Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02 (11 page)

Diane reached a very gentle forefinger to touch the subtly rough surface of Santa's mitten. “Yes, something like this wouldn't last a day in my shop. Would you think of parting with it?”

“Not even
Bill Gates
could buy this from me,” said Godwin. “It has taken me over
two hundred hours
to get this far. I did Santa's beard
three different ways
before deciding on French knots—there are ninety-two of them, you may count them if you like, and I can't tell you how grateful I am that only a third of his beard is showing, because I may not
ever
want to do another French knot. I haven't decided how to do the little girl's hair yet, but it will probably be something difficult and tedious and wonderful to look at. I'm sorry”—Godwin did not sound the least sorry—“but it's not for sale. It's a gift for someone I love, that's the
only thing
that makes it all worth while.”

Diane turned and saw the helpless, commiserating look in Betsy's eyes. “I see,” she said.

“That's not to say you couldn't have someone do a really fine embroidered or counted cross-stitch apron for you,” said Betsy. “It's just that the price would make it the kind of apron you drape over a chair or hang on the wall as an ornament, not the sort you tie on to protect your clothing while you decorate cookies.”

Diane smiled. “Some of my customers have kitchens with a full set of copper-bottomed pots no one is allowed to use. An apron also there strictly for show is a definite possibility.” She opened her purse. “How about I leave you my card? Perhaps you can ask some of your customers if they would be interested. They can call me or just drop by.”

“Certainly,” said Betsy, taking the card. It had the crisp clean look of a new coin. NIGHTINGALE'S Enchanted Vintage for Home and Garden, it read.
Diane Bolles, Proprietor
. She smiled suddenly. “Maybe there will be some people interested in selling some of their projects. I have customers who complain that they just can't stop doing needlework, even though they have a closet full of things and no room left to display any more of it.”

“They should rotate their work,” said Diane. “That way, their eyes are always refreshed by the display, instead of getting bored and not even seeing it anymore.” She had used that reasoning to increase her own sales of prints and silk bouquets.

“What a good idea!” said Betsy. “I'll suggest it; it makes my heart sink when a good customer starts in about having no more space.”

“Good idea, certainly,” drawled Godwin, “but
I
think Diane just shot herself in the foot by sharing it.”

Diane laughed. “I've done that before.” She looked around again. “You have really done some thinking in your layout.”

Betsy shrugged, her eyes suddenly sad. “No, it was my sister who did this. I only inherited it.”

Diane said, “I was very shocked when your sister died in that awful way. But I've heard nothing but good things about you. I'm certainly glad you were here to assist the police in solving your sister's murder. Have you always done that kind of thing?”

Betsy smiled. “Never before in my life. It was beginner's luck, I assure you. And not likely to happen again.”

“Really? But I understand you are involved in that skeleton business, helping the police with a major clue.”

“Not really. The police brought me a photocopy of some fabric they found on the boat, and I've been asking my customers if they can identify it. And, as it happens, just yesterday someone did. It appears to be a sample of bobbin lace.”

“Oh, I saw some bobbin lace once! It was
so
gorgeous. May I see the photocopy?”

Betsy indicated the Xerox copy still taped to the desk, and Diane looked only a moment before saying, puzzled, “
This
is bobbin lace?”

“I know, it doesn't look like anything to me, either. But a customer assures me it is water-soaked bobbin lace.”

“It must have been soaking for a very long time.”

“Ever since that hot, dry Fourth of July in 1949,” drawled Godwin, making a sort of rhyme of it.

Diane turned to face him, her eyes blank.

“Don't look at
me
, my
mother
was a toddler in 1949!”

“Hmm?” said Diane. As part of her gift for numbers, when someone said a year that came within her lifespan she automatically subtracted to see how old she was. In 1949, she had been six years old.

“I said—” began Godwin.

“You said it was a hot, dry Fourth of July,” interrupted Diane brusquely. “It wasn't. In 1949, the Fourth of July was cold and wet. I remember because my Aunt Faye and Uncle James were in town and they were going to take me to the amusement park and then out on a boat to watch the fireworks, and we couldn't go because it rained all day.”

Betsy said sharply, “Are you
sure?
”

“Yes, why?”

“Because our police investigator is using an eyewitness to close in on the exact day the
Hopkins
was sunk. The eyewitness says someone came to her on the Fourth of July in 1949 to say he'd seen it towed out to be sunk a day or two before—and she described the day as blazing hot.”

“Then she's wrong,” said Diane. “I cried all afternoon because we couldn't go, and Aunt Faye said I mustn't make it rain indoors as hard as it was raining outdoors. It rained all that day, and all evening, too, so we couldn't go see the fireworks, either. I was
so
disappointed.”

Godwin said, “You were just a little kid; I bet you don't remember the year exactly. It could have been 1948, or maybe 1950.”

“No, in 1948 my Aunt Faye wasn't married yet, and in 1950 my parents took me to Yellowstone. So I am absolutely sure the Fourth of July of 1949 was cold and rainy.”

“Oh, my,” said Betsy. “We'd better call Sergeant Malloy right away.”

 

Malloy and his investigative partner stood in the doorway of the motel room, just looking. A uniformed officer was standing at parade rest just outside the door, the perfection of his stance slightly spoiled by the clipboard he was holding in one hand poking out from behind his back. Malloy's partner would sign in on the clipboard— Malloy had handled the skeleton, so it was his partner's turn to handle the physical inspection of this body—but neither went in just yet.

A thin, elderly man lay on his back across the bed, whose white chenille bedspread was slightly rumpled. He was wearing an old brown suit, more than slightly rumpled. His legs were off the end of the bed from about mid-calf, and his right hand hung off the bed on the near side. A semiautomatic handgun was on the floor under the hand.

A small table had a lamp on it, the lamp turned on, though it was broad daylight outside. Of course, the heavily lined curtains were pulled shut, so when the door was shut, perhaps the light was necessary.

The state crime bureau had sent a crew—“Getting to be a habit, isn't it, Malloy?” one had wisecracked—and had photographed and videotaped everything. The medical examiner was on the scene.

Malloy held out his hand for the clipboard and asked the cop, “Were you the first responder?”

“Yessir.”

Everyone seemed to have signed in and out properly; Malloy gave the clipboard to his partner to sign. “Have you checked the other rooms?” he asked the cop.

“Yessir. There were only two other customers checked in last night, one up next to the office and the other down at the corner. Both checked out before nine this morning, and the room down at the end's been cleaned up already. The other one doesn't seem out of the ordinary, and none of the rest of the rooms looked disturbed.”

“Did you turn any lights on when you went in here?”

“Nossir.”

“Is the condition of the room now just as you found it?”

The cop came to attention before stepping around to peek in. You could always tell the ones who came to the police from the military. “Yessir.”

“Who found the body?”

“Cleaning ladies. Two of them.”

“Where are they?”

“In the office.”

“Your witness,” said Malloy to his partner and went to talk to the cleaning ladies. He detoured on his way to the unit at the end, the one also guarded by a uniformed officer. He didn't go in, just opened the door and looked. Bed mussed, one pillow used, no luggage left, towels on the bathroom floor, smell of aftershave, empty pizza box standing slantwise in the wastebasket. Nothing odd or out of place. His partner would do a more thorough search, of course.

The cleaning ladies turned out to be a pair of middle-aged women. Sitting with them on a couch, equally scared and distressed, was the owner of the motel. Her husband, she said, was at his part-time job in Excelsior.

The Hillcrest Motel, which was not located atop a hill but at the foot of one just outside Excelsior, was owned and run by an older couple. It had twelve rooms and an office along two sides of a blacktop parking lot. A small, shabby laundromat, also owned by the couple, occupied the third side. All the buildings were coated with faded pink stucco crumbling around the edges.

The cleaning partners were locals who lived just up the road. They'd worked here two years, but only while school was in. They were dressed in those aprons that cover all your clothing, even in back. These were a matching set in mint green. Patterned scarves were tied around their heads, à la Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. They had their heavy rubber gloves in their laps and they were smoking up a storm, their way of handling the fright, sickness, and excitement of this event.

They said they had knocked on the door of room seven about two, checkout time—it was now quarter after three—and when there was no reply, Lise had unlocked the door and they had seen the body and run pell-mell for the office to tell Mary to dial 911. No, they hadn't gone in, no they hadn't turned on any lights or checked to see if the man was really dead—of course he was dead, it only took one look to tell he was dead. Their little wheeled cart was still right outside the door—it wasn't? Well, they hadn't moved it, they had come right here as fast as they could and had been here ever since and did Malloy know when they might be able to finish their work and go home?

Malloy questioned them closely, but their answers were decidedly innocent. He asked if they could stay here for awhile, until the room on the end had been searched. Then they could clean it.

He turned to the owner, Mary Olsen. She said the man had checked in alone late yesterday afternoon and seemed all right, except all tired out from driving. She produced the sign-in card the man had filled out.

Malloy took it, a little five-by-six piece of thin white cardboard, and sat a few moments staring at it, because the name on it had a certain familiarity: Carl Winters. And from what Malloy remembered of the death scene, this Carl was about the right age to be the other Carl, the Carl that was Martha Winters's husband. The address on the card was Omaha, Nebraska. Hadn't run far, then. Hadn't done well, either, by the shabby suit and the tired old Chevy with Nebraska plates that was parked outside his unit. Trudie, it seemed, wasn't as valuable a partner as Martha had been.

“He check in alone?”

“Yes, and I watched his car pull up to his unit and he was the only one who got out.”

“Did he make any phone calls?” asked Malloy.

She checked. “Just one, a local call.”

Since he hadn't gone through a switchboard, she had no record of the number the victim had called. Malloy noted the time of the call in his notebook.

He got the names and addresses of the other two guests, then went back and stood again in the doorway and watched his partner. The medical examiner was with the body, taking measurements.

“Whaddaya think,” said Malloy, “he comes home to commit suicide?”

“So you know who he is?”

“Unless he signed in under a false name, our victim was one Carl Winters, who was alleged to have run off with a waitress back in 1948, leaving his wife Martha to run the dry cleaning store and raise their son all by herself. So now he's old and sick and sorry, so he comes home, calls his wife, who tells him to get stuffed, so he suicides.”

“One problem with that theory,” said Malloy's partner.

“What's that?”

“This wasn't a suicide.”

 

 

On his way back to the station, Malloy put in a call for Jill Cross to meet him there. She was standing beside her squad car when he pulled into the parking lot and approached at his gesture, breath gently steaming, to bend with the awkwardness imposed by a Kevlar vest and heavy winter police jacket to look in his window.

“You heard about the gunshot victim at Hillcrest?” he asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Identification on the body and the registration card both say it's Carl Winters.”

“Oh, lord,” said Jill.

“He made one local call after he arrived yesterday. The motel can't say to who, but it isn't hard to guess.”

“So you want me to come along when you tell her?”

Malloy nodded. “It may be an arrest situation. It's not a suicide we're dealing with here, unless he had the rare gift of being able to shoot himself from across the room.”

Jill stared at Malloy, who stared calmly back. She said after a bit, “We're going to arrest Martha Winters?”

“No, we're going to go talk to her. Carl Winters isn't exactly the rarest name in the world, so we're not even positive it's her husband. I'm going to go talk to her about what happened, see which way she jumps. She's not a professional criminal; if she did it, she may be waiting to tell us all about how she murdered Trudie Koch all those years ago and hid her body in that boat, and now has rounded things off by shooting her husband.”