“Of course not. So why did they put you in with them?”
“Oh, not all of them are weird. Some are just sweet and pretty, like me. My choice appears to be staying there or sitting in solitary. And I got a taste of that when they first brought me here.” His face puckered, close to tears. “Betsy, they took all my clothes away and gave me this smelly yellow blanket and put me in this tiny, tiny room, all alone, with a cement bench and a steel toilet—oh, ugh! I couldn’t go back to that!”
“No, of course you couldn’t. Oh, Goddy, I feel so guilty, asking you to stay in jail!”
“Don’t, please don’t, it’s all right, really it is. I didn’t understand what bailing me out meant. I don’t mind, not too much. It’s going to be hard enough to pay for that lawyer. By the way, I like Marvin, he’s like a big, strong daddy—and you would not believe how much respect he gets around here.” He looked from side to side as if for eavesdroppers, and said, sotto voce, “The best part is that Mike has a hard time with him. You can almost hear his teeth grind when Marvin says, ‘Wait just one second, Sergeant Malloy, I don’t think my client should answer that question.’ Such a hoot!”
Betsy smiled at this grand display of courage. “Well, then, we’ll keep him on retainer, won’t we?”
Godwin nodded. “Are you going to sleuth?”
Betsy nodded, then remembered a warning John had given her long ago: There are things about Godwin you don’t want to know. “Are you all right with me doing that? You know how deep I dig.”
“If it means getting me out of this mess, you may dig away. Carte blanche—that means do what you will, right?”
“Yes. All right, I’ll start by talking to Jill this evening. Maybe she knows why Mike arrested you.”
“Shoot, I can tell you that. It’s John’s new will. He was killed before he could sign it.”
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing for me. And that’s the problem. In his old will, he set up a . . . a testamentary trust for me. Or a spendthrift trust, they use both words, so I don’t know which is the correct one. A big hunk of money goes into a special account and I get the interest from it for the rest of my life.” His face went blank, then sad. “He really was mad at me this time, I guess. But he died before he could sign the new will—and Mike thinks I murdered him so I’d get the money.”
“But if you didn’t know about it—”
“Yeah, well, Mike thinks I did know about it. It’s a sweet motive, you have to admit. It might even have tempted me, if I had known about it.”
“I trust you don’t say things like that where Mike can hear you.”
“Never fear.” But he looked sad at having to guard his mischievious tongue.
“Actually, I don’t care how big it is. I just hope I get to spend it on something besides the prison commissary.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Goddy. If you’re found guilty, you won’t get it at all. You aren’t allowed to profit from a crime.” She added hastily, “But never mind about that. You know perfectly well you won’t be found guilty. In fact, it won’t come to trial. I’m going to find out who really murdered John, and they’ll have to drop the charges.”
“Do it fast, okay? If I stay here too long, I may start missing the missus, too.”
Fourteen
BETSY got caught up in rush-hour traffic all the way out to Excelsior, but managed to get to the exit to Excelsior before five. The long, slow drive out had given her a chance to think a bit about this case. Where to begin? Well, that was obvious. What she needed was the name of that person who had used John Nye’s whirlpool bath and purple bathrobe.
And she knew where that information was.
She walked into Crewel World at four minutes to five, to the cheers of Bershada, Shelly, Rennie Jones, and Phil Galvin. Phil was a member of the Monday Bunch. A retired railroad engineer, his beautiful counted cross-stitch patterns of railroad engines sometimes graced the walls of Crewel World as models to encourage others to buy the charts. He waved at Betsy from behind the checkout desk, where he was ringing up a sale under Rennie’s watchful eye.
“Hiya, Betsy!” he called cheerfully. “How’s Godwin?”
“Not happy,” said Betsy briefly. “Hello, Mrs. Cunningham,” she greeted the customer.
“Hi, Betsy” Mrs. Cunningham nodded.
“Whom did you hire?” asked Shelly.
“Marvin Lebowski.” Betsy turned and fixed Bershada with a gimlet eye. “Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“He’s black. I wish you had warned me, I stared at him like a tourist, which, fortunately, amused him.”
Bershada stared at her. “Marvin Lebowski is black?” A broad smile appeared. “Are you serious?”
“Well, his mother was African-American; his father was a second-generation Pole from Chicago.”
Phil said, “Why do white folks think black folks all know one another?” He shook his head at Betsy for harboring such a notion.
“I don’t think any such thing—do I?” Betsy did a brief examination of her conscience. “No, of course not, it’s just curious. Mr. Whistler is black, too.”
“Now him I know,” said Bershada. “Was he wearing one of his fancy-schmancy suits?”
Betsy smiled. “He sure was.”
“Fancy suit?” asked Rennie. “What are you two talking about?”
“Attorney Frank Whistler wears suits that are on the very leading edge of fashion,” explained Betsy. “You should have seen the lapels!”
“You mean like the beautiful things Goddy sometimes wears?” asked Mrs. Cunningham.
Betsy shook her head. “Godwin would sooner wear that orange jail coverall than the suit I saw Frank Whistler in today; Frank wouldn’t be caught dead in one of Goddy’s unconstructed sport coats.” She put a hand to her forehead and continued in a faint voice, “Dear lord, I am becoming far, far too knowledgeable about men’s clothing. Is there hot water in back? I need a cup of tea.”
“I was about to unplug the kettle, but hadn’t yet,” said Shelly, and Betsy went to the back room of the shop.
There, she started to smile, remembering Goddy’s over-fastidious fashion sense as she looked through the little box of tea packets for the raspberry-flavored one, but her smile quickly turned upside down. Godwin took great pride in dressing well, and to see—and be seen—in that ugly, ill-fitting jumpsuit was genuinely painful to him. Another reason, an odd, but real, reason to see that he was set free quickly.
She brought the cup back out front, inhaling the fragrance of the tea. Mrs. Cunningham had departed. Phil was at the front door, turning the needlepointed sign from Open to Closed.
“You want me to run the register?” asked Rennie.
“Yes, go ahead. What kind of day did we have?”
“Really good,” said Shelly. “Lots of people coming in to say how sorry they are about Goddy.”
That reminded Bershada. “Did you open that Godwin Defense Account?”
“No, I didn’t get to the bank. Why, how much did you take in?”
“Seven hundred and forty dollars. We emptied the bowl about five times.”
Betsy gaped at her. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
Phil snorted. “Yeah, it’ll pay for less than one working day for that fancy-suit lawyer you hired.”
“Every dollar counts,” countered Bershada. “Right, Betsy?”
“Right. And since you all are putting your money where your mouth is, I want to ask your opinion about something.”
“Shoot,” said Shelly, sitting down at the library table.
“Godwin’s bail has been set at a million dollars.” There were gasps at that. “I can’t possibly raise that amount, and a bail bondsman will charge me a hundred thousand to post it for him. I don’t think I can raise that amount, either, not in a hurry.”
“I bet the bank would loan you that amount. I mean, after all, you get it back, right?” said Rennie.
“No, and that’s the problem.” She expla
ined how bail bondsmen worked.
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair,” said Shelly. “A hundred thousand is a lot of money for a short-term loan of a million.”
“Sometimes it takes years for a case to work its way through court,” said Phil, still standing at the door, hand on the knob. “So it’s not always a short-term loan. And if the accused runs away, bounty hunters aren’t cheap. Think about that.”
“My question is,” said Betsy, “is it wrong of me to ask Godwin to sit in jail when I could, just possibly, get him out on bail?”
“But if you have to run around trying to raise the money,” said Shelly, “then you couldn’t also be trying to find out who really murdered John.”
“If you did raise it,” noted Phil, “Godwin would feel obliged to pay you back. That would make him your slave for years to come.”
Betsy shuddered. “Yes, that’s true.”
“So I think—” Bershada looked around the room and collected nods—“we think you should concentrate on sleuthing.”
“From your description,” added Phil, “Godwin is unhappy but not in danger where he is.”
“That’s right,” nodded Rennie.
Betsy sighed, partly from relief, partly from concession. “All right, then, Goddy has to sit where he is.”
“I’ve got to go,” Phil said. “See you tomorrow.” He waved to the room at large and went out the door.
A minute later Rennie handed Betsy the record of sales from the cash register. Betsy ran her eyes down the tape and smiled. “Very nice!” she said. “Now the rest of you run along, too. I’ll close and make a night deposit. Rennie, can you work all day tomorrow?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And I’ll come in, too,” Shelly said.
“Emily and Martha want to work tomorrow morning,” said Bershada. “And Doris will come in the afternoon.”
Betsy put her cup of tea down. Gratitude was making her hand tremble. “You people . . .” she began, then had to swallow before she could continue. “I have the best friends in the world,” she said. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
“Sure you do,” said Bershada. “Bring him home safe, okay?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Up in her apartment that evening, Betsy opened a can of tuna and made a little salad for supper. In her one exception to Sophie’s strict regimen of Science Diet, she put the emptied can down for the cat to lick dry.
She chopped some leaves off the bunch of cilantro into the salad as she built it and the scent made her smile. Some day she’d have to pay her own visit to Mexico City, stay at the Del Prado, and eat their version of that chicken rice soup. Though she doubted it would be any better than Goddy’s.
After supper she picked up the phone and dialed Jill at home.
They talked a bit about Betsy’s day—Jill approved of Marvin Lebowski, having heard stories about him—and then Betsy said, “Jill, I need a special favor.”
“Sure, if I can.”
“I want to borrow one of the copies Mike made of John’s hard drive. How do I go about doing that? Should I have Goddy’s attorney ask for it? Subpoena it?”
“What are you hoping to find?”
“For one thing, the name of the young man John brought home the night he was killed.”
“Why not just ask Mike?”
“Could I do that? You know what he thinks about me, the interfering civilian. On the other hand, he’s not using the hard drive, is he? He’s sure he’s got the guilty party, so what would he care? But he must know I’m wild to find another suspect in John’s murder. Mr. Lebowski said he often hires private investigators to help him in a case, and he’s all right with me filling that role, at least for now. If I tell Mike that, would that make it worse or better?”
Jill snorted softly. “Worse, probably, as far as your personal relationship with Mike goes. There’s cops in the area still trying to heal the scars Lebowski leaves on cross-examination in a courtroom, including Mike. On the other hand, having an official role in the defense gives you some authority. You’re not just a snoopy female this time. You’re working for one of the big guns. Not that Goddy deserves any less than the best, in my opinion.”
“So you agree with me, Goddy couldn’t be guilty!”
“Oh, you bet. But it looks bad. He’s got a heck of a motive.”
“You know about the will?”
“Yes, Mike was talking about it to the county prosecutor and I overheard some of the conversation.”
“Goddy didn’t know about the first will, much less the second.”
“That’s not what Mike understands. He found an e-mail to Goddy, suggesting he write his own will, since John had written his.”
Betsy groaned softly. “Oh, gosh, Goddy even mentioned that to me. He said John told him to make a will, but Goddy said he planned to die broke and so didn’t need one. But wait, did the e-mail Mike found say anything about what was in John’s will?”
“I don’t know.”
“I bet it didn’t—but now I have another reason to want to see that hard drive. Do you know where Mike is? I’ve been trying to call him all day with no luck.”
“I imagine he’s at home.”
“Would he mind if I called him there?”
“He’d mind if you called him at work.”
“True. And this is urgent. All right, thanks, Jill. Bye.”
Betsy looked up Mike Malloy’s home phone number in the Excelsior phone book—virtually no one had an unlisted number in Excelsior—and dialed it. A child answered.
“Hello, this is Betsy Devonshire. I’d like to speak to Sergeant Malloy, please.”
“Are you going to try to sell him something?”
“No.”
“Okay, just a minute.”
Less than a minute later, Mike said, “Ms. Devonshire?” He did not sound pleased.
“I’m so sorry to bother you at home, but I wasn’t able to connect with you at work, and this is urgent.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to look at the hard drive—the copy of the hard drive—from John Nye’s computer.”
“Why?”
“Now, Mike, you must know I’m trying to help Godwin. I want to talk to the person who was John’s guest the day he was killed.”
“That young man didn’t murder John.”
“He was among the last to see him alive, right? Maybe he can tell me something.”
“Did Marvin Lebowski put you up to this?”
“Not this specifically. But he’s allowing me to act as his private investigator. Do you need a letter from him stating that? I could get it to you—would an e-mail be all right? I’m in kind of a hurry.”
“Why don’t you just bail him out?”
“You know what the bail is.”
“You’re a rich woman. Don’t tell me you couldn’t raise a million dollars if you had to.” Was there envy in his voice?
“If it meant Godwin’s life, certainly. If it only means setting him free a couple of weeks early, no. I’ll get him out, Mike. But it will be as a free man, not someone under some Mickey-Mouse indictment, all right?” Betsy stopped and took a breath. She was getting angry and that was stupid and dangerous. “Please, Mike. If he’s guilty, it can’t do any harm—and I may even find something to prove that.”
“Yeah, and you’d be quick to tell me about it, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would, why not? Look, I’ll make you a deal. If I find proof that Godwin knew about the old will, I’ll hand it over to you. I promise. In fact, I’ll even tell you something now that you probably don’t know. Godwin’s computer is here. I’ll swap with you: a copy of John’s hard drive, for a copy of Godwin’s.”
Mike’s voice was suddenly eager, even warm. “Deal! Come to the police station tomorrow with your copy, and I’ll let you have the one off John’s.”
“Thanks, Mike.”
Betsy hung up. How on earth did you make a copy of a hard drive?
She went into her guest bedroom, where her own computer was, and booted up. It took some research, but she found that she needed a USB external drive. They cost around a hundred dollars, and they came in different sizes. Once you had that item, it was as easy as downloading a single program.
Funny how intimidating computers seemed. Betsy had resisted learning anything about them other than what she absolutely needed to know—all that talk about gigabytes, for example. What was a gigabyte? She wasn’t sure, except it seemed like some kind of large number.
But when you stopped trying to understand how they worked, suddenly it was easy. She didn’t need to know how the internal combustion system worked to figure out how many gallons of gas it would take to drive to Fargo and back. Same here, all she needed to know was that a gigabyte was a unit of storage, and Godwin’s computer had—how many of them?
She signed off and booted up Godwin’s computer. She went to “My Computer” and selected “Properties” for Godwin’s hard drive. That told her, among other things, that he had a forty gigabyte hard drive—so she needed another hard drive at least that large. Probably a little larger. She remembered an early computer that, when its memory was full, didn’t have the smarts left to operate the printer. So maybe a sixty gigabyte hard drive.
Hard drives were for sale in any store that sold computers. Tomorrow she’d go to CompuWorld in Minnetonka and buy one.
Fifteen
THE next day was Saturday. Betsy made three phone calls right after breakfast. One was to Hower House, the bed and breakfast on Water Street where Charlie Nye was staying. She was told Mr. Nye had eaten early and was already gone. She called John Nye’s house next, thinking he’d probably gone there, but the phone had been disconnected.
Then she called Gary Woodward’s house, and got his father, a retired army officer. “Hi, Frank, this is Betsy Devonshire. I need to borrow Gary, if that’s all right.”
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