The Drowning Spool (A Needlecraft Mystery) (9 page)

T
HURSDAY
was Valentine’s Day. For breakfast, Connor fixed heart-shaped pancakes, using a spatula to shape them. The batter didn’t always cooperate, so he kept the most lopsided ones for himself. Dressing for his day of working in the shop, he had put on his most elaborate Aran sweater, the kind worn for centuries by Irish fishermen. It had large knots down the outside of the sleeves and Celtic braids in a triple row down the front. The sweater was old, and countless washings had turned it from its natural pale brown to pale ivory. With it he wore new jeans and comfortable loafers. With his close-cropped graying brown hair and sea-blue eyes, he looked both handsome and approachable. Betsy felt her heart warm to him when he sat down across from her and, smiling, said, “Syrup, machree?”

“You are so good to me, sweetheart,” she said.

After breakfast they went downstairs together, down the narrow back hall that led to the rear door into Crewel World. Even though Betsy had made this trip countless times over the years, it felt unusual this morning. Betsy’s cat, Sophie, knew why. She came behind them, mewing anxiously. Incorrigibly fat, with her long white fur splattered generously with tan and gray on top of her head, along her back, and up her plumed tail, she was gracious and graceful, as much a part of the shop’s gentle atmosphere as the spinner racks of floss or the baskets of yarn. She was anxious because, like all cats, she was comfortable with routine. The routine was that Betsy came down with Sophie, opened the back door to allow her to scoot in first, let her explore briefly to see if there was anyone already present who might offer her a tidbit, and then Sophie would jump into a wooden chair with a blue cushion to await said anyone.

Today, however, Sophie was at the back of a procession, and Connor’s presence in the parade confused her. Betsy tried to help by unlocking the door and pausing long enough for the cat to weave her way through the maze of legs and trot through the back room and into the shop. Not unexpectedly, there was nobody waiting with a fragment of sandwich or cookie to slip to a greedy cat, so she jumped onto her cushion, turned around twice, and lay down. Things were back to normal.

Connor stayed in the back room to start the coffeemaker brewing and the electric tea kettle heating—paying customers were offered a free beverage. Betsy turned on the lights, then tuned the Bose radio to a soft jazz station and put the start-up cash in the drawer. She ran a carpet sweeper around the front and back of the shop, and did a little dusting.

Their first customer was a handsome middle-aged woman, tall and slender, with keen blue eyes, a long nose, and a wide mouth. She wore a black wool coat trimmed at collar and cuffs with Persian lamb and a hat also of Persian lamb. The hat wasn’t the usual Minnesota winter helmet, but sat at an angle on her bright chestnut hair. It had a high crown and a little brim that curved up on one side and down on the other. Betsy hadn’t seen a hat like that in person for a long time—and had never before seen the woman wearing it.

“Good morning,” said Betsy. “How may I help you?”

“A friend loaned me this magazine,” said the woman, with just a trace of a southern accent, holding out a back copy of
Just Cross Stitch
. “I told her I was looking for a cross-stitch pattern of daffodils that wasn’t too difficult, and she found this in her stack—she keeps all her back copies of stitching magazines.” A slip of paper had been tucked in to mark the page.

Betsy took the magazine and opened it at the bookmark to find a stylized pattern of three yellow daffodils with green stems and leaves on a blue ground. It was designed by Angela Pullen Atherton, to be stitched on white Jobelan or Aida with ten colors of DMC floss, the finished result to be about ten inches square.

Connor came up to the checkout desk for a look. “Say, that’s really pretty,” he said.

The woman turned to regard him, a little surprised. “Don’t mind me,” Connor said, smiling, “I just work here.”

The three of them, in consultation, decided on Aida, to be stitched using gold-plated size twenty-four tapestry needles. They agreed that Connor should pull the skeins of Anchor floss from the set of very small drawers that held them in numerical order.

As Betsy was processing the woman’s credit card payment, Connor said, from his place at the drawers, “May I say that I love your hat? I had an aunt who wore hats; my sister has several pages of a photo album full of pictures of her in her hats.”

“Why, thank you. It’s harder to wear a hat outdoors in a Minnesota winter. I’m afraid I’ll reach up one winter day to make sure I still have both earrings and one of my ears will crack right off in my hand.”

Connor laughed—he had a great laugh. He said, “And earmuffs would spoil the look, right?”

Her wide mouth twitched with amusement. “Very true.”

Betsy said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before. Are you a visitor to Excelsior?”

“No, I’m a new resident. My husband and I moved here from Nashville, though we both grew up in Pittsburgh. A woman I met at church, Patricia Fairland, is a stitcher, and she told me about your shop. I used to stitch all the time, and now that our third child is in college, I have time to get back to it.”

“Oh, yes, Patricia mentioned you this past Monday. You’re Cherie—oh, I can’t remember your last name—”

“Yonder, as in from far away.”

“Yonder. All right. I hope we see you often. And if you have time, there’s a group of stitchers who meet here Monday afternoons starting around one thirty. Patricia’s a member.”

“All right, thank you. I’ll try to come. I’m sure I can use some support as I try to bring back some old skills.”

Later, as the time approached for Betsy to leave for her punch needle class, Connor appeared more obviously anxious.

“Do you think I should call a part-timer to come in and help?” asked Betsy.

“No, of course not. We’re not that busy, I’m sure I can handle things.” But he kept looking out the big front window as if afraid a difficult customer might come in.

Then, suddenly, he relaxed. A man had entered, wearing a familiar brown uniform, carrying a white cardboard cube around nine inches square. Connor signed for the UPS package and brought it to the library table. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, smiling as he handed her the cube.

“What’s in it?” asked Betsy. The brown lettering on the side of the box said Norman Love Confections. It looked big enough to hold an awful lot of chocolate, but when Betsy took it, it wasn’t heavy.

“Open it,” suggested Connor.

Inside the top was a flat, silver foil surface—the box was lined with insulation. Under the insulation, on the bottom, was a plastic bag of something frozen solid. Beside it was a light green box with a mitered top, about eight inches long and maybe three inches wide, too small to be a container of ice cream. It was tied shut with a white ribbon printed with hearts.

She looked at Connor, who was smiling proudly. “Go on,” he said, gesturing at it.

She took the box out—cold in her hand—and opened it. On top was a strip of cardboard showing beautiful heart shapes in softly blended colors: purple, pink, gold, mottled, and swirled. Under the tissue were ten candy hearts, each just over an inch across and not quite half an inch thick. A rich smell of cocoa wafted to her nostrils.

“Try one,” said Connor, still smiling.

Betsy picked the dark brown heart with a swoop of white on it. She bit into it and her senses were assaulted with an incredibly smooth-textured rush of chocolate, not milk, not dark, so intense she had to sit down.

“Shut the front door!” she said, and Connor, recognizing the expression of surprise and pleasure from a cookie commercial, began to laugh.

He sat down beside her to watch her finish the heart in two slow bites. With the last bite in her mouth, she slowly leaned sideways until her shoulder was against his, and he put his arm around her. She was unable to say anything for a minute after the last swallow, but just sat there, leaning against him and enjoying the lingering taste of the chocolate, replaying those delectable moments in her mind.

“That is the best chocolate I have ever eaten,” she said at last. “And this day with you is the best Valentine’s Day I have ever spent. Ever. Thank you.”

“You are welcome, machree,” he replied solemnly.

“Where did you find this place?” she asked.

“Peg wrote to me about it.” Peg was Connor’s daughter, who was currently on an archeological dig outside of Mexico City sponsored by the University of Florida. “Her current boyfriend grew up in Fort Myers, where this confections place is located. She raved about the chocolates he sent her, so I decided to let you try some, too.”

Connor was as severely chocoholic as Betsy. He was already casting an envious eye at the little green box in front of her, so she pushed it toward him. “Try one,” she invited him.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he said, and chose one covered in subtly blended colors of red, orange, and yellow, with silvery gray on the sides. The card said it was called Sunset Kiss.

He bit into it, inhaled lightly to capture all the flavor, and closed his eyes. “Very, very nice,” he said, nodding over and over as he savored it. “This one’s mango.”

Betsy loved mango, alone or in any kind of mixture. Knowing this, he leaned toward her. “Have a taste,” he said, and kissed her.

“Yum,” she murmured, and kissed him back, warmly.

Then she determinedly closed the box over the remaining chocolates. “These are too good to eat all in one sitting,” she said. “Let’s put the rest upstairs in the refrigerator. Each of us can get one piece a day until they’re gone.” She was half hoping he’d object, but he only sighed and went upstairs.

Oddly enough, it was in that moment that she realized how much she loved him.

• • •

B
ETSY
hustled over to Sol’s for a couple of sandwiches—beef with horseradish spread—and potato chips. She made the same deal with Connor she usually made with Godwin: He could eat half her potato chips in exchange for his kosher dill pickle. Then she reapplied lipstick and drove to Hopkins for her punch needle class.

Most of her students had finished or nearly finished the chick-and-eggs pattern. Thistle had phoned Betsy on Monday, saying they wanted some more patterns, so now, up in the library, she opened her attaché case and brought out a selection.

While they were choosing, she looked at the chick patterns they’d been working on. Joy had not only made the chick a higher nap than the eggs, she had chosen to clip the loops—and she’d clipped them just a little shorter at the edges than at the center, giving a rounded effect that was, in Betsy’s word, “Brilliant!”

Joy blushed at the compliment. “If I’d had more colors, I would have made the edges just a little darker than the centers, too,” she said.

“I’ll get you all the colors you want when you punch the next one,” offered another student. “I’m making a floss run to Michael’s next week. “But I want cash in advance, no checks.”

Vivian had nearly finished her pattern. She said, “I couldn’t think of a design for the last egg, so I just punched it in yellow green. But I remember as a child an aunt and uncle who had a farm, and their chickens laid speckled eggs. How would I make a speckled egg? Do I pull out what I’ve stitched and then do the speckles and then punch the color around them?”

“No,” said Betsy, “it’s easier than that. You can leave the egg as is, if you’re satisfied with the color, but now you look at the needle on your punch.” Vivian held up her punch.

“Now, slide off one segment, to make what you’re going to punch stand up higher than what’s already there.”

“Yes, yes,” said Joy. “You told us about that at the first class; it’s how I worked my pattern.”

“Okay,” said Betsy to Vivian, “take off one segment, and thread your needle with a short length that is the color of the speckles.”

“Maroon, I think,” said Vivian. She pulled off a segment and put it carefully into the glass tube the needle was kept in, then cut about fourteen inches of the floss, divided it in half, and put three threads into her needle.

“Now,” said Betsy, “punch here and there randomly over the green egg. The speckle color will stand up just a little higher than the ground color so it doesn’t get lost. Here’s a tip: Do fewer than you think you should. You can always add more.”