Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03

by A Stitch in Time

  When she left, Jill said, “With that sense of humor, she should have been a surgeon.”

  It was a shabby motel room, with a big television attached to rabbit ears instead of cable and the remote bolted to the bedside table. It had an antique microwave oven, a plug-in coffeepot, and a tiny refrigerator that leaked. Hal might have done better, but flowers here in the frozen north were expensive, and he was afraid it was going to be a long siege.

  He lay back on the queen-size bed. He was familiar with the literature that portrayed Midwesterners and Southerners as inbred folk suffering from mad jealousies and inflamed libidos. He’d never thought to actually find himself among such people.

  What a place this was! Excelsior, Minnesota, land of ice and snow—and people who seemed to think there was nothing wrong with living that way. Coolly polite ice people, crazily jealous when an outsider comes in and makes good. Because that was what this stuff happening to Betsy was all about, right? She moves here from San Diego and gloms her sister’s money and her sister’s store and her sister’s friends, and they just can’t stand it. Tennessee Williams would have loved it.

  Someone knocked on his door. Hal rolled to his feet in one easy motion—he was in remarkably good shape for a man his—that is, he was in really good shape.

  He opened the door to find a slender man a few inches shorter than himself, a redhead with freckles and very chill pale blue eyes. Something about him set off alarms in Hal’s mind, but he said calmly enough, “May I help you?”

  “I’m Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy, of the Excelsior Police Department. May I come in?” And suddenly he was holding up a leather folder with a badge and a photo ID in it.

  Alarms now sounding loud indeed, Hal took the trouble to note that the photo and name matched the name given and face on display, then he stepped back and said, “Come in. Don’t mind the mess,” though the place wasn’t all that messy; it was more that it was dilapidated. Hal didn’t mind good furniture that showed wear, but he didn’t like cheap, seedy furniture.

  He sat on the bed, gesturing the investigator to the only chair in the room, a wooden armchair. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Were you once married to Betsy Devonshire?” Now there was a pen and a notebook in the man’s freckled hands.

  “Yes.” Hal wanted to say more but held his tongue. He tried to look friendly, harmless, and curious—but not too curious.

  “You know she’s in the hospital?”

  “Yes, I sent her flowers. Someone told me she got hold of some poison somehow. She’s having a serious run of bad luck lately.”

  “It may not be just bad luck, Mr. Norman. It appears someone is trying to murder her.”

  “I can’t believe that! She’s a fine person, not the type to get involved with people who do that kind of thing!”

  “Are you aware that she’s been involved in the investigation of three murders since she arrived in Excelsior?”

  Hal, genuinely startled, asked, “You mean, she’s been a suspect?”

  “No, she’s taken a role in solving them.”

  “She has? How … peculiar. She never did anything like that back home.”

  “Well, since she’s come here, she has shown a positive talent both for getting involved in crime and tracking down perpetrators.”

  Bewildered, Hal said, “I thought she was running a needlework store. Has she also taken out a license as a private investigator?”

  “No, she’s working as an amateur. How long were you two married?”

  Hal, still frowning over his ex-wife’s peculiar choice of spare-time activity, said, “Eighteen years. Back in San Diego, her hobbies were photography, embroidering aprons and other articles of apparel, and volunteering at the local animal shelter.”

  “You sent her flowers at the hospital during this stay. Did you bring her a carton of cashew chicken salad when she came home from her first stay?”

  Hal nodded. “That fellow who works in the needlework store said it was her favorite. I bought it at the deli next door to her store, and he said I could bring it up. So I did.”

  “And she thanked you kindly, I suppose.”

  Hal laughed. “No, she told me to leave and never come back, and she instructed the fellow in the shop to bar me. Which he did.” Hal’s grin disappeared. “I hurt her badly, and our divorce was entirely my fault. I came here without an invitation, and instead of finding her heartbroken, I find she’s made a new life for herself. She wants no part of me, and I can understand that. But I’m hoping that if I stick around for a while, she’ll remember the good times and let me have a second chance.”

  “Arsenic was found in the chicken salad,” said Malloy.

  Hal found he couldn’t breathe in. He sucked and sucked, and finally managed to get just enough air to croak, “What did you say?”

  “I said, arsenic was found in the chicken salad. There was enough to have killed her twice over if she’d eaten all of it, but fortunately, she took only one small serving.”

  Now able to breathe again, Hal couldn’t think of anything to say except, “I didn’t poison the salad. I didn’t even open the carton. I just brought it up and put it in her refrigerator. Why would I poison the salad?”

  “Because she won’t take you back. Because she left you and came here and has found, by your own description, a new and better life for herself. While you have lost your career and your new girlfriend and your standing in your community. Because she is going to inherit a great deal of money in a few weeks, which you will have no share in. And because when you came up to see her with that little offering of food, she told you to get stuffed, and you were absolutely furious. So you added your own herbal flavoring—”

  “Now wait, now wait!” said Hal, an idea coming to him. “What kind of poison is arsenic?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because if you can’t buy it at a grocery or drugstore, I didn’t do it. I don’t know anything about poisons, and I’m not familiar with what’s for sale on street corners around here, or even who to ask. I certainly didn’t come here expecting to poison Betsy; I came hoping to be reconciled with her, to beg her pardon and ask if she would give me a chance to prove I am worthy of her forgiveness.”

  “Do you have a pair of scissors or a box cutter in your possession?”

  “Huh? No, I don’t. I have a pair of fingernail clippers and a fingernail file. I’m doing day labor—painting the interior of houses—and cleaning up is hell on my hands. But at least it’s not shoveling snow. Are your winters always like this? My God, I can’t imagine living in a climate like this. I haven’t been warm since I got here.”

  Hal could sense he was winning Malloy over, but the cop’s next question showed he was still suspicious. “Do you know what the brake line of a car looks like?”

  Hal gritted his teeth and told the truth—nothing else would do in his situation. “Yes, I do. But I’ve never so much as changed a spark plug or the oil or anything but a tire. What was she doing out in a blizzard, anyhow? I would have thought Betsy had more sense than that. After all, she grew up in this part of the country, or practically. Milwaukee is just down the road, isn’t it?”

  “Milwaukee is six hours south of here by freeway.”

  “My God, that far? Minneapolis must be practically in the arctic circle, then.”

  The detective grinned. “Nothing between us and the north pole but a barbed wire fence.”

  Relieved, Hal grinned back. When the cops started joking with you, things were going to be all right.

  11

  Jill drove Betsy home from the hospital the next morning, right after doctors’ rounds. The trackless snowscape of the last ride home was now filled with snowmobile and cross-country skiing trails. The roads were wet but bare, and there were splashes of grime on the snow where it dared approach the road.

  “I see two ways to go with this,” Jill told her, sitting relaxed behind the wheel of her elderly Buick. “You can go into hiding—move to a
new town, rent an apartment under an assumed name, and get an unlisted phone number. Run the shop by E-mail, and have Godwin send any profits to a post office box. But who knows when Mike will find out who’s doing this? It could be weeks or even months.”

  “Or never,” said Betsy.

  “Or never,” acknowledged Jill. “Alternatively, you can stay where you are. It may be that, having failed twice, he won’t try again. For sure it will be a lot harder for him to get to you now you’re aware of him and traveling with me. But if he does try again, our chances of identifying him are improved.”

  “So Mike thinks of me as bait?”

  “No, Mike thinks of sushi as bait.”

  Jill knew which she wanted Betsy to choose, but shut up and let the silence last.

  At last Betsy said quietly, “I’m not running.”

  Jill did not venture to comment on that, but she did smile, just a little.

  They stopped off at Jill’s apartment so she could pack a bag. They stopped in at the shop to a warm welcome from Shelly and Godwin—and Martha Winters, who had come in to buy a packet of gold needles. “I broke my last one without realizing it was my last one,” she said. “Oh, Betsy, I’m so happy to see you looking well! I hope this is the end of that terrible business!”

  “Thank you, me too,” said Betsy. “Godwin, I’ve got some things to do today, but I’ll be at work tomorrow, if you want to take that as a day off.”

  “Bless you, I do.”

  Shelly said, “You want me to come in?”

  “Yes, thanks. And find at least one part-timer to work with me tomorrow evening, can you? I might as well start to make up for some of the time I’ve been away. Sophie looks comfortable. Shall we just leave her here for now? If I don’t come and get her by five, just push her into the stairwell.” Sophie was familiar with this procedure and would make her way up to the apartment to be let in.

  “Will do. Here, take her bowl up with you.”

  When they got upstairs, Betsy said, “The back bedroom will be yours.” It was the bigger, but it had been Margot’s, and Betsy couldn’t bring herself to move in there.

  While Jill settled in, Betsy looked up Mandy Abrams Oliver in the phone book. Jill had told her Mandy’s husband’s name was Dan and they lived in Golden Valley, so all Betsy had to do was decipher Gldn Vly in the phone book. But there was no answer.

  Betsy brewed coffee for Jill, who was a true Scandinavian in her love for that beverage, and made a cup of herbal tea for herself. The two sat and sipped and sketched out such things as who got the bathroom first in the morning, and whether the one who cooked dinner did the dishes.

  That settled, Betsy asked, “Jill, what are the odds? How sure are you that you can keep me safe?”

  “I’m more than reasonably sure. But you have to take some precautions. Let me drive you around, for example. Which isn’t a hardship on me; I like to drive. Don’t eat anything somebody else prepares for you—and that includes restaurant meals. The stuff currently in your refrigerator is a notable exception, since Mike had me bring samples of all of it in to be tested. Oh, and you’ve got to let me open your Christmas gifts.”

  “Now, just a second!” Betsy put her heart into her fake objection, and noticed with satisfaction that Jill had trouble keeping her deadpan in place.

  Jill said, “Oh, I don’t mind; in fact, I love opening presents so much I don’t care if they’re not mine.”

  “I always suspected you were a burglar at heart.”

  “Hey!” Jill’s expression broke and she began to laugh. “I object!”

  Betsy smiled, glad to lighten the topic, even if only for a moment and pleased to be mean to the person who insisted on talking about getting killed.

  But Jill was relentless. “Speaking of opening things,” she said, “let Godwin or me or one of your other employees unlock the shop in the mornings and open any orders that come in. Most important, make sure you tell people about these precautions. No need to let one of your employees get killed.”

  “Oh, no, I hadn’t thought about that! No, Jill, I can’t let other people do dangerous things for me! I couldn’t live with myself if you or Godwin or one of my part-timers got killed over this. Maybe I should just cut and—No, no, no! I won’t go into hiding! Okay, suppose I just announce loudly and often that I’m not going to open anything or eat any gift foods? Then I could go ahead and take care of it myself, right?”

  “No, because someone will see you opening a box or eating the fudge someone else made, and word will get around. You have to close that route absolutely. And, from now on, before you do anything, anything, ask yourself: Can someone possibly use this to hurt me? Could this be a trap? If the answer is yes, don’t do it. It sounds awful, but I know a man who has lived like this for years, and he said it got to be a habit pretty quickly. And other people hardly notice how he is unless they already know.”

  “I hope I don’t have to do it long enough to become a habit. I wish I knew why someone wants me dead!”

  “Think about the why. If you figure that out, we’ll probably know who.”

  Betsy added more sugar to her tea and stirred restlessly. “Okay, the first attempt was Monday. What did I do last week or over the weekend that scared or angered someone? There was the Christmas party, but I don’t remember a dark look or poisonous hint from anyone. Hal came to town, but he wants my forgiveness, not my funeral. I offered to go pick up that pillow—which reminds me—”

  “Their flight was canceled, so Mrs. Connor went and got the pillow herself.”

  “Good. All right, the only other new thing in my life is that tapestry. On the other hand, if it was the tapestry, why am I the only one being attacked? Lots of other people have seen it. What do I know about the tapestry no one else does?”

  “The attributes?”

  “No, I showed them to Father John and Patricia. I can’t imagine them plotting together to do me in. But maybe if I talk to Mandy, she’ll know something. I wonder where she is.”

  “Christmas shopping,” said Jill. “Want to go, too?”

  “Love to, but if I don’t do laundry, I’m going to have to go braless tomorrow, and that’s not a pretty sight on a woman my age.”

  Betsy found laundromats depressing. When that money finally arrived, she’d already decided, she would install a washer and dryer, then hire someone to do the laundry anyway.

  Was three million enough to have “people”? She’d known someone really wealthy back in California who had people to do his laundry, take care of his lawn and garden, clean his house, cook his meals, pay his bills, decorate his Christmas tree, sort his mail, keep his calendar. That was why he always had time for the important things, like taking impulsive trips to Paris and keeping himself beautifully tanned. How absolutely lovely it would be to have people!

  While Betsy was getting her laundry together, the doorbell rang. She came out with the heavy bag bumping her legs, and Jill, already at the door, gestured her back out of sight.

  Jill went out on the landing and came right back to ask, “Did you order a Christmas tree?”

  “No, why?”

  “There’s a big one coming up the stairs. A man carrying it.”

  “Maybe it’s the guy from across the hall.”

  “Then why is it your doorbell he’s ringing? Wait here.” She went out in the hall again, and Betsy heard her call down, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” said a man’s voice, somewhat strained.

  “Stop where you are,” ordered Jill. “What’s your name?”

  “Who are you?” demanded the man.

  “You first, mister.”

  “I’m Harold Norman, if it’s any of your business, and I’m bringing this up for Betsy Nor—er, Devonshire.”

  “Wait there.”

  “I can’t wait, this damn thing’s heavy!”

  Betsy was behind Jill by then, and she called, “What’s the big idea, Hal?”

  “You used to wish for a live Christmas tree, darlin
’, so I’m bringing you one.”

  Live Christmas trees had been politically incorrect at Merrivale. Still, “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “Now don’t be hasty, I—Ai!” There was a thump, a swishy sort of crash, then a series of stumbles, and finally a crunch. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, damn!” said Hal from successively farther down the stairs.

  “You want to talk to him?” asked Jill.

  “No.”

  “Then go back inside, and lock the door. I’ll take care of this.”

  A few minutes later, Jill called out. Betsy opened the door and had to back down the little hallway to allow a large and fragrant spruce tree in, with Jill somewhere close behind it. The tree was a little crushed on one side. “He fell on it,” explained Jill. “Did you really used to wish for a live tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Hal has lost interest in this one. It seems a waste to just toss it.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he couldn’t have it in his motel room, and with it damaged, he couldn’t take it back, so the hell with it. He stuck it into a snowbank and walked off.”

  Betsy looked at the tree for a few moments. Apart from the damage, it was a beautiful tree.

  “I’ll get the stand,” she said.

  Though Betsy had pictured her tree standing in front of the trio of living room windows, that wasn’t possible because of the broken branches. They put it in a corner, damaged side in. Betsy brought out the boxes labeled Lights and Ornaments. They strung the lights first. They were the old-fashioned, big-bulb kind. “Margot always had a real tree,” said Jill. There were even two strings of the kind with a bulb hidden in a base under a stem full of colored liquid, which Betsy remembered from her childhood. They were new to Jill, however, and the look on her face when the liquid started bubbling was a pleasure to Betsy.

  There were two big boxes of ornaments. But Betsy turned away from them, saying, “Laundry first.”

  The laundromat’s windows were dripping with condensation. Four washing machines and three dryers were in use, and a girl in her mid-teens was hanging blouses and shirts on the stainless steel rod over a wheeled bas—ket. A thin young man was deep into a Grisham paperback, and a grandmother type was futilely calling after two toddlers who ran and yelled around the place.