Knitting Bones

by Ferris, Monica

  “Vicodin does a good job, too, I see.”

  “Oh. Yes, I guess it does. All right, I’ll call Susan Lavery. But I wish you’d work for me. Godwin trusts you, and you used to be a cop.”

  “But I never was a detective in the department.”

  “No, but you did very well on patrol—and that calls for a lot of decisions based on your interpretation of what people say and how they behave.”

  Jill nodded. “True. Emma Beth, come away from there!”

  The child had fallen silent, a development that should have drawn Jill’s attention sooner. Now she was seen with one arm inserted nearly to her shoulder into Betsy’s knitting bag. Beside her on the carpet were several balls of yarn and a piece of knitting with needles sticking out of it. She glanced over at her mother, absorbing the look of censure with her mother’s own cool composure. “No,” she said calmly.

  “One,” said her mother, just as calmly. “Two. Three.”

  The arm reluctantly came out. Jill went to praise and pet her daughter and allow her to help pick up the yarn. Jill asked Betsy, “Do you want me to hand you this piece you’re working on?”

  “No, it’s nothing important. I thought you couldn’t use that counting business on children until they were at least four.”

  “I thought so, too, then I came home from an overnight trip and found Lars had taught it to her. Thank you, Emma,” she said, taking the last ball of wool from her and putting it into the bag.

  Emma followed her mother back to the chair, then leaned on her lap to smile very sweetly up at her. “Cookie?” she asked.

  “No. Lunch soon.”

  Emma’s lower lip poked forward, then turned downward until it nearly touched her chin. Her beautiful blue eyes shone with incipient tears, but Jill only continued regarding her daughter with no show of sympathy—or anger—and Emma’s lip slowly righted itself. The child sighed and looked around for some new source of entertainment.

  Betsy said, “There’s a pretty ball somewhere in this room.”

  Emma brightened. “Ball?”

  “It’s soft and it’s red and green and gray and blue and gold. And there’s a jingle bell inside it.” Betsy had made the ball of scraps of washable velveteen as a toy for Sophie, back when she still thought it possible to tempt the cat to exercise. It was stuffed with old panty hose, nice and squeezable, and in its middle was a tiny golden bell inside a little plastic box. Sophie had spent several weeks contentedly watching it roll by. A couple of weeks ago Betsy had come across it while cleaning out the linen closet and decided that she’d give it to Emma.

  “Where’s the ball?” Jill asked Emma.

  Emma looked around, then back at her mother and shrugged her baby shoulders.

  “It’s behind a pillow,” hinted Betsy.

  Emma studied Betsy as if waiting for further enlightenment, but Betsy merely winked and nodded. Emma looked around the room again and saw the brightly colored needlepoint pillow on the upholstered chair. With a glad cry, she ran to it and pulled the pillow away. But no ball was behind it.

  She looked accusingly at Betsy, her lower lip threatening to do its trick again—then saw how Betsy was moving her head against the big pillow on the couch. Emma laughed and ran to thrust a chubby hand behind the pillow, and pulled out the ball with a loud shriek of delight. She spent the next several minutes clumsily throwing and kicking the ball around the room while Jill and Betsy talked.

  “How’s the healing coming along?” Jill asked.

  “Oh, not too bad. There’s still some pain, of course. And the exercises are aggravating. I think it’s too soon to do all they’re asking me to do. Leg lifts really hurt.”

  “Do you think you’re reinjuring the bones?”

  “They say I’m not, that the plate they put in there will protect it against the movements I’m doing. But it hurts!” Betsy saw Emma look at her with alarm and closed her lips firmly over further whining. She said instead, “I just wish I didn’t feel so useless.”

  Jill said, “I think you need to give yourself some time. As the healing really takes hold, you’ll find plenty to do.” She stood. “And now I think it’s time we went away and left you to it. Emma Beth, what would you like for lunch?”

  “Mackincheeeeese!” crowed Emma immediately, dropping the ball and trotting to reach for her mother’s hand.

  “Bless you for coming,” said Betsy. “You really gave me a good idea. I wonder what other obvious thing I’m missing?”

  “Me, too,” said Jill, and she let the merest hint of a twinkle show in her eye. “Come on, baby, let’s go home.”

  Nine

  BETSY’S curious failure to think of something so obvious as calling Susan Lavery left her shaken. What was the matter with her? Was it the pain meds? Or was it simply that she had eaten only a dry piece of toast for breakfast this morning, and nothing since?

  She got to her good foot, grabbed her crutches and did the “dot and go one”—her father’s expression for anyone walking on crutches—into her galley kitchen to open a can of soup. She had very little appetite, which she would ordinarily consider a good thing, as she was generally in the middle of a fight between her waistline and her love of good food. On the other hand, the visiting nurse had warned her she needed to nourish her injured body so it could grow the new bone it needed to mend itself. She decided cream of chicken soup would be the easiest wise choice and balanced on one foot while pulling the tab that opened the can’s top. She used the last of her milk to make the soup and actually ate most of it. And did feel better.

  After lunch, she went to phone Susan Lavery at her home. She got Susan’s voice mail and left a brief message. Susan’s cell phone went directly to voice mail, too. Since she worked for a criminal defense attorney named Marvin Lebowski, Betsy called Marvin’s law firm and talked to Mr. Lebowski’s secretary.

  “Hi, Phyllis, is Susan there?” asked Betsy.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, she isn’t. She’s out all this week.”

  “Vacation or on a case?” Betsy had hired Mr. Lebowski to defend Godwin last year—which he did, very capably, with her help—and as a side effect of the case, Susan Lavery gave up her own position in a law firm to work for Lebowski as a PI.

  “A case. She’ll be gone at least all this week and possibly most of next week, too.”

  “Would it be possible to contact her somehow?”

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s out of touch unless it’s a real emergency. Is this something that serious?”

  “No, no. I wanted her to do some investigating for me.”

  “Maybe she’ll finish up this week. I’ll have her call you when she gets back in town.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Phyllis.” Betsy sighed deeply and hung up.

  She was back to deciding whether to let Godwin continue sleuthing or pressing harder on Jill to help.

  “NO,” said Jill, on the phone. “I told you, I have a full-time job taking care of Emma Beth. Maybe when she’s older, in first grade, say; then I’ll think about it.” Betsy could hear a smile in her voice as she continued, “Of course, by then I may have a little brother for Emma Beth.”

  “Say, you aren’t—”

  “No, I’m not—yet.”

  Betsy groaned inwardly. Jill in a nesting mood was not at all what she wanted. She teased cruelly, “I hope it’s twins.”

  “Then I’ll give one to you.”

  “Triplets?”

  “The other one to Goddy.”

  Betsy laughed. “Can you imagine Godwin with a baby?”

  “Now, don’t cast aspersions, he might make a very nice parent.”

  “At the very least, his baby would be the best-dressed of the three.” Godwin’s sense of color and style were legendary.

  “Seriously, Betsy, I’d like to help, but not by going out on a case. Maybe I can consult with Godwin, give him some hints about talking to people and how to judge whether they are holding back or lying.”

  “That actually might be a great help. Thank yo
u.”

  GODWIN was having a very interesting conversation with a young woman making her first quilt. “It’s not just my first, it’s my last,” Sharon was saying. “I had no idea how complicated it was when I started it, or how long it was going to take. I could have finished a Marilyn Leavitt Imblum pattern in the time it’s taken me just to accumulate the fabric and cut it.” She was a short, stocky woman in her middle thirties, with thick, light brown hair tied back loosely at the nape of her neck. She wore a pink cotton sweater of a complex pattern she had probably knit herself. “It’s not like I’m doing a fancy pattern, I’m just doing four-inch squares.”

  Godwin nodded sympathetically. “I’ve avoided quilt shops,” he said. “The fabric is so gorgeous I’m sure I’d be tempted into quilting. Just the thing I need, another needlework project!” He looked around Crewel World, which didn’t sell beautifully patterned fabrics. “So how can we help you?”

  “Well, my theme for this quilt is chickens.”

  “…Chickens?”

  “I know, it’s silly. But I must not be alone—there are dozens and dozens of fabrics with a chicken theme, especially if you include things like fried eggs and grilled chicken legs.” She laughed softly, a little embarrassed.

  Godwin made a pained face, and Sharon said, “Pathetic, I know. But eggs and fried parts are the reason we have chickens, right? Anyway, I’ve got two counted patterns already finished—one’s a hen and the other’s a rooster—and I didn’t know what to do with them until I thought how cute they’d be in my quilt. But two’s either too many or not enough.”

  Godwin smiled. “And you’ve decided they’re not enough.”

  “Right.”

  In a few minutes they had rounded up Jeanette Crews’s counted cross-stitch pattern Rooster Serenade, featuring two Mexican-style roosters—they’d finish at eight by eight inches, but that was fine; a booklet from Cross My Heart called Little Critters, which had a simple pattern of a rooster’s head in it that could be done on low-count fabric to make it four by four; a small square painted canvas of a baby chick labeled Share One’s Ideas; a punch needle called, simply, Rooster, designed by Rachel T. Pellman; a Cedar Hill sampler of a hen and chicks (“I’ll leave out the alphabet and some of the chicks,” said Sharon); a set of machine appliqué patterns from Debora Konchinsky featuring sixteen chicken patterns, if you counted the guinea hen as one; and another painted canvas of a Picassostyle hen—Sharon had the counted cross-stitch pattern of Picasso’s rooster at home.

  “There, that should keep me for a while!” she enthused at the checkout desk.

  Godwin happily added up the charges and was happy all over again when Sharon did not gasp at the total cost or groan or decide to change her mind about some of the patterns. But as he was bagging up her purchases, she said in a much more sober voice, “Goddy, you were at the EGA convention banquet, weren’t you?”

  He paused to look at her. “Yes, I was. I got Betsy’s ticket because she was in the hospital. Why, were you there, too?”

  “Yes. I sat at a table with my mother and four other relatives—it was a combination stitch-in and family reunion at my house all that week. But we heard about the Heart Coalition man running off with the check for the money we raised, and I wondered if Betsy is involved in the investigation.”

  “She wants to be, but her broken leg is keeping her at home for now.” Godwin leaned over the big, old desk that Crewel World used as a checkout counter and murmured, “But I’m helping. I’m talking to people who know something about it and bringing the information to her.”

  “Really?” Sharon breathed, eyes widening. “I’m glad to hear that, because I think my mother has something important to tell you.”

  Ten

  TONY was going desultorily through his mail. It had piled up a bit—he wasn’t ever very interested in mail, unless it had a check in it, his or someone else’s that he could glom onto, or unless there was a big sale on at Macy’s, which used to be Marshall Fields, which used to be Dayton’s. Odd how even the big companies merged and split nowadays. He could remember his grandmother’s intense loyalty to Dayton’s. Today you couldn’t be loyal for long to any department store.

  He quickly put aside a notice from the management company that ran his apartment building. He’d stopped paying rent a couple of months ago in anticipation of fleeing the country, but now he’d have to do something about getting caught up. That wouldn’t happen until he closed that phony Heart Fund account, and getting out and around was too painful right now. His eye was caught by an envelope with a return address of the Minneapolis Impound Lot.

  Oh, hell, his car. Which he’d been driving when he’d had the accident. Now he remembered how, once he’d been sitting up and paying attention in the hospital, he wondered what had happened to his car. And where it had gotten to. “Call the police,” his nurse had advised him. “They’ll know.”

  But Tony, for several good reasons, didn’t like talking to the police. Besides, if the accident was so serious they’d had to cut him out of his car, then probably his car was not just toast, it was burnt toast, and he was no longer interested in it.

  But maybe not.

  He opened the envelope hopefully—and gave a sincere groan of despair. His car had been towed, the form letter inside informed him, and they were charging him eighteen dollars a day to keep it until he came to claim it. And it wasn’t just the storage fee he owed them, there was also their “heavy-duty tow” charge of a hundred seventy-five, and their ninety-dollar “winch time” money.

  “Huh!” Tony muttered, tossing the form letter on the coffee table. They could go whistle for their money.

  But the notion of rent and now these car charges made him uneasily aware of the thin state of his finances. He’d called the airline where he’d bought his ticket and spun the sad story of his car accident, but had they forgiven him the price of his ticket? Of course not; hadn’t he been informed that the special bargain price he’d bought it for was absolutely not refundable?

  And the twenty-four grand? That turned out to be a hatful of smoke. He wished he could remember what went wrong! He clenched his good fist as he sighed after the lost party time, the hot sun on the friendly beaches.

  But so what? Right? So what? It wasn’t as if he were on the street. He had some money in his wallet, and some credit left. Not a lot, but some. And there was the four thousand dollars in that Heart Fund account. That money was going to be a great comfort very soon.

  Still, it would be good to run a con on someone, just to keep his hand in. Too bad his good looks were—temporarily, but still—marred by a huge black eye, a scabby cut on one cheek, and a swollen, purple ear. He could pull the “just need fifty more dollars for a plane ticket” scam, but that meant he’d have to stand for hours at the airport, which he wasn’t up to—plus, he couldn’t hustle away if a cop turned up. But he sure wasn’t ready for the dance floor or even a bit of sleight of hand. It made him uncomfortable to realize that; he’d always relied on his charm, handsome face, and smooth moves to get him into the right circles and out again—swiftly, if necessary. It would be a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, before he regained that edge.

  He pushed the rest of the mail aside. He’d gotten an uneasy glimpse of some bill-like envelopes from his doctor and the hospital, which he was sure represented the deductibles they mentioned when he’d checked out. What was the good of health insurance, anyway, if you still ended up paying out big hunks of money? It was a gyp! Well, he’d show them, he wasn’t even going to open the envelopes.

  So long as he could continue living in this apartment, and eating, and have lights to turn on at night, and warm water to bathe in, he was okay.

  But that meant he’d better go empty that Heart Fund account—that con was over as far as he was concerned.

  He’d show them his wounds and they’d feel sorry for him and probably not check his papers too closely. Like the fact that his ID card said Mail Room on it, not Chief Financial Officer like
he’d written on the application to open the account.

  Better go while the going was good. He took a deep, energy-giving breath and rose to his feet. But he hadn’t taken care to plant his crutch solidly. It slid across the low-nap carpet, and he fell. His head thumped painfully on the floor and spasms of pain shot through his injured arm and leg. He lay there for a minute, waiting for things to settle down. But his head only went from sharp pain to thick ache, and his arm and leg throbbed almost like they did when he first left the hospital. He lay there for several more minutes before beginning the long, slow struggle to regain his feet. Was this bad enough to warrant a call to his doctor?

  No, he might ask him for a payment, so never mind.

  But no going out to the bank today.

  He lurched slowly into his bathroom, took a double dose of pain pills, and in five minutes was draped across his bed, letting the Vicodin ease the hurt.

  He wasn’t quite asleep when his phone began to ring. He tried to work the noise into the dream he was starting but it was too loud and insistent.

  He waited for his answering machine to pick it up, then remembered that he hadn’t listened to his messages, and the phone wouldn’t transfer calls to a full box. Damn.

  He rolled over and reached for the cordless phone on the bedside table. “H’lo?” he grumbled, thick-tongued.

  “Tony? That you?”

  Well, damn it to hell if it wasn’t the pissant! “Yeah, Mitch, it’s me. Whassup?”

  “Can you come in to work tomorrow?”

  “Whaaaat? I can’t work yet! I won’t be able to work for another week, maybe two.” Or three. Maybe four.

  “I know, I know. This is just some kind of paperwork deal. Take you half an hour, maybe.”

  Tony breathed heavily while he thought about it. He was going out tomorrow anyhow, to First Express Bank to close that account. The bank was maybe two blocks from the Heart Coalition Building. “All right. What time?”

  “One o’clock all right?”