Threaded for Trouble (17 page)

Susannah had said that Darlene had volunteered as a fund-raiser for charities. Volunteers didn’t get paid, and winning sewing and embroidery contests wouldn’t put much food on the table, either. The Coddlefields needed a nanny now, but how had they justified having one before Darlene died? And how had they afforded it? Was farming that profitable?

I dug out Thursday’s newspaper and reread Darlene’s obituary. She’d been a “devoted stay-at-home mother.” In lieu of flowers, donations should be made to charities—Koins for Kids, Kompassion for Kids, Kiddies’ Korner, and Cure the Children. I’d never heard of any of them.

When the first batch of cookies was in the oven and the second batch was waiting on cookie sheets, I searched the
Internet. All four charities had similar websites, with lists of donors. The three charities that seemed overly fond of the letter K used the same post office box in Erie. The same telephone number, too, but the exchange was a local one, not in Erie.

I called it.

A woman answered on the first ring. Unless I was mistaken, it was Tiffany. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize my voice or do a reverse look-up, but just in case, I didn’t pretend I was someone else, like a reporter. I didn’t give my name, either, but blasted ahead with a question. “Can you tell me what Koins for Kids does?” My voice came out like candlewick rubbing against burlap.

“We…” There was a pause as if she had to think about the answer. “We provide funds for needy children. Totally.”

How enlightening. “What do they use the funds for?” Great question, too.

“Food, clothes, housing.” Another pause. “You name it.”

“Is this for children all over the world?”

“All over America.”

“How do I send a donation?” Having no intention of making one, I crossed my fingers.

Tiffany rattled off the address.

I thanked her and hung up. She’d had trouble naming the charity’s goals and mission, but could spiel out the P.O. box number and zip code.

I was tempted to call the other two charities that shared the Koins for Kids phone number, but Tiffany would undoubtedly answer and figure out who I was.

The fourth charity, Cure the Children, had a different phone number and post office box, but the phone number was also an Elderberry Bay exchange. I’d heard of people disguising their voices by draping a tissue over the receiver. I tried a lightweight piece of linen instead, and dialed the number.

“Cure the Children, Miss Quantice speaking.” Tiffany, again, sounding annoyed. I hoped she didn’t have number recognition.

I pitched my voice higher than believable for anyone larger than a squirrel. “Sorry, wrong number.”

She slammed her phone down. The nanny Darlene had hired was running children’s charities during the hours I’d have thought she’d be looking after Darlene’s children. Had Darlene been scamming people, obtaining donations for fake charities? And Tiffany had taken over. Strange.

I phoned Chief Smallwood. “I heard that Darlene volunteered for charities,” I told her.

“And this is pertinent because…?” Smallwood was always so helpful.

“I called two of those charities.”

“Whatever for?” Smallwood exploded.

“They’re listed in Darlene’s obituary for donations instead of flowers, and I wanted to know more about the charities before I donated.”

Apparently, I didn’t fool her. “You’re to keep out of this investigation, hear?”

“Yes, of course.” I crossed my fingers. “But it got interesting. I recognized the voice of the woman who answered the calls. It was Tiffany, Darlene’s nanny.” And then just to be certain that Smallwood knew who I meant, I added. “Darlene’s husband’s
girl
friend.”

“Would it be strange for Darlene’s nanny to take over some of the volunteer jobs that her boss—her
late
boss—had been doing?”

“Not if those charities are real. I suspect they aren’t.” It was my turn to put her in the hot seat. “Are they?”

“We’re looking into everything.” Some hot seat. I had a feeling she knew the answer and was only being difficult. “Do me a favor,” she said.

I hated it when she spoke to me like I was a slightly amusing child. “Okay.” Smallwood was going to tell me to butt out.

“Look at the list of donors for Koins for Kids.” She sounded a little too pleased with herself. “Tell me if you recognize any of the names.”

I stared at my computer screen. One name jumped out at me.

I skimmed through the list again. There was no point in lying. I admitted in a small voice, “The only name I recognize is Susannah Kessler.”

“Isn’t that funny?” Smallwood obviously enjoyed being sarcastic. “That’s the only name on any of the lists that I recognize, too.”

S
USANNAH’S FEAR OF THE POLICE ON SATURDAY night had seemed to stem from something in addition to memories of a childhood fire, and she’d been nervous at Opal’s storytelling on Friday when she’d disclosed that Darlene had raised funds for charities. Had she been afraid that someone might discover she’d been one of the donors? “Susannah would never hurt anyone,” I told Smallwood.

“Being that certain about others can be dangerous, you know.” Smallwood’s stern personality overcame her usually friendly telephone manners. “Trust me on this. The police know better than you do. And we will do the investigating. All of it.”

“So you’re checking into all of the charities, and
all
of the donors? Any of them might have borne a grudge against Darlene if they thought they had donated money to Darlene instead of to a charity.”

“We’re looking at everything,” she again told me. “
You
keep out of it.” She hung up.

I reread donor names on all four sites. I didn’t recognize any other names. Only Susannah’s.

Baking the rest of the cookies, I thought about Susannah. What did it all mean?

I could imagine Susannah being sad if she discovered that Darlene’s fund-raising was fraudulent. But angry enough to arrange Darlene’s death? I’d never seen her show the slightest annoyance, even about her ex. Only an overwhelming despair about a husband who didn’t love her, after all. Worse, he was now accusing her of possibly harming Darlene.

I still suspected Russ, Tiffany, and Plug. And maybe Felicity, too, though I couldn’t figure out why she’d damage one of her employer’s sewing machines.

When I’d called Smallwood just now, she’d already known about the charities. Grudgingly, I admitted to myself that she was right. I should leave the investigating to the police.

Besides, if I didn’t concentrate on my IMEC entry on my one day off, I probably wouldn’t finish it in time to display it along with the others at the Harvest Festival. I still hadn’t come up with an easy way of replicating old-fashioned candlewicking embroidery stitches.

I went up to In Stitches. Across the street, Haylee was rearranging the front windows of The Stash. I loved the natural fabrics I sold in my shop, but sometimes I just had to touch other fabrics.

Maybe they could be the solution to my candlewicking problem. What about using a nubby fabric, corduroy, for instance, and creating a very narrow appliqué in a winding shape? Wouldn’t that resemble the lumps of knotted candlewick that had been used in place of embroidery floss?

I ran across the street. Haylee was, as always, happy to have me browse through textiles with her. I chose mid-wale corduroy in a perfect shade of off-white.

Folding my purchase, she grinned. “You’re copying something made of candle wicks, and my mothers are using quilting, knitting, and weaving ribbons to copy something like fiery embroidery.”

“Flame stitch,” I supplied. “Otherwise known as bargello.”
I held one index finger up. “I could program my embroidery software to create a bargello-type pattern, and then frame it with my meandering white ‘candlewicking’ frame!”

Eager to begin, I didn’t stay at Haylee’s, even though she offered coffee and cookies.

I ran to Naomi’s shop. In her front room, surrounded by handmade quilts and haloed by light from her windows, she sat at a long-armed quilting machine and stitched freehand over her colorful bargello quilt. Calm seemed to radiate from her as she concentrated. Her narrow fingers expertly guided the stitching.

It took her a while to realize I was there, and when she did, she jumped and apologized in her soft, kind way. “I was in a different world.”

I asked if I could borrow the colored diagram she’d made for the quilt.

She sent me to her desk in the back room. I picked up the paper, admired her work, thanked her, then dashed back to In Stitches, where I scanned her drawing into my favorite embroidery software program.

The rest was easy. I clicked on the icons that told the software to transform the picture into an embroidery design. In only minutes, my screen showed what the flame stitch pattern would look like when “painted” in thread.

Naturally, I had every shade of embroidery thread I would need to match Naomi’s multihued drawing. The stitching and thread-changing took a while, but the end result was beautiful.

Flame stitch, candlewicking…I’d been trying to put the next night’s firefighters’ training session out of my mind. Apparently, I wasn’t succeeding.

I could carry the theme to extremes, too. Another age-old embroidery stitch, fire stitch, resembled flames. Simple curved lines were open at the bottom and closed in points at the top. I saved my bargello design under a new name and superimposed bright orange fire stitch “flames” on it.

Next was my attempt at candlewicking, actually a very thin appliqué framing the colorful part of the embroidery.
Appliquéing was easy with embroidery machines, software, and hoops.

Ordinarily, the first step in machine embroidery appliqué would be causing the software to stitch the shape of the finished appliqué on the base fabric so I could see where to place the appliqué fabric. For this project, though, the appliqué would frame the entire base fabric, my colorful bargello pattern with the orange “flames” embroidered on top. All I had to do was cover my entire design with a piece of corduroy. If I placed it straight up and down, I’d have short ridges and furrows on the top and bottom of my corduroy frame and long stripes of corduroy on the sides. I turned the corduroy on the diagonal.

Then I had the software stitch a wavy line around where I wanted the outside of the frame to be, and a slightly smaller wavy box just inside the first.

When I was done, the stitched corduroy still covered Naomi’s bargello design. Careful to keep the fabrics tight in the embroidery hoop, I removed the hoop from the machine. I clipped out the inside of the corduroy close to my stitching, then snipped the excess away from the outside of my thin white frame, and I had it—a narrow, twisty, bumpy, off-white decoration around the outside of the colorful flame stitch design.

The final touch was reattaching the hooped design to my embroidery machine and outlining both the inner and outer edges of my corduroy “candlewicking” with satin stitching that was just wide enough to hide the corduroy’s raw edges.

Flame stitch, fire stitch, and candlewicking, all on one small wall hanging, almost like an embroidered pun. I wasn’t sure it would win any IMEC prizes, but it had been fun to create. And wasn’t that what hobbies were all about?

Fire. I couldn’t put off getting ready for the next night’s firefighting session much longer. I dragged out the manual Isaac had given me and studied it on the patio in the seemingly never-ending summer afternoon.

After supper, I leashed the dogs and took them out the
back gate to the riverside trail. Ordinarily, I might have simply walked, but failing the physical fitness part of the firefighters’ exam could be embarrassing, so we jogged, south, away from the lake. Leashed jogging was apparently very exciting. We frequently tumbled to the ground in heaps of leashes, arms, legs, and paws. It worked, more or less, as exercise, and I may have run as much as two miles. Crisscrossing back and forth in front of me, the dogs probably ran twice as far. When we arrived back at the gate leading into our yard beside Blueberry Cottage, I was panting at least as much as Sally and Tally were.

We’d had so little rainfall during the summer that the only water in the river was a narrow stream meandering down the middle. We would be able to hop over that stream now, but rain could fall again any day, and we might never have another chance to cross the river here, conveniently close to home. We had never explored the state forest on the other side.

Hanging on to the dogs’ leashes with one hand and to tree trunks with the other, I sidestepped down the bank to the river bed.

The earth was not as solid as it looked.

I ended up on my rear in thick, oozy mud with a fragrance that was more attractive to the dogs than to me. The leashes were in my right hand, and I didn’t dare let go for fear my dogs would take off. I rolled over onto my hands and knees and pushed myself up until only my hands and feet were in the mud. My hands sank up to the leashes looped around my wrists. Wet clay plopped off my bare knees. My feet went in up to my ankles.

Sally and Tally liked nothing better than mud wrestling, and now, as far as they were concerned, I was joining them. They barked and danced, coating themselves and me in grime. Instead of crawling up the bank like a sensible person, I collapsed laughing, in the mud.

“Pull me home,” I gasped.

They barked faster. Sally had a way of running her yips together until she was almost howling.

I laughed so hard that anyone hearing me could have believed I was howling, too. Luckily, no one was anywhere near.

“Willow!” A man, shouting nearby.

Oops.

It was all I could do not to truly howl. And not with laughter. I recognized that voice.

Clay.

“S
HHH!” I TOLD THE DOGS. “PRETEND WE’RE not here.”

No luck. Sally and Tally recognized Clay’s voice and accelerated their barking so he could find them. And me.

My gate clanged. Clay must have come from Lake Street, climbed over the locked gate into my side yard, run down my sloping backyard, and now he’d gone through the gate beside Blueberry Cottage. He had to be on the trail above the river. “Sally, Tally!” He sounded tense.