“Like what?”
“He can get a face put on these bones.” Betsy stared at the photographs. “I’ve heard forensics departments generally have a severe backlog of work so that’s likely to take a while. I wish I didn’t have to wait for them. Hmmm, I may have a way of getting it done faster for myself.”
“Don’t you have to have the actual skull to do that?” asked Godwin, remembering how it was done in a case some years back.
“I know it’s usually done with a computer nowadays, instead of a person laying clay down on the skull with the aid of markers they glue on. I’m hoping all we need is photographs. I’m going to call Connor.”
“You think he knows?”
“No, but his daughter does.”
Connor promised to ask his daughter to call Betsy as soon as he could get hold of her, which he thought was likely to be this afternoon, unless she was doing some lab work.
Betsy was helping Godwin compare the contents of an order from Norden Crafts against her original order form when the phone rang. “Crewel World, Betsy speaking, how may I help you?” she said on picking up the phone.
“Betsy, this is Peg Sullivan. Da said you wanted to speak with me?”
“Oh, yes, thank you for calling so promptly! I have the most audacious favor to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“Remember how you pointed out that, by the description, the skeleton we found couldn’t be Dieter Keitel’s? Well, I have a set of six very clear photographs of the skull and I’m wondering if you know someone who could put a face on one of them, working just from the photographs.”
There was a thoughtful little silence. “It can be done,” she said at last. “I’m taking a class on how to do it this semester.”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
Peg laughed. “I’ll come over this evening, all right?”
“Thank you.”
Peg came over around seven. “Hmmmm,” she said, looking them over swiftly. And going through them again, more slowly, “Hmmmmm.” There was an eager, almost greedy, look on her face. Her mouth opened and Betsy thought she was actually going to lick her lips.
Betsy asked, “Does the ruler in the photographs help?”
“Not really; it’s the proportions between features that tell you the shape of the face. These are excellent photographs. May I borrow the wanted poster with Dieter Keitel’s picture on it?”
“Certainly. How long will this take?”
“Possibly as long as a week.”
But Betsy got a phone call the following afternoon. “Well, it isn’t Dieter Keitel’s skull.”
“I thought we knew that.”
“What we had was a description that didn’t match. I made an overlay of Keitel’s face on the skull and it doesn’t fit. The placement of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, the nose—it doesn’t fit.”
“So now what?”
“Now I try to make a face that does fit. Betsy, thank you for calling me about this. I am really looking forward to doing something . . . something real. I hope I don’t disappoint you—and myself.”
“I’m sure you won’t.”
Twenty
JILL was adamant: “No more investigating up in Cass County. They’re on it now,” she said. “And if we butt in the wrong way, we could hurt the case they’re building. Plus we could generate some ill will that I don’t think Lars and I need, since we’re going to be spending time up there in the cabin.”
So Betsy gritted her teeth and agreed. But it was hard. She felt she was hot on the trail to the solution.
Jill called the next day, Friday. “Did you get something in the mail today?” she asked.
“Just the usual. Why, what did you get?”
“Another of those three by five cards. Mine says ‘STOP SLEUTHING’ in all capital letters.”
Betsy was so shocked and frightened she could only think of banalities in response. “Terse fellow, isn’t he?”
“Yes. I’ve called Mike Malloy, he’s on his way over.”
“I thought they had this stopped,” Betsy said. “What do you think we should do?”
“Well, first of all, I sent Lars to take the children to Gram and Grampa Larson until we get this figured out.”
“Yes, that’s imperative. What can you tell about the card?”
“Not much. I think it’s just like the one you got.”
“What’s the postmark?”
“Same as before: Minneapolis.”
“Jill—”
“No, I don’t think we should quit.” This was quite a change from her statement the previous day. Jill sounded sure to the point of anger about it.
After they hung up, Betsy sat at the checkout desk for a while, thinking. Mike had sounded awfully sure that Robert Nowicki had received the message to stop writing threatening notes. Of course, Betsy was getting the report from Mike, who had it from someone in the Morris Police Department, who had it from Robert. Who knew how that message had changed over the course of being handed down? She did understand that Robert had strongly denied he was responsible for the notes.
Could that be true? What if Robert hadn’t written them? Maybe it was Max of the shattered cheekbone sending them. Maybe it wasn’t the Nowicki family at all.
Since there were no customers in the shop, Betsy reached into the carpetbag under the desk and pulled out her knitting. She had long ago found that knitting a simple pattern, as of a knit two, purl two scarf, was a way to free her mind of anxiety and clarify her thoughts. She was currently working on one in Christmas colors of red and green. In a minute or two she could feel her pulse slow and her thinking become more coherent.
But sadly, no new ideas formed.
IT was Sunday, only three days since Betsy gave the photographs of the skull and the wanted poster to Peg Sullivan. She had just come home from church and was deep into English muffins and jam and her second cup of black tea with milk and sugar when there was a knock on her door.
With a sigh over her interrupted breakfast, Betsy went to answer it.
Peg stood at the door, with a big smile on her face. “I’ve got it!” she said. “May I come in and show you?”
“You have it already?” replied Betsy, stepping back and waving Peg in.
“Professor Johnson let me turn it into a project for credit,” she said. “So I could take the time to really focus on it. The face I got looks like a real person, almost. At least as much of one as I could make it. It’s hard to resist the temptation to ignore some clue the skull is giving you in order to make the face more realistic. And of course, there’s the problem of not having the basic talent for drawing to do this really well.” Peg’s smile had been becoming more and more apologetic as she spoke. “Plus, without being able to handle the skull, I wasn’t sure what age he was. But anyway, I have a face to show you.”
Betsy led the way into the living room, where she took the envelope Peg was carrying and said, “Let’s have a look.”
The envelope was held shut with a big paper clip, which Betsy slid off. Inside were three sheets of paper, an original and two photocopies. Behind them were the six photographs of the skull.
The original, a pencil drawing, was just the head of a man in his forties with a thick head of dark hair cropped short on the sides. His jaw was square, his nose short and a little broad, his eyes large and set well apart, light-colored and intelligent. His mouth was wide and heavy, the artist trying for a sensual effect that didn’t quite come off.
“This is really interesting,” said Betsy. “It looks like a real person.”
“As drawn by an amateur,” said Peg.
“Well, not all that amateur, and it looks more as if it were drawn from life than from measurements taken from a skull.”
“Thank you,” said Peg, wriggling just a little with pleasure. “My professor thought it adequate and accurate.”
Betsy could not take her eyes off the face. Who are you? she thought. The eyes looked back at her, but e
nigmatically. She reached for the full-front photograph of the skull, and managed to shift her attention to it for a few moments. Nothing about it, to her, suggested the face in the drawing.
“How sure are you that what you’ve done really represents the person who used to occupy this skull?” she asked Peg.
“There’s been a lot of research done on this,” Peg replied. “There are rules about the placement of the eyes, the shape of the nose, the width of the mouth, and the thickness of the flesh on the bone that apply to every human, so once you know them, you can get a good estimate of the basic shape of any face. Of course, if a person is thin or fat, that will affect that shape, and age brings about changes, too. You told Da that Major Farmer was years older than his wife, that he’d been married before and had a son old enough to join the Army, so I made him middle-aged.”
Betsy stared at her. “I didn’t say I thought the skull belonged to Major Farmer!”
Peg said, dismayed, “No? Oh, no! But—but who else could it be?”
“I don’t know, not for sure. But it’s not the major. I’ve got two separate reports that Helga was seen at the train station saying good-bye to her husband as he left for California. I do have reason to believe the skeleton was put down there by the next owners of the cabin, Marsha and Arnold Nowicki. And that the person in the cellar is their sixteen-year-old son, Jerry.”
“I don’t understand. What makes you think that?”
“I got a threat, warning me to stop investigating, and the only person who would send it is Robert Nowicki.” Betsy explained about the interview with Robert.
“Well, now, isn’t that interesting,” Peg said.
“Yes, so I’m pretty sure it’s the missing boy.”
Peg reached out, took back her drawing, and looked at it again. “And I was so sure I had it right. Do you want me to redo the sketch?”
Betsy looked at the drawing. Was it what Jerry would have looked like in middle age, had he survived? Maybe she should ask Peg to redo the drawing, making the face that of a very young man. Even so, just getting this glimpse of the face made her wish all the harder to put the final pieces of the puzzle together.
ON Monday at two, the Monday Bunch came into session. A group of mostly senior women stitchers, they met one afternoon a week to do needlework and gossip. Emily was one exception to the group’s demographic—she was not yet thirty—and Phil was the other. He was a retired railroad engineer. All of the Bunch were avid supporters of Betsy’s efforts in the field of sleuthing.
So Betsy felt free to show them the pencil sketch Peg had done, putting a face on the skull found in the root cellar.
Godwin, who had seen it earlier, said, “I think he looks like a nice man.”
“I think he looks kind but bossy,” said Patricia.
“Let me see,” said Emily, putting down her knitting. She took the sketch and looked at it, holding it first close up, then at arm’s length. “I agree with Goddy, he looks like a nice man.”
But when Phil looked at the sketch, he merely shook his head. “He looks like one of those mealy-mouthed college professors to me.”
“You think so?” said Betsy, surprised.
“Or an office manager, a paper pusher,” said Phil, nodding, and he handed the sketch to his wife, Doris, an attractive woman in her sixties, with curly hair dyed a cheerful red.
She studied the drawing briefly then said, “I think that in real life he was sexy.” She handed the sheet to Alice, a tall, strongly built woman with a chin not to be trifled with.
“His mouth is all wrong,” she pronounced. “Who drew this?”
“Connor’s daughter Peg,” said Betsy. “She’s a forensic anthropologist, not an artist.”
“I can tell she’s no artist. Still ...” She tilted the sketch from side to side. “I can tell he was a handsome man, with a good sense of humor, but there was something wrong with him in his . . . manliness.”
Betsy was amazed at what the Bunch was reading into an amateur pencil sketch.
Bershada was last to look at the sketch.
“Nice looking,” she said at first. “But weak.” She glanced at Alice. “Not womanly, and not a crook, but weak as a man.”
Alice nodded, and Betsy said, “I am surprised you are able to decipher this man’s personality just by looking at a drawing of his face.”
“Oh, come on!” said Godwin. “We all do that all the time. We look at someone’s face and decide right away if we should stay or walk away—or run.”
“All right, I understand that, but we make those decisions based on what years of living have done to the muscles and skin of the person. This is a reconstruction of a face based just on his skull. We have no idea what living did to the muscles.”
“Bad to the bone,” said Bershada with a little laugh.
“No, I think he was nice,” said Godwin. “I’d’ve liked to be friends with him.”
“So would I,” said Betsy.
“Have you gotten any more threatening notes?” asked Phil.
“No,” said Betsy. “But Jill has.”
That created an unhappy sensation around the table.
“I think you should drop this,” said Alice.
“Jill doesn’t want to,” said Betsy. “But she has sent the children away until the person who mailed the notes is discovered and arrested.”
“Good idea,” said Phil, and the others nodded.
“We know who sent them,” said Godwin, “but we can’t prove it. He’s very clever and left no fingerprints and he wrote with block letters, which you can’t compare to his usual handwriting.”
“So who did send them?” asked Bershada.
Betsy replied, “Right now, I suspect a member of the Nowicki family. Marsha and Arnold Nowicki were the next owners of the cabin after Helga and Matthew Farmer. It’s possible the skeleton belongs to their teenaged son, Jerry.”
That created another, very satisfactory sensation. Godwin nodded. “It’s possible this is Jerry Nowicki, as he would look if he’d lived to middle age instead of dying when he was only sixteen.”
“So why did the Farmers run away?” asked Alice.
“That’s a good question,” said Betsy. “I’m thinking now that the rumors about the two of them from back in the 1940s might be true. Major Farmer got orders for overseas duty and deserted in the face of those orders, and then, when he got established somewhere new, with a new identity, he sent for her.”
“So they’re still alive?” asked Emily.
“Probably not. Major Farmer was a lot older than his wife, so he’s likely deceased. And we know Helga Farmer died of a stroke some years back. Seven years after he disappeared, a judge declared him dead, and sometime after that she met and married Peter Ball, and they ended up living in New Ulm. Then fifteen years ago she died of a stroke.”
“Could this Peter Ball really be Major Farmer?” asked Phil.
“No,” said Betsy. “He’s in his eighties, but very spry. Major Farmer would be over a hundred years old. For another, he’s not an American, he was born in England ...” She paused, frowning.
“What?” asked Godwin.
“Something . . . I don’t know.” She smiled. “He’s not like you, Phil. He can crochet circles around many of us, but he’s ashamed to admit he can do it at all.”
“Nothing wrong with crochet!” said Phil, lifting the cup cover he was working on. “If it wasn’t for needlework, I wouldn’t have met and married Doris.” He gave her a fond smile, and she smiled back at him.
Nice, thought Betsy, that some people find happiness in each other. She thought of Connor, and her smile was not dissimilar to Doris and Phil’s.
The door sounded its two notes and a woman in late middle age came in. Her hair was brown streaked with blond. She was dressed all in gray with touches of red: a long gray skirt with a red flower embroidered on the hem, a gray sleeveless blouse with red piping, gray sneakers with red shoelaces, and a red cardigan. She was carrying a gray string purse wi
th a red lining showing through. After a moment, Betsy said, “Hello, Molly. What brings you out?”
“You do.” She looked at the people sitting at the table and Betsy said, “Come with me,” and led her into the back of the shop. “Would you care to sit down? I can bring you a cup of tea.”
“No, I’m not staying long. Betsy, have you learned anything at all?”
Betsy first offered an apology for the real problem. “I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you. It’s just that we don’t seem to be making any progress. Everything is still just questions, and more questions, and all I learn leads to still more questions. Except we know that the skeleton isn’t that of Dieter Keitel but someone who was killed after your father and stepmother moved away. But we don’t know who it belongs to.” Betsy made a gesture of frustration. “Everything is fragments and speculation! I wish there was a chain of evidence going from the start right through to today! But there isn’t. I’m really sorry, I’m starting to think we’ll never solve this.”
Molly turned away and put her face in her hands. “This isn’t fair,” she murmured, and Betsy came to rest her hands on the woman’s shoulders.
“I know, I know. I wish there were something else concrete I could tell you. Well, wait, there’s one thing, but it’s just another fragment. We got hold of some photographs of the skull and I have a contact in a forensic anthropology class at the university. She put a face on the skull—but it’s not right, it should be a young face, and she put an older man’s face on it. It’s out on the table, if you want to take a look.”
“Thank you,” said Molly without enthusiasm, but she turned and went out into the front area.
“Here it is,” said Betsy, picking up the pencil sketch and handing it to her.
Molly took it, gave a little scream, and fell to the floor.
They soon had Molly sitting in a chair with her head down between her knees. She began murmuring something and Betsy knelt down to hear what it was.
“Please let me up,” was what she was saying. “Please let me up, I’m all right now.”
So Betsy lifted her upright. Her head lolled and she was so pale that her makeup—which hadn’t even been visible when she came in—now looked almost clownish. But she repeated, “I’m all right, really, I’m all right.”
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