Thai Die

Table of Contents

 

 

CREWEL WORLD
FRAMED IN LACE
A STITCH IN TIME
UNRAVELED SLEEVE
A MURDEROUS YARN
HANGING BY A THREAD
CUTWORK
CREWEL YULE
EMBROIDERED TRUTHS
SINS AND NEEDLES
KNITTING BONES
THAI DIE

 

 

PATTERNS OF MURDER

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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2008 by Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld.

 

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

eISBN : 978-1-440-64287-6

1. Devonshire, Betsy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—Minnesota—
Fiction. 3. Needleworkers—Fiction. 4. Antique dealers—Fiction. 5. Art thefts—Fiction.
6. Thailand—Fiction. I. Title.

 

PS3566.U47T43 2008
813’.54—dc22 2008031631

 

 

Acknowledgments

Many people helped with the writing of this novel. My writers group, Crème de la Crime, as usual kept me on task. Ellen Kuhfeld, curator, editor, and idea person, was a marvelous adviser. Ron Zommick, my Thailand contact, was very helpful. Denise Williams worked long and hard to make her Phoenix design so beautifully reflect the original one. Minnesota locales the March Hare and the Amboy Diner are real places; Lisa and Heidi are real people—even the giant angora rabbit is real.

So is Bangkok, Thailand, with its gentle people, fabled golden temples, and magnificent woven silks.

One

IT was early February in Minnesota, and so far it had been a very mild winter—which meant that anything heavier than an automobile was forbidden to drive on the lakes’ icy surfaces. Even snowmobiles had a distressing tendency to fall through on occasion. There hadn’t been many snowfalls after the first heavy one in early December, so cross-country skiing was curtailed. Gardeners worried that without deep snow cover, any severe cold snap might damage their spring bulbs. There wasn’t even the simple pleasure of looking out at the snow-covered beauty of a more typical winter.

Dreary Minnesota was a big contrast with Bangkok, where Doris Valentine had spent the last four weeks. She had sent almost daily e-mails to her friends, describing cloudless days of at least eighty degrees, sun-ripened pineapples for sale on every street corner, and live elephants with their hides painted in ornate patterns standing under banyan trees in the park.

“Here she comes!” called Bershada from near the front door of Crewel World. “She’s got a
suitcase
with her,” she added, hurrying back to her seat at the library table.

“Wonderful!” said Betsy, who owned the needlework shop. “I bet it’s just bulging with souvenirs!”

“Ah, a really big show and tell!” said Shelly.

“Souvenirs from
Thailand
,” sighed Alice, who had never been able to travel much. Her favorite song all her life began, “Far away places with strange sounding names . . .”

“Move over, I can’t see!” said Emily, leaning sideways to peer around the photographer who stood between her and the doorway. Emily was in her eighth month of pregnancy and tended to stay where she sat until she absolutely had to get up.

It was the first Wednesday in February, and the Monday Bunch was in special session, though they were not there to stitch. Fellow member Doris was coming home, and they all wanted to hear about her fabulous trip.

“What a great tan she got!” said the photographer, a very young man from the
Excelsior Times
, the paper of record for a town so small that a citizen’s return from an exotic vacation was news. His camera flashed twice as Doris opened the door, and she drew back in surprise. But then she smiled and came in, with a big suitcase in one hand and a shopping bag in the other. It was marked RAINBOW FOODS, and probably held fresh milk and bread, necessary immediate purchases on arriving home from an extended trip.

There were six people waiting for her: the owner of the shop, Betsy; young, pregnant Emily; schoolteacher Shelly; tall and elderly Alice; retired librarian Bershadaa; and the ambitious young man who was both photographer and reporter.

Phil Galvin wasn’t there. A retired railroad engineer and a member of the Monday Bunch, he thought no one knew he was also Doris’s boyfriend. But the gossip around the table before Doris arrived was about how he had met her at the airport yesterday afternoon and had taken her out to dinner last night.

Doris, a medium-sized woman of fifty-three, came in smiling. She indeed had a light tan and, instead of her usual complex blond wig and heavy makeup, she wore her own hair cut stylishly short, permed into gentle curls, and dyed a cheerful carrot color. She looked about twenty pounds slimmer than she had before her trip. Her face was almost naked, just touched up a little around the eyes, cheeks, and lips. She looked wonderful; the compliments from her friends at the table were heartfelt, which brought her to another halt, blushing with pleasure. The photographer’s flash went off, startling her again. Then she frowned—the photographer was not a member of the Bunch.

“It’s all right, Doris,” said Betsy. “Someone”—she looked around the table, but nobody confessed or even looked guilty—“someone told the
Excelsior Times
that you were coming home from a month in Thailand, and now it’s going to be in the paper. I really hope you don’t mind.”

“Well . . .” hedged Doris in her husky voice.

“You can object to it later,” said Bershada. “Girl, get your beautiful self on over here and open that suitcase! We’re dying to see what you brought home!”

Doris smiled. “Yes, of course,” she said, as she put the shopping bag on the floor and the suitcase on its side on the table in front of the one empty chair. She began to unzip it.

“First,” said the reporter, putting his camera down and pulling a notebook from his jeans pocket, “tell us what you liked the most.”

Confronted by a need to speak for the record, Doris hesitated, pulling a zipper around the side of her black canvas suitcase, which still had the airline tag on its handle. “Oh, I guess I liked everything. The people are wonderful, they’re beautiful, and
so
friendly and helpful.” The Monday Bunch looked interested, so she continued in a more confident voice. “But they’re so thin and little I felt like a giant. And I just couldn’t help loving Bangkok, it’s so . . . Oh, I can’t sum it up. It’s the most contradictory city! It’s huge, with really modern skyscrapers and a brand-new subway system and excellent hospitals. But the air is polluted, and there are beggars on the street with diseases and disabilities we can fix here. It has dozens of Buddhist temples all covered with gold, and monks in saffron robes, just like in National Geographic.” She smiled. “But I didn’t see a single Siamese cat.”

“No Siamese cats . . . ?” queried Emily, confused.

“Well, the country used to be named Siam—and that’s where the breed came from.” She sat down and finished unzipping the suitcase. “But what I fell most in love with was . . . silk.” And she opened the lid, causing gasps all around at the rich colors presented to the group’s eyes.

Doris began by lifting out two lengths of silk. These were not the filmy kind of silks, but substantial, opaque, saturated with color: deep, dark blue and rich red, with generous trimmings of bright gold. Geometrical patterns were woven into sections of the fabrics: a slab of unevenly spaced narrow vertical columns terminating in neat arrangements of diamonds and triangles; thin horizontal lines marked at small intervals with tiny alternating circles and squares; geometrical flowers surrounded by big diamonds filled with starlike shapes and surrounded by figures that could be caterpillars from Oz. The lines were woven on the indigo in gold and red; and on the red, in gold and purple. The pieces were big, about six feet long and two feet wide, and not cut off a bolt but woven as individual pieces. Each long end was marked with thin fringe, braided on the indigo and tied into patterns on the red.

The reporter put his notebook aside and flashed his camera again and again. Betsy waved impatiently at him.

“Handwoven,” said Doris proudly. “You can tell by the uneven edges, where she turned the shuttle to go back.”