She strained forward. “We can sew all night.”

“We’ve done it lots of times,” Naomi agreed. “We love sewing.”

“Not
sand
bags,” I scoffed. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Where’s the fun in watching your darling little cottage drift down the river?” Edna asked sweetly. “I’m sure we all have fabrics in our stashes that we’d be glad to donate. These will be the prettiest sandbags ever.”