Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 (16 page)

Betsy tried to relax, but alarm over possible side effects took most of her attention. And other thoughts were leaping and waving in a panicked attempt to get her attention.

Who wanted to kill her?

And why?

 

Two hours later, the door opened again, and a slim redhead in a dark suit, white shirt, and conservative tie came in, his charcoal-black coat over one arm. With him was Jill, in uniform.

“Hi, Malloy,” sighed Betsy. “I've been expecting you.”

“Have you figured out yet what you've got yourself into?” he asked, his thin mouth pulled into a little smile.

“I can only repeat that I am sure I haven't done anything to provoke this. Nothing.”

Jill asked, “Are you feeling better yet?”

“Yes, the IV really helped.”

Malloy hung the coat on a chair and reached into an inside pocket for a notebook and pen. He searched the notebook until he found the right page. “Only one of the chicken salads taken from your refrigerator contained arsenic. But it was enough to kill you if you'd eaten all of it.”

Betsy felt a shiver run down her entire body. She had been really hungry by the time she sat down to her very late supper, but eating heartily just before bed was a guarantee of a restless night.

Not that she hadn't had one anyway.

Malloy asked, “I take it these salads were brought as gifts?”

“Yes. When I got home from the hospital, people brought me all kinds of food.”

Malloy nodded. “Who brought the chicken salads?”

“I don't know.”

“You mean you don't remember?”

“No, I mean it started coming while I was still in the hospital, and continued after I got home. I went to bed and to sleep. Godwin may know who brought it. He was running the shop and sent the people up. A lot of people know I love Eddie's cashew chicken, so it could have been anyone.”

Malloy smiled. “Except for the ones who brought you something else.” He made a note, then went back a few pages. “Jill says she remembers you told her Patricia Fairland brought a hot dish, and that Godwin and Shelly also mentioned Martha Winters, Kate MacDonald, Alice Skoglund, and Phil Galvin as people who brought food. Do you know these people?”

Betsy nodded. “Good customers. Friends, some of them.”

Malloy said, his eyes amused, “What, you're so broke you're accepting charitable donations?”

Betsy rolled her eyes. “Come on, Mike. People want to do something for someone who's been in the hospital, and when they don't know what else to do, they bring food, God bless them. It was a revelation, seeing my kitchen. I didn't realize I had so many friends.”

“And one enemy,” Malloy reminded her. “Any idea who that might be?”

Betsy shook her head. “I told you, no.”

“You sure? Nobody mad at you for any reason right now?”

She started to shake her head again, then said, “Well, my ex-husband was. But he wouldn't do anything, he's trying to get me to come back to him.”

“Why?”

She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Why does Mr. Norman want you back?”

“I don't know, maybe he needs someone to do his housework. But more likely it's because he found out I'm an heiress.”

“You're sure he knows that?”

“I can't think why else he'd come all the way here from California to try to make up with me.”

“Why did you divorce him?”

“He started it, filing for divorce after he fell in love with one of his students. But another student he'd dumped for her blew the whistle. And that started a chain reaction of whistle blowing that went back years. His true love dumped him, the college dumped him, and I dumped him.”

“So things really came unraveled for him,” said Jill.

Betsy nodded. “He lost his tenure, his job, his house, and me. Now he says he's learned his lesson and is very sorry and wants me to forgive him and take him back.”

“And you are willing to do that?” asked Malloy.

“Remarry Hal the Pig? Not in a million years!”

“You told him that?”

Betsy, remembering the white, furious face, nodded. “He came to see me on Wednesday, trying to apologize for his behavior, and got very angry when I told him to get out.”

“So he was in your apartment, then. And you exchanged words. Did he bring you a food gift?”

“He didn't say. Godwin may know.”

“Did he threaten you?”

“No. He was really angry when I told him I'd call the cops if he didn't leave, angrier than I've ever seen him.” She grimaced. “But his goal is to win me back, so why try to kill me?” She nodded at the enormous bouquet of mixed flowers on the shelf in front of the window. “See? Latest in a string.”

But Malloy persisted, “Would he profit in some other way from your death? I mean, is there a life insurance policy he might still hold with your name on it?”

Betsy shook her head. “No. I changed the beneficiary—” She stopped.

“What?”

“I just remembered; I made Margot the new beneficiary. I'll have to change it again.”

Malloy went through her current circumstances with her in some detail. “Shelly Donohue pointed out Joe Mickels hasn't gone after me like he did my sister,” said Betsy at one point. “He doesn't like me, but he seems content now to wait out the lease.” She frowned, remembering the last two times she'd seen him. “I think there's something on his mind, though.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No, but it's not me or the building the shop is in. It's almost like I don't matter much anymore. Otherwise, why isn't he trying to evict me?”

Malloy smiled. “You haven't heard of the law passed by our city council?”

“What law?”

“ ‘No building in the City of Excelsior shall exceed forty feet in height.' So he can't put up the six-story Mickels Building. I hear he's looking around for a site outside Excelsior now.”

“Oh-ho! That explains it. I guess I've been too busy to notice that new law, though it's funny none of the town gossips dropped by to tell me about it. But surely they didn't pass that law just to keep Mickels from building in Excelsior?”

“No, it's this vision thing they've got hold of. There are a lot of people who live here because it's their ideal of a small town,” said Malloy.

“Mayberry of the North,” nodded Betsy.

“Right. They like the small-town feel, and they want to preserve it. So they elect representatives who feel the same way, and this is one way they've chosen to preserve the ambience they like.”

Betsy remembered how comforted she'd felt coming down Water Street on her way home from the hospital, as if she'd stepped into a Norman Rockwell painting. “Yes, but—” Betsy began, and stopped.

“Yeah, I agree,” said Malloy. “It means taxes stay high. Still, it takes Mickels off the list. What about Irene Potter?”

“What about her?”

“You know she was angry with Margot because she thought your sister was deliberately keeping her from her dream of owning an embroidery store or whatever you call it.”

“Needlework,” said Jill.

“And you wonder if she's transferred that anger to me.” Betsy smiled, remembering the pride and delight with which Irene had accepted the gift poinsettia. “No, she's not mad at me. Though she may see me as incompetent and is just biding her time until the shop goes under, at which glorious moment she'll take over.”

“Are you incompetent?”

Betsy chuckled. “In a lot of ways, yes. But I've got good help. And I'm learning fast. Irene hasn't realized that yet.”

Malloy wrote something down, then went back two pages in his notebook. “A cut brake line and now arsenic poisoning. That's two attempts on your life, Ms. Devonshire.”

Again, Betsy felt that chill, but all she could do was shrug helplessly. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I'm thinking you sent some people to jail charged with murder,” said Mike. “Very few people are pleased by that.”

“Well, yes, but both of them are still in jail.”

“They've got friends and relatives.”

“Oh. I hadn't thought about that. Do you know who these friends and relatives are?”

“Not yet. But I'll find out.”

Jill said, “I still think it might be Joe. He was fit to be tied when it turned out Margot's death didn't give him back his building. Even if he can't build something bigger, he can at least raise the rent.”

Betsy chuckled, but not wholeheartedly. It was no joke, having someone murderously angry with you.

Mike said, “But we can still eliminate people. It's someone who knows Betsy pretty well—she's still new in town, remember.”

Betsy nodded. “It's also a person who knows how to get hold of arsenic—and there can't be many sources around, can there?”

Jill said, “I shouldn't think so. Do you know of any, Mike?”

“No. It's not a street drug. I know it's used in some manufacturing processes, like in preserving wood.”

Betsy said, “In old-fashioned mysteries, you soaked it out of fly paper or went to a chemist and signed a poison book—but that was England in the thirties. I have no idea where you'd get it in modern America. Dr. McQueen said it also has medical uses.”

Mike asked, “How well do you know Dr. McQueen?”

Betsy replied, “Not very well, why?”

“So she has no reason to be mad at you?”

“No reason at all.”

Malloy closed his notebook and shook it lightly. “Still, here's a start,” he said. “We'll find this crazy person, and meanwhile, we're not going to let anything happen to you. I'll arrange for an officer to stand guard around the clock.”

“Wait, Mike, that'll pull an officer off every watch,” said Jill. “And we're shorthanded as it is. Besides, he can't follow her everywhere—like I can. So how about you assign me? I can move in with her, and we can put out the word that she has an armed, live-in guard with a real snarky attitude.”

Betsy waited for Mike to say something against that—he almost never agreed with Jill's ideas—but he didn't.

But Betsy didn't want a roommate and tried to say so politely after Joe left.

Jill replied, “All right, then we'll have to let Mike take you into custody. Do you want to spend Christmas in jail?”

“Jail?
He can't arrest me, I didn't do anything!”

“What do you think protective custody is? His job is to enforce the law and to protect the public. You're a member of the public, and he has the power to do whatever it takes to protect you.”

Betsy glared at Jill, who looked back with that serenely adamantine Gibson-girl face. So Betsy unclenched her own face and sighed. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.

T
he next morning Betsy, who was feeling pretty good now her reaction to the Dimercaprol had settled down, said to Jill, “Okay, I'm ready to see what you brought from my place. How did you get in, by the way?”

Jill replied, “I called Godwin, and he came over to the shop and gave me the key to your apartment.” She put a lidded basket on Betsy's legs. “In light of what's been happening to you lately, I think that key is a bad idea, so I brought it along.” She held it up by its needlepointed tag, then dropped it into Betsy's purse on the bedside table.

“Then how's Sophie going to be taken care of?”

“She's in the shop. I brought her down, and her dish and some of her food in a plastic bag. You'll probably be sent home this afternoon, so not to worry.”

“Was Godwin miffed at being asked to come in early? I don't like asking him to do more than he already does, which is a lot.”

“It wasn't Godwin who was miffed, it was that lawyer he lives with. He treats Godwin like a boy toy, you know.”

“Yes, I got a glimpse of that when Goddy brought John to the Christmas party. I wonder what will happen if Godwin starts acting more grown up?”

“Godwin will
maybe
turn twenty-three just before he dies eighty years from now.”

Betsy laughed and opened the lidded basket, which sat heavily on her legs. On top was the reason: the thick old book on Christian symbology Father John Rettger had loaned her.

“What'd you bring this for?” asked Betsy.

“It was on your bedside table. I thought you were reading it.”

“Well, I was, but I'm not as interested since I can't find my notes on the tapestry. You know, it's the darnedest thing ...” Betsy had started to put it aside, but now paused, frowning.

“What?” asked Jill.

“Maybe I've been a dope. Did I tell you the notes I put into the computer and printed out have gone missing?”

“When did this happen?”

“Last week. Hand me my purse, will you?”

Jill did, and Betsy dug around until she found her checkbook. She opened it and pulled out the tablet of checks. “Gotcha!”

Jill said, “Now what?”

“Here are my original notes, the ones I made while looking at the tapestry. I wrote them on the back of this, then copied them into the computer. Then I added more stuff from memory and printed it out. That's what disappeared, the printout. I could kick myself for not saving it, but at least I put this back where it belonged. We can maybe start over. I suppose you've got a pen and notebook on you?”

Jill did. It was a small one, with the pages sewn in, and to be used for official business only. “But taking care of you is my official business.”