Knit Your Own Murder

by Monica Ferris

  In front of the couch, which faced the windows, was a highly polished chrome coffee table. It and the couch rested on a big rug woven in a geometric pattern of dark taupe and white. To the right, suspended on the wall, was a long gas fireplace with a surround of small rectangular stones a darker shade of gray than the walls. Tiny yellow flames danced through black gravel down its length, and hanging above it were two large framed architectural drawings of commercial buildings on pale gray paper. On the left side, the entire wall was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase made of matte black metal. The books in it provided touches of color. Small lights on the ceiling spotlighted the bookshelves, the coffee table, and the architectural drawings.

  As Betsy stepped farther into the room, she glanced back the way she’d come and saw on the wall a large Impressionistic painting of Marilyn Monroe’s head, done in shades of black, gray, and white, except for her lips, which were a brilliant red.

  “Wow!” said Betsy, turning back around slowly to take a second look. Someone had paid a professional interior designer a lot of money to put together this room. Outside the front window the land fell away. There were a few mature trees in black silhouette flanking the window, and houses with glowing windows were down the hill. The main feature in view was the dark, restless surface of the lake, and the darker sky with clouds moving swiftly across a half-moon high in it. The view was wonderful, in tune with the room’s message of masculinity, power, and money.

  “You like it?” asked one of the other two men standing near the windows. He was just a little taller than Heck, slimmer, older. He and the other man, even taller and very skinny, but not so much older, had dark hair and features very much like Heck’s. Clearly, the men were his two brothers, Howard and Hamilton.

  “Impressive,” said Betsy.

  “But perhaps lacking a woman’s touch,” said the thinnest brother with a wry smile. He was wearing a dark blue suit with a faint pinstripe and a dark tie, also pinstripe, but from side to side. A short glass, half full of whiskey-colored liquid and ice, was in one hand.

  “I’m Hamilton Whiteside,” he said.

  “I’m Howard,” said the other, who was wearing a very thick brown pullover and brown corduroy trousers. He held an identical glass in his hand.

  “The house is for sale, of course,” said Hamilton.

  “Would you like to make an offer?” asked Howard, only half seriously.

  Betsy laughed. “No, I don’t think so. For one thing, it’s not my style. For another, I don’t think I could afford it.”

  “Come over, sit down,” invited Hamilton, gesturing at the couch. “Would you like something to drink? We have beer, wine, gin, scotch, Campari, and—” He glanced at Heck.

  “Diet Coke, and something called ‘spicy ginger ale.’”

  “The ginger ale, please,” said Betsy, hoping it was what she thought it might be, and in any case thinking it was the best of the choices.

  So she took the tall, ice-filled glass of the pale stuff when Heck brought it to her, and she smiled. “Thank you,” she said, and she took a taste. It was what she hoped; she recognized the taste, not too sweet and very gingery. “I’ll come to your estate sale to buy all of this you have.” Betsy had found WBC Craft Sodas at a now-closed craft beer store in Saint Louis Park and was sadly disappointed when she couldn’t find the Spicy Ginger variety she’d quickly come to love anywhere else she looked.

  “There’s a whole case of it back beside the refrigerator,” said Heck.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Write that down,” said Hamilton to Howard, gravely.

  Betsy drank some more, then realized a silence had fallen. They were waiting for her.

  “Ah,” she said, looking for a coaster on which to place her sweating glass.

  “Just put it on the table,” said Heck. “It can take it.”

  She obeyed, then went into her purse for her long, narrow notepad and a pencil—ballpoint pens sometimes failed her when she was trying to get something down on paper quickly.

  She looked up and around at the three of them, all still standing, and got up to go to the egg-shaped occasional chair, which was under the window. She moved it near the coffee table and sat down. It was surprisingly comfortable. “Will you all sit?” she asked.

  “Sure,” said Heck quickly, and they moved to the couch. It was more than long enough to hold the three of them.

  “I’m interested in the kind of person your father was,” she began. “Howard, you’re the oldest; presumably you knew him best. He was a very successful businessman. But what was he like as a man? What were his hobbies? Did he fish? Play golf? Own a motorcycle?”

  “He liked to fish,” said Howard. “When he was a kid, he used to spend summers with his grandparents up somewhere in Pine County in a cabin on Pine Lake—imaginative names you people have for landmarks. He took me up there a couple of times to see the old place, which was about the size of this room and had a roof that was missing half its shingles. It actually had an outhouse, which he thought was a fine feature.” He made a sideways mouth at the memory.

  Hamilton said, “I remember that! Somebody else owned it, and he wanted to buy it from them and restore it. But they wouldn’t sell it. He kept raising his bid for it, but they had hopes some company was going to build a lodge up there and refused to sell it to Dad.”

  Heck said, amused, “An outhouse? An actual two-holer?”

  Howard said, “Yes, and he was going to keep the outhouse. Wanted us to go on vacation up there. Said roughing it would be good for us, because it was good for him.” He shook his head.

  Betsy hid a smile behind her glass of ginger ale, and took a drink.

  Hamilton said, “I saw where the hopeful owner finally died, but now someone else has it and tore down the old place to build a new cabin on it. So I guess we can be grateful we dodged that bullet.”

  Betsy asked, “Did your father know who the newest owner is, the one who built a new cabin?”

  Ham looked thoughtful. “I don’t think so—I never asked him.”

  “Could it have been Maddy O’Leary?”

  “Why Maddy O’Leary?” asked Hamilton. “Who is she?”

  “She and a man named Joe Mickels were bidding on the Excelsior property,” said Heck. “And you know Dad when someone was trying to keep him from something.”

  The brothers looked at one another. Then Howard said slowly, “If Dad thought someone bought that cabin in order to keep him from having it . . . Especially someone he was already quarreling with.”

  The others drew long faces at the thought. But Heck said, “There’s no way to know that, is there?”

  Hamilton said, “Sure there is. A search of listings of property owners on Pine Lake would tell you that. The county—and I’ll bet you a dollar it’s Pine County—would give you the names. Easy peasy.” He said to Betsy, “They call me Ham.”

  Betsy made a note. Then she said, “What do you think was your father’s strongest personal strength, Howard?”

  “Tenacity,” said Howard at once. “He tried for years to acquire that rotten old cabin. Said his grandfather built it with his own hands. And call me Howie.”

  “Fine, Howie. Was he friendly? Honest? Temperamental?” At that last word, all three stirred. Howie snorted and hid his mouth with his hand.

  “Easily stirred to anger?” suggested Betsy, and this time all three of them snorted. She made a note. “Is it possible he poisoned Maddy O’Leary?”

  “Hey, no, no, no,” said Howie, surprised at her. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”

  “It’s Dad who was murdered,” said Heck, equally surprised.

  “She’s also been murdered,” said Howie.

  “And you think our father killed her?” Ham’s tone was incredulous.

  “No, the cops think Joe did it,” said Howie. He was looking quizzically at her.


  “I was originally thinking there was one murderer who killed both Maddy and Harry,” said Betsy. “And that still may be the case. But Joe has an alibi for your father’s murder. I’m looking for someone else who was angry with him.”

  “You’ve come to the wrong source,” said Heck. “None of us knows diddly about who Dad was dealing with currently.”

  “Now hold on,” said Ham. “If you’re looking for who was tight around the jaws, get a list of who he was doing business with, and you’ll have a list of who was mad at him.”

  “Well,” said Betsy, “he dealt recently with Howie.”

  “He asked me to help him design a building he wanted to put up in Excelsior,” said Howie. “I turned him down. No fight, no quarrel, I just said no.”

  “I’m talking about before that, the time your father took elements of an industrial park design you started doing for him and hired someone else to execute a new design based on your drawings. And you sued him for doing that.”

  “What are you—how do you—where did you—?”

  “Do you deny that you are Stonebridge Design?” asked Betsy.

  “Uh-oh,” said Ham in an amused voice.

  “So you knew about it?” Betsy asked him.

  “A chair thrown at the judge in his courtroom? Yes, I’d read the story. But I didn’t know that was you, Howie—or Dad. But I should have; it sounds a whole lot like him. And you.” Ham was smiling broadly.

  “That’s enough!” said Heck. “This is serious.”

  Everyone looked at Howie, whose face had gone red with fury. He took a long, noisy breath through his nose, then said, “Yes, that was me. I couldn’t believe that a dad would do that to his own son.”

  “Not all dads,” said Ham. “Not even most dads. But our dad? Sure, why not?”

  Betsy said, “I know Heck has an alibi for the night your father was murdered. Do the rest of you?”

  “Now she sounds like a cop,” said Ham, amused. “And yes, I have an alibi. I was in my office at home researching some upcoming litigation—which I should be home doing more of right now—while my wife kept freshening my coffee mug.”

  Ham, Heck, and Betsy looked at Howie. He threw up his brown-sweatered arms and tried to make a joke of it. “Well, how the hell was I to know I’d need an alibi?” he demanded. When they didn’t laugh, he continued, “If I’d known, I’d have stayed at home! But I had a fight with Abby, and I went out for a drive, stayed out all night.”

  “Did you go to a hotel?” asked Heck. “Or to a friend’s house?”

  “It was three o’clock in the morning before I cooled off enough to think about finding a place to bed down. I looked like a bum—I’d been working in the yard, I was all over dirt and blisters, I didn’t want to show my face anywhere. So I went to the work site and slept in my car, went home around eight to find Abby sick with worry, and we made up.” He shrugged. “We hadn’t had a fight like that for years.”

  “So the investigators here in Wayzata wonder if you picked that fight,” said Betsy.

  Howie stared at her with respect. “Their very words,” he said.

  “If he didn’t want to show his dirty face at a hotel,” suggested Heck, “then why would he show it on an airline?”

  “If we’re talking premeditated,” said Ham, “you stash a change of clothing in your trunk beforehand, clean up in the airport bathroom. Then change back and roll on the floor of the parking garage before you go home.”

  “What are you trying to do to me?” Howie shouted at Ham. “Get me hanged?”

  “Minnesota doesn’t have the death penalty,” said Betsy.

  He turned an angry face to her, then suddenly laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “This is stupid!” he shouted. “You’re all stupid! I didn’t murder my father!” He made a sound dangerously near a sob. “I never killed any human being in my life!” He turned away from them all. “I’m not staying here for this! She’s not a cop, she can’t arrest me! I think we’re done.” He gestured at Betsy. “It’s over. This was a mistake, agreeing to talk to her. We’re done, you’re done, all right? Heck, show her out!”

  “Hold on, pardner, hold on just one minute,” said Heck. “Ham didn’t mean anything—right, Ham?”

  “That’s right,” said Ham, with a placating smile. “No reason to fly off the handle. I apologize. We’ve got a problem here, and we need to work together to solve it. I don’t think you murdered Dad, all right? Seriously, I don’t.”

  “Me, neither,” said Heck. He looked to Betsy for an agreeing comment.

  But Betsy didn’t give him one, instead drank some more ginger ale. “What time did you leave the house after the argument?” she asked Howie.

  “Answer her,” warned Ham when Howie appeared about to explode again. Ham was looking very lawyerly.

  Howie blew out the big breath he’d taken in order to resume shouting. He took a lesser one. “All right, all right, let me think.” He turned to look at the long line of little flames in the fireplace. “It was almost dark. I remember being surprised by that. I was working outside and didn’t realize how dark it was getting—you know how that happens.”

  Ham and Heck made soft sounds of agreement

  “The argument started at a late dinnertime—she’d called me in about four times before I did come in, and I came to the table looking like the wrath of God, and she told me to at least go wash my hands. But dammit, I was hungry and I grabbed a chicken leg—and she knocked it out of my hand. I was pissed. I picked it up off the floor and took a bite, and she yanked it out of my hand and threw it in the garbage, and we were off to the races, the kids crying and hiding in their rooms, me totally out of control.” He took a breath and blew it out through pursed lips. “So I don’t know, it was probably after eight when I stomped out.” He looked at Betsy. “Okay?”

  She said, “Your home is in the Eastern time zone, so here in the Midwest it would be after seven. You’d need time to clean up, get to the airport, get a ticket, fly to Minneapolis, then get from the airport to Wayzata. The medical examiner has set the time of death somewhere around eight thirty, give or take forty minutes. So . . . you’re okay, if she’s right—and you’re right—about the time.” She wrote briefly in her notebook.

  “There, see?” said Heck, grinning. “See?”

  “All right, all right, you’re right, I guess,” said Howie, looking a little ashamed of himself. “But dammit . . .”

  “Yes, you are right,” said Betsy. She had let this get out of hand because she had underestimated how volatile one of them might become when he realized he was suspected of murder.

  She said, “I’d like to shift focus from you back to your father. He seems to have been quick to anger, willing to use physical force.”

  “That’s him exactly,” agreed Howie, and the other two nodded.

  “But what about more subtle ways of aggression?” she asked.

  “I don’t understand the question,” said Howie. “Subtle aggression? Is that like when a person hugs you to death?”

  “I’m thinking practical jokes—like he did to you, Heck, when you were a kid on the job.”

  The men’s almost identical puzzled expressions cleared up.

  “Oh, that,” said Heck. “Is a practical joke a kind of aggression?”

  “Of course it is,” Betsy said. “You make a fool of someone, he may laugh, but he feels injured. You’re showing him you’re smarter than he is, more clever.”

  “I think almost everyone working on a building site plays practical jokes,” said Howie.

  “So do soldiers, so do cops, so do cowboys,” said Heck. “It’s part of the rough-and-ready mentality, I think.”

  “Attorneys as well,” put in Ham. “Only ours are sneakier, of course. Sometimes a victim never realizes he’s been played.”

  “But did Harry like practical jokes played
on him?”

  “Now, that’s a whole different story,” said Heck. “He’d lay for anyone who pulled one on him. Didn’t find them funny the least little bit.”

  “That’s right,” said Howie, nodding.

  “But he liked to play them,” said Betsy.

  “Sure he did,” said Howie. “All his life, and some of them were damn mean. But so what?”

  Ham said, “She’s thinking about that woman, what’s her name, O’Leary, Maddy O’Leary. Someone sneaked poison onto her knitting yarn, remember? A really filthy practical joke. And Harry was very angry that she outbid him. And if she’d already done him out of the cabin . . .”

  “No, no,” said Heck. “She died from that poisoned yarn. That’s not exactly a little ol’ practical joke. And anyway, she died after Dad.”

  “The trap was laid before Harry was killed,” said Betsy, and a silence fell.

  Finally, Heck murmured, “Well, damn.”

  But that was it; without saying a word, the trio seemed to draw together, to make a pact to say nothing more. The man, after all, was their father. Betsy tried to ask a few more questions, but she got monosyllables in return.

  “Maybe we had better wrap this up,” Betsy said at last. “I am grateful to all three of you for allowing me to come here and talk with you. I hope there are no hard feelings and that you’ll allow me to contact one or more of you if I have additional questions.”

  There was a little murmur of reluctant agreement, and Betsy collected their current contact information.

  She thanked them again.

  Heck walked her through the beautiful kitchen, retrieved and helped her on with her coat, but when he opened the door, rain was falling in a steady patter.

  “Oh, rats,” sighed Betsy. “I knew I should have worn my raincoat.”

  “Where’s your car?” asked Heck, peering out into the rain past the three SUVs.