The Tales of New Yarn City : Chapter 8 : The common red thread
Talking to Mortimer was not very productive. He seemed rather uninterested and the only idea he came up with was that the wool might have been eaten by moths. How stupid! How big should these monster moths be, so that they swallow whole yarn balls? The boy really has to get out, the pest control business seems to make him even more paranoid.
Hailey decided to get to the bottom of it all, right now. Weird speculations about giant moths lead to nothing. She had to look for solid evidences. What did the women of Grandma’s secret Yarn Lodge say? Only certain colors disappeared. Colors that nobody wanted to buy anymore. And it was always high quality wool.
A few phone calls later, Hailey had compiled a considerable list of brands and color numbers. Now she called the other yarn stores of New Yarn City and its suburbs to ask for these colors. On the other end of the line, exactly the same thing happened every time : At first the sellers seemed extremely pleased to have finally found a prospect for their non-sellers. But when they came back they were slightly puzzled as to why these colors were unfortunately no longer in stock.
The young detective marked the locations of all the affected shops on a large city map. She attached photos and notes, and marked possible connections with a red thread. Somewhere behind all this deliberate confusion a pattern began to emerge.
And there was another fact Hailey couldn’t ignore any longer: Her shop seemed to be the only one that had been spared the mysterious loss of wool. Lack of potential loot couldn’t be the reason - grandma hoarded wool-incarnate color sins of half a century.
Hailey almost felt a little jealous and also a bit offended. Every yarn store! Just not her’s! Why did the exciting things always seem to take place somewhere else? Or was her shop next? It might be worth lying in wait and waiting for what happens. Maybe she would catch the secret red-handed. Whatever or whoever it was ...
