Crewel Yule

by Ferris, Monica

  While they waited, the big front doors swooped open and two young men in white trousers, knit watch caps, heavy black pea coats, and black rubber boots came in. They carried a wire stretcher with a blue plastic lining between them.

  They stood a few moments inside the door, stamping snow off their boots. The stitchers stopped working to stare, their faces showing concern. Marveen raised her hand, and they came to the counter. “There is a police investigator inside the office,” she said, gesturing at the door to it. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  “Thanks,” said the younger of the two.

  Marveen rapped once and opened the door. Ms. Wills was sitting at the side of the bigger desk in the office chair that belonged to the other desk. She no longer looked nervous; in fact, she was smiling just a little. Lieutenant Birdsong rose in Marveen’s opinion from competent to good.

  “Yes?” said Birdsong impatiently.

  “Emergency services is here.”

  “Wonderful. Excuse me, Ms. Wills.” Birdsong came out and held a brief conversation with the young men and then waved them and their stretcher into the atrium.

  With a minimum of noise and fuss, they put the unfortunate Ms. Hammermill into the stretcher—the blue lining turned out to be a body bag—and carried her through the lobby. The stitchers all stood as she went by, and two went to hold the big double doors open.

  Saturday, December 15, 3:40 P.M.

  Jill waited patiently behind the check-in counter for Lieutenant Birdsong to ask for her. She watched the ambulance crew arrive, consult with Birdsong, and take away the body of Belle Hammermill.

  It was always a solemn moment, to watch someone being carried away in a body bag. There was no rush to it, as there was when the person’s face was showing. Several of the people sitting on the lobby couches stood as the stretcher went by, and a man and woman hurried to hold the doors open.

  Jill stood, too, and took a moment to wish Belle’s soul good fortune in the sudden new place it had found itself. Then she sat down again, thoughtful. So long as a body remained where it had fallen, Jill was able to think of it primarily as a problem and/or a source of information. Once it was gone, she was generally able to stop thinking about it. But during that minute or two of transition, while it was being taken away, it became a human tragedy. And though Jill rarely discussed philosophical questions out loud, her work was the kind that raised them. Was there something after death? Was it golden gates and angels singing? Was there, at least, an explanation for everything? Or was death the final blank, and dying much as described in poet Philip Larkin’s vision of a black ship coming into port for you, towing behind it “a huge and birdless silence”?

  Though a Christian, Jill wasn’t absolutely sure it wasn’t the last—but, as she reflected at every death she attended, the deceased now knew. And just in case, Jill recited a very old prayer against the darkness, “May perpetual light shine upon her.”

  So long as she was in a prayer mode, she wished the two medics and all emergency workers strength and patience. It was going to be a very long shift.

  She sat down again to wait.

  A few minutes later, Birdsong came to the door to show Samantha Wills out and her in. Samantha looked heartened, no longer the frightened, nervous woman Jill had interviewed that morning.

  “Come in, sit down,” Birdsong said to Jill, in a voice roughened by exhaustion.

  She obeyed.

  “The hotel lady says you’re a cop from Minnesota. That right?” he asked, as he turned away and she followed him. The room was delightfully cool.

  “Yes, sir.” She produced identification, and explained how she happened to be at the Consulate instead of the Grand Ole Opry Hotel.

  He looked over the badge and ID card, raising his eyes once to compare the photo to her actual face. “You’re missing some good parties over there,” he noted.

  “And not having one here,” she replied.

  “Yeah, this’s too bad. What do you think?”

  “There are at least three people here who were very unhappy with Belle Hammermill. But there’s another eyewitness besides Samantha, someone I know personally as reliable, who says she watched it happen. She says Belle was alone up there. She says it seemed to her that Ms. Hammermill’s hand slipped and she fell forward and over. I have another eyewitness account, this one third hand, that says a Mr. Dave Stott looked up right after she fell and the railing was empty.”

  “Yeah. This partner she had—” He consulted his notes. “—Cherry Pye.” He shook his head at the foolishness of some parents in naming their children. “You talk to her?”

  “No, but someone else I know did, and he says Ms. Pye said Belle wasn’t suicidal. Ms. Pye, by the way, is one of the people very upset with Belle. I did talk to someone else who frequented Belle and Cherry’s shop and who had an infuriating experience with them just before this event. She didn’t think Belle was suicidal, either.”

  “So,” he said, “two who knew her say she wasn’t inclined to jump. And while you got three people mad at her, two, maybe three, saw her all alone up there, and not being pushed. And what you got at this hotel is just these low railings to stand between crowds of people and a big empty space. That adds up to an accident, right?” He wrote that conclusion down in his notebook and stood. Then he noticed she hadn’t risen and said, “What?”

  “The railings are three and a half feet high, which isn’t low at all. And where she was, wasn’t crowded. And she wasn’t so tall that leaning out would overbalance her.”

  “So?”

  “Well,” she persisted, “I’d at least like to find another witness who actually saw her fall over.”

  “So would I. If this were an ordinary day, I’d do that. I might even bring a crew in here. But nine times out of ten, what would I find out? Just what I already got—an accident. She was standing up there all alone, she saw someone a couple floors down and tried to get her attention and fell. Or she had a secret sorrow and here was a chance to end her troubles. Or she’s like a couple other cases I’ve heard of where she looked over and saw how high up she was and gave in to that weird impulse to jump.”

  Jill, a person subject to authority, nodded. “It could very well be one of those.”

  “Sure.” He closed the notebook with a little flip of his hand and put his ballpoint pen back into his shirt pocket. “I wish they were all this easy. I’ve been up since yesterday morning, and I got six more places to get to before I can go home to shower and change clothes and come right back to work. The National Guard volunteered us a couple of Hummers and I got one, otherwise I’d be home watching the Weather Channel like everyone else in Nashville today. You want a ride back to the Grand Ole Opry Hotel?”

  Jill shook her head. “I’m going to stay. If I hear anything, should I contact you?”

  He looked at her out of his reddened eyes, breathing audibly while he thought about that. His expression did not change when he started to fumble in an inside coat pocket, or when he brought out a business card.

  “Sure, why not?” he said, and gave the card to her. Then he turned and led the way out of the office.

  Fourteen

  Saturday, December 15, 3:55 P.M.

  Betsy went into the last suite on this long side of the third floor, a suite less crowded with product than most. STARDUST, the sign read. She was immediately struck by a large depiction of an old-fashioned steam locomotive. It was a snowy winter scene; the locomotive had pulled into a village decorated for Christmas, with wreaths on every door. The locomotive itself had a wreath circling its single headlight and a red ribbon streaming from its bell. Adults in fur-collared coats and children in snowsuits were waving at the engineer, who was waving back. The locomotive was pulling two yellow passenger cars and a red caboose—it was sad to think that modern children didn’t know what a caboose was.

  But that’s not why Betsy was disappointed. “Oh,” she said, “I thought that was a cross-stitch pattern.”

  “But it i
s,” replied a young woman with shining brown hair and hazel eyes, gesturing to a rack. “Come over here to see it. I begin all my patterns as paintings.”

  “Oh? Oh, good!” Betsy went smiling to the rack and picked up a pattern of the railroad engine. Phil, she was thinking. Phil Galvin was a retired railroad engineer, a semi-regular in the group that gathered on Monday afternoons in Betsy’s shop to stitch and gossip. His favorite patterns reflected his interest in trains. Because he also had a fondness for Christmas, this was a sure sale. She bought a second one, because someone would see Phil working on it and want to know where to get one, and then a third, because there was also a happy little group of historical restoration people in the Twin Cities that specialized in old steam locomotives. And she took a business card, in case there were more requests for the pattern.

  The brown-haired woman said, “I’m Linda Kotilla, and I painted these pictures.” She smiled to see Betsy taking other patterns of her design from the racks. “I’m glad to see you like my work. I use my little hometown as a model.”

  Sure enough, Betsy could see that the buildings in other charts were the same as in the painting, small and built of cream-colored wood, just from different angles. “Oh, they’re all beautiful, though of course I can’t stitch anything so complex myself. But I know my customers, and there are some who will just love them.”

  Betsy paid for the patterns, then went out to the elevator. She was about to get on when she heard a familiar voice call her name, and looked around. It sounded like Godwin, but she couldn’t see him. Then he called a third time and she looked out and up, and there he was, four stories up and around the side, waving at her from the railing. Betsy waved back.

  “Jill wants you to come on up,” he called.

  “To the suite?” she called back.

  “No, here,” said Jill, suddenly appearing beside Godwin.

  “All right!” The elevator doors had closed by then, but that was fine, because it was headed down.

  “What is it, what’s up?” asked Betsy a few minutes later, getting out on seven and finding the two waiting for her at the elevator.

  “Did you see me with Godwin?” asked Jill.

  “Sure,” said Betsy.

  “I mean when you first looked up and saw him waving at you,” persisted Jill.

  “Well, no. You came up beside him after he called to get my attention.”

  “She’s the one who pointed you out and told me to call to you,” said Godwin. “She was standing right behind me.”

  “No, that’s impossible, Goddy,” said Betsy. “I was looking right at you, and you were up there alone.” Jill was at least two inches taller than Godwin.

  “No,” said Jill. “I was standing close enough to touch him.”

  “Stooped down, you mean.”

  “No, standing up straight.”

  “And close enough to touch me right on the tush,” Godwin confided in a low voice, rounding his eyes and feigning shock.

  “I was reaching for his belt,” corrected Jill.

  “Could you see me?” Betsy asked Jill.

  “Not once I got behind Godwin. I saw you coming out of a suite and told Godwin to get your attention and stepped behind him. I couldn’t see you, and figured you couldn’t see me, either. And I was right. If you had been on six, or even five, we probably would have seen each other.”

  “But that means . . .” Betsy gestured.

  “Yes,” said Jill. “That means that you and Samantha Mills wouldn’t have seen someone standing behind Belle, even if he or she were close enough to touch her. To grab and lift her over.”

  “But surely I would have seen something, an arm or a hand!” Betsy turned and leaned against the railing. “It’s too high to just push someone over, see? You’d have to grab and lift.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Jill.

  Godwin said, “This is like high school math. If we knew how tall Belle was, maybe we could figure out the height limits of the person who pushed her over.”

  “She was short, about five four,” Jill said.

  Betsy said, “But my question remains: How could she get lifted over the railing without my seeing an arm or a hand on her?”

  “I have an idea for a way to figure that out,” said Jill. “She wasn’t as tall as you,” she continued, looking at Godwin. “But I’m taller than most, so we’ll use me and you. Betsy, go back down three flights and look up here.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Godwin, who, knowing Jill, was not as alarmed as he should have been, in Betsy’s opinion.

  “Well, I would toss you over in various ways, but after the first couple of times you wouldn’t be worth much as a model. Besides, people are upset enough as it is.”

  “Well, thank you very much!” said Godwin, “But what are you going to do?”

  “Now don’t you worry your pretty little head,” said Jill as she put her hands on Godwin’s shoulders, either reassuringly or to prevent his escape. “Go on, go on,” she said to Betsy.

  Betsy hurried to the stairwell, keeping her smile to herself until out of sight. Jill was a staid, even proper sort of person, except on rare occasions when a weird sense of fun broke a seal and erupted. This seemed to be one of those times. Godwin was, of course, safe as houses, and would surely realize that on some level. Betsy hoped it was a conscious one.

  She came out on the sixth floor and hurried up along the gallery walk to near the elevator, where she turned and looked up. Godwin grinned and waved and Jill, visible beside him, suddenly vanished from sight. An instant later Godwin rose as if on a jet of water. Jill’s arm was visible around his waist and as his legs came into sight, her other arm was visible around one of them just above knee level. Godwin’s mouth opened, but Jill appeared to say something to him, and no sound came out. He sank back down again, and Jill appeared beside him.

  Betsy shook her head no. That wasn’t at all what she had seen.

  “What are they doing up there?” came a woman’s voice, startling her. Betsy turned to see a stout Asian woman with beautiful silver streaks in her black hair looking from Betsy to Jill and Godwin then back again.

  “It’s kind of an experiment.”

  “It looks like skylarking, and if they’re not careful, someone else is going to fall off that railing, and then where will we be? I think I’ll go to the front desk and warn them about this.”

  “It’s not skylarking, it’s serious. That woman up there is a police officer, and she’s trying to figure out how the dead woman fell.”

  The Asian woman watched Jill arranging Godwin at the top of the railing in a new way, then said, “Well, if it’s police business, I suppose they must know what they are doing.”

  She went on her way, and Betsy waved at Jill to continue the experiment. Other people stopped as it went on, but all accepted the explanation that it was a police experiment to see how Belle came to fall. What people stopping to look from other places must have thought, Betsy wondered.

  Several failing combinations later, Godwin stood panting, with his hands braced on the railing well away from his body. He turned his head as if to protest where Jill’s grip had landed this time and one hand came off the railing. Then the rest of his upper body slipped forward and suddenly he seemed about to go over entirely. Betsy gasped and would have let the breath out in a scream but Godwin was grabbed by the shoulder of his sweater and pulled back.

  This time when Jill appeared at the railing, Betsy, still openmouthed, nodded. That was what Betsy had seen when it was Belle at the railing just before her fall.

  Godwin, looking shaken but grinning bravely, waved at her to come up.

  When Betsy arrived on six, she found a small crowd around Jill and Godwin. Two were hotel employees, marked by their white shirts, black trousers, and the blue laminated ID cards on lanyards around their necks. Some of the others were committee members, the rest were shop-owners. All were looking alarmed and speaking sharply.

  “I guess people do pay att
ention to what goes on above the shopping floors,” Godwin said, sidling out of the crowd and up to Betsy. “They’re pretty definite that the experiment is over.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. That last try was the one. How did Jill do it?”

  “Stooped and grabbed me by the lower legs. Lifted and pushed forward, all in one motion. It was almost too easy; think I might have gone over if she hadn’t grabbed me back.”

  Betsy looked over at Jill, who was looking a little winded and thought perhaps it only felt easy. Godwin was not by any means a heavyweight, but Jill had lifted him six or seven times in fewer than that many minutes. Of course, the murderer had only to do it once . . .

  Betsy moved closer to the crowd and heard Jill saying, “Yes, of course. It was a necessary experiment, but we’re done now, and it won’t be repeated.”

  “Well, all right,” said a committee member, somewhat grudgingly.

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” said another.

  “Thank you,” said a tall black woman Betsy recognized as the desk clerk. She seemed to be holding in her anger with much effort, biting off the words.

  The crowd slowly broke up and Jill came to Betsy. “What do you think now?” she asked.

  “What you did to Godwin last is what I saw happen to Belle. What can I say? It sure seems to be murder.”

  Fifteen

  Saturday, December 15, 4:08 P.M.

  Jill, Godwin, and Betsy went back to their suite. “Where do we start?” Jill asked Betsy.

  “You’re asking me?”

  “You’re the one who solves murders,” said Jill. “If we were trying to arrest a drunk driver now, or deciding how to arrange the watch list so Mike could take his vacation, then you’d be asking me for advice.”

  Betsy looked around for something to write on. Jill picked up a couple of sheets of hotel stationery, but Betsy waved them off. “I need a notebook or tablet. I always lose the most important sheet of a stack of loose paper,” she said. Then she saw the Management and Hiring booklet. She picked it up and opened it. As she remembered, the sets of rules were one-sided; the back of each page was blank. “This will do fine,” she said. She found a pen in her purse, but hesitated before clicking the point out. “I don’t like this.”