Crewel Yule (8 page)

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?

The crowd shifted as two employees pushed through, carrying a dark brown blanket they had already started to unfold.

“Hold it!” ordered Jill. “Let’s keep the scene just as it is for now.” The two men halted to look at her uncertainly. “I’m a police sergeant. Not from here,” she added, “but the rules are the same.” She reached into her purse and produced the folder with her ID card and gold badge. “My name is Jill Cross Larson.”

The badge did it. The men brought the ends of the blanket back together and edged away through the crowd.

Jill looked around at the gapers, some of whom had stopped staring at the body to stare inquiringly at her. “I want a perimeter, all right?” said Jill, in a voice that left no room for discussion. But they didn’t back up to enlarge the circle. She pointed to three strong-looking men and two tall women in the crowd. “You, you, you, you, you, come here.” They obeyed. “It may take a while for the police and an ambulance to get here,” she told them quietly. “I want you to space yourselves out around here, facing the crowd, and keep anyone from approaching any closer. We don’t need people tracking footprints all over the place. In fact, if you think you can, you might move them back a few feet.”

The five looked quickly at one another. “All right,” said the tallest one, a bald man with graying sideburns. He stepped away from Jill and stood facing the crowd, his arms held away from his body, palms front. “Everybody take one step back, if you can,” he said in a loud, firm voice. “An ambulance is on its way.”

The other four quickly followed his example of standing facing the crowd with their arms out, and they moved forward as the crowd edged back.

“Let me through!” a woman said, fighting the movement, and Jill turned to see a stout Hispanic woman in a red sweat suit waving at her. “I’m in law enforcement, too!” she added.

Jill moved to intercept her before she could break the line her volunteers were setting. “Thank you for speaking up,” she said.

The woman squinted as she confessed in a murmur, “I’m just a part-time 911 operator back home, but they don’t have to know that. Can I help?”

Jill smiled briefly. “Sure. See if you can find some hotel staff who can scare up five or six portable screens for us. It would be a good thing to get the victim out of sight and it will protect the scene. It looks like emergency services is going to take a while to arrive. Then we’ll need someone to stay here, to keep people from sneaking a peek.”

The woman nodded, then checked her watch. “I can stay about an hour, and then if I need to, I can arrange for a replacement.”

“Thank you.”

Jill went sideways through the crowd and back up the steps to the lobby. The black woman behind the counter was saying, “No, sir, I understand, I’ll instruct my staff not to talk to reporters. But I can’t restrict the guests, of course. No, sir, I don’t think you need to try to get over here, I understand the city is about closed down and I’ve got things under control here, pretty much.”

Talking to management, that also was good.

Jill walked up behind the plump woman, who was still staring at the woman on the phone. She touched her gently on the shoulder, and the woman gasped and turned sharply.

“I’m sorry to startle you,” said Jill in her gentlest voice. “Do you know what happened?”

“Yes, I was in the elevator and I saw her fall. She was on the ninth floor and she just went over the railing.”

“You’re sure she fell? She didn’t jump?”

“I saw her standing alone up there, looking over the railing. And then—over she went.” The woman made a hump shape with one hand, and cleared her throat.

“Was she looking at something? Or at someone?”

“No—well, I don’t think so. I thought she was just looking around. I did it, too, when I first came out of my room. Just stopped to look around.”

“Was it an accident, her falling?”

“I don’t know.” She cleared her throat again. “Maybe . . . or maybe she did jump.”

“You saw her, did she lean and fall, or climb over?”

“I—well, I don’t know. I guess I looked away for a second.”

“So you didn’t actually see her fall.”

The woman bridled a bit. “Yes, I did! I was riding down in the elevator from five, they’re all glass and it’s like a ride at a carnival. So I didn’t turn and look at the doors, like you do in a regular elevator. I looked down, but it’s kind of scary the way you see the floor coming up at you, so I went to looking up. And I saw her up there all alone, and then I saw her falling. And when I looked up again, there still wasn’t anyone there.”

Jill nodded. “All right, good. That’s very clear, thank you.”

Reassured, the woman smiled and relaxed.

“My name is Jill Cross Larson, and I’m a police sergeant from Excelsior, Minnesota. May I ask you some more questions?”

The woman’s light blue eyes widened. “Okay.”

“Excuse me just two seconds.” Jill stepped to the far end of the check-in counter to pick up a ballpoint pen and two sheets of hotel stationery, which she folded twice on her way back to make a stiff little pad on which to write.

“May I ask your name?”

“I’m Samantha Wills, from Clarksville.” Samantha coughed and said, “Hotel air, it makes my throat dry.”

“Tennessee?” asked Jill, writing.

“Yes. I own The Silver Needle. I took it over from my aunt, who retired last year.”

“Do you know who the victim is?”

“No. But she was up on the top floor, so I think she was a store-owner. The wholesalers don’t have rooms up there, do they?”

“They’re only selling things from the sixth floor down,” said Jill.

“Yes, that’s what I thought. This is my first Market. But I didn’t recognize her up there, and over there . . .” Samantha swallowed hard, and nodded toward the hubbub out in the atrium. “It’s hard to say, now. I mean, she, she’s kind of . . .” Suddenly her face crumpled up, and she put a hand to her forehead.

“Here,” said Jill, “let’s go over here where you can sit down. That wasn’t a nice thing to see.”

“It sure wasn’t,” the woman said sincerely.

Jill took her by an arm and led her to one of the pair of couches facing one another. “Are you all right? Do you need a drink of water?”

The woman shook her head. “No, I’m all right. Just a little scared, I guess. It was scary to see her fall like that. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“I’m sure you haven’t. Which elevator were you riding in?”

“That farther one, over on the pool side.” She gestured with hand and head.

The woman who had been on the phone said, “Thank you for waiting,” and they both turned to see her approaching. “May I ask your name?” she asked Samantha.

“I’m Samantha Wills, owner of The Silver Needle in Clarksville. This is Sergeant Jill Larson, a police officer from Minnesota.”

The woman looked at Jill, obviously reworking her initial impression—crazy lady in a wet nightgown and too-small slippers. “I’m Marveen Harrison, Manager.”

Jill held up the paper and pen and said, “I thought I’d start collecting information until the local police arrive.”

“Great,” said Marveen. Still, reluctant to give up any authority, she said, “But can I speak with Ms. Wills now?”

“Of course.” Jill nodded and stepped back, but prepared to write down anything more Samantha Wills might say.

Jill heard a rattle of wheels and glanced out into the atrium. A young woman in dark slacks and white shirt was pushing a tall chrome frame whose center was filled with a dark, rust-brown fabric along the tile floor toward the crowd around the body. The Hispanic woman in red was walking with her, explaining something. Behind them was a young man, with another frame. Noisy buggers, everyone was looking. She hoped there were enough of the frames to make a perimeter.

Then she realized she was not thinking of this as a disturbing tragedy but a crime scene. Why should she do that?

Jill thought about the sturdy, ivy-covered railings, none of them broken through. So unless the victim was leaning way out for some reason, this probably was not an accident. Then she recalled that Market Guide, marked in red. People planning a suicide don’t plan shopping trips.

That left murder. But Samantha said the victim was all alone up there. On the other hand, a single eyewitness was a fragile thread to hang an explanation on. Jill made a note:
Other eyewitnesses?
And under that Jill wrote the name of a person she trusted could find out the truth:
Betsy!

Eight

Cherry had heard the yell and the ugly sound of something landing on the atrium floor, but she didn’t go look. She almost had second thoughts when people below started to scream, but resisted the urge to go gape like a yokel. Instead, she rolled down the middle of the hall, turned the corner, and continued toward the elevators. She pushed the call button. It took a little while—the elevators were very busy—but at last one came. There was only one person in it, and she moved out of Cherry’s way only when Cherry brushed up against her. Her expression was perfectly calm.

“What’s going on?” Cherry asked. “What’s all the yelling?”

“I don’t know,” the woman said vacantly. She had that “shopper’s hypnosis” stare, and she got out at six without saying anything else. More people got on, laden with plastic bags. Cherry hated crowded elevators, everyone standing so tall and close. It was like being in a well full of elbows.

Two women were talking about the beautiful charts in the Pegasus Originals suite. “So romantic,” sighed one. But the other three squeezed past her to stare out and down through the glass walls of the elevator. “See it?” whispered one.

“God have mercy, I’ve never seen anything like that,” said one from behind her hand.

“She’s dead, she’s got to be,” murmured the third, and there was a horrified silence, as the Pegasus admirers turned to stare.

Cherry turned her chair just a little so she could look between fleece-covered elbows. She saw a golden-haired woman on the floor, her body flat, her limbs all wrong. She was surrounded by a fast-thickening wall of people staring or gesturing in alarm. Cherry’s breath stopped until she looked away, and even then she had to force her diaphragm to operate.

The elevator stopped. Two women got off, three others managed to get on. The elevator went down. Cherry looked out and down again. The angle of her view of the atrium floor had changed. Now she mostly saw a big group of spectators.

“Do you know who it is?” asked one of the murmurers, still looking.

“No, do you?” replied another.

“No.”

The elevator stopped at three and its doors opened. No one got off, so none of those waiting could get on. The doors shut on their disappointed faces.

Cherry looked out and down again, watching as a tall black woman pushed her way out of the crowd and ran up the carpeted stairs and into the lobby. Must be going to call an ambulance, or the police. Or both. Soon the place would be swarming with police and emergency medical techs.

The elevator moved downward. The dead woman was invisible behind the crowd, but Cherry knew who she was. She said nothing. She rode the elevator down to the ground floor, got off last, and wheeled her chair up and over the little bridge across the miniature brook. She started to follow the others toward the crowd around the body, paused, then turned away and went down toward the glass tables and iron chairs. She stopped at the first table she came to, and put one clenched fist on the table. She heard a quiet sound of lament and lifted her head to look around before she realized it was coming from her.

How could she be sad? She hated Belle! But tears spilled from her eyes. That sight of her, broken like that, was too much, too awful.

A slender, blond-haired young man sat down across from her. He looked blurry through her tears. “Do you know who she was?” he asked, his voice as kind as it was curious.

She nodded. “Her name was Belle Hammermill. We were partners in a store in Milwaukee.”

“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry,” he said. He rose swiftly and went away, only to return seconds later with a handful of paper napkins. “This is all I could find,” he said, putting them on the table in front of her.