The Drowning Spool (A Needlecraft Mystery) (25 page)

“It doesn’t matter. If I had carried Teddi in my trunk, say, and thought the police were coming by to vacuum up stray fibers to compare them to fibers from the sheet, I’d be off like a shot to clean my trunk.”

“So what does that mean?”

“A stakeout, so we can catch the guilty party at it.”

Connor rubbed his face some more. “You may have a good idea there, machree
.
But why not pass it along to Malloy?”

“Because none of these people are within his jurisdiction.”

“Okay, you’re right. And anyway, how would he get the word out? If these men were living in Excelsior, he could tell a few people and inside three hours it would be all over town. But Preston lives in Minnetonka, Noah lives in Navarre, and Tommy lives way the hell and gone out in the country. So,” he added, having just thought of it, “who is going to do these stakeouts?”

“You and I can do one.”

“Hey!” protested Connor, alarmed.

“We’re not going to arrest anyone, just let Malloy know what we saw. He can contact the proper authorities.”

“Why don’t
you
contact the proper authorities?”

“Because I don’t know any of them, they don’t know me, and they’ll just tell me to stay home and mind my knitting store.”

“Which isn’t bad advice, machree,” said Connor.

Betsy set her mouth in a firm line. “I’m going to do it, and I’d really like your help. You and I can take one of them, and Jill can take another—and, well, maybe we don’t really need to do Pres, because he’s pretty solidly out of it.” Her expression softened. “We’ll do it as soon as I can think of a way to tell the suspects—even Pres, because Madison isn’t all that far away, he could have driven up here and back again—that the police are coming with a search warrant and a handheld vacuum cleaner.”

A
FTER
lunch, Betsy went into her carpetbag, dug past the roving in it, and took out a scarf she was knitting from yarn made of recycled silk saris. She sold the yarn in her shop, but had no sample of it on display. Its bright colors and incredibly smooth texture made it a treat for both eyes and fingers. She was doing her usual knit two, purl two stitch with an odd one at either end to keep it from curling over. It was forty-two stitches wide, enough so she wasn’t turning too often.

As usual, she soon found herself lost in contemplation, first of the knitting, then of the case. She began ruminating about the information she had gathered from the start, from the first time she’d gone into the Watered Silk complex. She remembered meeting Wilma Carter, and hearing her call out, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, start over!” in the pool room of Watered Silk.

She remembered her shock at learning of a mysterious body afloat in that pool. She remembered Bershada’s indignation that her nephew, Ethan Smart, was under suspicion. She remembered her sorrow when it was revealed that Teddi Wahlberger was ten weeks pregnant when she was drowned.

She remembered the torn and dirty sheet with the magnificent Hardanger embroidery across its top. She remembered Phil and Doris’s concern when they discovered that Phil’s grandnephew, Tommy Shore, was the father of the unborn child. She remembered Tommy’s persistent, incompetent lying.

She remembered Frey’s and Lia’s anguish over Teddi’s death, and their persistent and finally successful efforts to make Betsy take Thai home with her. She remembered the surprise discovery of a pair of pillowcases whose Hardanger trim matched that on the dirty, discarded sheet. She remembered the shock of Noah’s good looks and the second shock of hearing that he’d lied to Mike Malloy about visiting the Watered Silk pool.

She remembered the fun but fruitless night out clubbing with Connor. She remembered Goddy’s clever trick of tracing Teddi’s sketch of exotic Preston Munro and taming it into a face he could recognize. She remembered Sony Munro’s rage when Betsy told her that Pres was dating Teddi.

She remembered the evening at Mike Malloy’s home, where he told her that Pres was out of the running as a suspect, but Tommy, with his pharmacy access, and Noah, with his knowledge of the building complex and his insulin dependency, were not.

She remembered . . . Hold on, there was an idea in there somewhere. Her hands slowed, stopped, dropped into her lap.

Connor, reading his spy novel, noticed her stillness. “Have you got an idea, machree?”

“I believe I have, my dear, I believe I have.”

She went into her office and booted up, found the web site for Bar Abilene, and called them on her phone. She raised her voice over the noisy background when the call was picked up, and asked for the manager.

After a pause, she heard a man’s voice. “Bar Abilene, Morty speaking, who’s this?” And the other phone was hung up. It had gotten a lot quieter; he must have an office in back.

“Hello, I’m Betsy Devonshire and I would like to talk to the person who writes the Winchell column.”

“We don’t take complaints about its content,” the man said at once.

“I don’t have a complaint. I’d like to plant an item in it.”

“‘Plant an item’?”

“I’m trying to spook a serious lawbreaker into doing something to give himself away.”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Betsy Devonshire, I live in Excelsior, and I do criminal investigations. But I’m not a cop.”

“Are you asking me to break the law?”

“No, of course not. I just want you to put an item in your clever gossip column that may cause my suspect to incriminate himself. It won’t be an accusation or anything like that, just a piece of information that may cause him to jump to a certain conclusion.”

“Is this person one of our regulars?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask who he is?”

“I can’t tell you that. Because if he doesn’t jump—or if he’s innocent—I don’t want him treated any differently.”

It wasn’t hard to convince Morty to plant the item, but it took awhile to convince him that the message would mean something to her suspect.

After they hung up, Betsy sent an e-mail to Lia and Frey. “Please go to the Winchell column at the web site of Bar Abilene tomorrow after eight in the evening and read the item, ‘Overheard: Mrs. Sherlock and her Irish BFF are talking about bed sheets, trunks, and fibers. Could they be planning a march up the aisle?’ Please call Tommy and Noah, ask if they’ve seen it, and do they think it’s about Betsy Devonshire? (My boyfriend is named Connor Sullivan, btw.) Thanks!” She sent another e-mail to Ramona, asking her to contact Pres about a strange message she’d seen on the Bar Abilene site.

And having set the trap, Betsy got on the phone with Jill.

“I don’t know, Betsy, this could be dangerous.”

“How? I don’t plan on confronting anyone, I just think that if we witness one of them scrambling to clean out his trunk or the passenger cab of his vehicle, we can let Mike know about it. You know how good forensics people are nowadays, there’s no way an amateur could clean up every single trace of evidence, and with one of us as an eyewitness, Mike will have probable cause for a search warrant. Right?”

“You’re going to do this whether or not I come on board, I assume.”

“You assume right. I’ll watch Tommy, and Connor will watch Noah.”

“It would be better if there are two witnesses to the act.”

“Okay, Connor and me, and you and—who?”

“Lars, of course. Though I’d like it better if it were me and Connor, and you and Lars. I want Lars to be with you watching Noah; Connor and I will take Tommy.”

“Welcome aboard.”

• • •

W
HEN
Betsy told Godwin of their plans the next morning, he was indignant that he hadn’t been offered a piece of the action. “A
stakeout
? For
real
? Just like
Dragnet
?”

“Don’t you mean
CSI
?”

“
Dragnet
’s more fun. Dum-da-dum-dum!” replied the fan of old-time radio. “Let me and Rafael come along, please?
Please
?”

“Settle down, Goddy, for heaven’s sake! From all I’ve read, stakeouts are boring! And we aren’t going to be part of any action, we’re just going to be sitting there watching. For hours and hours, probably. Even if something happens, we’re not going to do anything, we’re just going to report it to the police.”

“Please? Please-please-please?”

“Oh, all right, I’ll tell you what: You and Rafael—if you can persuade him to come with you—can stake out Pres Munro.”

“Awww, I thought he was cleared!”

“I have thought Tommy was cleared. I have thought Noah was cleared. Right now I think Pres is cleared. But I can’t prove any one of them is guilty. For all I know it’s Pres. Actually, it’s probably a good idea to cover all our bases.”

“All right, count me in. When do we start this stakeout?”

“Tonight. We should all be in place by eight o’clock. We’ll take turns this afternoon scouting out the sites. Look for a place to park that isn’t obviously overlooking their driveway. Then we’ll close the shop early enough to give each of us time to get there. Make sure your cell phone is charged and your gas tank is filled.”

“I will make it so,” Godwin said, echoing Captain Picard from Star Trek. He went in back to call Rafael and soon Betsy heard him arguing and pleading with his partner. But he came back a little later all smiles. “Rafael thinks it’s a wonderful idea, he’s
so
excited! We’re going to pack a picnic!”

• • •

B
ETSY
had always thought of her Buick as a big car, but with Lars in the passenger seat, it seemed to have shrunk to the size of a sports car. While not in the least obese, he was a very big man, and he came dressed for the outdoors in snow pants and a heavy jacket. He overflowed the passenger side of the front seat; she could feel his jacket brushing her arm. She wondered if he had a gun under it. Of course he did, he was a cop, they were always carrying. She was sure it was a big gun. Probably an AR-15—a man his size could carry one as a sidearm. Betsy had never felt so safe in her life.

Looking down at the huge boots he wore, she wondered what size they could possibly be. Seventeen? Twenty? Extra-extra wide? He must have to special order them. In the summer he could rent them out as cabins to tourists.

He also had the biggest thermos Betsy had ever seen. “Coffee,” he’d said when she’d noticed it in his gloved hands.

Now his gloves were off, draped across one massive knee. His wedding band winked in the faint light cast by a light high up on a pole in the barnyard of Tommy’s landlord’s hobby farm.

They were parked alongside the road, hidden from the house by a short row of overgrown lilac bushes. Tommy’s old car sagged in the driveway that crossed between the barnyard and the snow-covered front lawn. There was a garage, not attached to the house. Betsy was sure the landlord’s car was tucked safely away in there.

An hour later she was getting cold. She wanted to start the car and run the heater, but there were lights on in the house, and out here in the country sounds carried. The sound of a car starting and then not moving away might draw a look out the window—and if Betsy could see the upstairs window, then someone looking out could see her car. She sighed and wiggled her bottom, hoping to stir up her blood.

“Coffee?” suggested Lars.

But Betsy thought about the lack of bathroom facilities and said, “Not right now, thank you.”

A silence fell.

Betsy asked, “Have you done many stakeouts?”

“A few.”

“How do you pass the time?”

“Talk about fishing. Or cars. Or sports.” He sighed and looked out the window. “What do you and Connor talk about?”

“Needlework. English music-hall songs. Being a tourist in Europe. We’re planning a trip to East Glacier Park this summer.”

“Not much crossover there, huh?”

Betsy smiled in the near-darkness. “Not much. I’m kind of sorry now I agreed with Jill to swap you for Connor—and I bet she’s feeling the same.”

• • •

“A
RE
those pecans in the chicken salad?” asked Rafael.

“Yes. And cranberries instead of golden raisins. Isn’t this exciting?”

“Not really,
mi gorrion
. But it is fun, more fun than I thought it was going to be. Do you think we will actually see something happening?”

“Probably not. I’m getting cold. Start the car for a little while. Is it time to check in yet?”

Rafael checked his watch. “Not yet.”

• • •

C
ONNOR
and Jill were discussing needlework. “I’m not a big fan of counted,” Connor was saying. “I mean, the results are spectacular, but . . . well, all those damn
x
’s.”

Jill nodded. “Of course you can use other stitches. Samplers are a great way to explore the possibilities.”

“I saw a great quote on a sampler: ‘You love someone because they sing a song only you can hear.’”

“Why don’t you ask Betsy to marry you?”

“I have. I ask her about once a month. So far she says no.” Uncomfortable with her question, he changed the subject. “What do you think Lars and Betsy are talking about?”

“Fishing,” said Jill. “Children. Problems with owning a Stanley Steamer. What do you think?”

“Owning your own small business,” he said, with a chuckle. “Knitting. Ireland. Cats. Speaking of which, would you like a cat? He’s very lively, we’ve got his health problems straightened out, and he’s been fixed.”

“No, thank you. We have an absolutely enormous dog who would come to give him a big, wet kiss and accidentally swallow him whole.”

• • •

“W
HAT
time is it?” asked Lars.