Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04 (18 page)

“A man just walked in here with a letter for you. Instead of a stamp, it has ‘By Hand' typed in the corner, and he made me sign for it. The return address is ‘Touhy and Howe, Attorneys, in the IDS Center, Minneapolis.'
Betsy, do you know who they are?” He said that as if he knew, but wasn't sure Betsy would.

“Sure, Mr. Touhy is one of Joe Mickels' lawyers.”

“I
knew
he would try something, I just
knew
it! There's probably a
summons
in here! He's taking you to
court
!”

“No, a summons has to go to the actual person, and it's never in an envelope. This probably has something to do with the sale of the building.”

“Oh, then this is about the
water leak
! He thinks he's found a way to make
you
pay for it, I bet! But he can't
do that,
can he? I mean, the building
still
belongs to
him,
right?” Godwin in a panic put up italics like a porcupine erects its bristles.

“Calm down, Goddy! If you want to know what it's about, open the envelope.”

“Can I? Is that legal?”

“Why not? You signed for it, didn't you? So you have legal custody. It's addressed to me, so I can give you permission. For heaven's sake, open it and see what kind of headache it contains.”

The letter was a formal notification of a meeting two weeks hence in the office of Mr. Langston Touhy, Esquire, in the IDS Tower in Minneapolis, at which time and place papers concluding the sale of the building in which Betsy's apartment and shop were contained would be signed.

“Oh,” said Godwin, considerably let down. “Well, why'd he send something this ordinary by courier?”

“Because he agreed to give me two weeks' notice of this signing, and the date is exactly fifteen days from today. I think you're right: He's trying to conclude the sale quickly now, in case there's more water damage that hasn't shown up yet.”

“It's today's date on this thing. Getting an attorney to
work on a Sunday isn't exactly cheap,” Godwin pointed out.

“How much was the estimate for the water damage?” asked Betsy.

“Oh, my God, Betsy, wait till I
tell
you! The water is coming from the roof, it's been spilling down an opening in the side wall for days, running between the floor of your apartment and the ceiling of the shop, and pooling right in the center, where it finally soaked through! I asked for a ballpark figure on what it's going to cost to fix it, and he said
nine thousand
! I told them to put a temporary patch on the roof, which all by itself will cost about five hundred but that's only
temporary
! And that doesn't include the cost to repair the ceiling or replace the damaged goods!”

“And how often are ballpark estimates way under the actual cost?” asked Betsy, and answered herself: “Often. It's going to cost much more than nine thousand before we're through. What Joe will do is offer to deduct nine thousand from the price of the building. That's why the rush, he wants the deal done before we find out we need a whole new roof. I guess the bloom is off the rose.”

“What does that mean?”

“In the face of spending real money, any chance at romance is dead, dead, dead.”

“That evil,
sneaky
old man!” said Godwin, at length and not exactly in those words.

A few minutes later, Betsy hung up with a sigh. Maybe she shouldn't have gone away. What with troubles she wasn't allowed to leave behind in Excelsior and a mystery up here, she wasn't getting much of a rest.

She left the office, checking the door after she pulled it closed to make sure it locked. It was a fine old door, to judge by the solid thickness of the wood, but ill-fitted to the frame. At the hinge end she could fit the toe of her shoe under it.

Betsy stood a moment, frowning at the door, then went off on a search for James.

She found him in the kitchen, checking the blend of lettuces in a very large salad bowl. “Did you find an EpiPen on your desk yesterday?” she asked.

“EpiPen? Oh, that plastic thing for allergic reactions. Yes, I did. I wondered where it came from. Is it yours?”

“No. I found it on the floor of your office and left it on the desk. Are you sure it doesn't belong to an employee or someone who has access to that little office?”

“Yes, I'm sure. Anyone needing help as serious as that pen offers would be sure to warn us all about it.” He shrugged. “Plus I asked.”

“Then I think I know who it belongs to. May I have it back?”

“Of course. Come with me.”

The device had been put in a drawer behind the lobby counter. Betsy took it and asked, “So long as you're back there, can you tell me when Carla Prakesh checked in?”

“All right.” He checked his log and said, “She missed dinner on Friday, she didn't drive up to our door till almost nine. I remember because she asked for help unloading her car.”

“Thanks.” Betsy went into the dining room and sat on the circular couch with the pillar to take another look at the EpiPen. If Sharon hadn't dropped it, might it have saved her life? She held it up and jiggled it gently. The liquid inside was thin as water. The plastic was heavy, and formed a blunt point at the needle end. She gripped the safety cap and tried it. It would not move. She tried harder, but it was stuck fast.

Perhaps it had jammed when Sharon dropped it. She held it closer to her eyes. Was that something—? A thin trail of some clear substance ran around the cap. She prodded it with a fingernail, but it was as hard as plastic.
No wonder it wouldn't turn, the cap was sealed to the body of the pen.

She had seen this same thin, unyielding seal before, on a favorite mug she had dropped, broken, and repaired. Impermeable, unbreakable, permanent. Superglue.

She had a sudden, sharp vision of Sharon, eyes red and tearing, skin flaming and itching, as she frantically twisted the cap, trying to get it off. As her throat began to swell shut, the one thing that could fend off death would not open for her use. Realizing that, she either dropped it as useless, or threw it down in frustration—and it had rolled under the door.

Where the person who had sabotaged it could not retrieve it, as he had retrieved the betraying canvas bag of stitchery and burned it.

Betsy put the EpiPen in her skirt pocket and went to the lounge. Jill had a group of five or six stitchers sitting or standing around her, watching as she stitched something on a piece of scrap canvas, talking quietly as she did so. “You can see how the arrowhead shape of the Amadeus stitch is formed,” she was saying as Betsy approached. It appeared that the group was getting its surprise teacher after all—though it was likely Jill was as surprised as any of them.

Ingrid, sitting near Jill but working on her own project, looked up as Betsy came in, and her face filled with compassion. “More badt news?”

“Yes, I'm afraid so. Jill, may I see you alone for a minute?”

“Sure.” Jill handed the canvas to Linda Savareid, seated beside her, and said, “Now I've got the second one started, you finish it and start another beside it. The rest of you watch, and kibitz to your hearts' content.” She followed Betsy through the dining room, where
James was supervising the lunch setup, and into the lobby, which was empty.

“Look at this,” Betsy said, pulling the EpiPen out of her pocket.

Jill took it, read its printed instructions, noted that it was fully charged, and said, “Where did you find this?”

“Under the desk in the office, when I took that first call from Godwin. I thought it belonged to someone who worked here, so I left it on the desk. But it doesn't. James put it behind the check-in counter, waiting for a guest to ask about it, and no one has. It must be Sharon Kaye's. Look at it, the cap has been glued on.”

Jill twisted the cap, gently then harder. Then she, too, pried at the thin line of glue around the cap. “Very nasty. How did it get into the office?”

“My guess is, it rolled under the gap in the door.”

Jill walked to the office door, tried it, and found it locked, then fit the device to the space under it. Toward the hinge end, there was ample room.

Betsy said, “This is murder, Jill. Someone sabotaged her EpiPen, got her a long way from medical help, and triggered an allergic reaction somehow.”

“Who?” asked Jill.

“I don't know. Someone who had access to her purse or whatever she kept her EpiPen in. And probably not too long before she came up here, in case she was in the habit of checking the thing. I checked on when Carla got here, and it was late Friday night. And I bet if you check, she'll have a solid alibi for the afternoon.”

“Well, that eliminates her.”

“Actually, it doesn't. If you think about it, that puts her on the list. It wasn't a case of getting Sharon Kaye up here and then triggering the attack. The attack was arranged somewhere else, then she was sent up here. I'm sure that when they test that floss, they'll find it exchanged or coated with something. This was set up by
someone who wanted to be at a distance when Sharon Kaye had that allergic attack. So when they heard the news they could murmur sadly, ‘How awful, how tragic,' and maybe produce a tear.” Her mouth tightened. “How wicked.”

Jill said, “So your original theory is right. The person who took the body away is the one sitting down with the sheriff right now. He came back to his room and found her and panicked. We've got two crimes, two different perps.”

Betsy nodded. “Yes, I think that must be it. And as for the car, I think he missed his chance to move it. People were arriving, maybe he thought it had already been seen, or was afraid he'd be seen driving it away.”

Jill said, “You should call Sheriff Goodman right now and tell him about the EpiPen.”

“All right.” But as Betsy got out her wallet to dig for change, she heard footsteps on the stairs and looked up to see Doogie coming down.

“Ah, nuts, I might've known I'd run right into you two,” he said, half annoyed, half amused. “But I told Liddy that if I saw you I'd ask, so maybe you can tell me when they are going to release my father.”

Betsy replied, “I have no way of telling that. I'm not connected with any law enforcement agency.”

“How about your friend, the cop?”

Jill said, “I have no connection with local law enforcement.”

Betsy said, twiddling her left eyebrow significantly, “Jill, why don't you call the sheriff and ask him? I think he'll be willing to talk to you, as a fellow law enforcement person. Ask him if and when he's going to release Frank. Meanwhile, I want to talk with Douglas.” Betsy could not bring herself to call a murder suspect Doogie.

Faced with this offer of quid pro quo, Douglas could only nod. “Come up to our room, okay?” He looked into
the dining room and led the way back up the stairs.

He gave two brisk knocks on the angled door to his father's room even as he turned the knob. Apparently his whole family wasn't big on locks.

Betsy followed him in. Liddy was lying on her stomach on the bed, propped up on elbows. Carla was sitting in a little upholstered chair by the fireplace, in which a small fire burned.

Douglas said, obviously in response to a request he go down and check, “They're still setting up lunch, so we'll have to wait awhile longer.”

Liddy sighed and lay completely down.

“Well, it's your own fault,” Douglas said. “You should have eaten last night, or come down this morning for breakfast.”

Carla said, “Doogie, have a little sympathy for your sister.”

“How little can I have?” Douglas made an amused wincing face and said, “Sorry. Oh, by the way, Ms. Devonshire here has asked her friend to find out Dad's status, so in return I said she could talk to us a little bit.”

Carla stood. “I won't agree to that.”

“Fine,” said Douglas. “Why don't you go watch them setting up in the dining room and let us know when lunch is ready?” He walked to the door and opened it for her.

Carla sniffed and walked out.

D
ouglas went to the chair she'd vacated and gestured for Betsy to sit on the straight-backed chair near the door. She obeyed.

Liddy said, “We heard you're some kind of private eye.”

“Oh, no. My friend Jill Cross is a police officer—a patrol officer, not an investigator. I don't have any official status at all. Except in my needlework shop, and even there one of my employees is the person to ask for real help.” Betsy crossed her legs and leaned back with what she hoped was casual grace. “Do you do needlework, Liddy?” she asked.

Liddy eyed her suspiciously, but the question was innocuous, and Betsy kept her expression light. The young woman had changed into jeans and a cotton sweater, and she looked very young. She rolled over and up to sit cross-legged on the bed, hands on her knees. There were dark shadows under her red-rimmed eyes. “Yes, Mama taught me to crochet and do needlepoint when I was nine
or ten, and then I counted cross-stitch when she started doing that several years later. After the divorce, actually. It was in San Francisco; we spent a whole summer out there, remember, Doogie? I love San Francisco, it's so beautiful and sophisticated. And we both liked Jack a whole lot. I hadn't been there before, and so I thought anyplace in California was warm and sunny and I packed swimsuits and shorts, but San Francisco is chilly and I hardly got to wear them at all. Instead, we shopped for new clothes for me and rode cable cars and explored Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, and when we went home at the end of a day, Mama taught me to do counted. I guess I was her first student.”

“I've heard from several people that she was very patient with her students. Was she as patient with you?”

Liddy relaxed further, pleased to talk about her mother. “Oh yes. Very. Well, at first. It was all so wonderful in San Francisco until she and Jack started to fight. Things got very tense the last couple of weeks.” Liddy frowned. “I wish she could have stayed with Jack. She would have been happy, and then so would we. But Mama was very fickle.”

Douglas cleared his throat. She gave him a “What-did-I-say?” look and deliberately continued to Betsy, “I loved my mother.” She had to stop and swallow before she could continue, in a higher, more wavery voice. “But my mother could be very difficult. I used to think she was indifferent to our needs. Now I think it was because of the allergies. She had to concentrate on not getting sick, on staying away from things that made her sick, and that took all her attention. Even so, there were times when she came home and was wonderful to us. But she always went away again.” She folded her lips inward, and fell silent.

Betsy said, “Did the allergies start before she divorced your father?”

“Oh, yes.” Liddy nodded. “We were eight and nine when it started. That's the same age Tony's children are now.”

“Tony was her current boyfriend.”

Douglas said, “But our parents were younger than Tony when we were that age. So it wasn't the same.”

“No,” said Liddy, “and it's not the same. They won't—” She put her hand over her mouth, and tears flowed over the fingers. In a moment they stopped and she said in a much firmer voice, “Nobody could possibly think my father murdered my mother!”

“Of course not, Liddy,” said Douglas. “Once they talk to Dad, they'll see he couldn't possibly have anything to do with any of this and turn him loose.” He looked at Betsy. “You don't think he's a murderer, do you?”

“No, I don't,” replied Betsy, almost truthfully. “What's more, the sheriff didn't say a word to indicate he thought Sharon was murdered.” Unless Jill was talking to him this minute. Which was extremely likely. “In fact, the sheriff told me your mother suffered a severe allergic attack before she died. Perhaps she was seeking a private place to use her EpiPen and went to your father's room. I saw her there, dead. She did have an EpiPen with her, of course.”

“Liddy, don't talk to her about this!” ordered Douglas.

“Yes,” said Liddy, ignoring him. “She had several, and never went anywhere without them. It saved her life once that I know of.”

“So let's say she was having an attack. She would need to use the pen and then lie down, wouldn't she?”

“No, what she would need is to go to a hospital,” said Douglas, not quite so belligerently.

“She would need to be driven to an emergency room,” agreed Liddy. “The EpiPen only keeps her alive long enough to get to one, it doesn't stop the anaphylaxis.”

Betsy nodded. “And if she had an attack here, then
possibly there was no one in the lobby to ask for help to get to a hospital. The front desk isn't always manned, I've noticed. But she knew your father was here, she said to me that she came here to talk to him, to be reconciled with him. So let's suppose she went upstairs and knocked, and when there was no answer, she tried his door. It opened and she went in. She must have been very sick—climbing stairs has to be hard on someone having trouble breathing. So she used the pen and lay down to wait for it to go to work. But if you're right, the pen wasn't enough, she needed more drastic aid.”

“Why didn't she use the phone?” asked Liddy.

“Because there aren't any phones in the rooms, didn't you know that?”

She looked around. “No, I didn't notice that. How odd. Weren't there phones when we came here years ago, Doogie?”

“I think so. I don't remember,” he said.

Betsy took the reins of the narrative back. “There is a pay phone in the lobby, but it's off in a dim corner. Maybe she didn't notice it when she went into the lobby from the lounge. So she went up to your father's room, but he wasn't there. She didn't have the strength to go back downstairs. So she lay down on the bed and died. When I saw her, her lips were blue, and I thought she might have been smothered, you know, as if with a pillow.”

Douglas made a sound of shock or distress but when Betsy looked at him, he looked away with a gesture for her to continue.

“When I found her, I was scared and ran to tell someone. If in the meantime your father came back and found her dead, he may have panicked. He had told people he would never take her back, and if he said it angrily, they might think he had something to do with her death. So
he decided to get rid of the body. Do you know if they had quarreled recently?”

Douglas said, “I don't know. But what you said . . . that sounds plausible. They were always quarreling—”

“But not recently!” cried Liddy. “You know Dad hasn't talked to Mama in weeks, he hasn't seen her in months, so why would he panic? He hasn't got anything to do with this. Plus, he simply wouldn't hide a dead body, especially Mama's!”

“You don't—” began Douglas, turning on her. She stared him down. “Well, all right, you're right. He wouldn't. But then who?”

Liddy said, frowning, “I don't know. But now that they know it was an allergic reaction, the sheriff will know it was a natural occurrence, Dad didn't kill Mama—no one killed Mama.”

Doogie said, “You're right, I agree, not murder, never murder. Maybe the autopsy report will show what she was having a reaction to.” He asked Betsy, “Is that possible?”

Betsy said, “I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.”

Douglas asked, “If they don't release Dad, who is responsible for taking care of my mother's body? I don't like the idea of her being stuck in a refrigerator somewhere until . . . well, until this is straightened out.”

“They've done the autopsy, that's how they found out she didn't drown,” said Liddy. “So they have to give her back, don't they?”

Betsy said, “I don't know. I think you need legal advice. It's a crime to hide a body, you know.”

Douglas said, “I called Dad's attorney and he said he doesn't handle criminal cases—”

“Doogie!” cried Liddy. “I thought we agreed, Dad didn't do anything wrong!”

“We know that, but who knows what the sheriff will
charge him with? We have to face facts, Liddy. Dad's in trouble with the law, and we have to act quickly. I asked Dad's attorney to recommend someone, and he did, and the new attorney said he'd go straight to Grand Marais. That was last night, so he's probably there with Dad now. I had to wire him a retainer before he would even phone Dad.”

Douglas stood and came to a kind of attention, like the soldier Frank called on Liddy to be. Liddy, on the other hand, was drooping with woe.

“Do you have the money to make bail for your father?” asked Betsy.

Douglas nodded. “Yes. Unless it's hundreds of thousands, of course. That would take a few days to round up.”

Liddy perked up at Betsy's look of surprise and said with a sly smile, “What, nobody told you my mother was rich?”

“Actually, yes. But it takes time for a will to be admitted to probate—even more time, if there isn't a will. Months.” Betsy was speaking from experience.

“No, you still don't understand,” said Liddy. “Our mother set up trust funds for each of us when we were born. That's all we get, that's our inheritance. But Mama's no piker; the income from those trusts has kept us in socks and school and sports cars all our lives. What, you thought Doogie works for the Forest Service because he needs the money? No, we work because—Why do we work, Doogie?” Her tone had turned dry and mocking, another abrupt mood change.

“What's the matter with you, Liddy?” he asked, half angry, half concerned. He said to Betsy, “Mother's estate goes to a private laboratory researching allergies. She told us that years ago.”

Liddy continued as if he had not spoken. “We work because we want to make a difference, because we want
fulfillment, because that's what's expected of healthy young people, because there's satisfaction in having money you earned yourself, because it's hard to fill the lonely hours with idle amusement. But as a happy homemaker, I fill the lonely hours just fine.” She looked at Betsy with a strange little smile. “Are the dead lonely?” she asked.

“I think it depends on where your spirit goes after death,” said Betsy.

“ ‘Heaven for the climate, hell for the company'!” quoted Liddy, the smile turning real. “Oh, my God!” she said and began to cry, with loud sobs this time.

Douglas gave Betsy a cold look and went to sit beside his sister on the bed, his hand on her bent back. “I think you should leave now,” he said. “I hope you got what you wanted, and I hope you're satisfied. We'll see you at lunch for an answer to our question about our father.”

Betsy left the room, and found Carla waiting out in the hall. “How dare you make that child suffer even more than she's already suffering?” she said with a hiss as she reached past Betsy for the doorknob.

“Wait!” Betsy said. “Please? May I talk with you for just a few minutes? It won't hurt, surely, for Liddy to have a bit of private time with her brother.”

Carla stepped back to look with cold suspicion at Betsy. “What do you want to talk to me about?”

“About Sharon Kaye.”

“I can't tell you more than I already have.”

“I think you can. And you can tell me more about Frank as well as Douglas and Elizabeth. Maybe between us we can find the truth.”

“Oh?” Carla still glared, but Betsy, remembering how Jill could calm a person with a calm look, accepted her glare, and Carla looked away first. “Oh, what does it matter? All right.” The anger vanished into mere annoyance, Carla went past Betsy to the head of the stairs.
“Come on, I promised I'd let Liddy know as soon as lunch was served.”

“Fine,” said Betsy, following her down.

They went into the dining room and sat on the round couch with the pillar. The faded red fabric was scratchy, and the circle was small enough that it was impossible for them to look one another in the face without leaning forward, or hanging halfway off the seat.

Wait people were bringing dishes, flatware and glasses to the counter, further breaking any sense of intimacy.

Carla said, “Sadie told me you investigate crime, so you must know about things like what is going to happen to Frank?” Her interest was obvious, even desperate, though she was not looking at Betsy.

“I don't know what the penalty is for concealing a death, but it can't be as serious as even the least serious charge of homicide. The question is, why did Frank try to hide Sharon's body?”

“He didn't!” objected Carla sharply. “He doesn't know anything about Sharon dying in his room! He didn't know she'd even been there until you and Jill came knocking on his door.”

“How do you know that?”

“Why . . . he told me,” said Carla, and closed her eyes against Betsy's next question.

Betsy asked, “Did he come to Naniboujou to see you?”

Carla grimaced and opened her eyes. “Cut right to the chase, don't you?” Betsy held her tongue, and Carla said, “He came because he loves this place, and to do a little cross-country skiing—and yes, to see me.”

“Did Sharon come here to try to break up the relationship between you and Frank?”