Thread and Buried by Janet Bolin Read Free Book Online Page A

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?”

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