Knitting Bones (5 page)

Maybe it was just as well. Mitch thought he’d be coming back to work—and maybe he was. The airline ticket was no good anymore.

Anyway, he had no reason to run now, did he? He frowned over that for a while. Because he had been stealing checks from the mail room and depositing them in a special account he’d set up. There was absolutely no sign from Mitch that he, Tony, was suspected in that way. Of petty theft, maybe—but Tony hoped with all his heart that there were other petty thieves at the Heart Coalition, because a sudden stop to all theft during his hospitalization would be all the proof they needed of his guilt.

Thinking about his check-stealing scam brought up the question again: What happened last Friday? Tony had a good-enough plan to get hold of that check written by EGA. Okay, both Mr. Germaine and the check were gone—but why assume Germaine and the check had gone together? Maybe Tony had the check. His car accident may have been just that, an accident, with no link to the theft of the check. After all, no one said they’d found this big check written to the Heart Coalition in a pocket—they did search his pockets, didn’t they?

Whoa!

Tony stopped thinking while he ripped open the black plastic bag that contained his personal effects. A big brown envelope contained his cell phone, his good ID bracelet with the flat links, a nice gold watch with a leather band—which he’d never seen before—and his wallet, which itself contained his driver’s license, Social Security card, two credit cards. And $147, which was a lot more than he remembered, but nowhere near $24,000. In the big envelope was also a little brown envelope containing about two dollars in loose change, a small brass key with the number
36
written in ink on a strip of white tape on it, and a pair of what looked like real-gold cuff links. The change he remembered, but not the key or the cuff links. He put them aside and continued pulling things out of the bag. Up came a white dress shirt, covered with dried blood. His blood. It was odd to look at that and think that huge amount of blood had come out of him. He touched the big bandage on his head tenderly.

Hold on, he owned a white dress shirt, but he hadn’t worn it to work last Friday. And this one had French cuffs, which his didn’t. That explained the cuff links, in a way. But why had he been wearing someone else’s dress shirt and cuff links? Had he gone to a drunken hot tub party and put on the wrong shirt after? He smiled at himself—that would have been a typical accidental-on-purpose “mistake” for him. And it would explain the watch, too. But he had no memory of a hot tub party, and, in fact, didn’t currently know anyone with a hot tub. He picked up the cuff links. They were plain, a small square sitting on a bigger square, and not new; but the weight and shine suggested high-carat gold. He put them down again, more respectfully. The watch was only a Bulova, but the strap looked like real crocodile. Taken from the same person who owned the shirt and cuff links?

In the bottom of the bag, in a big wad, was a black suit. He pulled it out. It was torn, cut, stiff with what was probably more dried blood, and here and there, caught in the folds, were a very few little cubes of glass. Oh, windshield glass, sure.

But the suit was once a very nice one. And it wasn’t his. Tony didn’t own a black suit.

He went through the pockets anyhow and didn’t find the check. Had he left it at the party? In the car? Did the people who towed wrecked cars away go through them looking for valuables?

Wait a second, maybe he’d deposited it. He opened his cell phone and was pleased to find he had turned it off, so when he turned it on, it had a charge. He thought a few moments, then dialed a number that connected him to First Express Bank’s automated service. He had a checking account there that would give the Heart Coalition a fit if they knew about it, and he loved not having to talk to a person who might later remember his call. Some more numbers and he got the balance on the National Heart Fund account he’d set up: “Four thousand four hundred thirty-two dollars,” the female robot voice told him.

He disconnected. Okay, he hadn’t deposited the check.

Maybe Mr. Germaine had it after all. Tony felt a stab of anger. He hoped Germaine was found and sent to jail. That would teach him to steal from Tony Milan!

Tony cast about for something to do. He wasn’t able to go out of his little apartment and had always been careful not to let anyone know where he lived unless absolutely necessary. His home was a den, a place of safety, and the wise predator didn’t leave hints to its location. So he couldn’t invite anyone over.

His bank had his address, as did the bank unwittingly taking part in the Heart Fund scam. Some Heart Coalition employees also knew where he lived; for instance, the two women in Personnel and the pissant.

But no one else. Well, except the Domino’s Pizza that he sometimes ordered a delivery from. He drew a lonesome sigh. But hold on, no need for a pity party. Tony could still talk to people, couldn’t he? Some of his friends must be wondering why they hadn’t seen him in a while.

Tony picked up the cordless phone on the coffee table, thought a few moments, then dialed. A male voice answered, and Tony said, “Hey, Billy, it’s me, Stoney Durand!”

J
ILL
was preparing Emma Elizabeth for bed.

“
I
do it!” shouted Emma from inside the nightgown, her little fists grabbing at the fabric. Jill immediately let go and Emma began a struggle to find the neck hole and get her head through it. She pulled at random, and when she couldn’t find the opening she began bouncing with impatience, which didn’t help.

Jill, amused, continued to refrain from helping, but she could not entirely smother a giggle. Emma stopped, listening to the sound. Her tiny nose could be seen in outline through the fabric, pointed at the ceiling. Jill laughed.

Emma laughed uncertainly. “I silly?” she asked.

“No, darling, you’re not silly, but you look silly with your teeny nose.” Jill reached out and touched it lightly with a forefinger.

Emma collapsed as if the touch had been a blow. “Nose silly!” she shrieked. “
Toe
silly!” She kicked upward inside the nightgown, pressing her toes into the fabric, laughing heartily.

At other times Jill would have begun a hilarious search for the toddler’s silly toes and nose, but it was already a little past Emma’s bedtime and no time to get her daughter even more excited. Instead she began to sing a song about a farmer named MacDonald, and while at first Emma shouted with every verse that what old MacDonald had on his farm was a nose, pretty soon she was agreeing that here and there the chicken was going cluck-cluck and the pig oink-oink. Soon she allowed her mother to help her get the nightgown on. In ten minutes, she was asleep.

Jill went out into the living room and sat on the couch beside her husband with a little sigh.

“It only gets worse,” said Lars, affably. “Pretty soon it’s drinks of water and ‘God bless Mommy’ and just one more story.”

“And how do you know all this?” she asked in a chilly voice, and then was alarmed at how real it sounded. But she saw him catch the slight twinkle in her eyes, and her alarm faded.

“I remember from when I was a baby,” he said, and stuck his tongue into his cheek.

She made a skeptical face at him.

“Okay, my mother said my baby brother was just like me, and I remember him being like that.”

They sat in smiling silence for a few moments. Then Lars said, his massive brow corrugating in an effort to be diplomatic, “Hon, have you been thinking about going back to work?”

“Not really, why? Do we need the money?” She wondered if he had another costly purchase in mind—he was prone to costly, work-heavy enthusiasms.

“No, no, we’re doing all right.” Which at least meant his current hobby, a 1912 Stanley Steamer automobile, hadn’t done anything expensive to itself lately.

“Well, why do you ask, then?”

“You’ll think this is dumb, prob’ly, but yesterday I opened the suitcase on the top shelf of our closet because I forgot what it was doing up there, and I found it was full of Em’s baby clothes. And a smell came out of them, just like she smelled when she was new, and all of a sudden I thought how nice it would be to have another baby.”

He wasn’t looking at her when he said this. Afraid she might laugh at him, she thought. “And you think perhaps the choice for me is either going back to work or having another baby?” This time the chill in her voice was not faux.

“No, no!” he hastened to say. “No, what I was thinking was that maybe you were thinking about going back on the cops. Because I know you miss it. But if you’re not thinking about it, maybe you could think about a baby brother or sister for Em.”

He still was looking away. So he missed the look of compassion she gave him. Back before they married, they’d agreed they wanted a big family, at least four children. But Emma was more expensive and a whole lot more work than either had anticipated. Most of the labor fell on Jill—which was okay, because it was her choice. And she loved it. Mostly. And just lately she had been thinking that one wasn’t enough. It was kind of nice that dear Lars was thinking so, too.

Her silence drew his attention, and he turned to look at her, his pale gray eyes looking into her light blue ones. They both started smiling at the same time.

G
ODWIN
was watching an old movie on cable. It was Bette Davis month, and she was starring in
The Petrified Forest
. Bette Davis, he reflected, had been a terrific actress, sweet and vulnerable in some roles, defiant and angry in others, ironic and sarcastic in still others. Whatever the role called for, there she was, living it, graceful or clumsy, defensive and vulnerable, snotty, witty, beautiful—sometimes even homely, but always true to the role.

He was knitting another in his endless series of white cotton socks—not that he needed another pair. What he needed was an excuse for staying up late. Some customers who knew him would be sure to notice he was tired tomorrow and ask if he’d been out on a date. He didn’t want to lie and say yes—but he also didn’t want to say he stayed up late to watch a Bette Davis marathon. So he knit, because saying he got involved in knitting was almost the truth, and something Crewel World customers would definitely understand.

But he was really staying up late because he wanted to think. Like his parents before him, he had grown up doing homework while watching TV, sometimes with music also playing. He believed all those distractions somehow helped him focus.

But it didn’t seem to work this time. Maybe because he’d seen
The Petrified Forest
before, several times, and he didn’t think it one of her better efforts—Ms. Davis was very young in this movie, not the gallant ruin she would be many years down the road. It made him aware that one day he, too, might be a ruin—and not a gallant one, at that.

Which was not what he wanted to think about. He wanted to think about sleuthing. He’d thought he’d be a natural. Wasn’t he nosy? Even nosier than Betsy, if it came to that. Wasn’t he able to charm almost anyone into talking to him? Hadn’t he gone to places where he knew he could get people to talk to him, where he knew many of the people he would talk to? And hadn’t he found that Bob Germaine was living a secret second life? And yet the way she’d looked at him and his deductions…

He’d watched Betsy’s techniques as she investigated crimes over the past few years. He’d hung on her every word at the end of her cases and absorbed her explanations. It wasn’t hard, she always said. She’d just talk to people and gather their meanings, hidden and obvious, until a pattern emerged. And that’s what he’d done, talked and listened. And he brought home lots and lots of good information.

So why did it seem to him that she wasn’t fully satisfied with his results?

The deep thinking this was calling for was getting a bit hard, so he reached for the remote and turned off the television. He continued working on the sock, which was one begun at the toe and ending at the cuff. He was at the cuff, knit one, purl one, very easy, and he liked a nice, long cuff. Betsy often said that knitting something simple freed her mind to think, to
ponder,
which she defined as a deeper kind of thinking. He sat back in his big, comfy chair, allowing his mind to ponder.

He hadn’t done
everything
wrong. For example, Betsy had been very impressed with his idea that Bob Germaine had decided to come out of the closet with a big, bad, dishonest act, make a
statement,
so that was probably true—Betsy had a nose for the truth that was at least as good as his own.

But she had seemed particularly nose-wrinkly at his vision of Bob sailing down a highway with his silver-haired lover, which Godwin thought was a particularly fine piece of deduction. Why didn’t she like that one?

He pondered that for a while before deciding it was too many for him—he’d read that expression in a Mark Twain story once upon a time and really liked it—“too many for him,” meaning he just couldn’t figure it out—that was sharp. But knowing it was too many didn’t solve the problem. He knew his next assignment was going to be to talk to the women who had been at the EGA convention banquet, which was going to be a lot harder than talking to friends around the city. Maybe he’d better ask Betsy about her expectations, or at least get some solid instructions about his methods. That decision settled his mind enough that he could tuck his knitting away and go off to his lonely little bed for the night.

B
ETSY,
struggling gingerly into a fresh nightgown, reflected on Godwin’s efforts. Godwin had many talents, and his admiration for Betsy’s sleuthing ability was as charming as it was sincere. But his ambition to emulate her, to be a sleuth himself, was, she feared, not something he could do reliably.

Godwin had gone investigating to prove his already-drawn conclusion that Bob Germaine was a closeted gay man. Which was almost all right. He had told Betsy that Germaine was gay before they talked about his sleuthing. The problem was, he found a number of people who helped support his theory, and felt his mission was accomplished. Perhaps if he’d talked to more people, he might have found some who disagreed with his theory, perhaps with facts to back them up.

But what put the cap on the thing, she thought, was his imaginative description of Bob Germaine driving his Lexus down a long highway with a handsome, wealthy, mature lover in the passenger seat—there was not a shred of evidence to indicate this scenario was more than a happy dream—and one close to Godwin’s own heart. Who knew what Bob Germaine’s dreams were?

She sank carefully into bed, laying sheet and blanket tenderly over her mending leg. She had a huge stretchy stocking pulled over the hard plastic “boot” on her left foot and lower leg to protect her sheets from its buckles and rough edges, but pulling it on had reignited the pain.

She had barely emitted a sigh of relief at successfully becoming horizontal when Sophie jumped up on the bed, on the other side from her usual landing spot, away from Betsy’s wounded leg. Funny how Sophie had immediately understood that her mistress was injured and in pain, that the pain was located in her right leg, and that she, Sophie, while seeking to comfort Betsy, must not step on or bump the injury.

The cat, a beautiful, fluffy white creature with tan and gray patches on her head, down her back, and up her tail, was also very solid, and she joggled the mattress—and Betsy’s leg—while making her way to Betsy’s left side, where she collapsed with a purring sigh. Very gently she put one paw on Betsy’s forearm. Betsy could not help smiling, and she stroked Sophie’s dense fur, eliciting a deeper, more rhythmic purr. Giving and receiving comfort, Sophie was good to have around, Betsy thought.

Betsy was also, for once, grateful that Sophie was probably the laziest cat in the state. Long ago, a friend who owned a more energetic cat was sick in bed, and the cat wore itself out bringing her freshly killed mice, gophers, and once even a squirrel, in an attempt to nourish her mistress back to health.

Sophie, the queen of nourishment, did not hunt even to nourish herself. Possibly it was not her fault, possibly she was taken from her mother before her mother could teach her to hunt; it was even possible her mother did not know how to hunt, either. In any case, Sophie did not seem to know food could come from elsewhere than a human hand.

Betsy’s thoughts had wandered off the topic, which was…what? The pain pill she’d taken after brushing her teeth was kicking in. Oh, yes, sleuthing. And Godwin’s willing, enthusiastic, but not very good attempts at it.

So what was she to do? She didn’t want to hurt Godwin’s feelings by telling him he wasn’t to do any more investigating. And, it wasn’t as if she could go out herself. Perhaps, hinted her weary mind, she should just call the matter off. She’d done what Allie had asked, found that the police were, in fact, looking into other possibilities than that her husband was a thief. Still, it was an interesting case, and she was intrigued by its contradictions. Could she use Godwin’s inept investigating somehow? Or was there someone else she could send out? Who did she know who might be more skilled at sleuthing than Goddy?

The pill began easing her gently into sleep. Her last conscious thought was:
Jill.