Thread and Buried

Book 9: Mainely Needlepoint Mystery

by Lea Wait

Genres: Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries; Female Sleuths; Suspense

Synopsis

Haven Harbor is an authentic coastal Maine town—which makes it the perfect location for a new film production. But now it's become the scene of a crime . . .

Needlepointers Angie and Sarah are helping with set design for the movie being shot in their little New England hometown—but as the lighthouse and the wharves bustle with activity, a real-life drama is about to unfold. The director, Marv Mason, has been harassing the pretty young female lead, and the two exchanged heated words at a lobster bake. Now someone's lowered the boom on him . . .

After a wayward piece of sound equipment sends him to his death, theories fly about who went off-script. Meanwhile, a local woman's tragic story about a true love lost at sea, which originally inspired the film, may lead to murderous revelations from long ago. Angie's got to unravel these mysteries, and may need to give more than one killer the hook . . .

Release date: November 26, 2019

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

Thousands of vacationers head for the coast of Maine every July looking for lighthouses, beaches, lobster rolls, and cooler temperatures than in their home states. But for those of us who live in Maine full-time, temperatures in the eighties seem hot, and summer isn’t a time for relaxing. It’s a time to run restaurants and tourist attractions, sell the art and crafts we created during winter months, and convince visitors that Maine is, indeed, “the way life should be.”

That’s the goal of the police, state troopers, Marine Patrol officers, and Coast Guard, too. “The way life should be” should not include murders. And if it does, then solving them as quickly as possible is critical, not only for the victims, but also for Maine’s reputation.

Somehow in the fifteen months I’ve been back in Maine I’ve gotten involved in helping the police do just that.

I’m Angie Curtis. I grew up here in Haven Harbor, but took a ten-year hiatus working for a private investigator in Arizona, which is why I have some of the skills the police are looking for, although you probably wouldn’t guess it if you met me. I’m twenty-eight, I live with my black cat, Trixi, I have ordinary straight brown hair that I pin up in summer. And, oh yes. I have a Glock. Which I know how to use.

But what most people in town know about me is that I run Mainely Needlepoint, a business started by my grandmother. I make sure gift shops, galleries, and decorators have all the needlepointed pillows of eider ducks and lighthouses and harbor scenes they can sell, update our Web site, meet with customers who want custom work, and keep track of the schedules of all the needlepointers who have other jobs.

Nothing to do with crime.

Which is fine by me.

I’ve also been seeing Patrick West. He’s an artist, and runs a gallery in town. And, yes, what most people know about him is that his mother is movie star Skye West.

This summer Patrick and I’d hoped to spend time together, exploring Maine and each other. Patrick even hired a student from the Maine College of Art to “gallery-sit” so he’d have more time in July and August for his own painting and for me.

We didn’t schedule time for any activities other than art and needlepoint and romantic evenings.

That fantasy crumbled when Patrick’s mother announced that her friend, producer Hank Stoddard, had found enough investors so he could make a movie here this summer. Harbor Heartbreak would be directed by Marv Mason, and written by Thomas and Marie O’Day, who’d spent last Christmas with Skye here in the Harbor and fallen in love with the idea of making a movie based on a book written by my friend and fellow needlepointer Ruth Hopkins. Ruth has supported herself for years by writing, and many of her stories are based here in the Harbor. Not many people in town even knew she’s an author, since she writes under different names. Or, they didn’t know before now.

Of course, Patrick’s involved in the film. Skye also recruited me and another fellow needlepointer (and antique dealer) Sarah Byrne, to help lighting and set designer Flannery Sullivan create two sets, one for scenes set in the early 1960s and one for contemporary scenes.

They’d hired a number of locals, and were paying a lot more than minimum wage seasonal jobs paid here, so that was good. “It’ll be a summer to remember,” Gram kept reminding me.

But so far I kept remembering what I’d hoped this summer would be: time for Patrick and me to spend more hours together.

Looked now as though we’d have to wait for fall.

Here it was, already the third week of July, Harbor Heartbreak was set to begin filming in a week, and Patrick and I had hardly seen each other in the past couple of weeks.

—The Hearthstone; or, Life at Home: A Household Manual by Laura C. Holloway. Philadelphia: L. P. Miller & Co., 1888.

Sarah and I had spent all morning visiting souvenir shops and galleries, picking out details to add to the decors we were working on. Shopping wasn’t my favorite activity, although downtown Haven Harbor was lined with souvenir shops, art galleries, and antique shops. Plenty of places to investigate. Sidewalks were crowded with tourists wearing “Haven Harbor” T-shirts, shorts, and sea glass earrings. But now Sarah and I were both sweaty and exhausted.

We’d finished our shopping, and piled our bags full of props and decorative Maine accessories in Sarah’s van. Although it was almost time to pick up a couch upholstered in needlepoint that a friend of Gram’s was loaning the movie company, right now we were taking a break, looking out at the harbor, and hoping for a cool breeze.

Haven Harbor was as busy as I’d ever seen it on a hot July day. The air smelled of salt and steamed lobsters. The dark blue water was full of working lobster boats, larger boats offering tours of the area to tourists, small sailboats used by the Haven Harbor Country Club in their sailing classes for summer residents, and skiffs ferrying visitors to and from visiting yachts to the town dock.

“I don’t remember a summer as busy as this one,” Sarah said, smiling, as she looked from the harbor to the shore, her white hair streaked with pink and blue shining bright in the hot sunlight. “I agreed to help with the movie sets because the money was good, and I like Skye. Sales at my shop are usually steady in July and August, but Sandy, that nice girl from Bowdoin I hired to shop-sit for me, has been busier than I ever was. I go home at night and have to add items to the shop inventory, and then do hours of accounting. By the end of the summer I’m going to need a very long nap.”

“But you’ll also have a bank account that should see you through the winter,” I reminded her.

“‘Summer—we all have seen—/A few of us—believed—/ A few—the more aspiring/Unquestionably loved—/But Summer does not care—/She goes her spacious way/As eligible as the moon/To our Temerity,’” Sarah quoted. She had an Emily Dickinson quotation for every occasion.

Sarah’d learned the antique business (and needlepointing) from her grandmother when she was growing up in Australia. A set of strange circumstances had brought her to the coast of Maine, where she’d decided to settle. I’d learned a lot about history and antiques from her, and she and I had become close friends. I was even beginning to like Emily Dickinson.

I nodded. “You’re right. I’d hoped it would be a quiet summer. Instead, we’re all working harder than ever.”

“But, as you pointed out, making more money,” Sarah reminded me as we rounded the corner from the waterfront and stopped at the stand selling locally made ice cream. “One small black raspberry chip sugar cone,” she ordered.

“Small mocha chip for me,” I added as the teenager serving the growing line of customers nodded. I didn’t recognize her. She was probably from out of town, here for the summer. Haven Harbor offered dozens of summer jobs for young people who’d work for minimum wage. I’d steamed lobsters at the restaurant on the wharf when I’d been in high school. The smell and the heat had been hard to bear, but the money was decent, and customers sometimes even tipped me. I watched as this teenager reached deep into the bins and scooped out ice cream for our cones. Her shoulders and wrist would ache tonight. But she smiled as Sarah paid for both of us and added a dollar to the “Money for College” jar on the counter.

“Thanks,” I said, taking a lick. “This is the first day in a while I’ve been free to walk around a bit. Even if most of the walking was shopping for the movie.”

Sarah nodded. “When we agreed to work with Flannery Sullivan I thought it would be fun. And I guess it has been. But it’s taken a lot more time than I’d imagined.”

“He’s not easy to please,” I agreed. “And I’d hoped to spend time with Patrick this summer.”

“You went out on Skye’s new boat once,” Sarah reminded me as we headed up the street toward her van, parked behind her shop.

“True. Once. In late June. We cruised around for a couple of hours on the North Skye, but that’s all.”

“I figured you’d at least spend the night. It sleeps eight, doesn’t it?”

“It does. Skye’s letting some of the young men working on the crew who couldn’t find places to stay here in town sleep on it. Sounds glamorous, but they’ll have pretty tight quarters.”

“She’s filled her own house, too.”

“Basically with the same people she had here at Christmastime. Thomas and Marie O’Day, who’re finalizing the script. Marv Mason, the director, Hank Stoddard, the producer, our favorite set designer, Flannery Sullivan, actor Jon Whyte, and, of course, Talia Lincoln.”

I made a face that Sarah ignored. She knew how I felt that the cast of Harbor Heartbreak included one of Patrick’s old girlfriends. Especially one who was tall, blond, gorgeous, and was staying in his mother’s home, just down the driveway from the carriage house where he lived.

Sarah glanced at her phone. “We have about half an hour before we have to pick up that Victorian couch.”

I finished my cone and nodded. “Patrick’s going to meet us there. He borrowed one of the trucks the crew’s using and said he’d try to hijack someone else to help hoist and carry. Oak is heavy. I’m curious to see that couch. Gram did the needlepoint after I left for Arizona. It took her almost a year. After that she started Mainely Needlepoint, and turned down projects that large. We make more money doing smaller projects.”

“I wouldn’t know how to begin to design and needlepoint upholstery for more than the seat of a straight chair,” Sarah agreed. “It’s great that the family your gram did the work for is willing to lend it to be in the movie.”

“It’ll be the center of the contemporary living room set,” I agreed. “The nineteen-sixties set won’t be as elegant.”

“I’ve never worked on a movie before,” said Sarah as we headed for her van. “But I love that we’re creating both sets in the same house. Plus, it makes life a lot simpler for us.”

Ted Lawrence, an artist who was a relative of Sarah’s, had died last fall. Marv Mason had heard about his empty multi-roomed estate and rented it for the duration. The living room was going to be the contemporary set and the studio and gallery the 1960s set. Walking down the long hall at the estate felt like walking between decades. Or would, when Sarah and I finished the rooms.

For now, Flannery was leaving us alone and focusing on the outside scenes to be shot at the town dock and lighthouse.

We turned on Sarah’s GPS and headed out of town. We’d only seen pictures of the couch, but Flannery Sullivan had fallen in love with it. “I want both living rooms to be realistic; exactly what would be in a Maine living room,” he’d declared. “That’s why I hired you both. Skye assures me you’ll be able to handle the details.”

Sarah and I’d exchanged glances. Patrick’s mother had often found ways to hire Sarah and me and other Haven Harbor residents when she’d needed something done. At first it felt awkward, but then we’d decided saying no would insult Skye, and, after all, we could all use the money. Since Patrick and I had been a couple it was even more uncomfortable, although neither he nor Skye understood that. They both thought of money as something handy to have, because it could get things done, not as something that for many people outlined what they could do with their lives.

Until I was ten I’d lived with my single mom, who waitressed and drank most of her earnings, and my grandmother, who kept our household running. After Mama disappeared when I was ten, it was just Gram and me. For us, money wasn’t to hire people to help: it was to pay for food and fuel.

I was just beginning to get used to Patrick’s way of thinking, even though I knew not everyone thought of finances the way he did.

We passed two stands where families were selling the small wild blueberries that ripened this time of year. Setting up an awning or a tailgate by the side of the road was a way to make a few extra dollars in late July, and even young children could help with the picking. Wreaths at Christmastime; blueberries in summer. Every penny counted.

“Here it is,” said Sarah, who’d been paying attention to where we were going while my mind was wandering. “Barn Swallow Lane.” She turned right, off the main street onto a narrow curving road. When I was a child roads in Haven Harbor had names, but not numbers. Most private roads, basically long unpaved driveways with homes along the way and, often, dead ends, didn’t have names. And no buildings had numbers. When 911 service was put in, Haven Harbor had been forced to change its long-standing “we all know where Warren Smith lives” policy. Those living on unnamed roads were given the opportunity to name their own street, and numbers were assigned by the town. We passed a half dozen houses, some set near the road and some farther back in the woods, before reaching number ten. Not surprisingly, it was a large nineteenth-century house with a barn. Two hundred years ago it had probably been the center of a farm, before the land connected to it had been broken up and sold for new homes.

And, I smiled to myself, most likely the barn then was home to barn swallows. Barn swallows brought good luck.

Sarah parked her van near the barn as Patrick pulled up in the truck he’d borrowed.

I headed to the truck, which he’d parked near the front door. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days, and I suspected we both could use hugs.

I’d almost reached the driver’s door when I realized Patrick wasn’t alone. He’d said he was going to hijack one of the other men on the set, and Leo Blackwell, a young man who’d moved to Haven Harbor a few months ago and was living with Dave Percy, one of the Mainely Needlepointers, was with him. But Patrick and Leo weren’t alone. Talia Lincoln was also with them.

As she opened the passenger’s door and stepped down from the high truck she smiled, and tugged at her brief pink shorts. People from away wore shorts; I certainly knew that. But I’d never seen any as short as Talia’s. I tried not to stare. Her underwear was also pink.

Sarah caught up with me and whispered, “Maybe she borrowed something from the nineteen-sixties costume rack.”

“She’s not in the nineteen-sixties scenes,” I answered, feeling as though my feet were stuck to the ground. “She’s the contemporary ingenue.”

“What an old-fashioned house!” Talia said, as she came around the truck, ignoring Sarah and me, and talking to Patrick. “It’s even older than your mother’s!”

“Mom’s house is late Victorian,” Patrick answered, glancing at the house in front of us. “This one’s a Colonial.”

My family home, where I’d grown up and which I now owned, had been built in 1807. Talia would probably have deemed it ancient, although in Haven Harbor it wasn’t unusual.

“You know so much,” Talia oozed, taking Patrick’s arm. “I love this part of the country. I’ve never seen so many old houses before!”

He looked at me and moved away from Talia. “Angie, why don’t you let Mrs. Whitman know we’re here. Leo, come with me. We’ll open the back of the truck and put down the ramp.”

“Fine,” I said, and Sarah and I headed for the door of the house.

Before we’d rung the bell it was opened by a middle-aged woman wearing faded jeans and a yellow T-shirt, her graying hair pulled back in a ponytail. “You must be here to borrow the couch,” she said, smiling at us. “Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

The couch was just as the picture had shown—a Victorian sofa, most likely stuffed with horsehair, upholstered with delicate needlepointed lilacs and a pair of swallows.

“I’ve always loved it,” said Mrs. Whitman. “It’s not the most comfortable piece of furniture in the house, but the embroidery is so beautiful. Your grandmother did it, didn’t she, Angie?”

“She did,” I agreed, looking at the couch carefully. “But this is the first time I’ve seen it.”

“My mother commissioned it,” Mrs. Whitman explained. “It will be fun to see it in a movie. A Skye West movie!”

“It’s perfect for the room we’re designing,” I agreed.

“But you will be careful with it, won’t you? I hardly sit on it because I don’t want the needlepoint damaged.”

“We’ll be careful,” I promised, crossing my fingers.

Patrick and Leo had followed us into the house, with Talia behind them.

“This is Patrick West, Skye’s son,” I introduced them, “and Leo Blackwell, and Talia Lincoln. Patrick owns the art gallery downtown.”

“Of course. I’d heard Skye West’s son had taken that over after Ted Lawrence died,” said Mrs. Whitman. “I’ll have to stop in and take a look one of these days.”

Talia pouted a bit. Maybe because I didn’t point out that she was one of the major actresses in the movie.

“The gallery is open year-round,” said Patrick, walking over to the couch. “With four of us I don’t think this will be too difficult to lift. Would it be all right if we moved the small table and the lavender flowered chair to get them out of the way?”

Mrs. Whitman nodded. “No problem.. . .