She shrugged at them. Doris was a heavy-boned woman, nearly as tall as Alice, fond of elaborate blond wigs and bright red lipstick. A relative newcomer to stitching, she had taken to it with enthusiasm, and was never afraid to try new stitches or projects. But she retained a love for the quick, simple patterns she had begun with, and used them to decorate packages or as impulse gifts. She was a tenant of Betsy’s, having taken the apartment her brother had rented before he retired to a warmer climate.
“I like to watch true crime shows on television,” she explained. “And Court TV. I can tell you there’s a big difference between first-, second-, and third-degree murder charges. People charged with first degree usually don’t get bail at all. Sergeant Malloy didn’t say what degree murder he was charging Godwin with, did he?”
“No,” said Betsy. “So how do I find out?”
“Well, call him and ask,” suggested Emily.
“No, call the jail,” said Bershada.
“Yes, call the jail,” agreed Doris.
“He’s probably not there, yet,” said Emily. “It takes almost half an hour to get from here to downtown Minneapolis, where the jail is, and they only left a few minutes ago.”
“Adult Detention Center,” said Alice.
“What?” asked Betsy.
“That’s the name of our new jail: Hennepin County Adult Detention Center.” Alice volunteered at a homeless shelter once a week, probably the sad reason she knew this.
“Anyway,” said Emily, “I don’t see how he could be there yet, unless they took him by helicopter.”
But Betsy couldn’t just sit there, she was in a fever of impatience. She lifted the big phone book from a bottom drawer of her desk, looked up the number, and dialed it. Sure enough, no one there knew anything about a Godwin DuLac, prisoner. She dropped the receiver and put both hands over her face.
“We’re all sorry about this, Betsy,” said Martha. “Is there anything we can do?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Come on then, it’s time we started for home,” said Alice, and the women slipped away, even the woman who had wanted yarn for the painted canvas she was about to buy.
Betsy put the phone book away and just sat there, her mind a frightened blank.
She still hadn’t moved when Shelly came rushing, breathless, into the shop ten minutes later. “I just heard!” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
“There isn’t anything anyone can do, not yet, anyway.”
“I mean here in the shop. I can work for you while you go find things out.”
“What kind of hours can you work? Spring break is over and school’s a long way from being finished for the summer.” Shelly taught third grade in the local elementary school.
“School lets out at three, I can come straight here. I had two messages on my machine when I got home, and I came right over. I can work every day this week, from three fifteen to five and all day on Saturday.” Shelly worked part-time anyway during the school year, and all summer long.
“What about—”
“Homework, schomework, I can do that after supper and on Sunday. We’re talking third grade, not high school. I’ll help you find another part-timer for the rest of the weekday, okay? Here, let me hang up my coat.” She suited action to word and soon Betsy heard her humming in the back as she restacked and reshelved. She sighed, found Shelly’s time card in a desk drawer, and noted the time she started.
The sound of all that industry brought Betsy’s brain back in line, and she called the jail again. Again she was told no Godwin DuLac was there. She hung up and stuck the paper with the attorneys’ phone numbers under the phone. Then she realized it was on the back of an order form. She got a new order form out and began copying the items onto it. By the time she got to the end, her brain was almost up to speed and she remembered they were out of the whitest color of Rainbow Fuzzy Wuzzy floss—what was the number? She’d better go see.
But before she could do more than stand up, Shelly came to the desk holding the Margaret Bendig canvas and a few lengths of needlepoint yarn. “I found this on the floor,” she said.
And, to her surprise, Betsy sat down and burst into tears.
“What’s the matter?” asked Shelly, looking at the canvas for footprints or other damage.
“What am I going to do without Goddy?” Betsy moaned. “Oh, God, I feel so helpless!”
“Here now!” Shelly came behind the desk and turned the chair so Betsy was facing her. “Pull yourself together, you hear?”
Betsy looked up, feeling indignant. Shelly continued, “Goddy can afford hysterics at present, and is welcome to them, but not you!”
“Oh, Shelly, you don’t know—” Betsy started.
“Listen to me! Goddy needs you, and you’re going to have to be ready to fight for him. You can’t do that if you’re going to break down in tears every fifteen minutes!”
“But I can’t—”
“You can! You have to! And what’s more, you’re going to have to be both boss and Vice President in Charge of Operations of Crewel World, Inc.!”
“No, really—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you just got so used to him as your safety net you forgot to notice how rarely he’s had to save your kiester lately. What the store is gonna miss is his wit and charm—plus, that boy could sell ice cubes in Antarctica. But by gosh, you’re no slouch. How did we do while he was in Mexico?”
“Well, I guess we did okay. But my customers missed him. And so did I.”
“Sure. And they’ll miss him now. They’ll probably throw a heck of a welcome-home party when he gets out.” Shelly leaned forward. “And he will get out, right?”
“I sure hope—”
“No, no, no. We’re not talking hope, we’re talking action .” She said the word low, like a warning growl. “You are going to call on that wild card talent of yours for solving crime, and you are going to find out who really murdered John Nye, and bring our fair-haired boy home. Right?”
Betsy looked up into those hazel-green eyes, currently sparkling with electricity. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ll prove him innocent and bring him home.”
“Of course you will. So—” Shelly picked up a slip of paper and wrote a single, long word on it and handed it to Betsy. Kwitchyerbellyachin, it said.
Betsy read it and smiled through the last of her tears. “Thanks, Shelly.”
Betsy waited an hour and tried calling the Adult Detention Center again.
“Yes, we have him here,” said the man in charge of speaking to civilians.
“Do you know how much his bail is?”
“Ma’am?”
“How much will it cost to bail him out?”
The man sighed. “You can’t bail him out, he hasn’t been arraigned yet. That means formally charged, in court, before a judge.”
“When will that happen?”
“Sometime in the next thirty-six hours.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“No, ma’am. Right now the only people who can talk to him are the investigators and his attorney.”
Betsy hung up and rested a hand on the receiver. “His attorney,” she repeated.
“What’d you say?” asked Shelly.
“Godwin needs an attorney. Where’s that piece of paper?” She began to move things around on the desk with increasing urgency until she found it. “Hah!” She looked at the two names. “Shelly, have you ever heard of Attorney Frank Whistler? Or Marvin Lebowski?”
Shelly shook her head. “Where’d you find those names?”
“Jim Pemberthy recommended them. He said Mr. Whistler is a weasel and Mr. Lebowski is a tank.”
“Mike Malloy hasn’t got enough of a brain for a weasel to work on. A tank running over him he’ll understand.”
“Yes, but a judge is different, he may resent tank treads up his back.” Still, the notion of a tank appealed. “I’ll call Mr. Lebowski now.”
But Mr. Lebowski was in court, according to his s
ecretary, who took Betsy’s name and phone number. Betsy made sure she had Godwin’s name spelled right and understood that he was in the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center, charged with murder. Then she hung up and dialed Mr. Whistler’s number.
Mr. Whistler’s secretary put Betsy right through. “Mr. Whistler, my name is Betsy Devonshire, and I got your name from Attorney James Pemberthy of Excelsior.”
“Yes? How is Jim?”
“Very well. But he doesn’t practice in criminal defense, and that’s the kind of help we need right now.”
“Who is ‘we,’ Ms. Devonshire?” Mr. Whistler had a rich, confident, good-humored baritone, and a way of very slightly over-pronouncing his words, as if he thought her slightly deaf. Or dull-witted.
“Actually, it’s my store manager, Godwin DuLac. He’s also a close friend. He was arrested about an hour ago for murdering his lover, John Nye.”
“Nye: Are you speaking of the senior associate at Wellborn, Hanson, and Smith?”
“You know him?”
“I’ve heard of him, he has—had a very good reputation.” There was a pause. Betsy wondered if what Mr. Whistler had heard was nothing about John Nye the person, but that an attorney with an important law firm had been killed. “Is Mr. DuLac able to handle an attorney’s fee?” First things first, of course, thought Betsy.
“Probably not. But I can. That is, I think I can. How much do you charge?”
Mr. Whistler named a rate per hour—or fraction thereof—that was surprising, even with Mr. Pemberthy’s warning.
“All right,” said Betsy, wincing, writing that number down and underlining it. “I think we can manage that.”
“And, of course, I will need a retainer.” When he said how much that would be, it left her unable to speak for several seconds.
“Are you there?” asked Mr. Whistler, concerned.
“Uh, yes, I’m still here. Gosh, that’s a lot of money.”
“And it’s payable in advance.”
Nothing weaselly about the way he asked for money, thought Betsy, rudely. “I . . . see. Well, Mr. Pemberthy did give me the name of another lawyer—”
“I understand.”
“Good. I’ll call you back.”
“Hold on a minute. If you do hire me, I’ll have to start fast. So, with the understanding that you may not hire me, may I nevertheless ask you some questions?”
“What kind of questions?”
“For example, where is Mr. DuLac now, do you know?”
“Well, he went a little crazy when they came for him, so they didn’t interrogate him, but just took him right down to the jail.”
“‘Crazy’?”
“Hysterical is a better word, I suppose. He was here, at work, and they just walked in and handcuffed him while the detective read him his rights. Goddy is an emotional sort of person, and he started screaming ‘no, no,’ and they had to more or less drag him out. It was awful, just awful.” Betsy closed her eyes and swallowed hard.
“That must have been tough to watch.”
“It was. Tougher on him, of course.”
“What kind of business do you own, Ms. Devonshire?”
“It’s a needlework shop, called Crewel World.”
There was a brief pause, then rich laughter. “Very clever, Crewel World!” he said.
“Thank you.”
“In your opinion, is there enough evidence in the hands of the police to convict Mr. DuLac of this crime?”
“No. In fact, I can’t understand what Mike was thinking when he arrested Goddy.”
“Who is Mike?”
“Sergeant Mike Malloy, Excelsior Police.”
“You know him?”
“Yes, I’ve had several run-ins with him.”
“I . . . beg your pardon?”
“I sometimes do some investigating on behalf of people wrongly accused of a crime. Sergeant Malloy does not always appreciate what he calls my interference.”
“No, I can imagine that he wouldn’t. Well, thank you, I hope I have the beginning of an understanding of the situation here. I want you to let me know as soon as possible if you wish me to represent Mr. DuLac, so I may advise the police that they are not to question him without my presence.”
“All right, I’ll do that.”
“Let me give you a phone number where you can reach me at any time.” She wrote that down, too, and they hung up.
Eleven
BETSY was upstairs in her apartment trying to think what to have for supper. She finally found a small pepperoni pizza at the back of the freezer, which made her happy until she thought how Godwin would sneer at frozen pizza and make something far more interesting. That made her think about the cold balogna sandwich he was probably eating in his cell—and that made her burst into angry, frightened tears.
But the storm soon passed. She pulled herself together, turned on the oven, and had just put the pizza in when the doorbell buzzed. At the same time, the phone rang. She grabbed the phone and said, “Hold on a second, someone’s at the door,” and went to ask into the intercom system, “Who’s there?”
“Charlie Nye. I really need to talk to you.”
“Come up, I’m the door on the left,” she replied and pushed the buzzer to unlock the downstairs door. She left her own door slightly open and went back to the phone.
“Thanks for waiting,” she said.
“Is this Ms. Devonshire?” said a man’s voice with just a hint of sand in it, and a faint accent she couldn’t place. Maryland? Nebraska?
“Yes?”
“I’m Marvin Lebowski. You wanted to talk to me about a case?”
“Yes. My employee and good friend Godwin DuLac has been arrested for the murder of John Nye, and I’m seeking a lawyer to represent him.”
“John Nye the attorney, right?”
Was there the merest hint of avarice in his voice? Honestly, lawyers! “Yes,” she said.
“When was Mr. DuLac arrested?”
“This afternoon. The police took him right out of the shop.”
“And am I right that Mr. DuLac is the young man who found the body?”
“Yes. Actually we both found the body. Godwin was scared to go over to the house by himself and persuaded me to come along.”
“Ah, yes, that’s right, the newspaper said two people were found in the house by police. And now they’ve arrested one of them. But you are not considered a suspect?”
“No. Godwin, you see, lived with John until shortly before the murder. They had a quarrel, and Godwin moved out. He was staying with me.”
“Do you think the police have enough evidence to bring a conviction?”
Interesting, that was the same question Mr. Whistler had asked. Must be a lawyerly way of trying to find out how tough the case was going to be. “No, of course not.”
“You said you’re Godwin’s employer.”
“Yes, I own Crewel World, a needlework shop in Excelsior. Godwin was my store manager.”
Betsy heard the snick of a doorknob turning and looked around to see Charlie Nye sticking his head through the open door. She gestured at him to come in and go forward into the living room, and returned her attention to her caller.
“Were Mr. Nye and Mr. DuLac engaged in a homosexual relationship?”
“Yes.”
“A long-term one?”
“Yes, I believe something close to eight years.”
“Was Mr. DuLac taken to the Excelsior police station?”
“No, he’s in the Hennepin County Adult Detention Center. He became hysterical when they arrested him, and so he was taken directly to jail. I can imagine what it’s like down there, and I’m—well, I’m afraid for his safety. He’s very obviously gay.”
“Now don’t worry about that, he’s perfectly safe there. They have experience with gay prisoners and are careful not to place them in jeopardy.”
“Oh, thank you for telling me that!” said Betsy.
“No charge. However, if you think Mr. DuLac wo
uld like me to represent him, I’ll need a retainer before I can act on his behalf.”
Betsy braced herself and asked, “How much of a retainer?”
He named a sum even larger than Mr. Whistler’s.
Betsy sighed. “Rats. Okay, I’m talking to another attorney as well. I don’t know which of you to choose, but I think it should be someone Goddy is comfortable with. Would it be possible—is it even ethical, to ask both of you to visit him, and let him decide?”
“I don’t see why not. How about I call the Detention Center right now to ensure that Mr. DuLac knows he has potential representation, and that he should not consent to talk with a police investigator without the presence of an attorney.”
“I’d be grateful if you could do that. Thank you.”
Mr. Lebowski took Betsy’s cell, home, and office phone numbers, and they hung up.
Betsy shut off the oven before she went into the living room, where she found Charlie Nye looking at the glass case holding her late sister’s collection of Lladro statues.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Nye?” she asked.
He straightened and turned. “I heard Godwin has been arrested for the murder of my brother.”
“Has it been on the news already?”
“I don’t know. I heard it at that little restaurant over by the movie theater.”
Betsy smiled. She couldn’t help it. “Yes, of course, the Waterfront Café is the very root of the grapevine that covers this town.”
He grinned. “We have one of those back home, too.” He sobered. “So it’s true.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. He sure had me fooled; I never thought a fellow like him would be capable of a violent crime like that.”
“He didn’t do it, Mr. Nye.”
“No? How can you be so sure?”
“Goddy and I have worked closely together for several years, and I’m convinced he would never murder John. I’m hiring an attorney to defend him, but I also intend to do my own sleuthing, of course.”
“Of course?”
“I have a certain talent for it.”
Now he was really confused. “Are you a private investigator?”
“No, I’m a shop owner and landlord. But this won’t be the first time I’ve been asked to prove that someone accused of a crime is innocent.”
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