Free Night of the Living Thread (A Threadville Mystery) by Janet Bolin

“speak.” Sally let out a volley of barks so loud and abrupt that Floyd stepped back. Maybe Sally’s bark was worse than Floyd’s bite. How reassuring.
    The siren continued blaring. Tally-Ho let out that one woof that said someone else was coming.
    Lenny, the surfer zombie, sprinted up from the beach. I told him that someone may have tumbled into the river. He threw his towel down on the concrete ramp and stepped out of his flip-flops. The frayed rope tied around his ankle seemed realistically hideous in the foggy darkness. He waded into the river and grabbed the extension cord.
    I yelled, “Wait. Help is coming.”
    Naturally, the dispatcher wanted to know what was going on.
    “Another passerby,” I said.
    In the dim light, Lenny’s whitewashed face looked both wan and determined. “I’m a lifeguard. I know what I’m doing. There’s a life ring on a post right behind you. Toss it to me?”
    Holding one end of the rope attached to the life ring, I tossed the ring to Lenny.
    He clamped it under one arm. With his other hand on the extension cord, he walked down the ramp and then floated, kicking his feet, out onto the river. I was not going to let Lenny out of my sight. Or the rope out of my hands.
    Floyd called to him, “You’ll ruin your makeup!” To me, he muttered, “That guy can’t stay in character.”
    I snapped, “It’s an emergency.”
    Floyd’s voice sounded almost as lifeless as the zombie he was portraying. “You told me someone
may
have fallen in. So you don’t know if it’s an emergency or not.”
    “We have to treat it like it is.”
    I let my flashlight’s beam rake the top of Floyd’s black leather shoes before aiming it down the ramp and, from there, across the mist-covered water to Lenny.
    During the fleeting moment I’d looked away from Lenny, I’d made out water droplets dotting the streaks of fake blood on the toes of Floyd’s polished black leather shoes. If he had pushed the wedding skirt into the river, water could have splashed his shoes. And was all of that red stuff smeared on Floyd fake, or could some of it have been real blood, acquired only minutes ago?
    But Floyd might not be the only one with wet toes . . .
    I slipped my phone into a pocket and the dogs’ leashes over my wrist. Holding my flashlight and the rope attached to the life ring in one hand, I casually stooped and felt around with my other hand for Lenny’s flip-flops.
    The toes felt wet.
    Without glancing away from Lenny, I straightened his flip-flops beside his towel. Maybe Floyd wouldn’t catch on that I was snooping. He might merely think that I liked order.
    Either of the zombies could have left damp spots on the concrete. Both of them had come from near the lake, though, which could have explained why their shoes were wet. I straightened and placed my phone against my ear again.
    Where was Edna, and was she all right?

9
    A s long as I had to keep the 911 dispatcher on the line, I couldn’t phone Edna. I pictured her answering in her chirpy little voice that she was fine, why wouldn’t she be?
    I asked Floyd, “Do you have a phone with you?”
    He demanded coldly, “How could I?” I might have known he’d act like he’d died in 1934 and had never heard of phones that weren’t attached to cords.
    Meanwhile, Lenny floated downriver. His flowered surfer shorts ballooned on the water’s surface. He came up for air. “I can’t see anyone,” he called. “Only that ghostly blob.”
    The fire siren stopped. The station was only a block away, so it was easy for me to hear one of our big engines start, and then the blat of the truck’s big, loud horn.
    I turned to ask Floyd to please run to Gord’s house and pound on the door and ask Edna to come down here where I could see her.
    But as if he’d vaporized in the mist, Floyd was gone. Why? I could only guess that he didn’t want to be here when the emergency responders arrived.
    Cowering against me, the dogs stared into the fog at the