Crewel Yule

by Ferris, Monica

  As she went out the door of the suite, merry laughter caught her attention. Two men and three women were standing near the railing. One of the men was bouncing up and down on his toes as he said rapidly, “Throw the ball, boss! Throw the ball! Throw the ball!” And the others laughed again.

  One of the women said in a scratchy voice, “I’m sick of crackers, give me a walnut.” And they laughed some more.

  The man who wanted a ball thrown glanced over and saw Betsy. “It’s all right, we’re not crazy,” he said. “We’re trying out what it would be like if our pets could talk.”

  Betsy thought about her beautiful but fat and lazy cat Sophie, and said, in a low and furry voice, “Honey, peel me a mouse.”

  More laughter. One woman glanced at her name tag and said, “Say, I know you from RCTN! You’re the one with the shop near Minneapolis; I helped you out one time when you wanted to know about freebies. I’m Judy Baker of Stitchin House in Moline, Illinois.”

  Betsy came forward, rearranging her purchases so she could put out a hand. “Hi, it’s good to meet you. Thank you for your advice.”

  Judy said, “This is Mike, Kathy, Phil, Mary, and Jean.”

  “How do you do?” said Betsy, shaking hands all around. “Are you having a good market?”

  The consensus was, not bad, not bad. Though it was strange to be here in December, it was definitely better than not holding the Market at all. Reminded of the work they were there to do, the group broke apart. Betsy would have gone on her way, too, but first she wanted to check her Market Guide to see who else she wanted to see on this floor. Whiskey Creek was along here; Betsy loved their boxes. She closed the guide and would have turned away, but her gaze was caught upward by a woman standing against the railing on the top floor. She was a very fair blonde, wearing a big, loose-fitting white sweater, an eye-catching subject against the darker background of the hall behind her. There was an air about her, of chin-up arrogance perhaps, or even triumph. She’s like a queen greeting her people after an important victory, thought Betsy.

  The woman turned her head to the left, and suddenly her right hand slipped forward off the railing. To Betsy’s horror, the woman kept going right on over, shoulder first. A scream broke from her, and her hands grabbed futilely at the ivy and then at the huge emptiness of the atrium as she fell.

  Betsy gasped and her eyes fled upward. She would not, could not, look down. Up to the empty railing on nine, she fastened her eyes, until the scream was cut off by a horrid smack.

  Feeling weak in the knees, Betsy reached for the railing in front of her—no, no, no! She backed away from it, eyes closing. No.

  But now everyone was shouting and running and she was afraid of standing there blind, so she opened her eyes. People were rushing in both directions along the hallway, or crowding in front of her to gape downward. The air was filled with an uproar of excited and frightened voices. A man brushed her shoulder as he reached to point downward. “Oh, gosh, look at her!” But Betsy turned her head up and away.

  And there was Jill. She was standing by the railing on the eighth floor, looking down—but Betsy wasn’t going to look down. She kept looking at Jill until the impulse to drop her own gaze passed.

  Then Betsy knew what she wanted, and she wanted it right now: to stand in the aura of Jill’s strength. Jill wouldn’t be wanting to break into screams, or tears; Jill would know what to do.

  Betsy knew there were stairs, but what if they were strictly for emergencies? What if you could get into the stairwell but not out again until you were at the bottom, where the dead and broken woman was? No. She saw a pair of elevators down the gallery, not far away. She joined the current of people going that way.

  A car took a long time to come, and when it did, it wanted to go down, so she had to let it depart and wait for one to come up. People were all around her, saying, “Did you see it?” “Did you see her?” “I did, it was sickening!” “Who is she?” “Is she dead?” “I saw her, she’s got to be dead!” “How did it happen?” “Where’s that elevator?” “Come on, let’s walk down!” But Betsy clenched herself shut, and waited for an elevator to come, to take her up, out of this.

  It did, finally, and she dashed in and punched the button for the eighth floor four or five times, then jittered from foot to foot while it rolled smoothly upward. She was almost surrounded by glass, but kept her eyes firmly on the twin doors until the elevator stopped and they slid open. The eighth floor seemed empty. Certainly Jill was not at the railing anymore.

  Betsy hurried down the hall, around the corner, to her suite. There were big bay windows on either side of the door, with the door inset between them. She fumbled the card key into the slot. A little light blinked green and she opened the door, almost falling in her eagerness.

  “Jill!” she called.

  No answer.

  “Jill! Where are you?”

  But Jill was not in the room.

  Betsy stripped her wrists of the plastic bag handles and dumped them on the floor near the window. There was already a heap of filled bags there. She frowned at them until she realized they must be Godwin’s purchases.

  She wondered where Godwin was. Had he gone down to the atrium? Surely not—he would wish to attend the scene of an ugly accident even less than she did.

  Was he still shopping? Was anyone still shopping?

  The room was too silent. Who knew what was happening out there? She went out to see. The hallway was still empty, but there was a lot of talking going on down in the atrium, she could hear it. No screams or shouts now.

  Maybe, somehow, she wasn’t dead. Could it be? Reluctantly, she went for a look. There was a big knot of people down there, all talking and gesturing. As she watched a little clearing began to grow and there was the woman on the floor, her limbs impossibly crooked. Betsy looked away, but it was too late; the image left its outline on her retina, a stain that was permanent.

  Her gaze fled along the atrium floor—and there was Godwin! He was going toward a table whose single occupant was someone in a wheelchair. The woman appeared to be weeping, and Godwin was being sympathetic.

  Sympathetic was something Betsy could do. She decided to join them. She turned and went down to the end of the gallery, then turned down the long side toward the elevators. Halfway along, sitting on the floor, was another weeping woman. She was in navy-blue slacks and sweater. Her knees were drawn up and her forehead was resting on them, and she was sobbing so hard her shoulders were shaking.

  Betsy went to stoop beside her. “Here now, here now,” she said, “are you all right?”

  “Y-yes,” the woman managed. She gulped and went on, “Or I will be. That poor woman, I saw her . . . on the floor down there . . . Oh, God, Belle’s dead!” The sobs renewed themselves.

  “Belle—was that her name?” asked Betsy. “Did you know her?”

  The woman nodded. “I used, used to w-work for her. B-Belle Hammermill. Sh-she’s from Milwau-k-kee.” The woman wiped her face on her gabardine knees and sniffed once, twice. “Sor-sorry.”

  “Yes, it must be a shock to you, seeing someone you know . . . like that.” Betsy touched her gently on the shoulder. There were lots of silver threads in the yarn of the dark sweater, harsh to the touch.

  “A shock, yes. T-terrible.” The woman lifted her face to look at Betsy and forced a trembling smile. Her oval face was surrounded by very curly auburn hair; she was pretty, or would be when she wasn’t so upset. “Thank you for stopping,” she said. She glanced at the name tag and added, “Ms. Devonshire.” She choked and sniffed hard, seeking control. “Sorry. I’m Eve Suttle from Silver Threads in Savannah. But I used to work for Belle.”

  “Oh, then this must be especially horrible and sad.”

  Eve made a strange grimace. “It—is. I can’t stop crying.” She began a struggle to stand. “I’m sorry, making a nuisance and all.”

  Betsy helped her to her feet, concerned at the pale face, the glazed brown eyes. “I think you should go lie down, a
t least for awhile.”

  “Oh, no, I’ll be all right. I’m supposed to be shopping for Silver Threads, and Mrs. Entwhistle will be upset with me if I don’t get all the things on her list.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that right now. I think everyone’s stopped buying until this gets sorted out. Here, let’s go this way. Did you know Ms. Hammermill long?”

  “Three years.” Eve came along docilely. “But then things—well, I decided to move back home, to Savannah. That’s where I’m from originally, and there I went to work for Mrs. Entwhistle. I have lots of family there, and they’re helping me raise my little girl . . .” Her voice went high on the last two words, and she put her palm against her nose and mouth. “Sorry, sorry.”

  “Here, this has shaken you more than you know, I think,” said Betsy. “What’s your room number? I think you definitely need to lie down for a bit.”

  “We’re down there, in seven twenty-three.” The woman looked down the gallery.

  “On seven? But this is eight!”

  “It is? But the stairs went around twice . . .” Eve shook her head. “I was on the elevator, you see, and got off on the wrong floor.”

  Betsy frowned at this conflation of stairs and elevator, and Eve explained, “I was thinking about something else. So when I got off the elevator and went to my room, the card wouldn’t work and then I realized I was on the wrong floor. And I came down the stairs, and . . . and then there was this scream and when I looked . . . Oh, my God!” She bent over as if her stomach had clenched tight. “My God.”

  Betsy put a hand on the back of her sparkly sweater and circled it slowly twice, a calming stroke. “Take it easy, everything will be all right. Come on, I’ll walk you to your room.”

  Eve managed a faint, “You’re being very nice, thank you.”

  As they started along the gallery, Betsy cast around in her mind for something to say. Finally she asked, “Was Belle a good boss to work for?”

  “Yes, at first. But then . . .” Eve swallowed and said rapidly, “But I got homesick, I guess. You know how it is.” She made a gesture seeking understanding; but she didn’t look at Betsy, and seemed to withdraw into herself, so Betsy politely didn’t ask any more questions.

  Seven

  Saturday, December 15, 10:08 A.M.

  Jill was stitching in Betsy’s suite. Betsy had taken her down to the INRG desk in the lobby first thing this morning and explained that Jill had been trapped at the hotel last night by the snow, and so was not only without a change of clothes, but also the little stitching project she’d brought along to work on at idle moments during the law enforcement management seminar. Could she please buy a kit or something (she’d pay retail, of course) so she wouldn’t have to sit twiddling her thumbs until the streets cleared?

  They were generous—more than generous. They told her she could buy anything she wanted from any suite, at the same prices shop-owners were paying. They even gave her a special name tag so no one would question her right to shop. And they happily sold her an INRG T-shirt, too.

  Jill waited until they were on the elevator back up to eight to remark that it was a pity INRG wasn’t selling official Market underwear.

  After breakfast, Jill had seen Betsy and Godwin off on their buying spree, then gone shopping for herself. In Connie Welch’s suite she found a little kit with a Santa Claus face to be glued to a piece of stiff felt to which beads were added as ornament. No glue was included in the kit, so Jill made a side trip to the front desk, where the clerk found her a little bottle of Elmer’s white glue. Jill used it on the spot, drizzling it on the back of the plaster head and pressing it onto the center of the white fabric. Then, partly because scissors weren’t included in the kit, but mostly because Jill needed a new pair of scissors and wasn’t averse to buying them at a wholesale price, she was pleased to acquire a beautiful little pair of Ginghers. And because she was allowed to buy anything, she could not resist a lovely Purrfect Spots pattern of a polar bear on a blue ground, its nose lifted up to sniff a red Christmas tree ornament hanging on a red ribbon. It was called Yukon Yule. Though she liked needlepoint best, Jill, like most stitchers, could do several kinds of needlework. And this pattern was lovely.

  She started back to the elevator, but a suite that had needlepoint canvases caught her eye. J&J Designs was the name. The were printed rather than hand-painted, which meant their prices were reasonable. She paused to consider the beautiful Panda, a near-abstract, curved shapes of black on white, but bought the Measure Twice Cut Once canvas with its tiny models of tools and a frame for it taller on one side than the other, as if its maker had not followed the advice. Her husband would be amused.

  She went back to the suite. Before she sat down to stitch she figured out how the windows operated and slid one open a few inches, then opened the door to the hall so a draft was created. Jill almost always found hotel rooms far too hot for her taste and had to find a way to lower the temperature about fifteen or twenty degrees. She had already changed out of her clothes back into the flimsy nightgown Betsy had loaned her so she could rinse out her underwear and also so she would not be tempted to return to the sales floors. Soon she was content in the fifty-eight degrees of chill she had created.

  Also, she opened the door hoping the cleaning woman would come in. Or at least so Jill could hear her pushing her heavy cart and invite her in. No need to make her have to come back repeatedly to see if she could finish her assigned rooms.

  By now the glue was dry on the Santa head. Jill trimmed the felt back close to the head, threaded the hair-like beading needle, and made a quick circuit of the head on the felt with a single row of green and red beads. Then she consulted the instructions and did a row of picot beading—bring the needle up through the fabric, string three beads on the thread, and go back down close enough to the first stitch so the middle bead is forced out, making a tiny, square loop. Repeat all the way around.

  Jill had finished that and was stringing beads and tiny metal ornaments to make the first long string of fringe to hang down from the bottom of the Santa head when she heard a scream. By the time it was cut off, Jill was on her feet, and two seconds later she was out in the hall, looking over the railing.

  On the tile floor below, right at the foot of the carpeted stairs, Jill could see someone crumpled, limbs at impossible angles. The cockatoos in a cage near the body were shrieking, their noise nearly drowned in the shouts and yells of people rushing to the body.

  She whirled and ran back into the suite. No robe, no time to dress—she grabbed Betsy’s winter coat and shoved her toes into Betsy’s slippers. They were too small, her heels hung over the backs.

  She grabbed her purse by its strap and was out the door. She ran on long legs down the hall—not for the elevator. She went for the door back in a corner. The stairs.

  Like most parts of a hotel rarely seen or used by guests, the stairwell was utilitarian: gray paint over steel steps, buff paint on the rough concrete walls. Her feet thundered as she raced down. She was not even breathing hard when she reached the bottom.

  But the stairs decanted her into a hallway that led only outdoors. She opened the door into a blizzard. High winds and a thick whirl of snow batted at her. She started down a barely visible narrow walk that was snow over ice. She passed a thin tree and noted how the snow clung to leaves—the trees had leaves! In December! The slippers had no grip, and, distracted, she fell. She staggered to her feet. But even scuffling along, she kept slipping and sliding, and once slid into a car, burying her hands above the wrists in snow on its hood.

  She made her way as fast as she could down to the front of the hotel then up and under the portico, where the wind was blowing like a tornado, lifting her coat and nightgown indecently. Hands pushing down, she hurried to the front entrance, and inside the first set of doors she paused to stamp snow off her feet and resettle her coat. The nightgown clung to her knees and there was snow in her fair hair as she walked into the warmth of the big lobby.

 
; Someone was saying into a phone, “. . . eyewitness who saw her fall from the ninth floor.”

  There were loud voices out in the atrium, she could hear them coming through the center open doors. They were coming from a crowd gathering around the body. But the lobby had only three people in it. One, a tall, stocky black woman, was behind the check-in counter. She was the woman who had given Jill the glue bottle and, Jill realized, the clerk who had checked her in last night. She was talking on the phone.

  “. . . a terrible mess, and she’s really, obviously past any need for life support,” the woman was saying, talking to emergency services. That was good.

  Standing near the twin couches was a very plump woman in stretch knit slacks who was staring anxiously at the woman on the phone. Probably the eyewitness. That was good, too, pulling her out of the crowd before her memory could be mixed with other people’s.

  And in a wheelchair behind the INRG check-in tables was a thin woman with a thick, smooth helmet of white hair. She wore a gray dress printed with big black leaves, and was talking on a cell phone while looking with alarm at the crowd in the atrium. “No, no, stay where you are, it’s a madhouse here—and you couldn’t get over here, anyway, the news is saying all the streets are impassable.” Probably talking to another INRG official.

  Jill strode past the counter into the atrium, down the steps, and up to the crowd. “I’m a police officer, let me through,” she announced. The people made room, but slowly, staring at her, confused by the contradiction of the authority in her voice and the strange outfit she was wearing.

  At the center, in a small clear space, lay the body. Definitely a body, not an injured person. She had beautiful light blond hair in a tangle of curls, an oversize sweater that was still mostly white, and red wool slacks. One low-heeled black shoe had come off but lay on its side beside her shattered foot. Near one shoulder lay a small purse, its contents spilling. A Market Guide, open and folded back, had suppliers marked in red—the red pencil itself was near the dead woman’s hand. Jill looked up, but nowhere was the line of gallery railing broken. So why had she fallen over?