A Murderous Yarn

by Monica Ferris

  Steffans, now immediately behind them, said something, and it was Charlotte who realized first what was about to happen—and she helped Marvin get away. She raised a bloodcurdling scream and flew into Steffans, knocking him down. She fell on him, clawing and scratching and still screaming. People behind them hastily backed away.

  Marvin hot-footed it across the starting line, brushing past Betsy—who was stupidly frozen to the spot—to the huge four-wheel-drive SUV, where he did a very credible stiff-arm block on the heavyset man who tried to get in his way.

  The heavyset man fell, Marvin jumped in the vehicle, and the man did a spectacular leap from the ground, much like a freshly landed fish, landing out of the way as the SUV bolted forward.

  Betsy found her voice and yelled, “Stop him!” as Marvin roared out of the lot.

  One of the deputies trying to untangle Steffans and Charlotte looked up and raced off, bound for his patrol car at the far end of the lot.

  Jill stepped in to grab Charlotte by the hair with one hand and her arm with another. “That’s enough!” she said.

  Betsy ran to the Stanley, wrenched open the door, and said, “Let’s go!” (Though she later remembered it as, “Follow that car!”)

  Lars shoved the throttle all the way open, the steamer’s tires screamed, and Betsy was flung back into her seat. By the time she got herself untangled, the Stanley was flying up the street, actually gaining on the SUV. Lars grabbed a brass-headed knob and the Stanley’s whistle gave a long blast, causing innocent cars to swerve out of their way.

  Marvin slewed crazily making the turn onto the highway, but the SUV was surefooted enough to cling to the road. Marvin got back into the right lane and floored it, and the big gas engine responded with a will.

  So he must have been horrified a few seconds later to look in his rearview mirror and see an antique car still gaining on him.

  Betsy, hanging on to the gas lever, was yelling encouragement at Lars, who had a fierce grin on his face.

  But as they closed the gap, Betsy began to worry. How would they make Marvin stop? Was Lars going to try to pass him and cut him off? What if Marvin just crashed into them? Suddenly the Stanley’s rooflessness, its lack of seat belts, made it a very dangerous place to be.

  The SUV’s brake lights came on, and the gap closed swiftly.

  “He’s giving up!” said Betsy, vastly relieved. Lars shut down his throttle, and Betsy remembered how weak the primitive brakes were. They were going to overshoot. Lars would have to stop down the road and turn around. No cars oncoming, good. She looked behind. No flashing lights and sirens, just a single private car, well back.

  But Marvin wasn’t finished yet. There was a grassy lane across the broad ditch that ran alongside the highway, an access lane for a farmer to get into his field. The SUV swerved onto it and crashed through the pipe-and-wire gate into the pasture. Grazing cows, startled, began to move.

  Lars braked, but the Stanley was already past the lane.

  “Hang on!” yelled Lars and the Stanley bounced off the highway, down into the wide ditch, and t-W-i-S-t-e-D its way up out of the ditch. Chuffing under the load, it nevertheless went through the barbed wire fence as if it wasn’t there.

  The SUV was ahead of them, climbing a steepish slope, bouncing and skidding, flinging sod, mud and worse in all directions. Cows, only as alarmed as calm and stupid animals can get, scattered slowly.

  The Stanley might have been on a country road, climbing the hill smoothly and effortlessly.

  On the other side of the slope were the remains of a woodlot: stumps and fallen logs, heaps of brush, mud-holes. The SUV swerved and slid between the obstacles, bottoming here and there. A hubcap flew off. Marvin tried to dodge back toward the highway and snagged his exhaust on a stump. It tore loose and suddenly his engine was very loud.

  The Stanley went over everything. This was common terrain when it was on the design board, and its big wheels kept the underside clear of obstructions. Lars, after years of hard driving, with special law-enforcement training and the amazing Stanley to ride, kept thwarting Marvin and his SUV’s every attempt to regain the highway.

  Betsy, hanging on like grim death, watched the SUV finally dodge wildly around the last heap of brush, then crush another barbed wire fence. They were still on downhill terrain, and the SUV gained speed as it roared into a field that some hopeful farmer had plowed, harrowed, and planted with corn that had sprouted into neat rows of green about eight inches high. “Got ’im now!” Lars crowed, though Betsy couldn’t see how.

  The SUV destroyed the sprouting plants in their hundreds as it veered down the gray-black field. It started up another slope, this one steeper than the last, slowing as it went, fishtailing madly, earth and small green plants flying in all directions. The big whip aerial on the back was flailing as if wielded by a mad driver and the horses under the hood were real and needed beating to greater effort.

  Lars was by now close enough that some clods struck his windshield. By the time they reached the top, the SUV, despite its roaring engine and whipping aerial, was barely making any progress at all—and blocking its passage was a white board fence. On the other side, a dozen flesh and blood horses stood, heads raised in amazement.

  The SUV lacked momentum to break this fence down. By twisting the wheel hard, Marvin managed to turn and start along it, Lars close behind.

  “He’s going to get away, isn’t he?” said Betsy, as the SUV started again to build speed.

  “Nah, there’s another fence up ahead. I’ll corner him there.”

  And he did. Marvin tried to turn, but Lars was crowding him in his outer rear quarter, and Marvin ended up hard against the fence, too close to open his door. Lars shut the throttle down and leaped out of his car all in one movement. Before Betsy could even think what to do, Lars was sprawled across the hood of the SUV, pointing a gun at Marvin through the windshield, yelling at him to shut the engine off.

  Marvin shut the engine off and raised his hands.

  Lars called, “Betsy, blow the whistle until you see some backup coming.”

  Betsy pulled the brass-headed knob on the dash, sending the horses in the meadow into wild flight. She blew a long and then a row of shorts, then a long again. She kept doing it.

  It seemed like a long time before a farmer drove up on an immense tractor, curious to know what these people were doing in his field. He had a cell phone in a pocket.

  “So it was Marvin after all?” said Godwin from a stool in the corner. He was wearing immaculate white shoes, socks, and trousers, and not anxious to get anything greasy on them. His pearl-gray silk shirt was also vulnerable and he hitched the stool just a little bit farther from the wall where, he was sure, spiders lurked. Godwin was not afraid of spiders, but surely their little feet were dirty from crawling up and down that dusty wall. If one got on him, it might leave a trail. He had a date with John for dinner, and John had sounded very quiet and gentle when he’d called yesterday. Things were going to be all right, probably, but Godwin always felt more confident when he was dressed especially well.

  “No, it was both of them,” said Betsy.

  She was sitting on a low rolling chest designed to be sat upon, made of plastic, used by gardeners who didn’t like stooping or kneeling but who had a long row to plant or weed. She was wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless pink blouse, although she was getting too old to be going sleeveless, except among friends.

  But everyone present was a friend. Jill was there, sitting on the workbench, her bruises from the fight with Charlotte making bold purple comments on her smooth complexion.

  And Lars, of course, since this was his barn. He was in his grubbiest jeans and T-shirt, under the Stanley, “swaging the boiler”—banging a shaped metal plug up the numberless copper tubes, making them round again. It was a long, long job. He’d divided the tubes into areas, and worked on one area at a time; otherwise, he’d fall into despair at the large number there were to swage.

  During the wait for ba
ckup to arrive, the boiler had run itself dry. Lars should have told Betsy to shut it down, close off the valves, but he’d been concentrating on keeping Marvin from doing something stupid.

  Betsy took most of the blame. She should have thought of it, paid attention to the gauges. But the Stanley had sat there in silence and she had fallen into her internal combustion habit of thinking a silent car was a car shut off, and so the boiler was scorched.

  “How do you know it was both of them?” asked Godwin.

  “Because that was the only way everything fit. She was the one who pulled the trigger. She shot him early in the morning of the Excelsior run, as they were getting ready to leave the house for St. Paul. Then she called Marvin, and he came over and took Bill’s body over to the lay-by in the trunk of his car. Charlotte followed with the trailer they hauled the Maxwell in. It was Marvin who drove the Maxwell in the run, not Bill.”

  “But surely people talked to Bill,” objected Godwin. “How could they mistake Marvin for him?”

  “Actually they didn’t really talk to him. Charlotte stayed with Marvin until he was parked. She talked to Adam and to anyone who came by, until Marvin was well under the hood and able just to grunt at anyone who tried to talk to him.”

  “Why would Marvin help her like that?” asked Godwin.

  “Because they were lovers, had been for years. Everything was okay until Bill started spending more time at home. Then he got suspicious. Marvin wanted Charlotte to divorce Bill, but Marvin wasn’t a wealthy man. And while Bill wasn’t taking care of his high blood pressure, he may have had his suspicions about Marvin confirmed before he had that fatal stroke everyone was anticipating.”

  “Golden handcuffs,” said Godwin sadly.

  “Yes, at least in part. But also, tyrants don’t make loving husbands.”

  “What do you think, she just decided she’d had enough and shot him?” asked Jill.

  “I don’t think so. She’s a very intelligent person, she would have had a better plan set up in advance. I think she told the truth in her confession; they had a quarrel, he got violent, which he’d done before, and she went for the gun and shot him.”

  “Self-defense, then?” asked Godwin.

  “Detective Steffans says no. She had to go into another room, unlock a drawer, and then go back with it. She could have left the house instead. On the other hand, one reason she wore those enveloping dresses was because sometimes she had to hide bruises. Bill struck her often, but was careful to hit her in places she could cover up with clothing.”

  “The monster!” said Godwin, with a shiver.

  “So what put you on to them?” asked Jill.

  “Orts,” said Betsy.

  That had been said into a break in the hammering from Lars, and he wheeled himself out from under his car long enough to inquire, “Orts?”

  “Those little pieces of floss you cut off the end of a row of stitching. When you run it down so short you can’t take another stitch. The end you cut off is an ort.”

  “Oh,” he said and went back to hammering.

  “What about orts?” persisted Jill.

  “The photographs of the crime scene you brought me, remember? There were orts on Bill’s trousers, just like they were on Charlotte’s dress. She said she left them wherever she stitched. Anyone who lay on the floor of her sewing room—where the shooting took place—would come away with orts all over his clothes. But the man who drove into Excelsior and dove under the hood of his car to repair it, had no orts on his trousers. That photograph of him in the Excelsior Bay Times showed them immaculately clean, as clean as Godwin over there.”

  Godwin looked down at himself, then smiled at Betsy. “Thank you,” he said.

  “That’s it?” said Jill. “Just because of some orts?”

  “Well, there were some other things. The way she knew what Marvin was thinking when they came into my shop without his saying a word was exactly the way she knew what ‘Bill’ was thinking when he was sitting beside her in the Maxwell. I thought she did that with everyone she knew well, but she didn’t do it with anyone else. The smile she gave Marvin at the Courage Center pool was the same she gave the person we all thought was her husband. When I found out what kind of a tyrant Bill was, I wondered how Charlotte could feel so affectionate toward him. The answer was, she couldn’t.”

  Godwin said, “So you just put it all together in your usual clever way.”

  Betsy frowned. “I tried to think of other explanations, but none worked. Broward acted badly about my investigating because he thought he was the only one who knew about Marvin and Charlotte’s affair and was trying to prevent my finding out and telling his sister and brothers. Charlotte lied when she said Bro and Bill teamed up to keep Adam from taking Birmingham Metal.”

  “How’d you find that out?” asked Jill.

  “I didn’t. Steffans did. Bro told him the reason he came home was because he heard from Bill’s doctor that if Bill didn’t retire, he’d be dead in six months. Since Bro knew Steffans was looking for motives, Bro had every reason to point at Adam—and he did tell him about the Fuller and the race for president of the car club.

  “And there was an accident in the tunnel that Saturday, just as Adam said, so his alibi checked out. So it wasn’t Broward and it wasn’t Adam.”

  She turned to Jill. “Another thing that bothered me was the medical examiner’s statement about time of death.” She turned to Jill. “You know what I mean. The estimate was, he died between late Friday night and noon on Saturday. That makes the window curiously lopsided, if he’d been killed in that lay-by around noon. But if he was killed early in the morning, that was right in the middle of the window.”

  Jill nodded. “I see what you mean.”

  “I thought for a long while it was Marvin who did the whole thing, shot Bill and hid his body in the lay-by. But when? The night before? Marvin had an alibi for the night before; he was playing poker with some friends. Maybe late at night, after the poker game, or the day of the run, early in the morning. I thought about Bill going to confront Marvin over the affair he was having with Charlotte. I thought perhaps Marvin shot him when Bill got violent, and then, to cover the time of the murder, he took Bill’s place, driving the Maxwell in the run. But why bring Charlotte into it? He could just bury the body somewhere, or make it look like a robbery. Surely Marvin would never ask the woman he loved to be an accessory to murder. But if Marvin drove the Maxwell, Charlotte was right in the middle of the cover-up, deeply involved.

  “So I thought she must be the one who shot him—only not at the lay-by, she was with me all day Saturday. Then I thought, well, what if she shot him early Saturday morning, when they were getting ready for the run? Then, okay, it still was Marvin doing the driving. She called Marvin to help her, and they came up with this hasty scheme. And there it was, all the pieces in place.”

  “Clever of her to get you to provide her with an alibi,” said Godwin.

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Jill. “She didn’t know about Betsy’s sleuthing skills or she would never have involved her. Once she found out Betsy has a nose for crime, she had to pretend she wanted Betsy to investigate, which was really the last thing on earth she wanted.”

  Betsy nodded. “And because she was scared of what I might find out, she kept coming around to check on me. That was another thing that made me look at her. She couldn’t wait for me to come to her, she just had to find out if I was getting close. When she turned up in Willmar to shove Adam under my nose, I knew I was right.”

  “That’s two police investigators you’ve gotten in ahead of,” said Godwin. “Sergeant Mike Malloy and now Detective Steffans.”

  But Betsy shook her head. “No, he was onto her as well. He followed her out to Willmar because he was afraid she might try to murder me. While she was out there, he had a forensics team picking up all kinds of evidence in her house.”

  Godwin cocked his head at her. “You like him, don’t you?”

  “Heavens no!” said
Betsy. “For one thing, he’s too tall and gawky. For another, his ears stick out. For another . . .” She tried to think of a personality trait to complain about, but once she started thinking about his shy smile, his charming wit, the way he looked at her with admiring eyes, she had to stop, because she couldn’t think of anything else.

  Fabric: Aida, White, or Black

  Design Count: 73w x 79h

  Design Size: 7.3 x 7.9 in, 10 Count

  The designer, Denise E. Williams, stitched this design on black 14-count Aida. On any other color fabric, stitch the design first, and then fill in the blank stitch spaces using DMC Black.

  Hints

  1. Take the pattern to a copy shop and enlarge it so the markings in the squares are easy to read.

  2. Find and mark the center of the pattern, and the center of your fabric.

  3. If you use black fabric, put a white cloth behind it to make the weave easier to see.

  4. This pattern is trickier than it looks. Count twice so you only have to stitch once.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com