Betsy said candidly, “Well, it would be nice if I could put everything on hold while I take a semester or two of business courses. Godwin and the others are very helpful, but it's hard to be the boss under these circumstances.”
Irene's thin mouth pulled downward. “Margot's death happened at a particularly bad time, just when we're going to be swamped with orders.”
“We are?” Betsy noticed the “we”; Irene must still think she was going to own this shop someday.
“Yes, our inventory will be growing quickly toward its peak this month, in time for the holidays. This is when we spend the most, and hope to make it all back and more by the end of December. And, of course, utilities go high during the winter. That front window leaks heat as if it were screen instead of glassâJoe Mickels won't double-glaze itâand with people in and out, the heat just flows like a river through that door. And now, of course, you've got that burglary loss. Have you figured it out yet? How much?”
Betsy was staring at Irene as if she had never seen her before. And, in fact, she hadn't seen this Irene, the competent businesswoman. “Uh, we're pretty sure it's a little over seven thousand, mostly damage to fixtures.”
“That's not so bad.”
“No, it looked really terrible, but a lot of it we could just pick up and shake out, and there's more I think we can sell after it's been washed. I had wonderful help, they sorted thousands of beads and buttons.”
“Getting good help is half the battle.” Irene nodded. “I wish I could have been here, too.”
“But you have a better job, one that pays more than I can offer.”
“Ensuring a computer keyboard gets to Detroit by morning isn't as exciting the thousandth time as it was the first.”
Betsy'd had that kind of job, once. Besides, she had a question she wanted to ask Irene. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, I rather hoped Rosemary would be here. I wanted to ask her about that Appleton wool she bought, if she liked it. Since she isn't, I think I'll just go homeâ”
Godwin sang “Good Night, Irene!” and this time it was Betsy who glared at him.
“Irene,” said Betsy, trying at least to get her to come back soon, “Margot said I should see some of your work, that it was wonderful.”
“She said that?”
“People tell me you win prizes with it all the time.”
Irene nodded, her dark eyes glowing. “Yes, I do. Very well, I'll bring some to show you, maybe tomorrow. Perhaps you should hire me to teach a course on needlepoint, everyone in the class would end up with a finished project.”
“I'm sorry, I can't afford to hire another person right now. And if I could, the person I'd hire is someone to advise me, a consultant, someone to give me more advice like the kind you just gave me.”
Irene's dark eyes glittered. “A consultant?”
“Someone like you, who knows how to run a small business, and also knows all about needlework. Look, are you sure you wouldn't like a cup of coffee?”
Irene said slyly, “A consultant's job would pay better than working the register, wouldn't it?”
“Much better, because it's more important. Do you take cream orâ”
“Just black,” said Irene.
“Fine, I'll be right back.”
When Betsy returned, Irene was trying to convince a customer that she could use DMC floss rather than the silks she wanted for a small doorstop canvas, while Godwin made futile attempts to intervene.
“Irene,” said Betsy, forcing the smile now, “here's your coffee.”
“Just a minute,” said Irene. “I'm consulting with this customer.”
“Irene,” said Betsy, allowing a warning note to creep in, “if you consult with the customers, then I will think you are on their side, not mine.”
Irene turned toward her, mouth open, but changed her mind about whatever she was going to say. Instead, she turned back to the customer and said, “But perhaps I am wrong. I think Godwin here can help you. Excuse me?” and went to the table, where Betsy was setting down a pair of pretty china cups.
After the customer left with her selection of silks, Betsy remarked, “I'm surprised Margot didn't think of you as a consultant.”
“Oh, Margot thought she knew everything already,” said Irene.
“Well, she did know a whole lot more than I do.”
“Naturally.” Irene shrugged. Then she looked up at Betsy and smiled without a trace of rancor or wickedness in her eyes, and Betsy, with sudden compassion, realized that Irene truly had no understanding of the human heart.
Betsy took a drink of her coffee. “I hope they catch the person who murdered her,” she said.
“Well, they probably won't. It was an impulse thing, I'm sureâa burglar who was startled and just swung without meaning to kill. And don't they need fingerprints to solve a murder?” Irene was doing a great deal of stirring and hardly any drinking.
“I should think he'd be sick about it, unable to eat or drink or sleep,” said Betsy.
“Probably,” agreed Irene, stirring.
Betsy leaned forward, seeking an aura of confidentiality. “You know how you remember what you were doing when something important happens?” she asked.
Irene nodded.
“I was sorting socks from the laundry when the first men landed on the moon.”
“I was working on âAutumn Roses' in crewel for the chair in my living room,” said Irene.
“And I was sitting next to Jill Cross in the Guthrie Theatre, watching
The Taming of the Shrew
, when Margot was murdered.”
Irene's eyes slid sideways, then back. “I was doing the background of a Kaffe Fassett in basketweave,” she said.
“At home?”
“Yes.”
“All alone?”
“Yes. I was using Medici wool, which I think works better than Paternayan. That's one of the projects I'll bring in to show you; it came out rather well. Perhaps you'll want to hang it up where Margot's blue horse used to be.”
Betsy turned to look at the blank wall behind the checkout desk. “You noticed it was missing?”
“Of course. Was it taken with the rest?”
“Rest?”
“Yes, the Designing Women angel and my Melissa Shirley Christmas stocking and that child-size Irish fisherman sweater. Margot usually kept three or four completed projects on display.”
Betsy remembered the sweater, knitted in a beautiful cream-colored wool. “We found the sweater, trampled. I'm going to try washing and reblocking it.” She raised her voice. “Godwin, do you remember the other things?”
“What things?” asked Godwin, coming out from behind the shelves where he'd been rearranging instruction books, his eyes suspiciously innocent.
Betsy glanced at Irene for confirmation as she named them, the Designing Women angel and the Melissa Shirley Christmas stocking. He shook his head. “I remember them in the shop, of course, but I don't remember seeing them when we were digging through the trash looking for the Tâang horse, and I think I would have.”
“Me, neither.” Her eye, too, had been set for finished needlework during the search; she would remember if she'd seen any.
So more than the Tâang horse was missing. What did that mean? She had no idea. She picked up the phone book to look for the police department's number. What was the name of the investigator in charge of her sister's case?
13
The Excelsior police station was a new, one-story building of brick and dark gray stone. It was on the south edge of town near Highway 7, next door to the McDonald's and across the street from an ice cream shopâperhaps, Irene suggested in a very dry voice, to make up for its being so far from the Excelo Bakery and its wonderful doughnuts.
A thin-mouthed man with dark red hair and a lot of freckles came to the tiny foyer and said he was Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy. He seemed to recognize Irene, and not with pleasure. But he took both of them back to a small office crowded with two messy desks and several filing cabinets.
On one desk was a large paper bag stapled shut, with a big red tag labeled EVIDENCE covering the staples. He pulled a metal chair from the other desk so each woman could sit down.
Malloy broke the seal on the paper bag with professional nonchalance. “I want you first, Betsy, to tell me if you recognize any of this.” He upended the bag and wads of colored fabric mixed with the broken sticks of a wooden frame tumbled out.
“May I touch it?” she asked.
“Go ahead.”
Betsy picked up a wad of dull green cloth, which unrolled itself into a Christmas stocking. She turned it around to find a needlepoint picture of children looking through a multipaned window at Santa and toys. The stitches were fancy; Santa's beard was done in long curls, his fur trim was really furry, and the toys were crusted with tiny beads. “I think this is ours,” said Betsy, looking at Irene for confirmation.
Irene nodded, her eyes sad. “It's mine,” she said. “Maybe it can be saved. I won't know until it's been washed and reblocked.”
“I think it looks fine, just a little dirt here and there,” said Betsy, surprised.
But Irene shook her head. “I don't know if it will ever be the same.”
The angel, broken out of its frame, was in much worse shape. It seemed to have been pulled at its opposing corners, distorting the stitches along with the picture, and to have picked up some serious stains along its journey. “Oh, dear.” Betsy sighed.
“Yes, quite ruined,” said Irene.
Those were the only two pieces of needlework from the bag; there were also pieces of the mat that had enclosed the angel, and fragments of the wooden frame. There was also extraneous paper trash, and an empty plastic pop bottle.
“Is that all you found?” asked Betsy.
“Why, isn't that all that's missing?”
“No, there was also a needlepoint picture of a blue Chinese horse.”
“It was in a plain wooden frame, quite narrow,” added Irene. “Matted in very pale green.”
“That's all that was turned in.” Malloy sat back in his chair. “Were there price tags on these items?”
Betsy replied, “No, they weren't for sale. Although there has been a customer who wanted to buy the blue horse. Margot had agreed to make a copy of it for her for a thousand dollars.”
Malloy's eyebrows elevated. “A thousand dollars?”
Irene said, “It's quite an art to make a needlepoint project from scratch.”
“Would these other two things cost that much if they were for sale?”
Betsy said, “I don't know. An unfinished canvas by the artist who did this stocking sells for three hundred dollars.”
Irene said, “If my stocking were for sale, which it is not, I would charge fifteen hundred.” Betsy thought it possible that Irene made up that number on the spot, seeking to outdo the value of Margot's work. Certainly she beamed brighter when Malloy wrote that down.
Malloy said, “But people who don't know needlepoint wouldn't know the value of this stuff.”
“Probably not,” said Betsy. “I didn't before I started helping my sister out in the shop.”
“So the fact that a framed horse is missing instead of the stocking tells me the burglar hasn't got a kid, but has got a mother or sweetheart with a birthday coming up.”
Betsy stared at him. Malloy laughed, but not unkindly. “Most people don't realize that crooks have a life outside their criminal activities. A lot of burglars are married or have steady girlfriends. And all of them, of course, have mothers. It's not uncommon for a burglar to take something to give as a present. Which is how we catch them, of course.”
Irene said, “You mean their own mothers will turn them in?”
Malloy laughed again. “Not very often. But Mom will show off the present, wear the ring or fur coat, hang the painting in her living room, and of course her friends will ask where it came from. âMy son gave it to me,' says Mom, and word gets around, and one of my informants calls me. Then”âMalloy produced a pair of handcuffsâ“you're under arrest.”
Irene chuckled but Betsy frowned.
“Now, what if it wasn't a burglar who did this,” she began.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Suppose someone wanted my sister dead, and came to see her the night I was out, and somehow talked her into going down to the shop, maybe pretending he, or she, wanted to see something. And then murdered her and trashed the shop to make it look as if a burglar had done it.”
“Where did you come up with an idea like that?” Malloy asked, his tone patronizing.
“There are a couple of things. For one, the shop was trashed
after
she was murdered.”
Malloy nodded. “Yes, we know that. A very cold-blooded individual did this.”
“Second, the shop was completely torn apart. Either the thief was angry because there was nothing of value to steal, or he was looking for something.”
“Looking for what?”
“I don't know. The blue Chinese horse? It's the only thing missing.”
“But that was hanging on the wall in plain sight,” said Irene. “And how do you know there's nothing else missing? Have you finished your inventory and compared it to the last inventory and all the orders received since and records of things sold?”
“That's in process. So far nothing important has come up missing. But I don't think the murderer was looking for a pair of bamboo knitting needles; I think it was something else.”
“What?” Malloy asked again.
“I don't know. I may be wrong, but maybe he just wanted to make you think he was a burglar, and got carried away.”