Knit Your Own Murder

by Monica Ferris

  Betsy said, “So did Joe Mickels. Did you think of him, too, as a possible murderer?”

  “No, not right away. He and Maddy had no relationship I knew of until this Water Street thing, but . . .”

  “But what, Chaz?”

  “Well, I’m sure Maddy was stretching herself pretty thin on this Water Street property. She had taken out mortgages on some of her buildings so she could keep up with the bidding, and she was angry about that. And that last confrontation, that was serious.”

  “Her behavior must have been disturbing. Did you ever think about quitting your job?”

  “Yes, off and on. But never for long. She was honest—I know, I know, but she was. She wasn’t out to cheat anyone, she just wanted a fair chance. She was the most . . . straightforward person I’ve ever known. She knew what she wanted and went for it.” As he spoke, his tone grew warmer. “And she was interesting. She was complicated. She knew lots of things about lots of things. That sounds like Trivial Pursuit, doesn’t it? But deeper than that, not trivia. Things like history, science, and art.” His voice softened further. “She was a thinker. She challenged me to think, and I liked that.” His throat filled, and it became hard for him to talk. He swallowed and tried to suck it up. “I loved working for her.”

  “That’s wonderful, and it was brave of you to stand up among a gathering of strangers and say you loved her.” Betsy made a note on her pad and asked, “How did Joe Mickels fit into the bidding war?”

  “Well, I heard Mr. Mickels wanted that property, that he was a fanatic about it. But I’d also heard he was kind of a miser, so I think he was mad that the two of them kept bidding the price up. I’m pretty sure he knew Maddy and Harry were enemies—you couldn’t get anywhere near them without learning that—but he didn’t take sides or interfere between them that I knew of. He didn’t egg them on.” He stopped short, and added, “It would have been stupid to egg them on, as it would have just raised the price even more.”

  “Was he angry at them?”

  Chaz nodded. “I think so—no, Maddy told me he was. He thought they were unbusinesslike, she said. Taking it personal, when this was a business deal—though it was personal with her, too. Maddy told me Joe had wanted a big building with his name on it for a long time. Years.”

  “That’s true,” said Betsy. “He tried to force me out of this building—he was my landlord back then and wanted everyone out so he could tear it down and put up the Mickels Building.” She sighed. “I think all three of them were taking it personally, though perhaps not for the same reasons.

  “You talked about her being angry. Was she capable of violence? Physical violence? Did you ever see her strike someone?”

  “No, absolutely not. When she got really angry, it was mostly at herself, for losing her temper or making a mistake in managing or selling or flipping a property. She’d stomp around her office, and sometimes she’d throw something hard enough to break it, but it was her own something, and not just a stapler or a wastebasket. She might smash a valuable clock or vase, or she’d rip up a document, or, once, a nice wall calendar, the kind that comes from a museum, and then have to buy a replacement, and that would make her even madder. So then she’d sit down and knit. I was surprised at the way she’d knit, too, almost like she was mad at the yarn.” He smiled and shook his head. “Knitting was her act of violence.”

  Connor said, “Maybe that’s another reason she didn’t want to be honored as the person who contributed the most knitted toys. It was a reminder of how often she was angry.”

  Betsy looked admiringly at him for his perceptive comment, and Chaz nodded over and over. He said, “Yes, that makes sense. On the other hand, I wonder if maybe she didn’t see herself that way, not as an angry person, just as a person coping with a lot of stupid people and events.”

  Betsy smiled, made a note, and underlined it.

  Then something in the kitchen dinged, and Connor said, “The biscuits are done. Let’s eat.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  After Chaz left, Connor said, “Well, what do you think?”

  Betsy said, “I think he’s a fine, intelligent young man who knows his own mind. Interesting how close he felt to Maddy. You saw how he’s deeply grieved by her death.”

  “Do you think you have a better understanding of Maddy now?”

  “I think so. Chaz is obviously biased, in that he liked and admired her, but he seems to have a good understanding of her difficult personality. What do you think?”

  “I think she was a deeply flawed person,” said Connor. “Problems with anger, first and most obviously, but also plagued by ambition and lack of empathy.”

  “I’m not so sure about the lack of empathy. She was exceptionally generous to various charities—you saw how she knitted more toys for that auction than anyone else. But I agree she was unhappy. Do you think she would have been happier if she’d had a better grasp on her anger issues or been better able to empathize with her business rivals?” asked Betsy.

  “Maybe. But she wouldn’t have been as successful in business. There’s an element of ruthlessness in people who are successful, in any field. Don’t you think?”

  Betsy nodded. “Yes, I think that’s true. Ambition has to sit in the driver’s seat if a person’s going to get good at something. Like you and ships, or me and my little shop.” Emily was right: Betsy could sell it and never have to work again, but she remained determined to make it pay.

  “You love your shop, but I think it’s sleuthing that drives you,” amended Connor. “But what do you think is sitting in Chaz’s driver’s seat?”

  She looked at the closed door to the apartment, through which Chaz had exited a few minutes ago.

  “I’m not sure.”

  * * *

  Godwin was feeling down. He and Rafael had gone out on his day off for an early spring game of golf, and while he hadn’t lost his putting skills over the winter, his drive was yards shorter than usual. Now the two were cleaning and polishing their clubs in the kitchen of their condo.

  Perhaps to distract him, Rafael asked, “Has Betsy been keeping you up to date on her investigation into the murders of Harry Whiteside and Maddy O’Leary?”

  “She is trying to prove that Joe Mickels had nothing to do with them.”

  “And you believe Joe Mickels is guilty?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Does she really believe he isn’t guilty?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to think so. I mean, he’s such a terrible man!”

  “So maybe what she’ll prove is that he is guilty.”

  Godwin nodded as he rubbed hard at a grass stain in the grooves of his driver. It had turned out that way once before. “I’d like that.” He put down the head of the club he’d inspected and sighed sadly at it. “I don’t see what I’m doing differently in my driving,” he complained to his partner.

  “I noticed you were behind your usual distance,” replied Rafael, putting his driver away and pulling out his chipping club. “But your stroke didn’t seem any different.”

  “Yes, and my aim was good, the ball went right up the middle of the fairway—ah, mostly—but it was twenty, twenty-five yards shorter than usual.”

  Rafael stopped inspecting his club to look at his companion. “You are placing your feet correctly, so the ball is nearer your left foot?”

  “Yes.” Godwin wrapped his hands around the top of his driver, putting the club end on the floor next to an imaginary ball, feet apart, elbows straight, head down, knees slightly bent. He waggled his hands a little, preparing to lift the club.

  “Ah, I see!” exclaimed Rafael.

  “What? What am I doing wrong?”

  Rafael moved to stand close behind Godwin and wrapped his arms around him, grasping Godwin’s hands. He very slightly twisted Godwin’s left hand clockwise. “There,” he said. “Now, when you bring you
r arms back, and bend the wrists, you will find more power available on the down stroke from your left hand.” But he did not step back.

  “Is there something else?” asked Godwin.

  Rafael said, his voice roughened, “I love you so very much, mi gorrión,” which is Spanish for sparrow, his nickname for Godwin.

  “Well, I love you, too, you know that.” Godwin wriggled just a little, but still Rafael did not release him.

  “I want you to marry me,” said Rafael softly.

  The wriggling stopped. “I—I—Do you mean that?”

  “I do, with all my heart. Will you?”

  “Oh, Rafael! Oh, my dear! Oh yes!” He twisted violently in Rafael’s arms, so he could turn and face him. The golf club fell to the floor. “Oh, yes, yes, yes!” He was crying with joy and threw his arms around him. “Oh my God, I’m so very happy!”

  “Then I am happy, too, mi gorrión. So very happy, too.”

  * * *

  Godwin, of course, wanted to plan the whole wedding out at once. Large or small (large), outdoors or in (in because it might rain), what each of them would wear (a black tuxedo for Rafael, a white one for Godwin), when (next June), how many to invite (hundreds, everyone they knew!), what to serve at the reception—

  Here Rafael called a halt. “It is getting late, and you have filled my head to its capacity. I want to go on the Internet and see how that Davisson auction is doing, then do some more research on English coins. Or is the correct word coinage?”

  “How can you talk about coins when we haven’t decided on beef or chicken?”

  “It doesn’t matter. We could serve hamburgers, or shrimp salad, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we exchange rings and tell each other ‘I do.’ So which is it, coins or coinage?”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “You have been speaking English longer than I have.”

  “So? Numismatists speak their own language. My second language is needlecraft.”

  Rafael laughed. “Well said, my dear. Now you also must find something to do that will unwind you enough for sleep. What will it be?”

  “I don’t know, all I can think about is— Wait, yes, I do. I’ve been neglecting my counted cross-stitch for knitting, so I think I’ll get out that little bookmark I didn’t finish in time last year.” Godwin often stitched bookmarks as Christmas and birthday presents, working them between bigger projects all year long.

  “That’s better,” said Rafael. And he went off to his office.

  Though he did not display it, Rafael was elated over Godwin’s acceptance of his proposal. He had begun to think such a wonderful thing as a lifetime partner was never to be his. Afraid his excitement would overwhelm him as it had Godwin, he determinedly set the subject aside and opened the locked cabinet where his collections—he had several—lay.

  A numismatist is interested in money. Not as a medium of exchange, but as objects of beauty, markers of history, and items with a value outside—usually over—their face value. Rafael was a coin collector. Like most collectors, he had more than one interest, but he had focused hardest on one corner of the vast world of coins; in his case, medieval English hammered silver coins. Starting casually, but more ardently as time passed, he bought an Edward the Third here, a Richard the Lionheart there, a Henry the First, a Henry the Sixth, an Edward the Second. Eventually, he had a set that ran down six centuries, pausing at every reign, beginning in 1066 with the accession of William the Conqueror and ending in 1603 with the death of Elizabeth the First. The monarchs after her he considered less interesting.

  Well, except Victoria, a remarkable woman who, like Elizabeth, gave her name to an era. He had a beautiful uncirculated crown coin from Victoria’s reign, which he kept separate from the others, both because of the centuries-long gap between her and Elizabeth and because it was a “milled” coin, not a hammered one.

  But now, having gone to coin shows at which the Minnesota coin dealer Lief Davisson had a booth, and seeing Davisson’s remarkable offerings of British coins, both before and after the centuries covered in his own collection, he was thinking of expanding. He noted that if he went back just a few kings, from the Conqueror to his predecessor Harold the Second, then to Edward the Confessor, then to Harthacnut, then to Harold Harefoot, then Cnut, who became king in 1016; then forward beyond Elizabeth the First to the present queen, he would have a thousand years of English coins, a lovely round number.

  To a collector, the hunt is even more engaging than the collection. Finishing a collection is satisfying, but it can be almost a letdown, too, and generally leads to the start of another, or at least endless upgrades of the individual coins. Here was a chance to build on a collection he had seemingly finished.

  Toward his new goal, Rafael had signed on to an online auction Davisson was holding, hoping to win a good-looking Cnut he had on offer—and a superior Edward the Confessor. He booted up and went to the auction site.

  There were excellent pictures of the many coins in the current auction, as well as the years they were minted (if known) and where. He scrolled down past the ancients to the medieval.

  There he found coins dating back to before England was united into a single kingdom in the tenth century, back when kings had names like Sigehere and Egbert, and whose portraits were sometimes hard to identify as human. Reaching at last to England as a kingdom, Rafael found no one had raised his bid on the Edward. There was a Harold the Second being offered, but the portrait wasn’t very good—Rafael insisted on good portraits—and besides, the price was already beyond what he was willing to pay.

  Harold was king for less than a year before he was defeated at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, seriously altering the course of English history. Harold was a Scandinavian, and William the Conqueror, French—sort of. William was Duke of Normandy, a dukedom so named because it was settled by Northmen, or Vikings. So in a way, England ended up with Scandinavian rulers anyway, though by the eleventh century all of Normandy had become thoroughly French.

  There was also a James the First, Elizabeth the First’s successor, being auctioned. Among his few achievements, James had introduced the custom of milled coins—made by a machine rather than struck by a hammer one by one, the blank round held on the die by a nervous apprentice. Just as you could tell a blacksmith by his burn scars, you could tell a medieval coiner by his crooked fingers.

  Rafael found the coin uninspiring, perhaps in part because he found the king himself uninspiring. Okay, James had summoned the committee that wrote the King James Bible. But he also was responsible for the torture of witches and had a number of embarrassing personal defects.

  Still, if Rafael wanted to complete the expansion, he was going to have to get a James the First. And then Charles the First, Cromwell (ugh!), Charles the Second, James the Second, William and Mary, Anne, George the First, Second, Third, and Fourth, William the Fourth, Victoria, Edward the Seventh, George the Fifth, Edward the Eighth, George the Sixth, then the current queen, Elizabeth the Second, the longest reigning monarch in English history. That admirable woman would put a nice finish to the collection. Eighteen coins—but all more common than the medieval ones, and getting more and more common as they approached the twentieth century.

  Godwin had once asked Rafael how he kept track of all those kings and queens, and Rafael proudly recited a Victorian schoolboy’s mnemonic rhyme that listed them from William the Conqueror to Victoria:

  Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee—

  Harry, Dick, John, Harry three,

  One, two, three Neds, Richard two,

  Harry four, five, six, then who?

  Edward four, five, Dick the Bad,

  Harries twain, Ned the Lad,

  Mary, Bessie, James the Vain,

  Charlie, Charlie, James again,

  Bill and Mary, Anna Gloria,

  Four Georges, William, then Victoria.

&n
bsp; Then all he had to remember was Edward, George, Edward, George, and Elizabeth. But Rafael could not have told, for a million dollars, why he, a Spaniard by birth and an American by adoption, was so fascinated by British history.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning, up in her apartment, Betsy found a reply to one of her e-mails. It was from a Howard Whiteside.

  Hello, Ms. Devonshire, it began. I am Harry Whiteside’s oldest son. I am in Wayzata to make final arrangements of his estate, and to oversee the police investigation of my father’s murder. I am the executor of his will. Are you a police detective? Your name is not familiar to me. Is this an interview we can conduct by e-mail? Or Skype? Or even old-fashioned telephone?

  But he did not give his phone number, so she e-mailed him back.

  Hello, Mr. Whiteside, she typed. I understand how busy you must be, and how sad an occasion this is for you, so thank you for your prompt reply. I am not associated with the police but an independent business owner who occasionally does private criminal investigations. I have been asked to look into a pair of murders that happened within a few days of each other in the area around Lake Minnetonka. One of them was your father’s. It is possible that two different people are responsible but also possible that they are the work of a single individual. I would take it as a great personal favor if you would care to talk with me, however briefly.

  She concluded by offering details about the shop she owned and giving the hours it was open and its phone number. She re-read the e-mail a couple of times, corrected a typo, and clicked Send.

  When she went down to the shop fifteen minutes later, the phone was ringing.

  “Crewel World, Betsy speaking, how may I help you?” she answered.

  “Seriously? Cruel World?” demanded a man’s voice, a light tenor with a little pleasant sand in it.