Crewel Yule (16 page)

“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

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.”

“Sure, all right.”

But Betsy thought she knew of another reason: With everyone in chairs, their heads would all be on one level. It’s hard to control a conversation with someone who is looking down on you, as Cherry would on them sitting on the couch. She’d read that in a Travis McGee novel a long time ago—it’s possible to learn real things from fiction. Though Betsy was willing to bet Jill hadn’t learned it from a novel.

“Would you like coffee?” Cherry asked them, still the hostess. The sitting room was full of the smell of freshly brewed coffee and a pot of it was sitting in its maker on the narrow counter beside the sink.

“Why, yes, thank you,” said Jill, who drank coffee all day long, even at bedtime. “Black, please,” she added.

“No, thank you,” said Betsy, who couldn’t sleep if she indulged in caffeine after two o’clock. It was nearly five. She wrote Cherry’s name at the top of the page and below it wrote,
Volatile
.

Cherry brought a mug for Jill and filled a second for herself. “Now,” she said, wrapping her hand around her mug rather than holding it by the handle, “what did you want to ask me about Belle?”

Jill said, “Something else first: You’ve probably been asked a thousand times—”

“Yes, it’s my real name,” the woman interrupted, her smile gone sour. She spread her lower arms in a gesture half shrug, half invitation—but gently, so as not to slosh. “And it’s okay to laugh, really it is. Though I wish my parents had at least thought to give me a middle name, in case I didn’t think their joke was funny. Which I don’t. Because then I wouldn’t have a problem every time someone asks me my name.” She shook her head, her mouth still pulled back in that painful smile. “But at least it’s not the kind of name people forget as soon as they hear it.”

“You’re right there,” said Betsy, looking down at her open notebook, away from the pain. She wrote:
Hates her name.
On the side opposite the blank page was Rule 6:
Reward, reward, reward—and praise!
So she added, “And it’s not a bad name, really. Sweet, cheerful, down-home, and delicious. Cherry pie is on just about everyone’s list of favorites.”

Cherry cocked her head at Betsy, judging her, then smiled. “Thank you,” she said, drawing the words out a little to emphasize she was really pleased, and took a sip of coffee.

Jill asked, “Did you and Belle arrive together at the Market?”

Cherry nodded. “We flew in Friday evening. We’d decided not to take any classes this year.”

Betsy asked, “Does Belle have any relatives who need to be told?”

Cherry paused to take a breath that was nearly a sob. “Well, she has a sister named Cassy and a brother. I think his name is Eliot. I don’t know where they live—not in Wisconsin, I know that. Her parents are dead. There isn’t a husband—at least, she’s divorced. It was a long time ago, no kids. There’s an aunt and an uncle . . .” Cherry, eyes half closed, had been nodding at each person named in her recitation while Betsy made swift notes. She opened them again, and Betsy saw their green had gone from a soft Anchor 261 to something nearly gray—maybe 1040?

“I didn’t know what to do. You see, I can’t get home. So what I did was, I e-mailed our attorney, and asked him to notify her relatives, since I don’t know how to from here. I have the information—at home. In a drawer. I kept meaning to put it into my computer, but never did. It should have occurred to me, I suppose, that I might need that information away from home. You know, emergency contact numbers.” She glanced toward the door to the bedroom. “I use the same laptop at home and on the road, so my computer’s right in there.” She looked at Jill. “Was that the right thing to do? I hate to think of a lawyer calling these people to tell them. That sounds kind of cold.”

“You did fine,” said Jill. “And you’re being very helpful to us. How long did you know Belle?”

“I met her nine or ten years ago, when she was working in the shop we ended up buying. That was before my accident. We were partners almost five years. I saw her almost every day during those five years.”

“So you were friends?” asked Betsy.

Cherry blinked several times, as if surprised at the question, took another sip of her coffee, then nodded. “Of course.”

Betsy wrote,
Liar?
and asked, “What was she like?”

Cherry thought a moment, then smiled. “There’s a word someone used once, and it was just right. ‘Vivacious.’ That was Belle. Smart and full of energy. And she was sweet—and funny, mostly making fun of herself. Good with customers. People really liked her.”

“Did she have
any
faults?” Betsy got just the right tone, making it sound as if Cherry must be exaggerating this paragon.

Cherry’s smile faded. “Nobody’s perfect, of course.” She looked at her hands. Jill inhaled softly, as if to ask something, but Betsy, turning over a page in the booklet, jogged her elbow and she exhaled again without speaking.

After a few moments, Cherry said, “Okay, she was kind of airheaded, forgetting to order things for customers, or messing up an order—but she made jokes about it, like she’d say her brain must be made out of a sieve; and customers couldn’t stay mad at her for more than a minute.”

Betsy smiled and nodded, writing. “I’ll remember that for next time I mess up in my shop.”

Jill said, “Now, about today. Do you think what happened to her was an accident?”

“Why sure, what else could it be?”

“Well, those railings are kind of high for a person to go over by accident.”

“They are? I thought they were kind of low.”

Betsy asked, “How tall was Belle?”

“Five-foot-three and three-quarters. She thought it was cute to say that, rather than rounding up to five-four.”

“I’m five-four,” said Betsy. She half stood. “The railing comes up to here on me.” She held her forearm horizontally across her lower ribs, then sat down again. “I couldn’t go over by accident unless I was standing on something and leaned over too far.” She looked inquiringly at Cherry, who widened her eyes at her in surprise.

“You mean like standing on a chair?” Cherry considered that with a doubtful expression, and then shook her head.

“Can you stand?” Jill asked abruptly.

Cherry’s attention swiveled back to her. “If I have something to hang onto, like a bar, or crutches. I can stand alone in water, if it’s deep enough. But I can’t walk. I have feeling in my legs, but I can’t move them. Oh, I see what you’re getting at. If I try to stand, I fall over easily, so maybe I’m—what do you call it—projecting.”

“Yes, possibly,” said Jill. “But you see how there may be a problem, trying to figure out how Belle went over the railing by accident.”

“Yes. Yes, I can see that now.”

“But what about suicide?” asked Betsy.

Cherry turned to Betsy, her eyes green again. “Yes, what about that? Do you think. . .?” She wheeled forward, all the way to the table, to put her coffee cup on it, let her hand rest on the cup a moment or two, then pulled it back into her lap. “Because she
was
different lately. Preoccupied, I guess that’s the word. Not really unhappy, not what I’d call
depressed,
but something was wrong. She didn’t say what, but something was wrong. So maybe—maybe yes, it could be suicide.”

Betsy wrote,
Agrees it might be suicide.

Jill asked, “Where were you when you learned she was dead?”

Cherry drew her shoulders up and her eyes wandered around the room. “In an elevator.” She touched her chin with her fingertips, and her eyes came back to Jill. “I mean, I was just passing by the Kreinik suite—it was too crowded for me to get in there—when I heard the yell and the . . . the smash, but I thought it was a prank, someone dropping something to get a rise out of us. Or a banner falling. I never thought it could be a person. People were excited and rushing around, but I didn’t want to go gaping like a tourist, so I refused to pay any attention. Then in the elevator I heard someone . . . say it was a person who fell and she was . . . dead, and I looked then, and recognized—” Cherry cut herself off with a gesture, and a big sob escaped her. “Excuse me.” She turned and rolled swiftly toward the bathroom, nicking the extra-wide doorway on her way through with the axle of her chair.

They heard the sound of sobbing, then of a nose being blown, then water running. In another minute Cherry came back, a couple of clean tissues in her lap, looking almost angry.

“This isn’t like me!” she said harshly. “Normally I can handle anything! But every time I think about seeing her like that, I just . . . go to pieces.”

Betsy, the image rising unbidden behind her eyes, said, “It’s horrible to see anyone dead from a big fall. And to see someone you know all broken, that must be terribly difficult.”

Cherry’s mouth thinned with distress. “Yes, it was.” She looked down at her lap, and said softly, “And yet, on the other hand, I keep forgetting it happened. Like, this is my third time here in Nashville, and everything else is so familiar that I keep thinking Belle will come in here and tell me to quit goofing off talking to people and get back to buying.” Cherry’s face suddenly twisted and she put the heels of her hands up to her eyes. “Sorry . . . sorry.”

She shifted her hands so they covered her face, and continued in a muffled, angry voice, “Could you find out when they’re going to take her away? I can’t
stand
their leaving her down on the floor like that!”