Haylee took one look at the steep angle of the toilet, and the dam burst on her giggles.

For once, Edna seemed to be at a loss for words. Finally, she concluded, with a great show of confidence, "All this room needs is a new toilet. You never needed a building permit, Willow. You were only trying to be nice to Mike by asking him for one."

Behind Uncle Allen's back, Haylee conquered her giggles and elbowed Edna.

Uncle Allen turned around and frowned at us. "It's not the toilet. It's the floor. This whole building needs shoring up. She would need a permit for that. And she was being nice? Nearly everyone in Elderberry Bay heard her threaten to kill Mike. You call that nice?"

Edna reminded him, "Dust that button for fingerprints. And maybe there's DNA on it." She made a pouty face. "Except if the button is damp, it will decompose in that plastic bag."

Uncle Allen scoffed, "You watch too much TV."

Edna raised her little chin. "I used to be a chemist." She had a right to be proud. Together, she and her two best friends had juggled degrees, careers, raising Haylee, and perfecting the handcrafting of original and unique outfits.

I showed Uncle Allen the Ohio-shaped paint splotches on the front porch and door.

Predictably, he scoffed. "Someone could have made those tracks last summer."

"That paint appeared the day before Mike's attack."

My hot retort barely fazed him. "So? Maybe someone tracked it in after we were done here."

Or maybe one of the investigators tracked paint around. I didn't say it.

He concluded, "It might have nothing to do with Mike or his death."

I hated to admit it, but he could be right.

He took a deep breath, sniffing the air with something resembling satisfaction. "Snow's still coming down like a son of a gun. It keeps warming up like this, the river's gonna overrun its banks."

16.

THE RIVER DIDN'T LOOK HIGHER THAN IT had earlier when Clay had made a similar comment, but Sam, who had lived next to the river for most of his eighty-something years, had also predicted possible flooding.

Silently, we trudged up the hill. Newly fallen snow had obliterated our footprints from only minutes before.

At the street, Uncle Allen headed for his cruiser, and the rest of us returned to Buttons and Bows. Naomi and Opal were tidying up the last of the cartons. Edna gazed around her glittering store. "Thanks, everyone!"

We all agreed that we loved getting the first look at Edna's new merchandise.

Opal asked, "Did you recognize the button, Edna?"

"It wasn't a type I've ever carried in my store, but it looked familiar."

Haylee laughed. "Lots of buttons are round with holes."

Edna glared.

I said mildly, "Not many are sliced from black walnut branches."

It seemed impossible for Edna to be anything but cheerful for more than a half second. She thanked us all, and we said our good nights and left. Opal, Haylee, and Naomi appeared to be blown along the snowdrifted sidewalk toward their stores. I fought my way through blustering snow to let Sally-Forth and Tally-Ho out.

They were drenched by the time they tired of wrestling in the snow. I had embroidered their names and portraits on microfiber towels, tan to go with Tally's brindle and white coat, and red to go with Sally's gorgeous black and ermine fur. Tally wriggled when I dried him. Sally went all relaxed, like she never wanted the rubbing to end.

The dogs accompanied me upstairs to the shop, which the woodstove still kept toasty warm. I inspected the design I'd started on my practice remnant. I tried to tell myself it looked fine, but I had to admit that the stitches were too small and close together, creating a needle-breaking fabric with the approximate flexibility of plywood.

I went back to my embroidery software, fiddled with the photo, lowered the number of colors the design would use, and manually lengthened stitches.

I put stabilizer and another remnant from my stash into my largest machine embroidery hoop and began my second attempt. The improvements were just what it needed. The embroidery was neither puckered nor slack.

Now I could stitch the design on the homespunweight unbleached linen I'd bought for the finished product. By the time my machine began the cornstalks in the foreground, I couldn't help smiling at how well the design was coming out, almost like a seventeenth-century tapestry. Okay, not really, since the camouflage and orange neon fabrics the man wore had not yet been invented. Maybe if I added one of Naomi's unicorns? Maybe not.

While my favorite embroidery machine worked faultlessly, stopping and beeping to remind me to change threads, I looked through my photos for one that would show off my version of stumpwork and inspire Threadville tourists. I chose one of the fishing hut and ATV on the icy lake at dawn. I fiddled with the photo, trying one more thing to perfect it, then another and another until I lost count.

Meanwhile, my embroidery machine completed the design of the man disappearing into the woods. I still had to create three-dimensional cornstalks and trees.

When I thought my frozen lake photo was ready to be converted to an embroidery design, my eyes were too bleary to focus. The dogs and I went down to our apartment.

In the morning, the wind had died down, snow was no longer falling, and the sky was the color of frozen fog. Blueberry Cottage was charming, a pale teal gingerbread house underneath heaps of frosting. I snapped pictures while the dogs played tag.

When Sally saw me with the embroidered doggie towels, she trotted inside, lay down, and gazed imperiously at me, making it perfectly clear that she was ready for more rubbing. Wagging his tail and bopping Sally with his nose, Tally had to wait for his turn, then he wanted to bite his towel. By the time the two dogs were dry, I'd worked up a sweat. I showered, dressed, and fixed a yummy omelet stuffed with shredded sharp cheddar. Sally and Tally made certain they got their share before I went upstairs to In Stitches and locked the dogs in the apartment.

Lake Street had become an enchanted land during the night. Snow carpeted roofs. Tree branches resembled white lace. Evergreen boughs peeked out beneath soft white mounds. Lights inside the boutiques across the street made Threadville both cozy and inviting. I turned my cross-stitched sign from Closed to Welcome.

While the day's cider sent cinnamon and apple aromas around the shop, I cut a scarf from red fleece. One of the fun things about sewing with fleece was that it wouldn't unravel and didn't need hemming. I hooped it underneath water-soluble stabilizer, which would keep the stitches from burying themselves in the fluffy fabric. I loaded my weeping willow design into my software, saved a new copy of the design, and deleted the green parts, leaving only the bare tree trunk and branches. Imitating the scenery outside, I added dollops of snow to the weeping willow. Later, it would be fun to create spring and autumn versions of the design. I stitched my new winter willow design in charcoal and white on one end of the red scarf.

The embroidery machine finished. In the sudden quiet, I heard shouts and laughter. I'd been afraid that the Threadville tour bus wouldn't make it through the snow, but some of my students, along with village children who apparently had the day off school, whooped it up as they built a snowman in my front yard. I pulled on boots, coat, and mittens and ran out to join them.

Rosemary helped another woman lift a bulky snowball onto the snowman's rounded shoulders. "Hi, Willow! We left early because of the snow on the roads, and got here long before classes. We didn't want to bother you folks, so we've been having a little fun."

The Threadville tourists and village children had erected a huge snowman in front of The Ironmonger. They'd built snowmen in front of The Stash, Tell a Yarn, Buttons and Bows, and Batty About Quilts. Snowmen decorated the front yards of the General Store, the vacant store that Edna suspected was a drug dealers' lair, and the uncompleted restaurant. On the corner, Pier 42 boasted two snowmen, one in the front yard, and one on the side patio. Sisters-in-thread knew how to have fun, and they made it contagious. I'd have to talk to Haylee and her mothers about planning and giving children's courses.

Finished with their outdoor sculptures, my students left the children to invent more fun for themselves, and trooped into In Stitches. Several of them wanted to stitch my winter willow design onto the scarves they'd made. I helped others create monograms, some with crests from a commercial design collection. The woman who had already bought an embroidery machine wanted to learn to use software to create her own designs.

"How about a snowman?" I suggested. I demonstrated creating three circles, big, bigger and biggest, and filling them with fancy stitching. We added eyes, a mouth and three buttons. Other students finished their stitching and gathered around to watch. Several muttered about needing embroidery machines and software for creating original designs.

Soon, I should be able to afford Blueberry Cottage's renovations, downstairs and upstairs . . .

After I showed them how rinsing the scarves in hot water made the water-soluble stabilizer disappear, it was lunch time. They hurried away, some of them wearing their new scarves, complete with basted-on stabilizer.

I leashed the dogs and took them and my newly embroidered scarf to the front yard. Laughing, a boy pulled a toboggan loaded with smaller children down the snowy street. A family of two parents and five children, all of them with smiles so wide their teeth must have been cold, schussed past on cross-country skis.

I expected to have trouble hanging on to two lunging dogs while tying the scarf around my snowman's neck, but my biggest problem turned out to be trying to force Sally and Tally close to the snowman. They planted their feet in the snow, barked, and refused to look directly at the scary white creature. "It's okay," I told them, giving the damp scarf a toss. It draped itself precariously around the snowman's neck. I considered it artistic.

The other four Threadville proprietors came outside, too, and added scarves to their snowmen. Haylee's was a length of bright blue and green cotton. Opal must have knit her scarf that morning, using heavy yarn and huge needles. Edna tied a jaunty rainbow of ribbons around her snowman's neck. Naomi, possibly with the help of this morning's students, had sewn a row of quilt squares into a scarf.

We shouted to each other in voices as cheerful as the day's sunshine. Wearing an orange ball cap and an olive green cardigan with leather elbow patches, Sam came out of the hardware store and stuck a length of copper tubing where his snowman's mouth should be. Sam called to me, "He's smoking a pipe."

In case my groan wasn't loud enough, I twisted my face in fake pain.

With a grin and a wave, Sam stumped inside.

Jacoba and Luther emerged from the General Store. Jacoba used strawberry whips to create a jolly smile for their snowman. Luther gave it a radish nose. Jacoba was covered in so many layers I couldn't be certain, but I suspected that, a year from now, the couple would be trundling a baby around in a sled. I called a greeting. They waved, but I couldn't hear what they said over the sound of the white truck roaring past.

It stopped in front of the vacant store.

As one, Haylee, Opal, Edna, and Naomi began walking toward the truck. The dogs and I started in the same direction on our side of the street. Sally and Tally pulled toward the curb, away from the snowmen.

A man climbed out of the truck. Edna demanded, "What's going on in that building?"

The guy brushed past us, stomped up the unshoveled walk, unlocked the building, and stalked inside.

"Friendly sort," snorted Edna.

"You'd think he'd have decorated his snowman," Opal commented.

Haylee giggled. "Maybe that's what he's here to do."

I pointed dramatically at the papered-over windows. "Anybody see a building permit?"

"No," they chorused, and I sang it with them. Their adoption of me seemed to have taken.

Edna grabbed my arm. "Look what color they painted the door."

Aqua. Unless I was mistaken, it was the same shade as the paint someone had tossed onto my porch.

Naomi looked disappointed. "It's been that color since September."

"It still gives us an idea where the paint may have come from," I said consolingly. "I first saw it on my porch shortly before Mike was attacked. We can't say that the person who threw the paint killed Mike. Only that the person who tracked through it and kicked open my door may have."

Opal frowned at the snowy street. "Tonight's Friday, storytelling night at Tell a Yarn. My guest has a long drive. The tour bus made it from Erie this morning, so you all should come to storytelling, in case she can get through."

Edna toed at rivulets of water channeling their way through the snow in the gutters. "The snow could melt by tonight."

They crossed to their side of the street. I tugged the dogs to my yard and peeked over my yellow-bedecked gate. Was it my imagination, or had the river begun climbing?

During my afternoon class, my beautiful sea glass wind chime jingled. Aunt Betty and Rhonda. Just what I needed, snoopy browsers who bought very little and were inordinately fond of accusing me of murder. "Welcome," I called out, the very vision of a hospitable boutique owner. "Terrible day out, isn't it?"

Aunt Betty shuffled toward the back of the store. She'd managed to roll up the legs of her snowmobile suit, revealing blue plaid lining, but the suit was soaked to the knees.

Rhonda flashed me a quick grimace that may have been a smile. Her hood was tied around her face, bunching her cheeks, forehead, and chin together.

All around us, machines stopped stitching, and my students raised their heads.

Aunt Betty scooped up an armload of Dawn's lovely placemats and napkins, then gestured for Rhonda to do the same. After a sidewise glance toward me, Rhonda picked up the rest. They dumped them on the counter beside the cash register. Aunt Betty put her fists near where the waist of her snowmobile suit would be if it had one. "Do I get a discount for buying them all?" she asked. "How about half price?"

Appalled, I shook my head. "The prices are already very low for hand-woven linens."

"Can't you give me something off?"

"Did I talk to you last night?" I asked.

She gave me a blank look. "About placemats?"

"On the phone. Are you Detective DeGlazier's wife?"

"What business is that of yours?" A cunning look came into her eyes. "You'll give me a discount if I am?"

"Only if you aren't."

I didn't know that a face as doughy as hers could show surprise. Maybe she didn't understand that citizens weren't supposed to give favors to policemen and their families. Especially if they didn't want it brought up in court during murder trials . . .

It was difficult to stay optimistic when the local policeman and a pair of state troopers seemed determined to arrest me for murder.

Aunt Betty elbowed Rhonda. "She's paying for it."

Paying for what? I'd been so lost in my own thoughts that for a confused second, I thought she meant that Rhonda would be suitably punished for murdering Mike. Then, inwardly shaking my head at the conclusion I'd drawn, I realized that Aunt Betty was talking about the linens, not about Mike's death.

Grabbing the edge of the counter, Rhonda managed to stay upright. "I am?" Her snarly voice came out sounding pitiful.

Aunt Betty elbowed her again. "It's an investment."

Reluctantly, Rhonda unzipped her parka pocket and handed me a charge card. Rhonda Dunkle, it said. Her black nail polish failed to cover the fleck of aqua paint on the cuticle of her right thumb.

How had Rhonda gotten aqua paint on her thumb? By opening a can and heaving paint onto my porch? Or by cleaning her shoe after Mike was murdered?

Both Aunt Betty's snowmobile suit and Rhonda's parka were done up with zippers and snaps. Neither garment had ever needed buttons.

I offered, "How about two percent off?" It would come out of my slim margin, but selling the entire lot at once would save time and paperwork.

Aunt Betty looked triumphant. "Done."

I bagged the purchases, then the two women scuttled outside with their treasures. What did Aunt Betty plan to do with those lovely linens, grace the DeGlazier dining table with a different color scheme every night for two weeks? Pad the snare drum so she wouldn't deafen callers when she dropped the phone on it?

Because of the roads, the tour bus left Threadville earlier than usual. I downloaded the artwork I'd created of the fishing hut and ATV to my embroidery machine. While it stitched, I played with ideas for embroidering over wires so I could create objects that would stand out from the background as in traditional stumpwork. The stitches would have to be very precise, or the needle would hit the wires and break, which could damage the sewing machine.

My front door opened.

A visit from Uncle Allen was becoming a nightly event. He reached into his pocket. For a search warrant? A legible copy of the Miranda warning?

"I have a ticket for you," he said.