Sew Over It

By Barbara Emodi

It's winter in Gasper's Cove, Nova Scotia. All Valerie Rankin wants is a life of her own and for her dream of a sewing school to come true. But when murder steps into the picture, Valerie and the Seaside Sewists have no choice but to stop their stitching and start detecting. It's clear to them the Royal Canadian Mounted Police needs help, and who is better qualified to uncover the secrets of Gasper's Cove than they are?  But as it becomes clear the killer is someone they know, the Sewists realize any one of them could be at risk. As the RCMP and the killer soon learn, it is always a mistake to cross any woman with a seam ripper in her hand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Emodi
• Release date: Jul 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223502722

Barbara Emodi

Barbara Emodi lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada with her husband, and near her daughter and three of her grandchildren, She also has sons and their families in Berkeley, California and Austin, Texas and is just at home in those cities too. Barbara has worked as a journalist, a public relations prof., a political communicator, and a commentator on radio. She makes all her own clothes and has published two books on sewing. These days Barbara writes cozy mysteries for people who make things. She writes about what she knows and a few things she has suspected. To keep in touch with her upcoming releases, and for more stories of Barbara's life and world, sign up for her reader newsletter 

Book preview

Prologue

Who would have thought it would be this easy?

And so fast.

One turn and there she was. A solitary figure, head down, only fifty feet from the turnoff to her house. The driver caught a glimpse, a mile away from the bend, and knew who she was. Who she had to be.

Hard to believe.

But there she was. The one last loose end, walking along the Shore Road. She walked as if she knew the path along the highway well. Bet she followed this route first holding her mother’s hand, and then every day for fifty years. Now it looked like she was just thinking her thoughts and trusting her feet to take her home. The woman didn’t seem to hear the car.

To her right, a bad drop. Two hundred feet down to the North Atlantic, the sea closer now the winter weather had moved in to extend the ice out from the cliffs into the sea.

The driver had no choice. What good was a two-foot-high guardrail? How would that save anyone from a wall of Nova Scotia rock and the swirling surf below it? Someone alone in the icy dark, on a road like this, had nothing to protect them. What did she expect? There was a reason they were both on this road, this night.

The driver reached out and dimmed the lights. Just like always, for the sake of oncoming traffic. It was no effort at all to reach down again and turn the lights off.

The woman was at the road to her house when the lights went back on. Her face, white and surprised, turned to look behind her. Then, she did what anyone would have done, although maybe a little too slowly, a little too awkwardly.

She jumped.

She jumped out of the way as fast as she could. But then she tripped and fell. Over the rail she went, skidding down over the crust of the snow, through dark bushes, to the edge, right to the edge. Then she was gone.

Too easy.

Chapter One

We were on the way into town along the Shore Road when the sound hit us, like a smack in the back. The blast of the truck's horn came through like a siren into the car.

The jolt went through me. My seatbelt pulled hard against my shoulders. I looked up and into the rear-view mirror and saw the huge headlights and the grill of a Nova Scotia Department of Transportation salt truck. It was bearing down on us hard, ready to ram right through my old Toyota.

In the seat beside me, my cousin Darlene slammed her hands onto the dashboard to brace herself. You're too slow. He can't stop; he's going to crash into us!

She was right. I saw the fear and anger in the driver's face now as he came up behind us, struggling to control the massive vehicle on the icy road. Just when he almost hit us, the truck swerved, bumped into the snowbank on the hillside to the left, and careened back over in front of us. A curtain of snow and salt hit the windshield and a slew of slush slapped up against the door. I held tight to the vibrating steering wheel as the tires skidded as they lost traction. For a moment, the road disappeared in front of me. This is it. I wanted to start a new life, but here I am, about to end it for both of us.

I waited. The wipers made a pass, and then another, carving fans through the ice and snow on the windshield. A small window appeared, and I lowered my head, peered through it, and found the road again. Ahead, the truck's red taillights barreled away down the road and out of sight, horn still blaring. We had survived.

Darlene let out a long breath. That was close. You can't drive like this on a highway, my dear. It’s as dangerous to be too slow as it is to be too fast.

Really? I believed caution meant safe, and the more cautious and slower, the safer. But there's nothing safe about big trucks sliding into you. I sped up.

It's this stretch of road, I heard the shrillness in my voice, and it embarrassed me. I was just trying to be careful.

I looked at Darlene's eyes in the mirror. They were the same color as the sky, and now just as chilly.

Careful? she asked. "You're so far over the white line, you're practically in the