Embroidered Truths

by Monica Ferris

  “So cancel the pirate image. I still think he’s double dealing.”

  “How? I mean both how do you know, and how is he doing it?”

  “I don’t know how he’s doing it, but I’m sure he is. There’s no reason for him to have that much information, even as the official check signer. And it’s the only part of his computer material that’s hidden behind a password. I’m going to find out more.”

  “Is he being shady, or is he really doing something illegal?”

  “Illegal, definitely.”

  “Then shouldn’t you tell the police?”

  “I don’t have any real evidence yet. But I will, I will.” She was crooning with happiness.

  “Now hold on a second. What connection does all this have with John Nye?”

  “Oh. None at all that I know of. I don’t think John and D’Agnosto ever so much as had lunch together.”

  “Then stop turning over rocks that don’t concern you! I need you to find out who at Hanson Wellborn had a motive to murder John.”

  “But this does concern me. At least for the next two weeks it concerns me. I work here, remember?”

  “Susan, for the love of justice, please. I hired you to help me find someone with a motive to murder John.”

  “Yes, but—oh, all right. I was going to say this is more fun, because it is, but I get your point. Very well, Mr. D’Agnosto can go on skimming the company profits for a little while longer. I’ll go back to looking for people who thought of John Nye as a deadly enemy.”

  “Thank you.”

  Betsy had no more than hung up when the phone rang. “Hello?” she said.

  “Hello, Ms. Devonshire, it’s Charlie Nye.”

  “Hi, I got your message. You can come over anytime.”

  “Is it too late to come over right now?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good, I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

  He was as good as his word. He came up the stairs flushed with excitement, a big brown envelope in one hand, attaché case in the other. Inside her apartment, he went to the dining nook and spilled the envelope’s contents on the table. “Look at this!” he said. “It was in John’s safe deposit box.”

  There was a man’s brown leather wallet, separated from its contents: a Social Security card, driver’s license, ATM card with a logo identifying it as from a First Wisconsin bank, and sixty-three dollars in cash. The photograph on the driver’s license was recognizable as John’s.

  “Notice there are no credit cards,” said Charlie.

  “Is that significant?”

  “It probably means he couldn’t get a credit card—no credit rating. No work history, no job. He didn’t own any property, not even a car. Never bought anything on time. He did rent a small apartment in Rush—and look at this.” He picked up a small rectangle of paper Betsy hadn’t noticed. It was a scrap of newspaper, a want ad that began: Two Blocks from Lake Winnebago! and offering a vacant lot for sale.

  “I don’t get it, was he going to move away?”

  “Eventually. I think he was going to work some more on this new identity. Buy some land, pay cash, then put a manufactured home on it. Then mortgage the property, make regular payments, construct a credit rating. Pay property taxes, buy a car.”

  “But . . . why? I mean, why did he have this need to become someone else?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He couldn’t practice as a lawyer; Christopher Bright doesn’t have a law degree.”

  “I know. I don’t know what he meant to do. Maybe buy one of those degrees from a mill. Not a law degree, but a bachelor’s degree in something.” He tossed the scrap of paper down, and shook his head. “He had a great job, he was doing really well—wasn’t he? You’ve been poking around, have you talked to people at his law firm?”

  “Yes.” Betsy nodded. “He and his supervisor weren’t getting along, but no one gets along with David Shaker. John had a good reputation, he was definitely close to making partner. One of the reasons Mr. Shaker didn’t like him was because John was a lot smarter and more clever than he was.”

  Charlie smiled. “Johnny never was one to hide his light under a bushel.” He wiped the top of his head with one hand. “But if he was about to make partner, then Shaker was not a threat. So why quit? Why quit the law?”

  “It’s possible he knew something about financial illegalities at the firm. My spy there says at least one partner was cooking the books—or at least she suspects he was, she’s still digging for proof. Why don’t you go look on his hard drive and see if anything turns up there to show he knew about it?”

  “Or was involved in? I can’t believe he’d take part in something like that. But if he knew, and was afraid of the consequences of knowing . . .”

  “Yes, that would explain this Christopher Bright business, wouldn’t it?” said Betsy. A troubling thought—especially with Susan Lavery poking her long white fingers into the secret places of that same firm.

  Charlie had also brought his own laptop. It nested in his attaché case, atop a stack of papers. “With your permission, I’ll attach that hard drive to my own computer.”

  “Fine. Will you need to go on-line?”

  “No, or at least not for awhile.”

  “Good, I need to make a phone call.”

  But when Betsy dialed Susan’s number the line was busy—and it stayed busy. That most likely meant Susan was on the Internet. Betsy wondered what line she was investigating and prayed it wasn’t something that might endanger her life, as it had ended John Nye’s.

  Twenty-two

  CHARLIE said he was sorry he’d taken so long, but he didn’t seem particularly sorry, perhaps because he had gotten some more account numbers and some figures that were more in line with what John’s two banks had told him. He left with a cheery “So long, I’ll call you tomorrow, if that’s okay.”

  “Certainly,” she replied, and shut the door after him.

  She felt restless, and made a cup of tea, which she had with a cookie. She was so distracted, she actually gave Sophie a fragment.

  She tried calling Susan again, but her line was still busy. At last she sat down with the one thing she had found always soothed her: knitting. The entrelac pattern took all her concentration and after an hour of it she felt calm enough to go to bed.

  The next morning she rose very early and drove into Golden Valley for water aerobics. The streets were wet, though it wasn’t raining, and there was a small buildup of traffic as she neared the Highway 100/394 interchange. As she pulled into the sunken parking lot on the west side of the building, her headlights swept over a red fox. The creature was looking back over its shoulder at her, unafraid. She found a slot (most of the slots in the lot were restricted to handicapped drivers), got out, and peered around in the faint light, but the fox was gone. Had it been an illusion?

  In the locker room she greeted her fellow early birds, and mentioned the fox.

  “Oh, did you see him this morning?” asked Jackie.

  “You mean there really was a fox there this morning?”

  “I didn’t see him this morning, but I’ve seen him other mornings. He doesn’t run, he just kind of fades into the bushes.”

  “I know, that’s what made me think my eyes were deceiving me. If he’d taken off up the hill, I would’ve known he was real.”

  “Sly as a fox, I guess,” said someone behind Betsy.

  She turned to see Barbara, a tall woman with a serene face and a lot of allergies.

  “Yes, very appropriate,” agreed Betsy. “Have you seen him?”

  “Strangely enough, no.”

  Betsy tried to work off some of her frustration by pushing herself through the routines, and was thinking pretty well of herself until she caught a glimpse of Trisha, a young marathoner who did every movement faster and harder even than the instructor—and without breathing hard.

  When they all grabbed a “noodle,” a foamlike, stick about three inches in diameter and fou
r feet long, and headed out to the deep end, riding them like horses, Betsy again tried to lose herself in the repetitions, but the only part that worked for her was the thirty seconds right at the end when the music changed to a thoughtful Indian pipe and they all shifted the noodle to under their arms and hung still in the water.

  Betsy hated for that part to end, when they had to go back to the shallow end and do stretches before heading for the showers. She would have liked to just hang there all morning.

  Instead, she slipped into the heavy morning traffic heading downtown, found a space in a parking ramp, and went into the extensive “skyway” system that went between buildings. She managed to get lost twice before she found a box of printed maps, took one, and sat down in a little café to have a cup of coffee and a bagel while she read the morning Star Tribune. Called the “Strib” by locals, it served even more than the coffee to stir Betsy’s blood. She snorted at an editorial and turned to the funnies.

  They lasted until it was time to go over to the jail. She left forty dollars in cash at the front desk for Godwin, for which she prudently took a receipt, then went up to the depressing little room to wait for him.

  His appearance didn’t help. “What’s the matter?” she demanded, once he was seated and had picked up the telephone receiver on his side.

  “Nothing,” he said mournfully.

  “Goddy . . .”

  He rolled sad eyes at her. “I’m sorry, but I miss my stitching. They won’t let me knit or do needlepoint and my fingers are getting all soft and lazy. It’s going to take me weeks to get them back.” He held up one hand and twiddled the fingers. “See?”

  “Poor fellow,” she said, and meant it, though his fingers looked as slim and flexible as ever. Needlework was pleasure and relaxation and meditation and even a form of exercise for Godwin. It kept his fingers nimble, his vision sharp, and his brain alert.

  “That book you suggested we order, on rediscovering crewel? You were right, we should have ordered four copies. We’re sold out already.” Talking shop helped, and after ten minutes of business and gossip he was in a better frame of mind.

  “I’ve been talking to someone over at Hanson, Wellborn, and Smith,” she said. “And I’m afraid she says John didn’t have a good time in Mexico City.”

  “Did John tell her that?” Godwin seemed sincerely surprised.

  “John told a friend name Dick Kennison—do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him a couple of times. He and John went to law school together.”

  “That’s right. Anyway, Dick is a gossip, and he told Susan—she’s my source at Hanson Wellborn—that John whined to her about the trip.” Betsy found the page in her notebook. “He said Mexico City was too big, too dirty, smells funny, and has thin air.”

  Godwin looked stricken. “He did say things like that, but not like he was angry about it.”

  “Did he also complain about children running around the hotel while their teachers danced in the lobby?”

  “Now just a minute, that was a nice thing! The kids were part of that children’s government thing, you know, like we have here, where kids take over the city government for a day. Down there it’s called, let me think, Parlimento de Los Ninos y Las Ninas de Mexico. A real big deal for the children, and the teachers had this reception for the child elected governor or president or whatever it was. They had these paper shakers, like pom poms, and they sang and danced in the lobby. It was like a line dance, only in a circle.” Godwin took the receiver away from his ear to move his hands back and forth, then in a circle, tilting his torso from side to side. Then he resumed. “The kids got to stay overnight, and they were pretty well behaved, considering. All I remember John complaining about were the balloons. There were thousands of them, stuck to walls and making big twisted chains all over the place. Balloons in that quantity smell, did you know that? But it was only in the lobby, and John never spent more than three minutes in the lobby. I did, I was trying to learn that dance the teachers were doing.” He moved his hands again, looking over his left then right shoulder.

  Then he stopped and said, “What else didn’t he like? If you say the museum or the pyramids at Teotihuacan I will scream, I promise you. Because he said he loved them.”

  “No, the last thing he complained about was your native guide.” When Godwin looked puzzled, she said, “The taxi driver.”

  “Mario? Oh, my God, how could he not like Mario! Mario took us everywhere, he told funny stories, he was the nicest taxi driver I’ve ever met!”

  Again Betsy consulted her notes. “He was short and pudgy, he wore double-knit fabrics, and his cab smelled of cigarette smoke. In a word, he was tacky.”

  For just two seconds Godwin’s face twisted in anger. “That beast! Mario was sweet and he worked very hard for us! I liked him, I don’t care what John says, he was sweet!” Godwin paused to take several calming breaths. “All right, I won’t deny his English wasn’t the best. And he tended to scratch where it itched.” He giggled, then shrugged sadly. “Actually, I thought John hardly noticed him; he is a bit that way around servants. Oh, Betsy, here I was comforting myself thinking I gave John some of his happiest days there at the end.” He dropped the receiver, put his head down on the little shelf on his side and wept.

  She couldn’t reach him, she could only let him have all the time for that he needed, and it was several minutes before he pulled himself back together and sat up.

  “I’m sorry, wasting time with this. Now I wonder if he didn’t like that one night club we went to.”

  “What happened there?”

  “Well, we’d gone to a couple of loud party-night ones and we both were a little tired, so I talked to the concierge and he gave me a list of three quieter places. Mario said we’d like this one only a couple of blocks away. ‘There is a guitar player who is so marvelous!’ he said. So we went. It was a small place, with this little, little stage, and a man came out in shirt-sleeves with an acoustic guitar, sat down, and played—what’s it called? Flamenco, that’s it. I’m not a flamenco fan, but it was interesting just to watch him. His fingers were flying up and down the neck and he played with all the fingers of his other hand, but his face was very still. And after awhile”—Godwin’s voice dropped and he half-covered the receiver with his hand—“it was like he was making love to the guitar. His face got—oh, I can’t describe it, but I’ve seen it often enough. You know, the upper lip, and the eyes . . . And later, John—” He cut himself off with a gesture. “Anyway, I liked it, and I still think John liked it, too.”

  “You should write for a travel magazine,” said Betsy. “That was a beautiful description, Goddy, I almost feel like I was there with you.”

  “Really?” He brightened at that. “Thank you!”

  “Now, on another topic entirely, I’m having trouble with the entrelac pattern I’m knitting.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  She tried to explain it, but soon he was lost in its complexities. “That’s all right, I’ll call Rosemary today, she can tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

  He looked sad again, so she said, “If they won’t let you knit for real, try visualizing knitting.”

  “Visualizing?”

  “Yes, when you get back to that quad, lie down and close your eyes. Think about holding your needles—”

  “What size?” he said, eyes already closed.

  “Fives. You’re making me a pair of socks. You want to put beads in the cuffs.”

  “What color?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—yes, I do, purple yarn and iridescent pink beads. You want them kind of lacy around the edges. Do you do scallop edges on the cuffs, or little hanging rows of beads?”

  His hands began to move. “Scallop edges, they’re more fun. With a row of beads above the scallops, and then another row, offset, above that.” His head cocked sideways. “Lacy scallops, that would be nice.” His fingers moved for awhile, then his eyes opened and he smiled at her. “Thanks, boss, that really helped
. I’ll make you those socks when I get out of here.”

  “Deal,” she said.

  On the drive back to her shop, she wondered what she would find there. Though she tried hard not to be superstitious, she tended to look for omens. The water exercise hadn’t been great—though that glimpse of the fox looking over his shoulder in the pre-dawn light had been nice. Or was it mysterious? Was mystery to be her portion today? Godwin had started out glum, then had turned bitter and sad, even angry, on learning how John had not enjoyed the trip he’d been so proud to take him on—the cheesy bastard!—but then had been cheered by her suggestion that he imagine knitting in lieu of the real thing. By all that, she was going to have a very mixed day.

  She hoped Godwin wouldn’t actually knit her a pair of purple socks. If he did, he’d expect her to wear them, and she’d have to buy some purple slacks—and then everyone would be asking her where her red hat was. Gray, now, with pink beads, that would be nice. She’d only said purple because it was easier to imagine purple yarn.

  Lacy scallops, hmmmm . . .

  A horn brought her back to herself. The light at Route Seven and 101 was green. She drove through and continued up Seven. Maybe dark green if he didn’t want to work in gray. Or white with red and blue beads, for the Fourth of July.

  The shop was in good order. Two Monday Bunch volunteers were helping Peggy, who was retired and only worked enough hours in the shop to pay for her needlework materials, and Nikki.

  “Now, you go right on upstairs and draw some deductions,” Peggy ordered, and the others seconded that heartily.

  She went up to find her cat weaving impatiently by the door. Betsy had not come back from aerobics, and so the cat had not been taken down to the shop. Denied her opportunity to cadge snacks from chance customers, the cat was in no mood to be placated by a stroke or two.

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said it was Sunday, old girl,” said Betsy. Sunday in Excelsior was observed by all the shops, and was the one day when Sophie stuck to—or was stuck on—her diet. Betsy took her downstairs, where she was greeted with glad cries and immediately given a small piece of cookie. Betsy pretended not to see that, and went back upstairs.