THREADVILLE MYSTERIES
by
JANET BOLIN
Photo by Bruce Bolin
The sky in the south brightened from pale apricot to delicate azure. The road ran along bluffs above Lake Erie, covered with ice resembling a quilt stitched together from patches of peach, periwinkle, and lime. I parked again and got out. Some of the photos I took showed the lake as if no human had ever touched it, but when I aimed the camera in another direction, I captured images of ice fishing huts dotted over the frozen bay. Smoke swirled from the chimney of one. An ATV was parked beside it.
Boom!
I dove to the ground beside the driver’s door. Had the murderer followed me out of the village to take potshots at me?
The noise rocketed out onto the lake, too prolonged for a gunshot. The thick lake ice must have developed a sudden, and very long, crack.
Photos by Bruce Bolin
First, Felicity banished my dogs.
Naturally, I objected. “When In Stitches is open, Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho always stay in their pen.” They could wag their plumelike tails at shoppers or trot downstairs to the apartment whenever they wanted a nap, snack, or drink.
Felicity glanced at my name tag, embroidered in willowy green script on white. “Willow—” She scrunched up her nose as if my name smelled. “Our guests may have allergies.”
Most of our guests would be my usual customers, ladies who came on the Threadville tour bus four days a week to shop and take classes in all of the crafty stores. Threadville tourists loved my dogs and had never complained about allergies.
However, Felicity was my guest—sort of—and I would have to put up with her only during the first part of the morning. Hiding my annoyance, I gave in and herded my two active dogs, a brother and sister, one of whose parents must have been a border collie, into the stairway to the apartment and closed the door.
That’s when the real reason for their banishment became clear. Felicity informed me that their vacant pen would be a perfect stage for our speeches.
Speeches?
