Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_02 (19 page)

So no more Quarter Pounders, no more desserts, and one day soon look into joining a health club, or do some mall walking. There was a fortune of several million dollars coming her way some time next year, and when Betsy invested in a new wardrobe, she didn't want to buy it from some mail order catalog sent to women ashamed to be seen going into the Women at Large shop at the mall.

So instead of eating a second supper, she got out the fabric, floss, and pattern for the little Christmas tree ornaments, then went to put the kettle on. Tea had no calories, she could have tea. She went into the living room and turned on the Bose, tuned to KSJN, the local public radio station. Fortunately, they weren't being experimental or operatic this evening. She listened only long enough to determine it was probably Brahms, sat back, and looked around.

The living room in the apartment was rectangular and low-ceilinged, its triple window heavily draped. The rug was a deep red on a pale hardwood floor, the walls a light cream with black baseboards. The room was furnished sparingly with a loveseat, upholstered chair with matching footstool, and some standard lamps. The low ceiling, the shaded light of the standard lamps, and the covered window made a cozy haven. Betsy had felt comfortable here from the first moment she'd entered.

But looking around reminded Betsy that while Margot had been a fine decorator and a terrific housekeeper, Betsy wasn't. She stood and debated getting out the vacuum cleaner, but decided against it. Instead, she went to the dining nook, sat down at the table, and tried again to work on the counted cross-stitch pattern. She counted very carefully with her threaded needle, both pattern and fabric, but after ten minutes a line of stitches that was supposed to join an earlier line didn't. She groaned. This was always happening! She consulted the pattern and her stitching and found the error was a dozen stitches back. She stuck the needle into the fabric and shoved it aside. Why did women insist that doing counted cross-stitch was relaxing? It was a lot of things: frustrating, aggravating, stupid, and impossible. But not relaxing.

She glanced into the kitchen but resolutely turned and went to the hall closet and got out the vacuum cleaner. She was about halfway around the living room when Sophie came out of the bedroom. Unlike many cats, Sophie had no fear of the vacuum cleaner. She got in front of it, looked up at Betsy, and opened her mouth. Betsy shut off the vacuum cleaner.

“... ewwwwwwwwww!” Sophie was saying.

“What do you want?”

Sophie started for the kitchen, the too-long cast, designed to keep her from running or jumping, lifting her left back end up a little higher. The vet tech at the clinic described it as having “square wheel syndrome.” She stopped and looked back hopefully at Betsy, then at the kitchen, but Betsy said firmly, “No.”

If Betsy was giving up snacks, Sophie was, too.

Sophie limped to her cushioned basket under the window draperies. She gave Betsy a hurt look, then climbed into her basket, lying down with her injured leg pointedly on display.

Betsy felt for the animal but didn't yield. She flipped the switch on the vacuum cleaner and went back to work. It was bad enough that her employees and customers vied to see who could bring the tastiest tidbit to the cat. Betsy wasn't going to. At twenty-three pounds, Sophie was proportionately far more overweight than Betsy.

The vacuuming finished, Betsy considered dusting, but instead went to the comfortable chair with the cross-legged canvas needlework bag beside it and got out her knitting. Not the mittens, she needed something soothing. The red hat was at a section that was just knit, knit, knit—no purl to complicate the action, no increase or decrease. As she had noticed before, there was something calming about knitting. One sat down to it with a jumbled, disordered mind, started in, and after a few minutes, the pulse slowed, the fingers relaxed, the mind, like a troubled pool, settled and cleared.

She wondered if Jill would just take her word for it that Alice hated Trudie without Betsy having to say why. Betsy remembered something her mother had frequently said: “Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Alice had kept her secret for fifty years; it seemed a shame it couldn't be kept just a little longer, until Alice was safely dead, beyond hearing the wagging tongues of Excelsior.

And what about Vern Miller? His date of entry into the army was July 3. The
Hopkins
had been towed out and sunk with its grisly cargo on July first or second—and Trudie had been murdered the night before that. Was it what he said, an attempt to get away from a town that didn't appreciate his talents?

Or from an arrest for murder?

11

T
he kettle had been refilled, heated to boiling, and turned down to simmer long before Jill arrived a little after nine. “Sorry I couldn't get here earlier,” she said as she peeled off her uniform coat, dappled with melting snow. “But I figured I might as well change into uniform, in case this runs long. I'm still on the graveyard shift, so we have till eleven-thirty.”

“How was your dinner with Lars?” asked Betsy.

“Okay. He asked me to marry him tonight.”

This was said so casually, Betsy nearly missed it. “He did? What did you say?”

“I said what I always say when he asks me: No.”

“Aren't you in love with him?”

“Oh, I'm mad about the boy,” she said, still casually. “But he wants kids right away, and I'm not ready for that yet. Have you got English tea?”

“Yes. And the water's hot.” Betsy went into the kitchen, Jill following.

Betsy used a Twinings tea bag, but heated the heavy mug with a splash of boiling water which she dumped out before putting the bag into it and pouring more water over it. Jill added sugar—two spoonfuls—and a dollop of milk.

“Bad out?” asked Betsy.

“Not yet,” said Jill. She leaned against the refrigerator while Betsy made a cup of raspberry-flavored tea for herself. Jill's Gibson Girl face and her invisibly pale eyebrows made her, as usual, hard to read. And that cryptic way of talking about Lars—what was that about?

Did she want Betsy to ask questions? Or was she being cryptic because she didn't want to talk about it? Or did she think Betsy already knew enough about the two of them to understand what Jill meant?

Betsy wondered if Jill often had trouble with that enigmatic face, with people reading into it whatever they were most—or least—comfortable with. Perhaps Jill wasn't cold or unemotional at all, just reluctant or even unable to share her feelings with the world. There had been times when she'd seemed very friendly, such as that other morning on her boyfriend's boat.
Perhaps,
thought Betsy,
if I reached out a little, I'd find her easier to understand. So try to think that there is a friendly interest.

And, actually, there must be, or why else was she here?

“Tea all right?” asked Betsy.

“Yes, thanks. You make it just like Margot.”

Betsy smiled. “We both learned how from our father; he loved tea.”

“With a name like Devonshire, that's not surprising.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Jill, why don't you want children?”

“I
do
want children. But I want to continue in law enforcement, and when I have a child, I'll want a year or two off, and that would put my career in jeopardy. Also, I can't drive a squad while I'm pregnant, but I could manage a desk. When I make sergeant, then I'll marry Lars.”

“Does he know that?”

“I've told him that, which is not the same thing.”

Betsy smiled. “I see.” She sipped her tea. “Is Malloy making any progress?”

“Only against Martha,” sighed Jill. “How about you?”

Betsy said, “Yes, that's why I called you. I've found out something that may be important. Alice Skoglund told me that in 1948 she wished with all her heart that Trudie were dead. She told me why. She also said she didn't kill her, but she did have a good reason to. And after I called you, I discovered Vern Miller, who had been Trudie's jealous boyfriend, joined the army approximately one day after Trudie disappeared.”

Jill said, “I ask you to find lace makers, and you find suspects.”

“I didn't mean to, honest. Well, maybe I did go looking at Vern Miller. But all I did with Alice was ask her about her lace. She made an assumption that I was sleuthing and confessed about Trudie.”

“Why would Alice Skoglund hate Trudie Koch enough to wish her dead?”

Betsy hesitated, then said, “What she told me would be nearly nothing by today's standards. But by her own, it was shocking and shameful. And Trudie was blackmailing her over it. She said she hadn't told anyone until today, when she told me. I felt so awful, listening to her pour her heart out. All that wretchedness—I had no idea. And all I wanted was for her to tell me who was making lace in 1948—oh!”

“What?”

“I forgot to ask her that.” Betsy glanced at Jill and noticed a slight quiver of the shapely mouth. She smiled herself, and Jill's quiver became a genuine grin.

Jill asked, “And did Vern Miller just pour his heart out to you, too?”

“No. What happened was, Shelly said he retired from the army after thirty years, came home and opened Miller Motors. His sign says, ‘Since 1978.' If you subtract thirty years from that, you get 1948. So I went to talk to him. He said he was halfway through boot camp when he got a letter about Carl and Trudie running off together. He says he didn't believe it, because Carl was a respectable businessman with a family and not likely to fall for someone like Trudie. Vern thought she might have accepted a ride from Carl to somewhere, but that's all. He said he used to think about her waitressing in some other town, sassing the customers and going home to her six kids.”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know what to think. He said she used to pick fights with him whenever he couldn't buy her something she wanted, and then she'd temporarily take up with someone who would, then she'd let Vern back into her life. It sounds like it was a volatile relationship, and that can end in murder. And he did leave town at a very significant moment.”

“Hmmmm,” mused Jill. “You know, you have come up with two very solid alternatives to Martha. I wonder if there's a way to get Mike to look them over.”

“You think I should go talk to him?”

“No, let me have a go, first. He didn't like you poking around that first time, remember? And he wouldn't listen to you until you had proof. Which you don't have, right now. He's pretty sold on Martha being the killer, you know.”

“I can't believe he really thinks she did this.”

“Well, look at it his way,” said Jill. “Trudie works at the Blue Line Café, just yards from the dock where the
Hopkins
is tied up, waiting to be towed out and sunk. Carl is having an affair with her, he meets her after work that night in The Common, which is right there next to the docks.

“It's all over town that Carl is messing with Trudie. Think how embarrassing that must have been for Martha! It's not hard to see the obvious, that Martha comes roaring out of the darkness to smite Trudie on the head with a tire iron or a hammer—at least that's the ME's opinion.

“Now, rather than trying to stop her, Carl runs off—”

“The coward,” said Betsy.

“Well, if my spouse and my lover got into a fight, I might not care to interfere. Both of them might remember who they really should be mad at.”

“Oops,” said Betsy.

“Right. So Carl's gone and Trudie is dead. Martha drags or carries Trudie's body onto the boat, the effort shifting her dress around so a pocket opens, or a sleeve unrolls, and her handkerchief falls out. It's dark, she's busy, she doesn't notice. And either when she's moving rubble it gets covered up, or she steps wrong in the dark, and a piece of pipe rolls under her foot, covering the handkerchief.”

“But think of that big boat filled with rubble,” said Betsy. “It would have been an enormous effort for a woman to move enough of it away to uncover the deck and then move it back again in order to hide the body.”

“Malloy has found someone who remembers that they didn't fill the boat at the dock, but hauled maybe half of it out on a barge, since they didn't want the boat to tip over or sink before they got it out behind the Big Island.”

“Oh,” said Betsy, deflated.

“But there was enough that she had to clear a space, and enough that when she put it over the body, no one noticed when they tossed the rest in. It was hard work, but not an impossible task. Remember, she's scared. I'm sure you've read the stories about women who have lifted whole automobiles off their husbands or sons after the cars fell off jacks onto them. Malloy has.

“Meanwhile Carl gets into his car, drives off—”

“The
car!”
exclaimed Betsy.

“What about it?”

“All these years Martha says she thought Carl had been mugged and his body thrown into a boxcar or into the lake. How did she reconcile that notion with the fact that his car was missing?”

“His car wasn't missing,” said Jill. “It was found behind the dry cleaners. I'm assuming he drove down to the lake, and then drove back again. There was a pretty fine train and streetcar service out here in those days. He left his car behind the cleaners, then caught a streetcar or a train into Minneapolis, and caught a train out of town.”

“Oh,” said Betsy.

“He arrives in Omaha and decides to stay awhile,” continued Jill, picking up Malloy's scenario. “He finds work, tries to forget. But fifty years later, the boat is raised, the skeleton found, and a story about it gets picked up by the wire services. The story says Martha is suspected. Carl is overjoyed. At last, he can come home and tell what really happened, see to it his wife is at last punished for her deed.