Read Thread End: An Embroidery Mystery for Free Online

truth.”
    The bells over the shop door jingled, and I whirled around, half expecting a knife-wielding maniac. Instead, it was a Chanel-purse-wielding Vera Langhorne.
    “Gracious, darling! What’s happening in the alley?”
    “Excuse me.” Ted gave me a quick kiss and said that he should probably get back outside since Manu had undoubtedly finished his call and gone back out himself.
    With that, my noble lawman escaped, leaving me to Vera’s inquisition.
    “What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
    I quickly—and with as little drama as possible—explained that I’d taken the garbage out this morning and discovered someone wrapped in a rug lying in the alley.
    “Was this a
dead
someone?” Vera asked.
    I nodded.
    “Again?”
    “Again?” I huffed. “What do you mean,
again
? I’ve never found a body in the alley before!”
    “I know, I know, darling.” She sat on the sofa facing away from the window and put her purse on the coffee table. “I guess I’m thinking of the time you found that man in your storeroom. That was dreadful.” She petted Angus and cooed, “Hello, my sweet boy,” before looking back up at me. “Was finding this person as bad as that?”
    “Of course it was,” I said, sitting on the sofa across the square from Vera. “Who gets used to stumbling over dead bodies?”
    “Police, I imagine,” she said. “Maybe journalists, too—I’ll have to ask Paul—although neither of those groups find many dead bodies on their own, do they? They’re notified of the occurrence beforehand so they have a few minutes to steel their nerves or what have you. But not you, darling. Time and again, you get surprised by . . . well, you know.”
    I merely listened to Vera’s rambling and stroked Angus’s wiry fur.
    “So, this person you found,” she continued. “Was it anyone we know? Or
knew
, rather?”
    “Um . . . no. No positive identification of the body has been made yet, but I don’t think we knew the man. At least, I didn’t know him.”
    “And you say he was wrapped in a rug?” she asked. “What kind of rug?”
    I was carefully weighing my answer to that question when Vera’s journalist boyfriend, Paul Samms, came rushing into the shop.
    “What’s the story with the body in the alley?” Paul asked in lieu of a greeting. “I was halfway between here and Lincoln City—on my way to do a piece on a clambake—but turned around when I heard over the police scanner that there was a body found in the alley behind the Seven-Year Stitch. This story is clearly much better than a clambake.”
    Not for the guy in the alley, I thought. I blinked twice. The similarities between Paul and Vera were becoming more apparent by the second.
    He seemed to notice his beloved at last. “Hello, Vera, love. So, what’s the scoop?”
    “We were just getting to that,” she said. “Marcy?”
    Once again, I told my tale of the garbage drop discovery.
    Paul sat on the sofa beside Vera and took out his pen and notebook. “Which sounds better?
Mysterious Body Found Dead in Alley Behind Embroidery Shop
or
Man Reaches His Dead End Behind the Seven-Year Stitch
?”
    “The second one is catchier,” Vera said. “You need to be sure the reader understands that the man
is
the dead end, though.”
    “Do you have to mention my shop? I mean, at least in the headline could you say something like . . .” I scrambled to come up with a clever headline that didn’t implicate my embroidery shop as the scene of the crime. “How about
Dead Man Found Near Museum
?”
    “I thought you found him in your alley,” Vera said.
    “Right . . . but the alley is only one street over from the museum,” I said.
    Paul tapped his pen against the notebook. “You think this murder has something to do with the museum? With the textile exhibit?”
    “What aren’t you telling us?” Vera leaned over so far that she could’ve placed her elbows on the coffee table.
    I bit my lip. “I’m not at liberty to