Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_04 (8 page)

Betsy said, “But I'm not dating him anymore. Didn't I tell you? He thought because I was so clever about maneuvering him into selling the building to me that I was his kind of person, a little too interested in making money. We went out three times, and every time, all he wanted to talk about was all the clever ways there are to make money, and hinting that no one knows how rich he really is. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that he's the cheapest date I've been out with in my life.”

Godwin laughed. “I can believe that. He made an ass of himself at an all-you-can-eat buffet once, eating till he waddled, and insisting on a doggie bag. But I wish you'd strung him along for a while. It would make this problem a lot easier to deal with.”

“No, friendly doesn't work on Joe. Better he still thinks I'm too clever for him, so when you call him, tell him I've already been notified. That may keep him from trying to get cute. Whew, I'm glad we haven't signed the final papers yet.” Betsy had been going round and round with Joe about the sale, trying to bring him to the closing, but he was apparently determined to hang on to those rents as long as possible.

“All right. Are you having fun up there? Is that why you don't want to come home?”

“Not yet. But soon, I think.”

“Well, get lots of rest. Take at least one nap a day. ‘Sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care,' you know. That's Shakespeare.”

“Yes, I know. And I think you're right. Now, go show me my confidence in you is not misplaced.”

“Yes, ma'am. And, Betsy . . . thanks.”

Betsy hung up. But not wanting to return to the lounge, where Carla waited, she sat for a bit, looking around. The office was not only tiny, it was oddly shaped and without a window. A computer took up most of the desk space, but it sat on a very old desk, possibly original to the building. The walls were papered with cheery yellow roses, one section almost hidden behind Post-It memos, lists, and other reminders. The door was old and ill-fitting—another reason to think the office was a retrofit. Light could be seen at the bottom where there was an inch or more of space.

How wonderful to be the owner of Naniboujou, with its beautiful lounge and magnificent dining room, but how sad to spend the wakeful hours in here, struggling with maintenance, heating, insurance, the wait staff, the kitchen, without even a window to look out of at the lake. Of course, what with changing bed linen, serving meals, chopping wood for that fireplace, and coping with guests who complained of dead bodies in their rooms, perhaps the owner didn't spend all that much time in here.

Betsy was reminded of a sign she'd needlepointed back in February:
THE ONLY THING MORE OVERRATED THAN NATURAL CHILDBIRTH IS OWNING YOUR OWN BUSINESS
.

But at least she wasn't going to be the one shelling out big bucks to do the repairs back home. The thought of Joe's greed doubling back to bite him in the butt made her smile suddenly, and she lolled back in the chair, tipping ash off an imaginary plutocrat's cigar. But the chair, an executive model, dropped backward so sharply she thought it was going over. She threw herself forward and the chair slammed upright, throwing her onto the dark hardwood floor.

“Ouch, dammit!”

After a second, she rolled onto her backside, and sat
quietly for a minute, gently rubbing her left knee, squeezing her eyes shut to keep tears from flowing.

As the ache subsided, she took a deep breath and dared to look for injuries. The knee, while painful, didn't have broken bones poking out. It didn't look bruised. In fact, there wasn't even a run in her pantyhose. She brushed at her skirt, which wasn't very dusty, and leaned forward to start getting up. Her eye was caught by something grayish white on the floor near the back of the knee well of the old wooden desk. It looked like one of those fat markers for a whiteboard, or maybe a highlighter, probably dropped and kicked out of sight.

Awkwardly, favoring the painful knee, she crawled forward to retrieve it.

It wasn't a marker. It was a translucent tube with black and yellow printing on it, filled with a colorless liquid. And clearly labeled:
EPIPEN
.

Betsy reached up to grab the front edge of the desk with her free hand and got her feet under her. She pulled the chair forward and sat down. There was liquid inside the object and what looked like a very big-bore needle. Instructions printed boldly on it said to remove the gray safety cap, with an arrow pointing to the other end. The cap was a flat thing, with a gripping edge like the milling on the rim of a quarter. The instructions continued that one was to put the needle end against the thigh, and “using a quick motion,” push “until injector functions.”
Ouch,
thought Betsy.

Smaller printing described the pen as an auto-injector which would deliver a “0.3 milligram intramuscular dose of epinephrine,” and noted it was “for allergic emergencies (anaphylaxis).”

Did the owner of this place suffer from allergies? If so, he would be pleased to know where this device had gotten to. She put it in the center of the desk, and would
have reported finding it, but the lobby was unmanned, so she returned to the lounge.

“What's up?” asked Jill.

“Godwin says there's water leaking into the shop from the ceiling. I told him to handle it.”

Jill raised her pale eyebrows in surprise.

“What?” said Betsy.

“You think the boy is up to it?”

“Sure, don't you?”

“I'd rather it was Shelly working this weekend. She's calmer in an emergency.”

“Oh, Godwin's already over the vapors. He'll be fine.” Betsy rummaged in her knitting bag for her own project, a counted cross-stitch pattern of a rose window, to be stitched on black Aida cloth. She found the round plastic box in which she kept her floss, the Aida cloth, and spare needles. She unfolded the cloth on her lap, and her eye was caught by a finished section of Carla's trame. “You do really excellent work,” she said, trying to keep the note of surprise out of her voice. People as rudely opinionated as Carla were often less than talented.

Jill leaned forward for a look. “You did the faces in petit point,” she noted. “Nice.” Petit point stitches are half the size of needlepoint ones, and enable the stitcher to get lots of detail on faces and hands. That's why there was Penelope canvas, which was double woven to make both petit point and needlepoint stitches possible on the same canvas.

Betsy said, “How long does it take you to complete a project this large?”

“About four months, if I get to work on it steadily,” said Carla. “Of course, that rarely happens. One is so busy nowadays, with travel and committees and all.” She heaved an overburdened little sigh.

Betsy noticed a tiny movement and glanced at Isabel, who was heaving a sigh of her own and rolling her eyes
at Carla. Betsy barely suppressed a giggle, and bent over her canvas bag to look for her scissors and the paper pattern, lifting and moving her knitting aside, hiding a grin. But honestly, the way things curled down and out of sight in this thing—
The American Needleworker
magazine she had tucked in was lifted with her knitting and fell out.

“Oh, did your
Needleworker
come already?” asked Isabel. “Mine's probably in my mailbox then, waiting for me to come home.”

Betsy pulled out the pattern, handed the magazine to Isabel, and continued to root in her bag for her scissors. “I pay extra for first-class delivery, because it's so annoying when a customer comes in with a question about something she saw in a needlework magazine or catalog, and I haven't read it yet.”

Isabel didn't answer. Betsy found her scissors in their little case on the bottom, hung them around her neck on a braided cord, and looked over to see Isabel staring at the cover of the magazine as if she'd never seen a counted cross-stitch pattern of pansies before.

“What?” asked Betsy.

“Well, look who's on the cover!”

“Who?” asked Carla.

“It's Sharon Owen.”

Betsy frowned and said, “No, that's Kaye of Escapade Design.”

“Well, sure, Sharon Owen and Kaye of Escapade are the same person. No way for you to know that, I suppose, but Sharon Kaye Owen is her full name.” Her sigh this time was authentic. “I really was hoping she'd be our surprise instructor. We do like to support local talent.” She saw Betsy was staring at her and said, “Is something wrong?”

J
ill reached for the magazine, turned it so its cover faced Isabel, and said, “I bet she wears this sweater a lot.”

Isabel said, “She does. It's knitted of silk, because she's allergic to wool, so it's unique. But how did you know that?”

Jill said, “Because she was wearing it when Betsy saw her here yesterday.”

“You mean she
is
here? Why haven't we seen her?”

Betsy said, “Yesterday afternoon Sharon Owen sat down across from me right in this lounge. We talked a little bit about how great Naniboujou is; she said she's always loved it, and that she had come up here on her honeymoon. She also said she was here to meet her husband—”

Carla interrupted, “She's not married.”

Betsy said, “You're right,
ex
-husband. She said she was here to try to reconcile with him.”

“Never happen! She's been divorced from Frank for eleven years.”

Betsy said, “Is Frank also called Eddie?”

Isabel replied, “No, of course not. Why?”

“I thought she said at one point she was going to meet Eddie.”

Jill said, “None of the three men here are named Eddie?”

Isabel shook her head. “No.”

Betsy said, “Maybe he's an employee here.”

Carla said dryly, “Maybe it's Eddie she wants to reconcile with.”

“What do you mean?” asked Betsy.

“Now, Carla,” warned Isabel.

But Carla said, “She's always running off with some boyfriend or other.” She frowned and added with a faux air of thoughtful frankness, “Well, actually, she never tries to reconcile with the boyfriend once she leaves him, at least as far as I know. She just dumps him forever when she decides to give Frank another try. But of course she can't stick with Frank, either.”

Isabel, frowning at Carla, said, “It's kind of sad, really. One of those cases of can't live with him, can't live without him.”

But Carla said, “That's strictly on her part. He's done with her, no chance in the world he'll take her back. He finally realized she's one of those people who make promises they have no intention of keeping. All she ever did was get the children excited and hopeful, then she'd abandon them again. He should never have let her come back after she left the first time, because then and every time after, she'd be nice to everyone for about a month, then get bored and unhappy and be out the door, on to bigger and better things.”

“That might have been true once about the children getting hopeful,” said Isabel, “but they aren't exactly children anymore. Beth must be twenty-two or-three,
and Douglas is what, twenty months younger than she is?”

“Eighteen,” Carla said, adding with an air of quoting an authority, “It doesn't matter how old the children are, they still suffer when there's a bad divorce. Besides, Beth never really left home, she just took over the mothering chores from Sharon Kaye. Frank's done all he can, more than he should, really, but Sharon is a perfect witch with a capital B.”

Isabel said firmly, “This is all very interesting, but wandering off the point. The point is, was Sharon Kaye actually here? Ms.—Devonshire, is it?—”

“Betsy,” said Betsy.

“Betsy seems to think so. And as I said, it would make sense if Sharon Kaye was the mystery teacher. She does beautiful pulled thread and cutwork. And her latest cross-stitch pattern is amazing. Even that very first one in her series, the 'When I Grow Up' teddy bears, is adorable. I've been stitching them on an afghan for my granddaughter. I know she can be impatient with people—”

Carla sniffed pointedly.

“But, I'd give her a chance, if it were up to me. And Charlotte is, after all, her friend. If she was here yesterday, why isn't she here now?” Isabel stood and put her project on the cushion where she'd been sitting. “I'm going to ask if anyone else has seen her.”

As Isabel stood and began working her way from group to group down the room, Carla said to Betsy, “What's that you're working on?”

Betsy's pattern was a counted cross stitch pattern from a booklet called
Rose Windows,
by Sue Lentz. She had taken the book to Kinko's and after a copyright discussion with the man behind the counter paid for an enlargement of the pattern labeled “Traditional.” Like the others, the pattern was a circle cut into rows of wedges
around a central medallion. Because the cover showed it stitched on black, she'd cut a length of sixteen-count Aida from her shop's supply, added a spool of Kreinik Confetti blending filament, and selected antique DMC colors. Though the pattern wasn't for a beginner, Betsy had gotten used to color changes, doing a set of Christmas tree ornaments, and had surprised herself by working a snowflake pattern that called for careful counting. She'd heard black was difficult to stitch on, but sixteen-count wasn't tiny. And these glowing colors would look especially nice on the matte black of Aida. If it came out well, she'd frame it and hang it as a model in her shop.

Betsy unrolled the black cloth and said, “I'm better at needlepoint than I am at counted, but my shop sells both, so I thought I'd better at least try something more advanced.” She showed the pattern to Jill. “Not that this is really advanced.”

Jill snorted faintly.

Betsy said, “What, Miss I Only Do Needlepoint?”

“That's not as easy as it looks. You have to really pay attention to your counting on circular patterns.”

It was Betsy's turn to snort. “You have to really pay attention to any counted. Isn't that the point?” She ran her fingers down the ribbon pinned to the fabric to where her needle threader was attached. “Anyway, all I brought to work on besides this is my knitting.”

Knitting was Betsy's therapy. It freed her mind to ponder, to wonder, to connect things. But Betsy didn't want to think—not about finding a woman's dead body on a bed, or worse, that her bad dreams had become so realistic she could no longer tell them from reality.

She found the center of the fabric. The one-inch medallion in the center was old gold, and she threaded her needle and set to work. “Count twice, stitch once,” was the advice given by counted cross-stitchers, and Betsy
was careful to obey. Still, Isabel was gone long enough that she came back only as Betsy was putting in the last three stitches. “No one else has seen Sharon Kaye,” she reported.

“Perhaps we should call Charlotte in the hospital,” suggested Jill. “Ask her if Sharon Kaye is, in fact, the surprise guest.”

“Why?” asked Carla. “It isn't important, is it? Sharon isn't here now, and neither is our mystery teacher. That is, unless Isabel takes my earlier suggestion. What do you think, Isabel?”

Isabel said, “I don't think so, Carla. For one thing, hardly anyone here is interested in trame, and for another, you don't have enough supplies with you to give everyone a chance to try it. Merely talking about it won't satisfy.”

Carla tried to take that in good grace, but there was a snappish emphasis to the next few stitches she took on her canvas.

Betsy kept her eyes on her work, threading her needle with the soft pink of the first wedge and counting carefully before taking the first two stitches. But when the silence went on and on, she glanced up to see Carla, her embarrassed cheeks overriding her artificial blush, smiling apologetically at Isabel. “I'm afraid I do ride my hobbyhorse hard,” she said.

“It's all right,” said Isabel stiffly.

Betsy smiled, too, relieved the tension was not because of her and her strange story. “There seems to be something obsessive about needlework. I don't know if it draws the kind of person inclined to obsess, or if doing the work brings out the obsession. I have customers who seem to suffer withdrawal if they have to stop stitching for as long as a week.” Betsy's smile deepened a bit. “Such a delicate, dainty art, needlework,” she continued, her own needle flashing. “Created with fibers twisted
tight, and sharpened, highly polished steel.”

Carla's eyebrows lifted in surprise, then she laughed. “I like that!”

Isabel said, “I don't feel obsessed. When I pick up my needle, I remember my mother doing needlework by lamplight, and my grandmother, and I can sense her grandmother under an oil lamp, and hers, and hers, and so on, until we are back sitting by the fire, trying a new pattern on doeskin and keeping an eye out for the sabertooth that took a neighbor's child last night.”

Jill remarked, “We are bloody-minded today. I wonder why.”

Carla said, “I think we're disappointed and angry. All that hinting, and no surprise.”

Isabel said, “I think the idea of a mystery teacher was always a bad one. Everyone had a secret wish for what the class should be on or who the teacher should be, each one different, so most of us were doomed to disappointment even if the instructor showed up.”

“That's true,” said Carla.

Isabel said, “Who would you have liked it to be, Betsy? I mean, if it could have been anyone at all.”

“Anyone? Joyce Williams. I'd love to sit and watch how she knits those Latvian sweater patterns. Or Kaffe Fasset. I hear he's a wonderful teacher. How about you, Jill?”

Jill said, “Susan Porta, maybe. Or Jean Hilton. They both do exotic fibers, and that's what I like to use in needlepoint.”

Isabel said, “I'd like Charley Harper to come by. Not because I think he'd have something to teach me, but because, judging by his designs, he has a terrific sense of humor.” She added, more darkly, “And I'd like to have a word with him about the way he designs his patterns.”

Betsy said, “I like Charley Harper, too. I especially
love the one of the brown pelican sitting on a brown piling in silver rain. The pattern's in my stash, along with the cobblestone Aida cloth and floss. I picked a thin silver braid for the rain, and the Aida is a nice big fourteen-count . . .” Her voice drifted off as she began to think about the project. Then she laughed. “I already have more projects than I can finish in a year. Now that I have a little money, it's going to be really hard not to buy lots more.”

Jill said, “When you no longer resist temptation, you will know you are officially a stitcher.”

Isabel said, “I have a T-shirt that says,
WHOEVER DIES WITH THE BIGGEST STASH WINS
. I'm definitely in the running.”

Betsy said, “I sell a T-shirt that says,
WHOEVER DIES WITH THE BIGGEST STASH IS DEAD
.
WHEN
'
S THE ESTATE SALE
?' ”

The women laughed. Carla said, “I don't think I've heard of Charley Harper.”

Jill said, “Counted cross-stitch,” and Betsy looked for and saw the very slight raising of Carla's upper lip.

Honestly,
she thought,
why there has to be this split between the counted cross-stitch and needlepoint communities, I cannot understand. It's worse than dog people versus cat people.

Betsy and her sister Margot had had both cats and dogs, often simultaneously, while growing up. So it was no surprise that Crewel World carried cross-stitch, knitting, and needlepoint supplies.

There was a period of silence while everyone settled into their projects. Betsy finished her first wedge in DMC, then got out the Kreinik metallic filament and snipped off a foot of it. It changed colors every couple of inches from gold to blue to green to silver. She consulted the pattern and began the first stitch. Pulling it through, the ultra-fine stuff, twisted and crinkled around
a very thin thread, caught on the cloth, and slipped out the eye of her needle.

“That should look very pretty,” noted Isabel.

“Yes. This will be my first try at a blending filament.” Betsy took another stitch, holding the filament in the eye with her fingers, and this time the filament knotted without warning, and when she tugged experimentally, it broke.

She glanced at Jill, who was smirking subtly. Betsy stuck her tongue out at her, teased the filament loose, cut off the knotted portion, rethreaded her needle, and set off again. But with almost every stitch, when the filament didn't twist and knot, it slipped out of the needle or snagged and broke. It was impossible for Betsy to lose herself in a stitching pattern when the thread was being difficult. Despite herself, thoughts of Sharon Kaye began to intrude. At last she growled, stuck her needle in the fabric, and asked, “What hospital did you say Charlotte Porter is in?”

Isabel said, “What a good idea! I think it would be a nice thing if we bought a get-well card and everyone signed it. She's at St. Luke's in Duluth.”

But Betsy wasn't thinking about a get-well card. She stood and said, “Excuse me, I'll be back in a few minutes.” Then she remembered: No phones in the rooms.

Jill murmured something and Betsy bent to hear it said again. “Pay phone in the lobby.”

She nodded and went out into the lobby, where she found James on duty and got him to break a five-dollar bill into coins. She sat down in a dark corner near the office where the pay phone lurked. In a few minutes, the heap of coins considerably diminished, she sat frowning.