A Murderous Yarn

by Monica Ferris

  “Would you buy it?” asked Godwin.

  Betsy half closed her eyes, picturing it on her living room wall, in a smooth, dark frame . . . “Gosh, yes.”

  “What would you pay for it? I mean, if it was an auction, and you were bidding on it. How high would you go?”

  Again Betsy half closed her eyes, imagining raising her hand with a numbered paddle in it. Fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars. “Who’s bidding against me?” she asked.

  “The Getty.”

  Betsy giggled. “Then I haven’t got a chance, have I? But I’d go as high as five hundred, I guess.”

  Godwin smacked his hand down on the desk. “Sold! Would you really go that high?”

  Betsy hesitated, then recalled that figure in the foreground so realistically bent under the wind’s constant shove, and the way the snow swirled around the plinth and softened the vertical lines of the buildings. She had worked not far from Columbus Circle many years ago, and had once been out in a city blizzard . . . “Actually, yes, I think I would. But I’d also like to hang it down here as a model for a while, and sell lots of patterns. Oh, darn, I let Irene get away without asking if she’d do that Terry Nolan model for me. Remind me when we’re closing up, I need to call her at home.”

  It was a little after one when the door’s Bing! brought Alice and Martha in, project bags in hand. It was nearly time for the Monday Bunch to meet. The two went to the library table in the middle of the room, but hesitated when they saw the Dazor light.

  “What’s this?” asked Alice, a tall woman with mannish shoulders and chin.

  “It’s a magnifying light, silly,” said Martha, who was short and plump, with silver hair.

  “I know that. What I meant was, what’s it doing here?”

  Betsy said, “I’ve set up a sample basket so people can try out fabrics and fibers and stitches, and I’m going to let them do it under the Dazor if they like, so they can see better.”

  Alice, who was inclined to blurt out whatever was on her mind, said, “And maybe somehow they’ll get the notion they need the lamp, too?”

  “Alice!” scolded Martha. A brisk-mannered widow in her late seventies, she was an ardent practitioner of Minnesota Nice.

  “That’s the idea, certainly,” agreed Betsy cheerfully.

  The women had barely taken their places at the library table when the door opened again. This time it was Jill Cross, a tall, ash-blond woman with a Gibson girl face. She nodded at Betsy and Godwin and took a seat at the table.

  “Not on duty today?” asked Alice in her deep voice.

  “No,” said Jill, opening her drawstring bag and taking out a needlepoint canvas pinned to a wooden frame. It was a Peter Ashe painting of a Russian church liberally ornamented with fanciful domes. She was using a gold metallic on the one swirled like a Dairy Queen cone.

  “That’s coming along real nice,” noted Alice.

  “Uh-huh.” Jill was normally taciturn, but this shortness bordered on rudeness.

  Betsy said, “Something bothering you?”

  “Huh? Oh.” She sighed. “All right, yes. I think I told at least some of you that Lars was going to sell his hobby farm.”

  “You told me,” said Martha. “I thought you were pleased. I know you’ve been wanting him to cut back on the time he spends trying to make a go of that place.”

  “Yes, that’s true. Actually, he’s had it for sale for a month now.”

  “What, you’re afraid he isn’t going to get his price for it?” asked Alice.

  “No, he got his price last week.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” asked Martha.

  “I think he’s already spent the money.”

  “On what?” asked Betsy. She knew Lars and Jill had been dating for a long time—two or even three years. They weren’t living together, or even officially engaged, but neither dated anyone else so far as Betsy knew.

  “That’s just it, I don’t know. He’s been making long-distance calls and reading books about—something. You know Lars, working fifty hours a week isn’t enough to keep that man occupied. First it was boats, then it was the hobby farm. I don’t know what’s next, flying lessons or do-it-yourself dentistry. That’s what’s bothering me—he never talks to me before he decides what he’s going to do.”

  Godwin said, “Some men are just terrible at sharing their plans. Afraid they’ll start an argument, I guess.”

  “Are you having trouble with John again?” asked Alice, sometimes as perceptive as she was tactless.

  “No, not exactly. Well, actually, it’s me who doesn’t want to start the argument.” Godwin lived with a wealthy attorney, an older man who, by Godwin’s telling, was kind, generous, and very possessive.

  Alice, who had sat down next to the Dazor, made a sudden exclamation.

  “What?” asked Betsy.

  Alice had casually turned the light on and, instead of using it to light her crochet project, had taken a scrap of twenty-count Jobelan from the basket to look at it through the big magnifying glass. “I can see this!” she said.

  “So can I,” said Godwin, who was at the other end of the table from her.

  “No, I mean, I can see the weave, I can actually see the weave!”

  Betsy and Godwin exchanged smiles. While Alice was not in a position to afford a Dazor, her reaction was exactly what they’d hoped for. Other customers would sit there and hold a piece of high-count linen under that magnifying light, and the cash register would ring merrily.

  Two more Monday Bunch members came in to sit down with projects and soon the table was alive with helpful hints and gossip. Betsy kept the coffee cups filled, served the occasional customer, and brought patterns, fabrics, and fibers to the table to be examined and, often enough, set aside by the cash register.

  She came from the back with the newest Mirabilia pattern to hear Martha saying in an amused voice, “Honestly, Emily acts as if hers is the first baby ever born! All she ever talks about anymore is the joy and burden of staying home with an infant.”

  “All first-time mothers are like that,” said Kate McMahon with a little sigh. “My Susan certainly is, and I expect I was, too.”

  “Have any of you talked to Irene lately?” asked Betsy, anxious on behalf of Alice to change the subject. Alice’s only child had died young of a heart ailment.

  “No, why?” asked Phil Galvin, a retired railroad engineer. He was working on a counted cross stitch pattern of a mountain goat.

  “She has made the most amazing—”

  The door to the shop made its annoying Bing! sound, and a very big police officer came in. He was about twenty-five, golden blond, and excited. “Found you at last, Jill!” he exclaimed, his voice as loud as he was big.

  “Hi, Lars!” said Jill, getting up and heading toward him. “What’s up?”

  “Look at this, look what I found!” He had a sheaf of papers in his hand and thrust it at her.

  Jill took the papers, glanced at the top one, then more slowly looked at two or three sheets under it. “What is this? Some kind of old car—what, reported stolen?” she asked. “Where’d it turn up?”

  “No, no! I finally found this for sale. I can’t believe the price. Wait till you see it!”

  “See it?” asked Jill, handing back the papers. “What do you mean, what have you bought?”

  Lars thrust the papers back at her. “In there, look at the picture of it!”

  Betsy, curious, came to look around Jill’s shoulder.

  “You want to buy this?” said Jill, having sifted through the papers until she found the eight-by-ten color photo again. “Why?”

  But Betsy, glancing at the printing on the margin of the photo, said, “Oh, my God, it’s a Stanley Steamer! Is it for real? Does it run? Where is it?”

  “Yes, it’s real, a 1911 touring car. It’s in Albuquerque. And yes, it runs, or he’s pretty sure it will, after it has a little work done on it. He had an accident with it a few years ago and it’s been just sittin
g under a tarp in his back yard. But he says they’re harder to kill than a rattlesnake. What I can’t believe is the price. Only wants seventeen thousand for it!”

  “Dollars?” said Jill. “For an old, old car that’s been in a wreck and it will maybe run after you’ve done, oh yeah, a little work on it?”

  “You’re really going to bring it up here?” asked Betsy eagerly.

  “Of course he isn’t!” barked Jill. “Steam?” she said to Lars. “Like a locomotive?”

  “Yeah, just like a locomotive, except it’s a car. Isn’t that great? It’s got the original boiler in it!”

  “From 1911? A ninety-year-old boiler sounds dangerous to me.”

  “The boiler on a Stanley never blows. Ever. And there are lots of them still out there on the road. There’s a whole organization of people who drive them. And there’s all kinds of places that make parts for it, tires and windshields and all. The owner is an old guy, a doctor, who can’t work on it himself anymore, he’s got heart problems.” He shifted his ardent gaze to Betsy, whose expression was much more receptive than his girlfriend’s. “I found this old book by a guy who got a hold of a Stanley and got it running. He tells some stories in that book that about had me rolling on the floor.” Thinking about the stories in the book made his blue eyes twinkle and the corners of his mouth turn up. Lars was a good-looking man, and when amused and enthusiastic, he was irresistible.

  Betsy said, “Will you take me for a ride in your Stanley Steamer, Lars?”

  Jill turned away and walked back to the table, where she put a great deal of meaning into the way she sat down.

  Lars didn’t notice. He continued eagerly to Betsy, “Nobody knows how fast the Stanley Steamer can go, ’cause as long as you hold the throttle open, it just keeps on accelerating. In 1906 it set the world land speed record of a hundred and twenty-seven miles an hour. There’s a picture of it in this guy’s book of the special chassis they put on it, like a canoe. In 1907 they tried again—it was on Daytona Beach in Florida—and this time, at over a hundred and fifty, it hit a bump and the air got under it, and it actually took off, like an airplane!” Lars’s hand described a shallow arc. “Of course, it crashed after a few dozen yards, but just think, over hundred and fifty, and that still wasn’t its top speed!”

  “In 1907? That’s amazing!”

  Lars continued, “Most cars back then could manage about twenty-five miles an hour going downhill with a tail wind, so it isn’t amazing, it’s fantastic! I wonder if my car can go that fast.” His blue eyes turned dreamy.

  “But then it crashed,” murmured Jill, bowing her head. “Lord, help us not to forget that little part, amen.”

  Several other members of the Monday Bunch snickered softly.

  Lars, aware at last that he had lost Jill, went to her to show her the color photo again. He said in a wheedling voice, “Just look at it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at the shape, so beautiful and old and classy. It’s got brass trim and wooden wheels, and look at those big old lamps for headlights. Plus, it doesn’t have a horn like other cars, but a whistle!” Lars shrilled a creditable imitation of a steam train whistle. “Wheee-owwwwww! And it doesn’t go brrum, brrum like gasoline engines. It goes chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff!” He began to circle the library table, elbows bent and arms working. “Chuff, chuff, chuff—whee, whee-owwwwwww!”

  Phil and the women laughed.

  Jill, her voice sounding strained from her attempt to be reasonable, said, “Listen to me, Lars. This car has got to be dangerous. It’s more than ninety years old, and it’s been in a wreck. And it’s a steam-powered automobile. That’s something they tried and gave up on, or why isn’t every car on the road today powered by steam? And look at this thing, it hasn’t even got a roof! What are you going to do when winter comes?”

  “Oh, it’s not going to be my main car. I’m just going to drive it for fun!”

  Phil, never one to spoil a good argument, said, “I could help you get it going, Lars. I started out in steam-driven locomotives.”

  “See?” Lars said to Jill.

  Phil continued, “And there’s an antique car meet every year right here in Minnesota. They drive from New London to New Brighton.”

  “New Brighton?” echoed Betsy. “You mean our New Brighton? The Minneapolis suburb?”

  Phil nodded. “They finish up in a park in New Brighton, and the mayor comes to shake every driver’s hand. I’ve gone a couple of times to watch them come in. I remember there’s usually a 1901 Oldsmobile, and a 1908 Cadillac, and a spread of Maxwells and Fords. Beautiful old cars—and one year they had those bicycles that have a big wheel up front and a little bitty wheel behind. There’s a big club that runs the thing. People come from all over to drive in it.”

  “Are they the Minnesota Transportation Museum people?” asked Martha. “We’ve got some of them right here in town.”

  “No, those folks run the street cars and steamboat and a couple of steam locomotives,” said Phil. “This is a different bunch, they only run horseless carriages.”

  “An annual meet, huh?” said Lars thoughtfully. “Naw, they probably wouldn’t let me in it with my Stanley. I’d be passing them old explosion-engine people right and left.” He began to circle the table again. “Chuff, chuff, chuff, wheee-owwww!” he crowed, working his elbows back and forth. “Get a horse!” He huffed back to Jill and got onto one knee so he could look up appealingly at her. “Ride with me?”

  Jill frowned and looked away—only to encounter Betsy’s equally ardent face. “I’ll help. In fact, I’ll be Lars’s sponsor. I’ll pay fees and buy coal or wood, or whatever you burn to make steam. Mention the name of the shop and I’ll split the cost of restoration. Let me ride along, and it won’t cost him a dime. Say yes, Jill, please?”

  Jill sighed and looked again at the photo, shaking her head. Betsy looked too, holding her breath, wishing hard. The car was standing on a tarred road against the backdrop of desert scrub and cactus. It gleamed a rich forest green. The wooden wheel spokes were painted yellow, and there appeared to be yellow pinstriping on the body. And Jill was wrong, it did have a top, if that folded hunk of black canvas hanging out over the back seat was any guide.

  Something that looked like an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner, complete with hose, was curled up against the passenger’s—no, the steering wheel was on the right, so against the driver’s side, under the door.

  “Strange the photographer didn’t notice when he took the picture that there was a vacuum cleaner still on the running board,” Betsy remarked. The car was gleaming on the outside, so she assumed the inside had also been cleaned and polished.

  “It’s not a vacuum cleaner, it’s for when you stop to take on water,” said Lars, rising to point at the device with a big forefinger. “It just sucks it up out of a well or a pond or even a ditch. But you can pull into someone’s yard and use their hose, too.”

  “Wow!” said Betsy, thinking how thrilling it would be to have a Stanley Steamer chuff up in front of the shop to ask for a bucket of water. How even more marvelous to be riding in a Stanley. What a thrill!

  But Jill didn’t smile, and Lars, realizing at last how deep in the doghouse he was, knelt again. “I know I should have talked to you before I decided to buy it,” he said. “And if you say no, I’ll call back and tell him I’ve changed my mind.”

  Betsy closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.

  She heard Martha say, “I’ve always wanted to ride in an antique car.”

  Then Alice said, “We could make costumes. Waists and long skirts, and great big hats with veils.”

  Godwin said, “We could find boaters and celluloid collars, and make spats and close-fitting trousers! Oh you kid!”

  Betsy hadn’t thought about costumes. Oh, Jill just couldn’t say no!

  Phil added, “I could renew my boiler license easy, if it would make you feel better about this.”

  “Please?” said Betsy.

  Jill let out a long breath. “Oh, what t
he heck. I’m not living dangerously enough already, arresting drunk drivers and the occasional murderer Betsy scares up. So sure, Lars honey, go tell the doctor with the bad heart you’ll take his crumpled car off his hands.”

  2

  A few weeks later, Betsy was preparing to close Crewel World for the night. It was a little after five. The last customer had just left. She ran the cash register, made sure there were no sales slips loose on the desk, took forty dollars out of the register to keep as opening-up money for tomorrow, signed the deposit slip Godwin had made out and sent him off with it and the day’s profits.

  Then she hurried upstairs to give Sophie her evening meal, put the money into a locked drawer, and change into wool slacks and a heavy sweater. She grabbed her raincoat and a knit hat, dashed back down the stairs and out the back way to her car.

  Lars had called in the afternoon to say that he was back with the Stanley, and did she want a ride? She’d been so excited she nearly forgot to ask him for directions to his new place.

  It was less than five minutes away, out St. Alban’s Bay Road a mile and a half, to Weekend Street, a narrow lane about three houses long. Lars, having concluded the sale of his hobby farm, had rented a very modest cottage at the bottom of the lane. It was surrounded by middle-size trees and a lot of brush, but it had a big yard. A driveway led behind the house to a small red barn.

  Beside the barn was a long, low, white trailer, like a multihorse trailer, except this one had no windows. It was hitched to Lars’s dirty blue pickup truck, which apparently hadn’t gone to the buyer of his farm.

  Betsy steered her car onto the weedy lawn, got out, and went through the open double doors of the barn. Close up, the barn was relatively new, sided vertically with aluminum “boards” and floored with cement. The oil stains on the floor and the big electric winch that ran on an overhead rail announced that this shed was no stranger to people who worked on engines. A workbench along one wall had a vise on it and a pegboard above it with the outline of numerous tools, though the tools presently on it didn’t always match the outlines.