Crewel Yule

by Ferris, Monica

  “Why not?” asked Jill.

  “Well, suppose this is a suicide?”

  Jill frowned lightly at her. “But you didn’t see her throw a leg over the railing, or hoist herself up on her arms,” she said.

  “No . . . no, you’re right. But how about those railings? Maybe stepping up on the rail along the bottom gave her enough height to, I don’t know, sort of lean over and keep going.”

  Godwin said, “How far off the floor is the bottom railing?”

  Jill started for the door to the suite. “Come on, let’s see.”

  They went out into the gallery and up to the railing, where Betsy—with Jill holding onto her sweater in back and Godwin standing with both fists pressed nervously against his jaw—stood on the bottom rail and tried to lean over. She tried it flat footed, on her toes, and by leaning a little sideways. But the bottom rail didn’t lift her high enough.

  “Satisfied?” asked Jill after three tries.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  They had only taken two steps back toward the suite when Betsy said, “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” asked Jill.

  “Look who’s coming.”

  Coming swiftly toward them was Marveen Harrison, de facto manager. Betsy was put in mind of a film she had once seen, of a tornado rolling with terrifying power and big cracks of electricity through power lines toward a helpless farm.

  “I’m sorry—” Betsy began as soon as Marveen came within earshot, but Marveen was having none of it.

  “Listen to me, the three of you,” she said in a low voice that had a distinct growl of thunder in it. “I believe in cooperating with the authorities, and I have given you all the latitude I could in doing whatever you think needs to be done. But this—!” She gestured at the railing. “I thought I had a promise from you that you would stop alarming the other guests in this hotel with your shenanigans.”

  “Yes, ma’am, you did,” said Jill. “But there was one more—”

  “No,” said Marveen with great firmness. “There is nothing more. You may talk to anyone you like, you may poke and pry all you want, but you are not to climb, crawl, clamber, or jump over, throw over, or pretend to throw something or someone over any more railings, is that clear?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Betsy humbly.

  “Yes’m,” mumbled Godwin.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Jill firmly.

  “Humph,” said Marveen, giving them one more good scratch with her eyes. She turned and stalked away.

  “Whew,” said Godwin, when she was out of earshot. “I guess she told us.”

  “Well, we certainly asked for it.” said Betsy. “Come on.” She led the way back to their room.

  Once inside, Jill asked, “Where were we?”

  “I don’t know,” said Betsy tiredly. “I wish I did know.” She sat down at the round table to stare disconsolate at the booklet.

  “I think I know what’s wrong here,” Jill said.

  “What?” asked Betsy.

  “This isn’t like back home, where you know the town and the people. Nor is this like your usual setup, where someone comes to you for help because an innocent person has been accused of wrongdoing.”

  Betsy nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I feel as if I’m working blind, as if I’ll never come close to solving this. I think we should quit. I have another important mission here. This is a once-a-year opportunity to see, handle, and buy the latest in needlework supplies, charts, and gadgets. I have an obligation to my shop and my customers to do that.”

  “Now wait,” said Godwin. “I can do the rest of the buying, if you’ll trust me. I know counted isn’t my strong suit, but I’ve worked in Crewel World longer than you have, and I’ve got a feel for what our customers like.”

  “I do trust you, Goddy, but it’s important for me to see what’s out there, too.”

  “Yeah, I know, but—” He gestured at the book she was resting her hand on.

  Jill said, “He’s right. This is important, too. Maybe more important. Please try, Betsy. Pretend for a couple of minutes that you’ve got the time to investigate. Where would you start?”

  “Well . . .” Betsy sat down and opened the booklet to stroke the blank left page with her palm, preparing to write on it. Her eye was caught by the first rule printed on the right in thick black type: Always document problems as they occur, as well as what you have done to alter the problem.

  “Huh,” she said, “this applies to us in this situation, too,” and read it aloud.

  “See?” said Jill, a bit dryly, “Even Betsy Stinner thinks you should do this.”

  “Define terms, define terms!” said Godwin, and when they looked at him he said, “Well, isn’t that what we have to do? That’s what John says is the correct way to begin solving a problem.”

  “I think we should begin by defining the problem,” said Betsy.

  “The problem is,” said Jill, “someone murdered Belle Hammermill, and since the local police aren’t here to solve it, we should.”

  “Why?” demanded Betsy.

  “Because, unlike anyone else here, you have an established track record for amateur sleuthing.”

  Betsy sighed. “All right,” she grumbled and wrote at the top of the blank page, Who killed Belle Hammermill?

  “We have three suspects,” said Jill. “Cherry Pye, Eve Suttle, and Lenore King.”

  Betsy wrote their names down, numbering them one, two, and three. Then she put a big capital A under Cherry’s name. “Goddy, tell me again about your conversation with Ms. Pye.”

  Godwin, seeing the importance of this question, took half a minute to organize his thoughts. “She was really upset when I saw her. I mean, she wasn’t fake-crying—she was really crying. There were real tears, and she kept blowing her nose . . . you know . . .” He thought for a bit, groping for the right adverb, and finally produced, “juicily.”

  “Good, that’s good,” nodded Jill.

  “Ish,” noted Betsy, not writing that down.

  “It may be gross, but it’s a rare actor who can produce snot at will.” So Betsy dutifully wrote, Real tears and snot.

  “What did she say, Goddy?” asked Jill.

  “Remember I already told you that she said Belle was more absentminded than usual? That she would forget to order things or order the wrong things? Well, I’ve got something to add to that. I was in Doug Kreinik’s suite first thing this morning, looking at their iron-on ribbon, and I heard him talking to a Hoffman rep. He told the Hoffman guy Belle Hammermill ordered some Kreinik product COD, then told the UPS man to wait when it arrived, while she went in back to empty the box, close it up again, and mark it refused.”

  Betsy stared at him. “He said Belle Hammermill did this?”

  Godwin nodded. “By name. Doug told the Hoffman guy to spread the word to other suppliers not to take any order from her without cash in advance. Later, I heard someone in the Weichelt suite talking about it, so I asked if Mr. Kreinik had told her this himself, and she said yes. Then someone else jumped in to say that now Belle is dead, he had stopped spreading the word about her since it didn’t matter anymore.”

  “I wonder where he was when Belle died?” Jill remarked in a dry voice.

  “Talking to Dave Stott,” said Godwin seriously.

  “She’s kidding, for heaven’s sake, Goddy,” said Betsy.

  “How do you know I’m kidding?” Jill said, not sounding as if she was kidding.

  Betsy said, “Because I was in Norden Crafts a while ago and Dave was looking kind of sad so I asked him if he knew Belle Hammermill and he said, ‘Just in passing,’ and his wife threw a pillow at him. She explained that he was talking to Doug when they both saw Belle go by into the atrium.” Goddy turned to frown at Jill, then he caught the merest tweak of one corner of her mouth, and giggled.

  “Honestly, Goddy!” scolded Betsy. “How you can even think—” Doug Kreinik had come to Crewel World a year ago to give an evening talk on his company’s products to Betsy
and a group of her customers, including Jill, and proven himself a bright, entertaining, personable representative of his company. He also positively reeked of integrity.

  Jill said, “Still, we have a motive and an alibi for Doug Kreinik. Write it down.” She had the tweak under control, but not the twinkle in her light blue eyes.

  Betsy said, “Jill, you have the weirdest sense of humor.” And deliberately turning a shoulder to it, she asked Godwin, “Did Cherry hint that she knew Belle was doing something dishonest?”

  “No, not that I could tell.”

  “Well, was she angry or resentful about Belle’s airheaded-ness?”

  Godwin thought some more. “I don’t think so,” he said. “You have to realize, she was such a mess, it was hard to tell anything else about her. All I could see was that she was crying over the horrible death of her business partner. Wait a minute, wait a minute, maybe she did say something . . .” He fell into a studied silence. “It was about not liking Belle,” he said after nearly a minute. “No, that wasn’t the word, it was . . . fond. Yes, she said, ‘I wasn’t very fond of Belle lately.’ ” He sat up straight and beamed at them. “Now that’s a memory for you!”

  “Very good, Goddy,” said Jill. She added, to Betsy, “Think about it. If I’d just tossed someone over a railing and hoped to get away with it, I’d be telling people what good friends we were. So because she admitted she wasn’t ‘fond’ of Belle that would indicate she’s probably not the murderer.”

  “Yes,” Betsy said, “but it’s still odd. In a moment like that, crying over the horrible death of someone I worked with, was partners with, I’d think all I could talk about was the good stuff.”

  “Are we going to talk to her, then?” asked Godwin.

  “Oh, yes.” Betsy nodded. “If for no other reason than to ask her if she knows someone who was seriously angry with Belle.” She tapped her pen on the page she’d been writing on. “There’s a lot we don’t know.”

  “We know Cherry Pye was really upset,” said Godwin.

  “So was Eve Suttle,” said Betsy, remembering the stammer, the copious tears, the helplessly quaking shoulders. She made a note.

  “Where was it you saw her sitting down and crying?” asked Jill.

  “Eighth floor, on the long side, about halfway from the end and the elevators.”

  “Which end?”

  Betsy thought. “Well, we’re on the short side above the lobby, and I was going from there to the elevators, so along there.” She nodded to herself and wrote that down, then tapped the writing with the pen. “She said something about going down twice.”

  “In the elevator?”

  “No, the stairs. Not down, around. She said she went around twice.”

  Godwin snorted. “What does that mean?”

  “Each floor has a landing between,” said Jill. “You go down, cross a landing, and go down again, to go down one floor.” She and Betsy exchanged looks.

  “Oh, right,” said Godwin, baffled. “Well, look, if we’re going to talk to Cherry, we should get going, shouldn’t we?”

  “Not yet,” said Betsy. “And anyway, Goddy, I don’t think you should come with us.”

  “Why not?” He looked almost comically disappointed.

  “Well, there’s this little matter of the Market. I guess you’re going to have to be the Crewel World buyer for the rest of today, while Jill and I do this.”

  Godwin blinked at her, a smile starting to form. “For real? Go to all the floors, make my own decisions?”

  “For real. Whoops, wait a second.” She hurried back into the bedroom to find her purse and extract the Market Guide. She came back and handed it to him. “I’ve marked the suppliers I particularly wanted to visit. Other than that, you’re on your own. Go, boy.”

  “Oh, joy!” He took the little booklet and stuffed it behind his belt. Then he whipped out his Visa card, held it up like a sword, and crowed, “Chaaaaaaaarge!” And he was out the door.

  Once he was gone, Jill said, “When did you get the Market Guide?”

  “It was in the packet we got when we checked in on arrival,” said Betsy. “Why?”

  “It didn’t come in advance?”

  “No, I think they didn’t know until the last minute who all was coming. Why?”

  “Seeing that guide marked up made me remember seeing another one falling out of Belle’s purse beside her body. She must’ve gotten hers on checking in, too. And marked it up last night or this morning.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “I remember thinking at the time that people who are going to commit suicide don’t plan a shopping trip.”

  Betsy tossed the pen down. “We didn’t need to go climbing all over that railing, getting Marveen Harrison mad at us, did we?”

  “No, I guess not. Sorry.”

  Betsy sighed and picked the pen back up. “Eve said ‘coming down the stairs.’”

  “Yes.”

  “She went right away into talking about taking the elevator to the wrong floor, but first she said ‘coming down the stairs,’ which makes me think she walked down from nine. Jill, have you ever talked to someone who committed a murder and was sorry?”

  A faint emotion crossed Jill’s face, too swift to be read. “No, but I’ve talked to people who have talked to them. Which makes it hearsay. Still, for what it’s worth, some have reported tears and regret. Now I remember someone who accidentally ran over a neighbor with his car. In that case, the man cried real tears, too. But what happened here today wasn’t an accident.”

  “No. But suppose it was an impulse. You’re angry at Belle, you wish something bad would happen to her—and there she is, leaning over a railing. You walk over, lift, and she’s gone. You could do it in three seconds, without thinking, and then be shocked and horrified. And dreadfully sorry.”

  Jill considered this, and nodded. “All right, yes.”

  “That would fit both Eve and Cherry, wouldn’t it?” Betsy touched the third name on her list. “You talked to Lenore King at lunch today.”

  “With you watching.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know this was murder, so I wasn’t paying the same kind of attention you were. Anyway, you’ve talked with people in trouble often enough. What did you think of Lenore?”

  “She was upset, but in a different way, not crying,” said Jill slowly. “And denying she murdered Belle before anyone even asked is strange, don’t you think?”

  Betsy made a note of that. “Yes. Does she have an alibi?”

  “That’s something we’ll have to find out. I hope so; it would be nice to eliminate just one of these people.”

  Betsy made a note and closed the booklet. “So let’s go talk to someone. Who first?”

  “The first one on the list. Cherry Pye.”

  Sixteen

  Saturday, December 15, 4:17 P.M.

  Jill and Betsy took the clanging, echoing stairs up to nine and went down the hall to Cherry’s suite, which was a few doors short of the spot where Belle went over the railing. Jill knocked.

  Fairly quickly, the door opened, and there sat a woman in a wheelchair. She had short, light-brown hair, tumbled attractively around a pretty face set with smokey-green eyes under level brows. She wore a loose-fitting knit shirt of royal purple, lavender slacks, and new-looking white walking shoes with velcro fasteners.

  “Yes?” she inquired.

  Jill spoke first. “I’m Jill Cross Larson, a police sergeant from Minnesota.”

  For the merest instant, Cherry’s face paled, but the color came back. “Minnesota?” she said.

  “Yes. I’ve volunteered to assist the local police by collecting information about Belle Hammermill.”

  “But Belle was from Wisconsin.”

  “I know. I’m collecting this information for the Nashville police.”

  Almost laughing, she pursued, “But . . . Minnesota?” She gestured widely, meaning they were surrounded by Tennessee, whose border did not come anywhere near Minnesota.

 
Jill smiled faintly. “Yes, Minnesota. I came to Nashville for a police seminar and got caught up in this by accident. I took a couple of friends out to dinner last night, and had such a terrible time getting them back to this hotel that they insisted I stay.”

  “I bet you’re sorry about that,” said Cherry, her face gone grim.

  “Well, I’ve had happier times. May we come in?” Jill took half a step forward.

  But Cherry didn’t move back for her. Instead she frowned and looked at Betsy. “Who’s she, another cop?” Her tone was sarcastic.

  “No,” said Betsy, “I’m one of the dinner friends. I’m Betsy Devonshire, and I own a store back in Excelsior, Minnesota.”

  “She takes good notes,” said Jill mildly, and Betsy held out the Management and Hiring booklet, already turned to a new blank page.

  Cherry started to smile, but decided she was still puzzled.

  So Jill continued to explain. “Nashville PD has pretty much decided Belle’s death was due to an unfortunate accident. The problem is, they are really swamped by this blizzard, lots of far more urgent calls: serious accidents, power lines down, and so forth. They’d conduct these interviews themselves if that wasn’t the case. You knew Ms. Hammermill well, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.” Her face went sad. “She was my . . . partner in business. All right, come in.” As she turned and wheeled away Betsy was struck by the smooth and powerful movement of her arms and shoulders.

  Cherry wheeled around in the center of the room and gestured at the couch. Her voice and expression were suddenly pleasant, a hostess greeting welcome guests, as she asked, “Care to sit down?”

  Betsy was beginning to get whiplash of the mind, following Cherry’s sudden shifts in mood. But Jill merely said, “Yes, thank you. Oh, but is it all right if we sit over here?” Jill went to draw back a chair at a round table under a swag lamp, a twin to the one in their own suite. “The light’s better, and Betsy can use the table to write on.”