Going Through the Notions (A Deadly Notions Mystery) (10 page)

It was silly, but I felt guilty for feeling sympathy for Ramsbottom, too.

Was it too far-fetched to think
he
might have killed Jimmy to frame Angus?

Well, no more far-fetched than thinking the Perkins boys did it. And Ramsbottom certainly had a better motive.

The detective wasn’t in great shape, though. He looked like one of those guys who’d had the size and muscle to play high school football, but the years and weight had crept up and softened him. He certainly couldn’t wield a heavy barn beam.

Wait a minute. Could Jimmy have been beaten up somewhere else, with some other kind of weapon, and brought
back
to the crime scene? To the place where Ramsbottom knew Angus’s fingerprints would be all over everything?

But that still didn’t solve the problem of the only footprints around the barn belonging to Angus.

Although who had said that?
Ramsbottom.

And who’d said Jimmy had been hit with a barn beam in the first place?
Ramsbottom.

If you were out for revenge, as a police officer, there were probably plenty of ways to mess with the evidence.

All my life, I’d been brought up to respect those in authority. My own father had been a firefighter. It was hard to believe that an officer of the law would stoop that low.

I shivered. In spite of the heat and humidity outside, now that the damp sweat had dried on my skin, I was suddenly chilled to the bone.

I’d meant to ask Angus about the estate company that had consigned the pens, too, but after he got so upset, I didn’t dare push it. Tonight I planned to go over and help Betty after work, so I’d dig around the auction building and see what information I could find.

Although how the heck would I research this company, even if I did find out who it was, without jeopardizing Reenie? Call them up and say, “Hey, how are you doing? Are you the people who were cooking up some underhanded scheme with Jimmy Kratz, and when he double-crossed you, you decided to do him in?”

Crap.
I had absolutely no clue how to go about it. It was the same feeling I’d had when I questioned Cyril. I wasn’t a detective, for God’s sake. I was simply a former schoolteacher who now owned a sewing notions store.

No one had come into Sometimes a Great Notion yet today. The brutal humidity was as effective as a blinding snowstorm in deterring shoppers. But for once I was grateful the store wasn’t busy. The lack of business would give me a chance to get my act together and unpack some new merchandise.

If I could ever find the strength to get off this damn stool, that is.

Another image popped into my mind. Years ago, when he was still working construction before he devoted himself to the auction business full-time, Angus had brought home a bucket of baby blackbirds. They’d been abandoned by their mother on the construction site. He showed me the sorry little group at the bottom of the empty five-gallon paint bucket and said he planned to take them to the nature center when they opened the next day.

He’d fed the birds with a baby dropper and nursed them through the night, but when I stopped by in the morning, they had all died.

Angus was sitting there, on a wooden bench in his workshop, tears streaming down his ruddy, weather-roughened face that he didn’t even bother to wipe away. Sick at the loss myself, I sat there beside him, not knowing what to say.

After some time had passed, I whispered that I didn’t know what I could do to help.

“You were here and you cared,” he said finally. “That’s good enough for me.”

How was I supposed to reconcile the man I knew, gruff, unbelievably generous, protector of the weak, to someone everyone believed to be a killer?

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and then hauled myself to my feet.

Come on Daisy, make the coffee. Stat. And lots of it.

Perhaps I’d pay another visit to Reenie and pressure her into telling Ramsbottom about Jimmy’s deal to bid on the pens. The detective might listen to her, if not me. I knew she was scared, but so was I. For my best friend, Angus.

It seemed as though there were other more compelling suspects than the estate company anyway. Like the Perkins family. Like Ramsbottom. Like Fiona Adams.

And what about Hank Ramsbottom’s wife? Was she still around? She wasn’t in any of the photos on the wall. I also needed to go see Warren Zeigler, the attorney, and satisfy myself that he was doing everything possible to get Angus acquitted.

As the coffee brewed, I brought a couple of boxes down from the bedroom upstairs.

I liked to display merchandise so that it didn’t look too “organized.” So a buyer could still feel the same thrill of the hunt that I’d felt on our picking adventures. The idea was that you could walk around the store several times and still spot something new. I set an apothecary cabinet near the counter with an inlaid rosewood box on top. On a small table nearby, I grouped some thimbles, lithographed paper packages of hand sewing needles, and sixty-year-old German sequins.

“What do you think, Alice? Do you like it?” Over in the corner, Alice the mannequin kept her expression carefully composed.

“Wait, you don’t have to say anything. You’re right. Too formal.” I added a whimsical note with a pincushion in the shape of a large strawberry.

I stood back to admire my tableau. Much better. Alice was often helpful like that.

I still remembered with fondness, and more than a little longing, the twenty yards of fine French satin I’d found in the trunk I’d bought at auction that fateful day a year ago.

A glorious deep blue with a peacock design. It killed me to sell it, but the profit from the sale had paid the rent for the next three months, which was a huge help for a fledgling business. I’d kept a scrap of the peacock fabric in a two-inch photo frame next to the register as a remembrance.

I had worried at first that I would have a coronary each time I made a sale, but I’d come to the way of thinking that I had these treasures only for a short while. That they were in my safekeeping until they went to a good home.

Often I wondered who had sat in the child’s scarred wooden school desk, or who had labored over the tiny stitches in a needlework sampler. Out of the next box, I picked up a slim burgundy glass perfume bottle with a silver stopper, and when I held it up to my nose, I caught a faint hint of the fragrance that had once been inside. I tried to picture the woman who’d worn it; the scent a connection between us through time.

As a child, I remembered hanging on to my grandmother’s every word, listening to her stories and memories of life as a milliner, soaking up as much history as I could. I was enraptured with the sewing notions used to trim hats: the ribbons, braids, glass beads, veiling, velvet and organdy flowers.

I slumped down again, the caffeine rush worn off, swallowing against a bittersweet longing for the past.

“Hey, Alice, you know I think my daughter would be hard-pressed to tell someone much about my life. And she certainly doesn’t understand my connection to all these beautiful old things.”

Alice, diplomatic as ever, didn’t comment, but there was a wealth of understanding in those almond-shaped eyes framed by impossibly long lashes.

I blinked when Sarah walked in the door, as if thinking about her had conjured her up.

“Who were you talking to, Mom?”

I could feel the flush heating up my neck and cheeks. “Oh, um, you know, just practicing my sales pitches.”

“Oh-ka-a-ay.” She wrinkled her nose and looked around the store. “You need help with anything?”

She must have been utterly bored out of her mind if she was asking me for something to do. But I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Not that Sarah would even know what that old-fashioned phrase meant.

I walked over to the computer and pulled up a file. “Well, I’ve been doing some after-hours open houses, about one every couple of months, specifically for interior designers and high-end collectors. I need to send out an e-mail blast for the next one. Would you like to create the flyer?”

“Sure.” Sarah skimmed through my file, which showed past events that featured French linens, quilts and samplers, or vintage jewelry, bags, and clothing.

I pointed to some of the more recent images. “See, they usually have a specific theme, and I serve cheese and wine, and of course offer a substantial discount for that evening only.”

“This is actually a cool idea, Mom. I didn’t know you were doing this.”

Score one for old Daisy.

“What’s the theme this time?” she asked.

“I have quite a lot of children’s items right now. The auction this weekend will give me a chance to focus and acquire even more.” I thought about the dollhouse that would be up for bid and my pulse accelerated again.

“Ah, so
that’s
why you’re helping Betty Backstead with the auction. I see your ulterior motive!” Sarah grinned at me.

“Brat.” I grimaced and nudged her with my elbow.

I showed her some of the items in the corner of the store—a lithographed tin sand pail, an early 1900s Blue Onion toy silverware set, a Chautauqua home-schooling desk, and a 1930s heavy pressed steel toy metal stove that was green and white jadeite with an orange back panel.

She seemed to take a little more interest in the children’s toys than she ever did in the sewing notions.

I smiled to myself.
There’s more than one way to skin a c
at.

As I took photos of Mary Willis’s table linens for the website, I glanced surreptitiously at my daughter. Her blond hair fell in a shiny golden wave over her shoulder, and she bit her full bottom lip in concentration as she worked at the computer.

I couldn’t believe Sarah was still hanging around Millbury. She must be more burned out and upset than I’d realized.

As a child, she’d been fascinated with the movies, and she had a funny habit of dotting her speech with snippets of film dialogue. It was sometimes hard to tell where the movie left off, and where the real conversation began. In fact, she had named this store after the film
Sometimes a Great Notion,
starring Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, and Lee Remick.

Tears stung my eyes, but I willed them away. Sarah didn’t deal with my sentimentality too well. I remembered a conversation I’d had with her when she must have been about five, and I was in my thirties.

“Why do old ladies always cut their hair so short, Mom?” she asked as she played with my long dark brown locks.

I smiled at her. “I don’t know, Sarah.”

“Promise me you’ll never cut yours?”

“Well, I’ll have to cut it sometime,” I teased.

Even today I kept it shoulder length, but now I had to dye it to achieve that rich chestnut color. Coloring my hair every month was such a production. It was something, like my period, that I wouldn’t mind not having to go through anymore. One of these days I’d let it go all gray. But not this week.

I sighed. Damn it, when was I going to find the time to do my hair?

“You have a lot of clients in this database.”

Sarah’s comment broke my reverie.

I straightened up. “Yes, the store has really hit its stride. And with interest in crafts on the upswing, it should turn a nice profit again this year.”

“You seem to have lots of friends in this town, too. Are you happy here, Mom?”

“Yes, I am,” I said carefully, camera hanging down, not quite sure where she was going with this.

“That’s good.”

I wanted to broach the subject of how to make Sarah happy, too. I opened my mouth, but before I could find the right words, the doorbell rang and our token male on the street, Chris Paxson from the bicycle shop, walked in.

After I introduced him to Sarah, I apologized for the state of the
MALE
box. It was sadly depleted from Martha’s shift the day before.

“Actually I’m looking for a gift for my mother,” he said.

Sarah hopped down from her stool. “Here, I’ll show you around.”

Chris followed her, transfixed. I think he’d have bought the phone book if she’d shown it to him. I was poised, ready to step in, but as I listened, it sounded like she was doing fine. Maybe she’d absorbed more knowledge about the store than she’d realized.

I peeked at the computer screen. The flyer was perfect. A collage of the photos of children’s accessories for sale, superimposed over a watermarked photo of the store, featuring a Raggedy Ann in a rocking chair, who seemed to welcome guests in. The font she’d selected was an antique child’s picture book style, but still easy to read. I shook my head at her innate creativity. I’d have wrestled with this all afternoon.

I looked out of the store’s front display windows to see Martha trying to parallel park. She drove a white 1977 Lincoln Continental that was about half a city block long. The backseat with its opera lights in the corners was so expansive you could stretch your legs all the way straight out, and then some. I’d ridden in it once, but only once. That was enough.

The unfortunate neighbor who lived opposite her house had a mailbox that had started off normal size but, after the number of times Martha had backed straight out of her driveway and plowed it down, was now about two feet off the ground after numerous replantings. The mailman was threatening not to deliver mail to it anymore.