Authors: Janet Bolin
7
I
’D FALLEN ASLEEP THINKING ABOUT CLAY
and my date with him. I woke up counting the days. This was Saturday. Our date was next Friday. Six and a half more days. But I would also see him and his band at the community picnic, only hours away. Fraser Construction had grown since I’d first met Clay. Discovering that nearly every one of his employees played an instrument, he’d started a band. Clay played the trumpet.
All morning and afternoon, everyone in my shop was in a holiday mood, looking forward to the picnic and crowing about the bargains they’d bought at the sidewalk sale.
After my last customer left for the evening, I closed In Stitches, leashed the dogs, and took them out to my backyard. We were able to stay on the correct side of the police tape and go through the back gate for a quick stroll along the riverside trail.
When we returned, I eyed Clay’s front-end loader. Digging holes in my yard with that thing could be fun.
The dogs probably had similar ideas, though they might prefer slightly more primitive tools. I took them inside.
I put on jeans, sneakers, and a navy blue T-shirt with the Elderberry Bay Volunteer Fire Department logo on the front and
FIRE
screen-printed in huge white letters across the back. Leaving my dogs behind, I took off for the picnic.
The temperature was perfect. I wouldn’t swelter in the firefighter’s outfit I’d promised to wear for the first part of the evening. From the hill above the beach, the aromas of vanilla, cinnamon, and boiling oil—the good kind—whetted my appetite for funnel cakes and French fries.
The picnic appeared to be a hit with children. They shouted inside a bouncy castle, petted baby farm animals in a pen surrounded by hay bales, and ran around with their faces painted to resemble cats, flowers, and superheroes. Emergency medical technicians gave tours of the ambulance. Chief Smallwood sat in the driver’s seat of her cruiser, showing excited kids the gadgets built into the car. She must have found time to buy supper. Plates of deep-fried Lake Erie yellow perch fillets, asparagus salad, and strawberry shortcake balanced on her dashboard.
Wearing her firefighter’s jacket unbuttoned over her official department T-shirt, Haylee helped a squirming toddler up into the fire truck’s passenger seat.
I opened one of the truck’s storage lockers, grabbed a pair of firefighter’s pants, stepped into them, and snapped my suspenders. Kids laughed. I toed my sneakers off and slid my feet into the clumsy boots. Like Haylee, I didn’t bother fastening my jacket. Finally, I plopped a helmet on my head without bothering to tuck my hair underneath it. The kids found that funny, too.
Our new fire chief blasted the siren for a second. Haylee and I jumped. Our pint-sized audience laughed harder. “It startles me every time,” one mother said.
We lifted children into and out of the fire truck until every kid at the picnic who wanted to sit in a fire truck had done it, some of them several times, and the fire chief announced that it was the truck’s bedtime. Haylee and I stowed our gear. Everyone under four feet tall rowed up along the curb and gazed wistfully as the bright red fire truck, siren blaring and lights strobing, roared up the hill toward the fire station, a little more than a block away. The ambulance left, too, at a speed that caused the children to lose their bereft expressions and jump around in impromptu dances.
Eating strawberry shortcake, Chief Smallwood leaned against her cruiser. She waved a fork. We waggled our fingers at her and took off toward a tent labeled
Tom’s Fish Fry
.
Tom piled fillets of fried perch on my plate.
“That looks lots better than when I cooked it,” I admitted.
He pointed his slotted spoon at his deep fryer. “Nothing beats deep frying. You have to cook these suckers really fast. A little light breading, then into the pot, and right back out.”
I ordered onion rings to go with mine, and Haylee chose sweet potato fries. We bought drinks and wended our way between families to Opal, Naomi, and Edna, who were beckoning to us from a table close to the beach.
Opal had given birth to Haylee when Opal and her two best friends were only seventeen. Haylee’s three mothers had celebrated their fiftieth birthdays recently, but they were fit and always teasing each other, and appeared much younger than they actually were.
Opal was almost as tall as Haylee and looked a lot like her, complete with the long blond hair, but while Haylee tailored her own clothes from fabrics she sold at The Stash, Opal knit or crocheted every garment she owned. Tonight, she wore a pale aqua T-shirt and matching slacks that I’d seen her crocheting with cotton yarn during her Friday night storytelling evenings at Tell a Yarn. She stared at our firefighter T-shirts in pretend shock. “Willow and Haylee, those are
lovely
T-shirts! So creative and original.”
Edna, the shortest of the three women, almost never ventured out without some of the embellishments she sold at Buttons and Bows. With red and blue tapestry trim running down the outside seams of her red capris and tank top, she resembled a toreador. A headband she’d made from the tapestry trim corralled her hair, sort of. Crimson and navy points of hair stuck up all over the top of her head. She pointed her fork at me. “Printed, Willow, not machine embroidered?”
I had to grin. Although I tried to restrain myself, I used my machines to embroider almost every garment I owned. I thought of it as marketing. Neither Haylee nor I were advertising our shops at the moment, but the white
FIRE
across my back made me feel important. If anyone needed help at the picnic, they could easily find Haylee or me.
Naomi, who always stood up for everyone, complimented us. “No one else looks as good as you two do in jeans.”
I could think of someone who looked much better in jeans. I would soon see him in his shiny band uniform . . .
I thanked Naomi. She owned Batty About Quilts, and nearly everything she wore had been pieced together from several colors and patterns of fabric. For winter, she added batting and backing, and quilted all the layers together. For summer, she simply sewed the cottons together in interesting ways. She wore a long skirt, all pastel batiks, with a pale yellow cotton T-shirt she had crocheted during storytelling evenings. Despite Edna’s frequent hints and suggestions about hair colors, Naomi was letting natural gray highlight her brown hair. She had, however, obtained big sequins from Edna and had stitched them to both her top and her skirt, so she wasn’t completely immune to Edna’s brand of flamboyance.
Edna examined the food on Haylee’s and my plates. “You two didn’t get any asparagus and bocconcini salad. You should before it’s all gone. It’s delicious. I poured some of their hot pepper vinaigrette on mine.”
Naomi shuddered. “Opal and I can’t understand how Edna and Haylee can stomach asparagus.”
I confessed that I loved it. “But let me see if I can eat all these fried goodies, first. And someone around here is making funnel cakes.”
Haylee said, “La Bakery is serving strawberry shortcake. With fresh strawberries.”
I muttered, “Life is just full of tough decisions.”
The perch and onion rings were delicious, and Haylee shared her sweet potato fries.
Opal, Naomi, and Edna left, probably to gather in one of their apartments to gossip, play with needlework, and drink beverages that weren’t available at the family-oriented picnic.
Greeting old friends and making new ones, Haylee and I headed to the salad tent. A placard advertised asparagus salad, coleslaw, potato salad, and macaroni salad. Unfortunately, though, the last serving bowl was being carted away.
By a woman with maroon curls. She hopped up into the back of a large white van with no windows except for its windshield.
I elbowed Haylee and whispered, “Is that one of the women who fought over the remnant?”
“I think so.”
Tripping over heavy-duty electrical cords strung across the lawn, we hurried to the rear of the van, but all we saw of the woman was a flash of her navy blue long-sleeved shirt and her hand as she pulled the back door shut. Seconds later, the van rumbled away.
The sun was still high above the horizon. The time for salads might be over, but there was plenty to do. Funnel cake or strawberry shortcake?
Fresh strawberries
. And Neil’s shortcake would be the real thing. Besides, I’d had enough fried food to last me awhile. Decisions weren’t that tough, after all.
A tiny, energetic woman I’d never seen at La Bakery worked the cash register. “Hi,” she said. “Are you two from around here?” She looked maybe all of twenty-one. Some of her light brown curls had popped out of the holes in her hairnet, giving her a whimsical look, like she’d decorated her head with randomly placed springs.
We explained that we owned some of the shops in town.
She snapped her fingers. “You serve cookies in your shops, right? You must spend a lot of your free time baking.” Her gray eyes were guileless, her skin freckled and young. “I’m Cassie, La Bakery’s new manager, and I have an idea for you. Can I come by your shops tonight after the picnic?”
“Sure,” I said. “How about if all three of us meet at In Stitches around ten?”
Haylee and Cassie agreed.
Neil heaped strawberries and whipped cream on round, flaky shortcake, then handed us our mountainous desserts. Despite creating all sorts of wonderful baked goods day after day, he somehow managed to stay thin. He beamed at Cassie, but she was looking at us, not at him. Was he thinking of her as a potential girlfriend? He must be more than twice her age, but he probably seldom met women who didn’t tower over him, and she was short. Was she avoiding his gaze in hopes of fending off his advances?
I felt suddenly protective of the girl. I’d obviously spent too much time around Haylee’s mothers with their penchant for looking after everybody and everything. I handed Cassie the correct change. “These smell wonderful,” I said.
Spooning whipped cream and strawberries into our mouths, Haylee and I sauntered toward the bandstand. The Fraser Construction Marching Band weren’t marching, but they were warming up.
Clay looked yummy in that red and white uniform with gold braid crisscrossing his chest. He marked time with his trumpet, and then the band launched into a Sousa march.
We finished our shortcake. I was going to stay and listen for the rest of the evening.
Someone behind me touched my elbow. I turned around.
Chief Smallwood stared at the band. “See the gray-haired clarinet player in the high-top sneakers?” she asked.
He was hard to miss. One of his white satin pant legs was caught in the top of one of those black sneakers, and he was gazing at Chief Smallwood as he played. I couldn’t be certain, but if I was hearing his clarinet, he was really good.
“That’s Fred Zon . . . Fred Zhong . . .” Chief Smallwood’s face was pale, tinged with green. Perspiration stood out in droplets all over her forehead.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered to her.
“Shh. Don’t make a fuss, but come with me.”
8
“
C
OME WITH ME QUIETLY.” CHIEF SMALLwood
turned toward Lake Street. “Please.” It came out, “pleesh.” She stumbled. “Help me to my cruisher.”
Haylee and I reached for her arms, but she shook us off. “Just walk beside me. Don’t call attention to me.”
Did she think that a washed-out, staggering policewoman in her uniform, complete with bulletproof vest, wouldn’t be noticed?
Frantically, I looked around for help, but the fire and ambulance personnel had left. Haylee’s mothers must be in one of their apartments sharing a bottle of wine. Like Haylee and me, Clay was a volunteer firefighter. He seemed capable of everything, including resuscitating the near-dead, but he was playing his trumpet and leading his band in another rousing march. Chief Smallwood probably wouldn’t appreciate my interrupting the concert and making it clear to all of Elderberry Bay that she was under the weather.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her again.
“Shick.” Yes, it was obvious that she was sick.
“You can’t drive,” Haylee informed her.
“Have to.” She ran the words together.
“My apartment’s up the street,” I reminded her. “Lie down until you feel better.”
“Call 911,” Haylee said to me. “She’s sweating and shivering.”
“No!” Smallwood protested. “I don’t want
anyone
seeing me like this. I’ll be fine.” She took a wobbly step, sighed, and halted. “Okay, Willow. I’ll go to your place, but let’s take the trail. Maybe no one will see us.”
One thing about Chief Smallwood—she was determined. Chin up, eyes focusing straight ahead, breaths shallow, she walked between us, and probably managed, except for her greenish face, to look almost normal.
I asked her, “Why did you point out that clarinet player? Is that Fred Zongassi? Clay’s employee?”
“Yes.”
“Did Fred make you sick?”
“No. I don’t know. Do not trust him.”
Promising her that I wouldn’t, I opened the gate. We crept up the hill. “Why did the investigators stop working?” I asked Smallwood.
“Almost done. Comparing our inventory to list of stolen jewelry. They should release the scene soon.” She slurred the
s
s. By the time we’d climbed the hill to my back patio, Haylee was holding her up. I dashed inside and shut the dogs into my bedroom. Haylee led Smallwood, now greener than ever and trembling, over the threshold.
We helped Smallwood into my guest room. “You’ll be my first guest,” I told her.
“I can’t lie on that beautiful bed in my uniform!” Smallwood could look fierce even when she was about to faint.
I turned down the white embroidered duvet and plumped the pillows. “Don’t worry about it.” I’d had my parents in mind when I’d decorated the room and its en suite bathroom in embroidered whites, but my mother was always too busy in the South Carolina House of Representatives to stray into the northern reaches of Pennsylvania, and my father always stayed home, puttering with his inventions and occasionally emerging from his workshop to barbecue a steak. Fortunately, they had a housekeeper who shopped and cooked for them, or they’d have gone hungry.
Smallwood dashed to the guest room’s en suite bathroom. Eventually, she crawled out on her hands and knees. We helped her sit on the edge of the bed. With great concentration, she unloaded her gun, then carefully tucked the cartridges into a pocket and stashed the weapon underneath a pillow. Finally, apologizing for creating problems, she flopped down with her head on the pillow, one hand covering her eyes, and her booted feet hanging over the side of the bed. She didn’t object when Haylee and I each tackled a boot and untied it.
A siren sounded in the distance. All three of us tensed. “Can’t be a fire truck,” Haylee said. “The whistle on the station didn’t go off.” She pulled off one of Smallwood’s boots.
I tossed the other one to the floor. “And it’s not Chief Smallwood’s cruiser. She’s here.”
Smallwood muttered, “Would you stop calling me that? My name’s Vicki-with-an-i-no-e. And anyway, that’s an ambulance.”
How could she tell? I hoped she’d radioed for one for herself, but the siren dwindled off into the distance.
I asked Vicki if she had any family in the area.
“No.”
I straightened her boots near the foot of the bed. “Friends?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
I pulled the duvet over her. “What about Detective Gartener?”
She gasped. “No! Don’t you dare call Toby. I’ll . . . I’ll . . . well, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“But he has always been helpful,” I said. It was true, except for the first time I’d met him, when he’d frightened me half to death with his penetrating, accusing silences.
“I don’t want him seeing me like this.”
I hadn’t guessed that our police chief would have this vain streak.
Vicki managed to be assertive even when whispering. “And don’t tell your boyfriend, either.”
I denied, “I don’t have—”
She waved my words aside. “Clay Fraser. He might tell Toby. I have my radio, so if there’s an emergency, I’ll either respond to the call or ask for help from the state police. Meanwhile, don’t tell
anyone
until I’m back on my feet. Just knowing that I’m temporarily incapacitated could cause folks to drive around like maniacs and
cause
police emergencies.”
She looked so pathetic that I agreed I wouldn’t tell anyone she was in my apartment.
Unless you get worse, Vicki.
I put my fingers on her wrist. Her pulse felt strong.
Her complexion gained the tiniest tinge of pink, and her ragged breathing became more rhythmical. Softly, I told her that if she wanted to change out of her uniform, she should look in the closet for the waffle weave summer bathrobes—embroidered, of course—that I’d hung there for guests. She didn’t respond. Maybe she’d wake up totally recovered in an hour or two and would be able to drive her cruiser home. She wasn’t going to like leaving it on Lake Street.
Haylee and I tiptoed out of my guest room. I closed the door and let Sally and Tally out of my bedroom.
Sally went straight to the guest room door, wagged her tail, and whimpered.
“You can’t go in there, Sally,” I told her. “Chief Smallwood needs to rest.”
Sally curled up next to the door. Haylee and I sat on my comfy couch and shared a pot of tea. Shortly before ten, we went upstairs to my shop for our appointment with Neil’s assistant. Tally came with us, but Sally, who seldom departed from Tally’s side, stayed beside Vicki’s room. I left the stairway door open so I would hear Vicki if she called, then unlocked the front door.
“I hope we don’t all come down with the flu,” Haylee said.
My sea glass chimes jangled and Cassie trudged in. She looked exhausted. She’d taken off her hairnet, but many of her curls were still flat while others sprouted like wild cartoon hair.
I said to Haylee, “Maybe it’s food poisoning.” Although I had spent very little time around my mother recently, I’d listened to her carefully years ago when she’d still been a family physician. Like other doctors’ children, I probably thought I knew all about medicine and health.
Cassie slapped a brand-new red notebook onto my cutting table. “Please don’t call it food poisoning,” she said. “Several people got sick at the picnic, including Neil. He helped me put everything away, but all of a sudden, he could barely stand. It
wasn’t
food poisoning, but even if it was, it did not come from La Bakery.” Despite her rather wonky logic, challenge sparked from her eyes. Tally had been standing in front of her, his tail held low but waving gently back and forth. He backed into his pen and stomped a nest, around and around, in his bed.
I understood why Cassie might be upset. This sudden epidemic had occurred right after she’d become La Bakery’s manager, and she was probably afraid that people suspected her of causing the problem. “Tell Neil to get better quickly,” I said. “And don’t worry about food poisoning coming from La Bakery. Haylee and I gobbled every bit of your strawberry shortcake. We’re fine.”
“Then, can I bring you each a couple dozen cookies, free, first thing Tuesday morning? If your customers like them, I can deliver them to your shops as often as you like until you tell me to stop.”
Haylee and I both accepted the offer, but after Cassie dashed out, running her hand through her curls and probably making them more unruly, Haylee and I agreed that if Neil was sick, maybe we didn’t want his cookies until after he had completely recovered.
“What did Vicki Smallwood and Neil eat that we didn’t?” Haylee asked.
I straightened a bolt of lightweight mint green linen that my students and I liked to hem and embroider for tea towels. “Vicki had perch, asparagus salad, and strawberry shortcake on her dashboard. And she had an insulated cup of something as well. Coffee?”
Haylee held up fingers, one for each food item. “You and I had perch and strawberry shortcake. We had canned drinks. And we didn’t have any of that asparagus salad.”
I gnawed at my thumb. “Edna did.”
Haylee hauled out her phone and punched in numbers. “Hi, Opal.” She called all of her mothers by their first names.
Opal’s response came clearly, even to me, and I wasn’t right beside Haylee. “Edna’s sick!”
Haylee asked questions and ended the call. “Edna has the same symptoms that Vicki has, and she refuses to allow Gord near her.”
The village’s popular older doctor was dating Edna. He insisted that Haylee and I call him by his first name. Like everyone else, we thought he was fabulous, so we’d learned to stop calling him Dr. Wrinklesides and to treat him as another member of our extended family.
“Opal and Naomi are fine,” Haylee went on. “They’re with Edna. They suspect the asparagus salad, too.” She glared in the direction of the beach. “That salad lady was furtive, climbing into her van and then shutting the back doors. Because we were coming?”
“Maybe, but she drove off, so she could have simply been using that door to get into the truck, not to escape us. She must have gotten to the driver’s seat from the back.”
Haylee squinched up her mouth in annoyance. “She was up to something, joining that blonde in a seemingly unnecessary fight.”
I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“What?” Haylee asked.
“I saw the salad lady and the woman she fought with later last night, talking together as if they were friends, with a third woman. I’m sure the third woman was wearing the same pink plaid as that shirt Cassie had on under her jacket just now. And the third woman was about the same size as Cassie, and her curly hair was the same shade of light brown.”
“Maybe it was only a similar shirt worn by a different petite woman with brown curls.”
I agreed that was possible. I couldn’t imagine why a sweet girl like Cassie would hang around with those two women.
Suddenly, Detective Gartener burst into my shop. Handsome as ever, he scowled in a particularly ferocious way. “Willow, I need to talk to you.”
Haylee eased toward the front door.
“You, too, Haylee,” he barked.
She paled and stopped. Tally had tiptoed out of his bed and now leaned against me, warming my legs through my jeans.
Gartener asked in a voice as sharp as the blades of my best embroidery snips, “When did you two last see Chief Smallwood?”
Haylee turned toward me and lifted an eyebrow. Vicki had specifically told us not to let him know she was in my guest room. I stammered, “She was at the picnic this evening, showing her cruiser to kids.”
“After that.” He held his arms loose, elbows out, obviously ready for anything. “Don’t lie to me, Willow.”
I opened my mouth to protest that I would never do such a thing, but was silenced by his unyielding, dark eyes. Another time, I thought I had successfully lied to him, and had discovered later that he’d seen right through me. Everything had worked out that time, but . . .
“She was observed with you two,” Gartener accused. “Holding on to her, and heading toward the trail that runs along the river, and that also conveniently leads to your property, Willow. Chief Smallwood’s cruiser has her leftover dinner in it. That’s not like her.”
I stalled. “Don’t throw that food away. It should be tested for food poisoning.”
Gartener grated out, “I don’t care about spoiled food. I need to find Chief Smallwood. Do I have to haul you two in for questioning about the mysterious disappearance of a police officer?”