A Murderous Yarn (11 page)

“Wait a minute,” said Charlotte, gesturing at her to sit down again. “Betsy, is it true that you have a talent for solving crimes?”

Obediently, Betsy sat. “Yes. But you don’t want me to look into this.”

“I don’t?”

“No, because you are already afraid of what might be found out.”

“No, I’m not.” But Charlotte’s face was afraid—and suddenly she seemed to realize that, and smiled. “Well, perhaps I am, a little. I suppose it can’t be helped that the police will find out things that are better hidden. That’s why I’m here, really. When the police find things out, it gets into the newspapers. But you can find things out and maybe only tell the police things that will lead to the murderer.”

“My looking into this case won’t stop the police looking as well. And anyway, what if it turns out the murderer is someone you don’t want found out?”

Charlotte said very firmly, “I am perfectly sure that won’t happen.”

Godwin, who had been lurking with intent to eavesdrop, could no longer resist. “There are some people in prison right now who were perfectly sure an amateur sleuth couldn’t possibly figure out what they’d done.”

Charlotte looked around indignantly, but Godwin smiled and said gently, “I think that if you have a secret you don’t want revealed, whether about yourself or someone else, you should either tell her right now what it is, or change your mind about asking her to look into things. She will find it out.”

“Yes, but it won’t become part of an official file, or turn up in the newspaper.” She looked at Betsy. “Please, please help me. Help preserve the reputation of my family.”

“Is there something bad about your family the police can find out about?”

“No!” said Charlotte, too sharply. Then, “Well, yes. Do I have to tell you what it is?”

“Might it have given someone a motive to murder your husband?”

“No,” said Charlotte.

“Then I don’t need to know.”

After she had left, Godwin said, “So you’re going to look into this.”

“Looks like it.”

“I wonder what the big secret is.”

“I suspect it has something to do with her son. And remember what Phil said, about Bro and his father struggling for control of the steel door company. Do you know anything about the company?”

“It’s Birmingham Metal Fabrication of Roseville, I know that. Our back door was made by them. Our decorator recommended them, but he always wants us to buy local.”

“So you don’t know if it’s in good financial condition.”

“No. But I’d think a quarrel in the uppermost management couldn’t be a good thing.”

“Yes, that’s true. But was the quarrel serious enough to lead to murder? That’s the real question.”

F
irst thing Tuesday morning a man in a handsome three-piece business suit came into Crewel World. Despite the vest, and though his shirt had long sleeves with French cuffs held together with heavy gold links, and his bright blue silk tie was tight against his collar, he did not look the least wilted in the early-morning warmth and humidity. The big American sedan he’d climbed out of in front of the shop was a variety that came with heavy air-conditioning.

He was tall, with dark brown hair and blue eyes, square-jawed and handsome, moving with athletic grace. The fit of the suit bespoke wealth. Betsy could almost hear Godwin’s engine start to race.

But the man ignored Godwin’s flutter of inquiring eyelashes and came to the desk to ask Betsy, “Are you Ms. Devonshire?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I’m Broward Birmingham.” He didn’t hold out his hand, and his tone was that of an executive seriously thinking that order could be restored only by firing someone. Betsy suddenly realized that his jaw was so prominent because the underlying muscles were clenched.

“How do you do?” said Betsy.

“My mother came here yesterday and talked with you.” It was not a question.

“Yes, she did.”

“She asked you to do some unofficial investigating of the murder of my father.”

“That’s correct.”

“I am here to ask you not to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because this isn’t any of your business. I see no reason to ask an amateur to second-guess the police.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t be second-guessing them. I don’t have any idea what they might be doing. I will just talk to people, listen to their stories, and draw my own conclusions.”

“And who knows what conclusions an amateur might draw? This isn’t something you’ve been trained to do.”

“That’s true. But I seem to have a talent for it. Also, I am unhampered by the rules—of evidence and so forth—that the police must follow.”

“That is exactly why I am asking you to stay out of this. I don’t want you screwing up an official investigation.”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing that!”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t, not on purpose. On the other hand, if you come across evidence and handle it or
move it or take it away, that can compromise the rules that must be followed for the evidence to be used in a court of law.”

“Oh, I see what you’re getting at. But, you see, I wouldn’t do something like that. I have a friend who is a police officer, and she advises me about particulars like that. I don’t usually pick up things, mostly I just talk with people. It can’t hurt to talk.”

“I’m not just concerned about you moving evidence. I don’t want you to investigate, period. Let me tell you as plainly as I know how: Stay out of this.”

Betsy nearly continued arguing with him. Then she saw that the muscles in his jaw were even more prominent, and she recalled what Phil had said yesterday about the Birmingham men: They don’t like people to disagree with them.

Broward had no legal authority over Betsy, but something her mother used to say rolled across the front of her mind on those letters made of dots:
Those who fight and run away, live to fight another day.

“I understand,” she said as meekly as she could, and dropped her eyes.

“Thank you,” he said tightly, turned on his heel, and walked out.

Godwin withheld his snigger until Broward slammed himself into his big car and drove away. “Good for you,” he said. Because Betsy had not said she was going to obey Broward’s order, only that she understood it.

“I wonder how long I’ll be able to poke around before he finds out?”

Godwin’s amused smile faded as he thought that
over. “I think you ought to be even more concerned about what he’ll do when he
does
find out.”

Adam Smith sat at the head of the old wooden table, his six steering committee members arranged down either side. Five were, like him, white males in their sixties. The sixth was Ceil Ziegfield, married to a white male in his sixties. Every one of them owned at least one antique car; every one had made the New London to New Brighton run at least three times.

Adam had tried it fourteen times in six different cars, and had finished it only nine. He liked the rarer makes, which tended to be more delicate, eccentric, and cranky than the ones which had proved their worth by becoming numerous. But he always had chosen the road less traveled.

“Have we got all the pretour routes printed?” Drivers would gather in New London early, and would drive to nearby towns: Paynesville on Wednesday, Spicer on Thursday, and Litchfield on Friday, following complicated routes on back roads, trying to keep off busy highways as much as possible.

“All set,” said Ceil. She was secretary of the committee, naturally; it never occurred to the men to think a woman wouldn’t be pleased to take minutes and do the endless paperwork connected with this project. Ceil wasn’t pleased. On the other hand, the men who had done the job in previous years—this was the first year a woman had been honored by being chosen to sit on the steering committee—had managed all right, and so she supposed she could, too.

“Who’s going out ahead to put up arrows?” asked Ed.

“Me, I guess,” said Adam. Small squares of paper with bold black arrows printed on them were to be stapled on fence posts at intersections to aid drivers. This had been the late Bill Birmingham’s job, as he had been in charge of laying out this year’s routes.

But after a discussion about possible problems Adam might have to be on site to resolve, it was decided that Jerry, who had laid out the routes last year, should put up the arrows. Ceil handed over the shoebox full of them and a staple gun.

“What else?” asked Adam. “What have we forgotten?” There was always something forgotten, something that was thought to have been taken care of that wasn’t, some glitch in the planning. This would be the Sixteenth Annual New London to New Brighton Antique Car Run, but he was sure that even now, after sixteen years, there was a screwup somewhere.

But everyone turned confident smiles on him, and Ceil even said aloud, “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

“We have enough banners,” Adam prompted, meaning the heavy plastic squares with a soft drink logo and a number on them—a past president of the club owned a soft drink bottling company, and supplied the banners for free, complete with logo.

“We have fifty-three drivers signed up as of yesterday evening, and expect perhaps twelve more by Saturday,” said Ed, consulting his notes. People were allowed to sign up as late as the day of the run. “We’ve never had more than seventy, and we have banners numbered up to eighty-five.”

“Have we got enough volunteers at Buffalo High for lunch?” Buffalo wasn’t a big city, but the high school was one of those massive consolidated ones, with a
huge parking lot. Drivers came in for a hot lunch of hamburgers and hot dogs, with cole slaw and watermelon on the side. The Antique Car Club had to rent the cafeteria from the school district, and then find volunteers to buy supplies and prepare the meal. The soft drink bottler would provide drinks at cost.

“I think we’re okay,” said Ed, “though I’m hoping to scare up another server on the lunch line.”

“Get two,” advised Adam. “You’ll always have a no-show, and if another one gets sick, you’re in big trouble. How’s the program coming?”

“Fine,” said Ceil. “The layout’s done, the printer’s been warned it’ll be a rush job, and I’m just waiting another day because Milt said he’s FedExing his photo to me.” The program was printed as late as possible in order to include as many entries as possible. It came in the form of a magazine, and each entry was to supply a color photograph of his or her vehicle. Onlookers enjoyed being able to look up and identify a car they had seen and liked.

“Did we take Bill Birmingham’s name off the program?” Adam asked, and there was an awkward shuffle.

Ceil said, “That’s something we should discuss. Some of us think we should leave it, maybe put a black border around it.” Bill’s photo showed him at last year’s run, the first one he and Charlotte drove in the 1910 Maxwell. The photo had been taken in New London, with the two of them aboard looking happy and confident. The look had vanished by the halfway point, when they’d staggered into Buffalo two hours late. Their car had not been able to continue.

“What will Charlotte think when she sees it?” Adam asked.

“She’s not coming,” Ceil said. “I talked with her this morning and she told me to tell you not to expect her.”

“When’s the funeral?” asked Henry.

Ceil replied, “They don’t know yet. The medical examiner hasn’t released the body.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Ed remarked, “This whole business sucks. I don’t know which aspect sucks the worst, but there isn’t an aspect that doesn’t.”

“I call the question,” said Henry, who was familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order.

“What does that mean?” asked Adam, who wasn’t.

“That means, let’s vote on the motion.”

“Nobody made a motion,” noted Ceil.

“All right, I move we leave Bill’s name and photo in the program, with a black border.”

“Second,” said Mike.

The motion carried five to two, Henry and Adam being the two dissenters. Henry thought they should either make a big fuss, dedicate the run to Bill, ask for a moment of silence and put a big picture on the first page of the program—or drop the photo out of the program and say nothing at all. Though no one wanted to say so now, Bill hadn’t been popular enough for the first to have any meaning, so Henry voted for the second. Adam thought it would make people who knew the ugly details of Bill’s death uncomfortable to find him beaming out at them from the program, even with a black border. He knew it would him. So he voted against it.

Early in the afternoon a woman came into Crewel World. Betsy didn’t recognize her. She was in her late twenties, too thin, with fine-grained skin lightly touched
with freckles, dark blond hair pulled carelessly back into a scrunchie, and a sleeveless, pale pink dress a size too large. She looked around with an experienced eye, then went to the racks of counted patterns. After a few minutes, she picked up a black-on-white pattern called A Twinkling of Trees and brought it to the desk.

“What do you recommend for the fabric for this?” she asked. Her light blue eyes would have been her best feature if she had thought to use a touch of mascara on her very pale eyelashes.

“I’m doing it on Aida,” said Betsy. “I should warn you it’s almost all backstitching,” she added, because many stitchers become very cross about backstitching.

“I can see that, but there’s something primal about trees standing in snow, don’t you think? Plus it reminds me of where I grew up. We don’t get a lot of snow where I live now.”

“Are you from Minnesota?”

“Oh, yes, I’m Lisa Birmingham.” But not for long, to judge by the three-carat engagement diamond on a long, slender finger. Well, unless she decided to keep her name, thought Betsy. Which she might, because this was
Dr.
Lisa Birmingham, the pediatrician.

“How do you do?” said Betsy. “I’m Betsy Devonshire. I’m so sorry about your father.”

“Yes, well, that’s the real reason I’m here. You spoke with my mother yesterday. Has my brother been to see you as well?”

“Yes, a little while ago.”

“Well, I’m sure he tried to warn you off.”

“Yes, he did.”

She leaned forward and said with quiet intensity, “
Ignore him. Help my mother. She’s going crazy, and the police won’t leave her alone.”

“You don’t think the police suspect her?”

“Yes, I do, though I don’t see how. But I want as many people as possible working on solving this. The more people trying, the better, don’t you agree?”

“Possibly. Your brother seems to think I’ll do something that will spoil the investigation.”

“Will you?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Well, then. Do your darndest to help us, won’t you?”

“All right. Have you got a few minutes to talk with me?”

“What for, what about?”

“Your father, your brother, anything you think might help.”

“All right. But I live in St. Louis, and have for three years. I don’t get home very often. So I don’t know if I’ll be much help.”

Betsy led her to the back of the shop, where two cozy upholstered chairs faced one another across a small, round table. “Here, have a seat,” she invited the woman. “Would you like a cup of coffee, or tea?”

“Coffee, black, thanks.”

Betsy brought her the coffee in a small, pretty porcelain cup, and for herself a cup of green tea. Each took a polite sip. Betsy said, “How much older than you is Broward?”

“Three years. Bro is the oldest, then there’s me, then Tommy is not quite three years younger, and David is two years younger than Tommy. I assume Mother bragged about us?”

“Yes, of course. She said Broward quit an excellent job to go into business with his father, that you are a pediatrician, Tommy owns a car dealership, and David is going for an advanced degree in education.”