Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02

by Framed in Lace

  “She does? Why of course, I remember she used to. I didn’t know she still did. How interesting.” Martha did not sound very interested, and appeared suddenly to realize that. She stirred on the chair and said more positively, “I’ll have to talk to her some time.”

  They did leave then. Outside, Malloy said, “Slick, Cross. I was wondering how to ask without getting her all suspicious.”

  “Thank you,” said Jill, gratified. Compliments from Malloy were rare. She wondered if she’d get mentioned in his report. Probably not. And after all, the way Martha reacted to Malloy’s questioning, it was obvious she was innocent.

  For all the skull’s lack of cooperation, Kerrie finished it rapidly. She got out her box of glass eyes and looked at them, and the half-formed face, for several minutes. White folks’ eyes were so variable! She finally picked out a blue pair and fitted them into place, then worked the eyelids over them. She wasn’t satisfied with the result and tried lowering the lids a bit, which was better but still didn’t quite do it. She took the glass eyes out and put brown ones in, which was another improvement, but still not right. She couldn’t think what else she could do, and sat staring at it, baffled.

  She had given the lips a hint of a smile, and had found evidence of an old break in the nose and so had made it a trifle crooked, with a bump. There was a rakish air of reality in these details somehow not reflected in the eyes. She wished she were a better artist, able to capture such subtleties. She sketched eyebrows onto the forehead, hoping that would help, but it didn’t, much. She colored the lips deep red—lipstick in the forties was red, red, red—and got out a selection of wigs.

  Eyes were merely variable; hair was infinite in its variety. Blond, she decided, though she’d given the face dark eyebrows. What were the hairstyles of fifty years ago? Not that it mattered, all she had were modern wigs. She picked a medium-length one and tried tying it up in various ways, then finally left it loose.

  She put the completed head on a shelf over her desk, sat down in her chair, and looked up at it. There was a face looking back, all right.

  Who are you? she asked one more time.

  And still the answer was silence. But now it was a sullen silence. The eyes said she really hated the hair.

  Malloy got a fax of an eight-by-ten photograph of the face on Monday morning. It had the almost-real look of such re-creations, with a pleasant expression that didn’t reach the eyes, which had a sullen glare.

  Still, it was a whole lot better than the fractured skull he’d started with.

  He took the picture along on another visit to the strong room in City Hall. The Historical Society women weren’t in session today, but he would catch them later. Right now—Yes, he was right; among the books on the shelves were high school yearbooks, from back when Excelsior had its own high school.

  It took some searching. He didn’t know when Trudie graduated from high school or even if she had. As it turned out, she hadn’t, but she’d been a cheerleader as a sophomore.

  Trudie as a sophomore had been a brown-eyed brunette, her face a little plumper than the re-created face. But there were undoubted similarities; the general shape of the face, the line of jaw, and the slightly crooked nose with a bump. Both faces had a hint of the sensual, with full lips and slightly heavy eyelids. To Malloy’s thinking, there were far more similarities than differences, enough to call it a match.

  Identification of a skeleton from a recreated face wasn’t admissible in court, but Malloy was now sure that it was Trudie Koch who had died violently fifty-one years ago, and her body hidden on the steamboat Hopkins , just before it was taken out and sunk. In 1948.

  Malloy had thought it possible that Carl Winters murdered Trudie and fled. In fact, it was still possible. But it was also possible that someone else had murdered Trudie, someone with a hatred so deep and bitter that it reached out again to take Carl’s life. And there was only one person Malloy knew about who might reserve her hatred and bitterness over that many years. He’d check further, of course, because if he was right in his surmise, it was also clear that Martha Winters was one hell of a dissembler.

  The Monday Bunch meeting was in order, the chair was serving hot cocoa in honor of the first snowstorm of the season. It was very bad out, because yesterday had been very cold, so what had begun as a thin rain today froze the instant it landed on street and sidewalk. The official weather reports had predicted rain turning to snow by evening, but this hadn’t waited until evening. The rain had quickly become sleet, and now was snow, the gorgeous, feathery stuff every white-Christmas-lover dreams about.

  But snow over ice can be a lethal combination. The schools realized what they were faced with, and students were sent home at noon. So Shelly was present, and very pleased about it. “Two inches, they said this morning, but it turned to snow before they thought it would, and the storm system isn’t moving through like they said it would, either, so now they’re saying more like six, maybe seven. Late start tomorrow, I bet.”

  “Late start?” said Betsy.

  “Schools will start late if kids have to bus from a distance. It will take awhile to clear the roads.”

  “If it snows six or seven inches by tonight, I bet school won’t start at all tomorrow,” said Betsy.

  “She’s not from Minnesota,” explained Godwin, showing compassion for her ignorance, and there were friendly chuckles.

  “I don’t understand,” said Betsy.

  “That means,” said Shelly, “that it takes a blizzard to close a school in Minnesota, and six inches isn’t quite a blizzard.”

  “Too bad,” said Betsy, having fond memories of school closings.

  “Lots of accidents, however,” said Jill, thinking ahead to her night on patrol. “Always are with the first storm, until people remember how to drive in this stuff.”

  This set off a round of complaints about Minnesota winters, with an undertone Betsy had come to recognize as boasting. “We can take it, bring on your worst,” they seemed to be saying.

  Betsy, who had only to walk up a flight of stairs to be home, and who had not seen snow like this for many years, ignored all that. She was filled with warm pleasure every time she looked out her window. It was so incredibly beautiful. How could these people not appreciate how magical it was to see snow falling?

  A huge dump truck with a gigantic plow on its front pushed down the street. As it went by, Betsy could see little whirly motors spinning sand out from the bin in back. It spoiled the opaque whiteness of the street, but of course it had to be done.

  She looked around the table. There were more than the usual four or five present—seven, in fact. The carpet under the table was crowded with discarded boots and blue plastic Crewel World bags. There was a pleasant air of anticipation among the women, which seemed focused on Betsy. Since there had never been any presiding done at these meetings, she was at a loss to know what they were waiting for.

  She said, “I got in a shipment of embroidery hoops and some iron-on patterns, and it inspired me to try out some old skills.” She reached into her work basket and pulled out a white apron with a fifties pattern of vegetables with smiling faces half embroidered on it. “Diane Bolles is looking for work like this to sell in her shop. Actually, she’s looking for much better work than this; I won’t pass this around because I know how you all are about the back.” That got an agreeable laugh; the Monday Bunch thought the back of needlework should be as presentable as the front, and Betsy had never been that fussy.

  “I think my mother had an apron like that,” said Kate.

  Jessica, who was sitting in the first chair at Betsy’s right, said, “You do beautiful French knots. And you have a good eye for centering and layout of the pattern.”

  “Thank you,” said Betsy, pleased.

  Then silence fell again, and again they all seemed to be waiting for Betsy to do something, but just as she was about to cry, “What? What do you want of me?” Martha stood and lifted a big paper bag onto the table.

&n
bsp; “We have something for you,” she said. “We want you to know how much we appreciate your keeping Crewel World open. And we want to show how much we loved your sister, all of us.” They all nodded solemnly. “And we came up with this way of telling you.”

  She opened the bag and brought out a box about twenty-four inches square and about three inches deep. It was wrapped in red foil paper and tied with golden ribbon and matching bow. She handed the box to Betsy, who stood to receive it. It was so heavy she nearly dropped it—and that gave a hint to its contents.

  Her comprehension showed on her face and the women laughed softly. Shelly said, “The hardest part was finding a finisher who wouldn’t automatically send it back here to you.”

  Betsy sat down and admired the wrapping awhile. “It’s very pretty,” she said. Someone handed her a pair of scissors from the basket of needleworking tools in the middle of the table, and she obediently cut the ribbon and used a blade of the scissors to open one end of the paper. The box inside was heavy cardboard, and again the scissors were needed to cut the tape.

  Betsy lifted the box lid. Inside, double matted with cutouts and in a black oak frame, was a motto done in needlepoint, a fragment from the last chapter of Proverbs, which had been read to enormous effect at Margot’s funeral. “Her light does not go out,” it read in gold lettering on a deep blue background. Betsy did not recognize the quote at first, but then she looked at the symbols surrounding the motto and began to smile. There was a ring with a real red-glass stone (“She is worth far more than rubies”), a sheep standing in tall grass (“She selects wool and flax”), a hand grasping a kind of stick wrapped in thoroughly brushed satin stitching (“In her hand she holds the distaff”), a tiny decorated Christmas tree (“She … extends her hands to the needy”). There was a bright red ribbon surrounding and connecting the symbols, its meaning probably both the sashes Margot supplied to merchants and the scarlet clothing supplied her servants so they were not afraid of the cold.

  “We did it as a round robin,” said Martha. “Everyone in the Bunch had a hand in it.”

  Betsy wanted to thank them but found, to her dismay, that she was crying. The women gathered around to pat her on the back and shoulders and speak comforting words, and after awhile she realized her weeping was a more effective thank-you than anything she could have said.

  When at last everyone was settled down again, and projects were brought out to be worked on, Betsy asked, “Whose idea was this, anyway?”

  Martha said quietly, “Mine. But actually it was inspired by something Jessica gave me when Carl disappeared. Remember?” she asked Jessica.

  Jessica bowed her head as if embarrassed and murmured, “Yes.”

  “When she gave that to me, it was the beginning of our friendship. She’s been such a comfort to me over the years.”

  Jessica blushed and said nothing.

  “What was it?” asked Shelly.

  “It was cross-stitch, a heart with Carl’s and my initials in it, and the word Forever underneath. All those years ago.” She sighed. “I still have it.”

  Jessica looked up, surprised. “You do?”

  “Of course. It’s in my bedroom where I see it every morning first thing when I wake up. You know, though, I think sometimes I see your initials instead of Carl’s. Yours is the love that proved to be the forever one.”

  “Awwww,” everyone sighed, even Godwin.

  Such a surge of emotions overwhelmed the Scandinavian breeding of the Monday Bunch, and soon after, the group decided they’d had enough and would go home.

  Jessica said to Martha, “That was one of my earlier efforts at cross-stitch. What people would think if you showed it to anyone! I wish you’d let me redo it properly.”

  Betsy smiled. She’d heard of people going back to undo and redo work they weren’t satisfied with, but not at this remove of years.

  Martha said, “Oh, when I first saw it, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen! And it’s the sentiment that still counts. And don’t worry about it being seen, I’m not going to enter it in a competition.” Laughing, the two friends went out together.

  “We didn’t get much work done, did we?” Shelly remarked.

  “We’ll do better next time,” said Kate.

  But Alice Skoglund had leaned to murmur in Jill’s ear, and the two stayed behind. When everyone had left, Alice said, “Betsy, maybe you should see this, too.”

  “What is it?” asked Jill.

  Alice, her chin even more prominent and her glasses winking with importance, brought a sheet of graph paper out of her purse and unfolded it. “I’ve been working on that bobbin lace pattern, and I’ve got a big part of it figured out.” She put the sheet on the desk and said, “Here is the ground, mostly spiders.” There was a pattern of solid blocks, each with thin “legs” growing out from it—twelve legs, Betsy noticed, not eight.

  “And here, this was very difficult, because it’s weaving and open spaces, and the outline was broken and it’s not complete, the bottom portion is mostly gone. But see? A butterfly.”

  Jill asked sharply, “How much of this was guess-work?”

  Alice replied in kind, “None of it! I just took what was there and figured it out. I didn’t add anything. That’s why it’s not complete. Where the threads were pulled thin, I tried to think what it would look like shorter, closed up, and I only connected the broken threads in a way they most likely joined. I didn’t guess, I restored.” She looked defiantly at Jill.

  Jill said scornfully, “And you’ve never seen Martha Winters’s work!”

  “Of course I have! Why?”

  “Because she always put a butterfly into her lace.”

  “Are you sure? I never saw one.”

  “She has three samples hanging in her living room, and all three have butterflies, and they look a lot like this one you’ve drawn.”

  “I’ve never been in her living room. I saw some gorgeous stuff she made for Mrs. Allen’s baby’s christening cap twenty years ago, and there’s no butterfly on that. And I saw the pieces she made as shelf fronts for the Sutter House restoration, and there’s no butterfly on them, either.”

  Jill frowned, then nodded. “Okay, okay, that’s right, she said she put the butterfly only in pieces she meant to keep for herself.”

  Alice sniffed righteously, but Jill didn’t apologize.

  Betsy stared at the pattern on the graph paper. Jill had told her about the butterflies in the bobbin lace that edged Martha’s handkerchiefs on her wall. This was bad, this was very bad.

  8

  It was a teachers’ conference day, schoolchildren had the day off. But the portion for elementary school teachers ended at noon, and Shelly came to Crewel World after a hasty sandwich in the Waterfront Café.

  “I, uh, wanted to see if you had any work for me,” she said. She was looking very earnest—Betsy might have described her as desperate.

  Betsy looked around doubtfully. The shop wasn’t very busy; Godwin was seeing the first customer in an hour to the door.

  “You see, there’s that Carol Emmer counted cross-stitch pattern, and with the hours I put in last Saturday and my employee discount, I could buy it and the floss with just a few more hours’ worth of work.” Shelly glanced toward the front of the shop. “And, that front window isn’t as good as it could be. I could redo that.”

  Betsy frowned at it. “I think it looks very nice.”

  “Well, then, how about I get out the Christmas decorations and put them up? There’s lights for the window and some fat candles with needlepoint and cross-stitch decorations, and some artificial holly garland.”

  “I can’t afford to buy—” began Betsy.

  “No, they’re in the storeroom, in a big cardboard box.”

  Betsy looked at Godwin, who nodded. “Well, all right,” she said, wondering if perhaps Shelly needed the money for something more necessary, like groceries or car repairs. Though Shelly was a very avid counted cross-stitcher.

 
; Godwin came to help her get out the box of decorations. They had been at it only a few minutes when the real reason Shelly had come to Crewel World was revealed. She asked, cautiously because of Betsy’s aversion to gossip, “Did you hear about Martha Winters?”

  “Hear what?” asked Godwin immediately, but then he also glanced at Betsy.

  But Betsy looked inquiring as well, so Shelly burst out, “Martha is under arrest for murdering Trudie Koch!”

  “Nooo!” wailed Godwin.

  Betsy also made a mourning sound but said, “I guess I’ve been expecting that.”

  Godwin said, “You have? Honestly, Betsy, I don’t know how you managed not to become a private eye years and years ago! You know everything before it happens.”

  Before Betsy could object to this, the door went bing and Jill, in uniform, entered. “Have you heard?” she asked.

  “Shelly just told me. Was it the lace?”

  Jill nodded.

  “What lace?” Shelly asked.

  “Were you there?” asked Betsy.

  Again Jill nodded.

  “How did she take it?”

  “Utterly surprised. She didn’t do it, Betsy, she couldn’t have, or she would have been more careful what she said when Mike interviewed her the second time. He walked all around that handkerchief, and she just kept on talking, innocent as a baby chick. I had to go stand behind her, or my face would have warned her. I couldn’t believe she couldn’t see what he was doing.”

  “What was he doing?” asked Shelly.

  “She said she never rode the Hopkins, she didn’t visit it while it was aground or while it was tied up waiting to be towed out and sunk. She said she never gave away any of her personal handkerchiefs, and that she never put butterflies in any of the lace she gave away. She said that when a handkerchief would get worn out, she’d take the lace off and put it on another handkerchief. Bobbin lace lasts forever, did you know that? Mike asked if she ever missed any handkerchiefs, and she said of course she’d lost some, but mostly got them back because people knew about the butterflies. Only two she never got back. One she lost at the State Fair in 1944, and another at the Guthrie Theatre ten or twelve years ago. She was laughing about them; she was pretty sure she dropped the one in the biggest-pig display in the pig barn and was glad no one tried to bring it back to her, because you never get the smell of pig out; and the other she thinks she saw the next season, onstage, in a production of Othello.”