Threads of Evidence

by Lea Wait

  “Was she drinking?”

  “Heavens, Angie, don’t look so moral. Everyone was drinking! She was at her own home. We were all outside, in a beautiful place, with people we knew and cared about. No one seemed to mind.”

  “Did you see Jasmine with anyone in particular?”

  “She was with several people I didn’t know. I assumed they were from outside Haven Harbor. And with young people from the yacht club. Someone told me Jasmine and Jed Fitch had been dating that summer.” She shook her head. “If she hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have remembered. Truthfully, I didn’t pay much attention. I was focused on Ben and on our life, finally together and independent of hospitals and parents and wars. I remember making sure we didn’t sit near where a lot of parents had small children. I was still dealing with the loss of the child I’d dreamed of having.”

  Nothing Ruth said clarified what happened that night, or what happened to Jasmine. But I’d learned a lot more about Ruth. What would it have been like for so many of your dreams to be destroyed by a war that half of America didn’t believe in? I couldn’t imagine.

  My phone sounded. I glanced down at the text. It was Sarah Byrne: Call me ASAP re: needlepoint panel.

  “I’m tired. You go and answer your call,” said Ruth. “I can’t remember any more. I think I’ll lie down for a bit.”

  “Can I help you with anything?” I asked. “Get you something?”

  “I’m fine, dear. Thinking about the past sometimes wears me out more than living in the present. One of the many frustrating parts of old age, I’m afraid.”

  I smiled. “You know I’d be happy to help you anytime. Groceries, mail, drive you somewhere. Just let me know.”

  “Oh, heavens, dear, I’m not that feeble yet. One reason I want to lie down now is so I’ll have plenty of energy to watch the Red Sox tonight. Can’t miss a Red Sox–Yankee game, can I?”

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said, getting up. “Enjoy the game. And thank you for sharing your memories.”

  “Nice to know there’s anyone still interested in them,” said Ruth. “I’ll see you at Charlotte and Tom’s shower on Saturday. I’ll be the one with bells on!”

  I smiled as I headed back to my car. Ruth was more than ten years older than Gram, but she was still working and taking care of herself. I hoped Gram would be able to do the same.

  When she was my age, Ruth had been married to someone who’d been badly injured. Her life had changed, and she’d adapted. Would I have been as strong? I hoped so. But I wasn’t sure. So far, I hadn’t even had enough faith in myself or anyone else to make a lifetime commitment to another person. Would I ever feel that strongly about someone?

  Before I thought about sharing my life with someone else, I had to figure out who I was and what I wanted. Then, if my life changed, the way Ruth’s had, I’d have to rethink everything. That was a task I wasn’t ready for. Not yet.

  In the meantime I dialed Sarah’s number. What could be so urgent about the needlework I’d dropped off with her a couple of hours ago?

  Chapter 28

  A fair little girl sat under a tree,

  Sewing as long as her eyes could see;

  Then smoothed her work, and folded it right,

  And said, “Dear work, good night! Good night!”

  —Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton (1809–1885), “Good Night and Good Morning,” 1859

  “Sarah? What’s the problem with the needlepoint?”

  “Has anyone else looked at the panels? Looked closely?”

  “Gram cleaned them and left them in the sun to kill the mildew. She and I looked at them. I left panels today with you and Dave and Katie. That’s it. Is there a problem?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. Just something curious.”

  “Curious?”

  “After I got home, I decided to take a good look at the panels you gave me. To check colors and flosses—those you gave me and any I might have—because once I take something to the shop to work on, I don’t like to leave. Even if I do just live upstairs.”

  “Yes?” I was getting a little impatient.

  “I had the panel over by the window, to get the best light. And I found something strange.”

  “What?”

  “Along with the embroidery floss Mrs. Gardener used, she stitched in strands of hair. Not a lot, you understand. But once in a while, I could see one. I got a magnifying glass out to check.”

  “Hair? Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. I’m not an expert on hair. But it definitely isn’t silk floss, or yarn, like the rest of the panel.”

  “Mrs. Gardener was getting older. Maybe her hair was thinning and a few pieces fell out. Maybe she didn’t notice and stitched them into the pattern along with the floss.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘maybes.’ And I found more than one or two pieces of hair.”

  I sat back in the car. “You’re right. That’s weird. I can’t imagine why anyone would stitch hair into needlepoint intentionally.”

  “They did in the nineteenth century,” said Sarah. “Not needlepoint exactly, but people, usually women, collected hair from those they loved, especially ones who’d died. They wove the strands into flowers and swirls and made them into jewelry or wreaths.”

  “Sounds creepy,” I said.

  “Here in America, weaving with hair was especially popular during the Civil War and after, during the Victorian period. Both men and women wore mourning jewelry made of, or holding, hair of deceased loved ones. The wreaths some women made were incredibly elaborate. They often included hair from many friends and family members so they could work with different colors.”

  “Interesting. But I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the needlepoint.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Gardener took some of her daughter’s hair and wove it into the pictures.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” I said. “It would mean she planned those pictures before Jasmine was buried, though. I thought she’d made them years afterward.”

  “But we don’t really know, right?” said Sarah.

  “Right,” I agreed. “It would be cool if Jasmine’s hair was in the panels. We could check DNA to find out if it was hers.”

  “So we need to find someone who could test for DNA,” Sarah said excitedly.

  “Even if we could get someone to agree to do a DNA test, we’d need to have something of Jasmine’s, or at least of her mother’s, to compare it with. We threw out almost everything at Aurora. We didn’t exactly leave a toothbrush to be tested for DNA.”

  “You’re right.” Sarah’s voice went down.

  “Why don’t you work on the other panel first,” I said. “Let me think about this a little longer. Maybe there’s some way to get a DNA sample.” It doesn’t seem likely, I thought as I headed for home. Plus, police labs took weeks to analyze DNA. They wouldn’t do it out of curiosity. Finding hair in the needlepoint was interesting. But I didn’t see how it would help figure out how Jasmine Gardener died. Or who killed her.

  And that was what Skye and Patrick and I were trying to do.

  Chapter 29

  Beautiful fireboards [boards covering the opening to fireplaces in warm months] can be made of silk, linen, or any of the woollen goods which come for decorative purposes, and embroidered in silk and crewels. Of embroidery it should be urged that for effectiveness it is necessary to adhere to one kind of stitch, as well as to insist on tones in choosing color, rather than contrasts.

  —Laura C. Holloway, The Hearthstone; or, Life at Home: A Household Manual, L.P. Miller & Co., 1888

  Somehow I managed to get my laundry done, talked with Gram without revealing anything about the proposed shower, and still got to bed before midnight.

  My mind was still turning circles. But my body was exhausted.

  By dawn I’d decided what to do next. First I called Sarah; then I called Dave Percy.

  Admittedly, Sarah looked at me a bit strangely when I arrived to collect a couple of the hairs she’d
promised to pull out of the needlepoint. But she handed me an envelope. “Be sure to let me know what you find out,” she said. “I have a feeling about these hairs.”

  Then I turned my car toward Dave’s house. He’d said classes were on a short schedule. But when would he have to be at school?

  He was waiting at his door. “Come in! Come in!”

  I handed him the envelope and followed him to his study. I’d never been in that room before. Papers were neatly stacked on top of an old oak office desk. Bookshelves were full of books on everything from protozoa to echinoderms, from birds and fish to humans, and, of course, poison plants. A human skeleton I hoped was a fake hung over the door.

  Dave went straight to a metal table in the corner equipped with a microscope, test tubes, and bottles of chemicals.

  “It will take me a minute or two to set this up and adjust it,” he said, carefully removing one hair from the envelope, putting it on a glass slide, and then taking a piece of silk floss, separating out the strands, and also putting it on the slide.

  I nodded and waited.

  “Very interesting indeed,” he said after a minute. “You’re sure Sarah found these hairs woven into the needlepoint?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  He looked through the eyepiece again. Then he turned to me. “Here, take a look at this.”

  I peered through the eyepiece of the microscope. I’d never figured out how to use one of those things, although my high-school biology teacher had certainly tried to teach me. My eyelashes always got in the way.

  “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m no good at microscopes. I see two lines, but they’re blurry. Tell me what I’m supposed to be seeing.”

  “You’re right. Two lines. One of them is a piece of silk thread from the lighthouse panel you gave me. The other is what Sarah found.”

  “But is what Sarah found also floss?”

  “Definitely not. She was right. It’s hair.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me. I’ve seen a lot of hair under the microscope. It’s one of the beginning microscope exercises I assign my classes.”

  “Maybe one of Mrs. Gardener’s hairs fell out while she was stitching, and she never noticed and stitched it into her needlepoint.”

  “That would make sense, of course,” said Dave. “It would make sense if the hair was human. This one is not.”

  My head spun. Sarah and I had wondered if the hair might be from Jasmine. Or, most probably, from Millie Gardener. Not human? “Then what is it from?”

  “I can’t tell right off. Hairs from different mammals are all different. I’ll have to compare this hair to those from other animals.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Of course. Just not right now, because I have to get off to school.” He looked at me. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have the patterns for all mammalian hair in my head.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Gardener had a cat or dog,” I suggested. “Those hairs could get mixed in with floss.” I’d even heard of people knitting sweaters from their dog’s hair.

  “The hair isn’t from a dog or a cat. Students often bring those to class. I’d recognize them.”

  “You’ll let me know when you figure out what animal the hair is from?” I said as we walked together toward his front door.

  “Of course. I may even have time to do it later today.” He hesitated. “Why is this so important to you, anyway?”

  “I’m curious,” I admitted. “It doesn’t make sense. I like my world to be logical. Animal hair woven into an embroidery panel isn’t logical. Or, at least it isn’t logical until we figure out why it’s there.”

  “I’m with you. That’s why I love science,” said Dave. “I promise to let you know as soon as I can. But right now I have to get to school.”

  Back in my car I realized I’d never reached Susan, the church secretary. That shower I’d been inviting people to attend wasn’t officially “on” until we were on the church calendar. No one answered—it was only about seven-thirty—so I left a message for her to call me back as soon as she opened the office.

  In the meantime I had plenty of time and nothing to do. I headed for the Harbor Haunts Café.

  In the summer they opened for breakfast, and I’d been craving crabmeat eggs Benedict. Living in Haven Harbor had its challenges: solving crimes, digging up old secrets, even figuring out why an animal hair was in a needlepoint panel.

  But fresh seafood (and farm-fresh eggs and cheeses and vegetables) was definitely one of the reasons I loved Maine.

  In Arizona they hadn’t even heard of crabmeat eggs Benedict.

  Chapter 30

  How fair is the rose, what a beautiful flower!

  In summer so fragrant and gay!

  But the leaves are beginning to fade in an hour,

  And they wither and die in a day.

  —Sampler by Lydia Frawley, age ten, Salem, Ohio, 1832 (Lydia was a Quaker, who married Hutchins Satterthwaite in 1846.)

  Skye West was standing between two construction company trucks parked in Aurora’s front drive. Roofers already had ladders up, and an empty Dumpster (how many of those had they filled already?) was standing at the ready. Few Maine homes had slate roofs. Slate cracked easily. I’d seen enough garden paths patchworked out of broken pieces to know that. Where had Skye found roofers able to repair the old roof? Replacing it would have been the easier, and less expensive, choice.

  Then I noticed one of the trucks had New York plates.

  They might be experts on slate roofing, but Skye and Patrick had just lost some of that local credibility they’d said was so important to them. Surely, there must have been someone in Maine who could deal with a slate roof.

  How old was the roof on the house that would soon be mine?

  Standing at the edge of Aurora’s driveway I had a small wave of panic.

  Am I ready to be a homeowner? To take responsibility for the house my family had built two hundred years ago?

  True, I was next in line, and I loved the house. I loved that Mama and I and Gram always put our Christmas tree up in the bay window that had been added to the living room sometime in the early twentieth century. I loved that people walking by could see the shiny tinfoil star I’d made in kindergarten and we’d put on top of our tree ever since. I hoped Gram hadn’t discarded it when I was in Arizona. But, no, she’d never have done that. That was our star. My star.

  I loved the wide front porch overlooking the town green, where our Adirondack chairs caught breezes from the harbor and gave us a view up close of what was happening in town. I loved the old maple tree in our backyard, where my friend Frankie and I had built a rickety tree house the summer we were nine and kept records of the planes whose jet trails we saw high overhead. We’d dreamed of someday being on one of those planes and going somewhere exotic, somewhere far from Maine. A nor’easter had taken down most of our tree house one winter, but one stalwart board was still stubbornly nailed to the tree to mark the spot where our platform had been.

  I loved my house. My home. But taking full responsibility for it? Grown-ups did that.

  Was anyone ever completely ready to pick up the pieces left by earlier generations . . . whether those pieces were genetic or clapboard?

  Certainly, Skye West seemed capable. Of course, she was almost Gram’s age. How many houses had she owned? Patrick had mentioned several. I watched her pointing at various places on the roof and the siding, while a burly man in blue overalls and a short-sleeved Yankee T-shirt listened and wrote notes on his clipboard.

  Someone should warn him about being seen in town in an “Evil Empire” shirt. Haven Harbor was definitely part of Red Sox Nation.

  A hand touched my back. I jumped.

  “Patrick! I didn’t hear you coming!” His hand touched off an electric circuit. I stepped forward.

  His crinkly brown eyes laughed. “Not to worry. No murders here today, investigator lady. Talked with Mom yet?”

  “Not yet. She se
ems pretty busy.”

  “A constant state with her, you’ll find.” Patrick agreed. “Mom’s never bored. She’s always got a project or seven to work on. This summer, of course, she has Aurora. And the carriage house.”

  “And the death of her friend,” I added. “Did you know she planned to solve Jasmine’s murder?” Assuming she’d been murdered, I added to myself.

  “For years she’s talked about the Gardeners. How they sponsored her scholarship at Miss Pritchard’s, and later paid for her college, and helped her out when she was studying acting and only getting bit parts off-Broadway. But I didn’t know about Jasmine’s death, or the promise she made to Mrs. Gardener, until a few days ago.” Patrick looked up at the old house. “I suspect Mom has always been fascinated by this house. After all, she saw it when it was at its height. It was here she learned what it meant to people of a certain class to summer in Maine, with all the possibilities inherent in those words. Maybe restoring the house is like bringing back the girl she was when she was here.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Then she’s never restored another home?”

  “Not like this one, for sure. Our New York place is a loft, converted before we bought it. The L.A. house is new, too.”

  “And you said the other day you had a place in Aspen.”

  “We did until a couple of years ago, but I never was fond of sliding down a mountain on two boards, and Mom’s schedule didn’t let her get there often. So we sold it.”

  “You don’t like skiing. What do you like to do?” I guessed Patrick West didn’t need to work. At least, work in the sense of being employed, or going to an office on a regular basis.

  “I paint. I enjoy good music and good food and wine. I do some hiking. It feels good to be outside and not stuck in a building or car all the time, the way life is in L.A.” Patrick looked around. “I’d never been to Maine before. I like it here. Low-key. Lots of artists and lots of galleries. A few good museums—I love the Farnsworth. And one day while Mom was busy with the contractor, I drove up to see the collection at Colby.” He paused. “Impressive. I hadn’t expected to find places like that in Maine.”