Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 (21 page)

“Maybe he was angry that he'd broken in and there wasn't anything worth his while to steal.”

“You would think killing the owner would be revenge enough,” said Betsy, and to her chagrin she sobbed just once.

Malloy sat very still, watching, until he was sure she wasn't going to break down. Then he said, “It's a stinking shame what happened to your sister. This is a quiet town, with a low crime rate. We haven't had a murder here in years. Everyone is angry and upset over it, and I want to assure you that I'm putting in a lot of overtime working the case. Your reporting the missing items really helped, because when someone rummaging in the trash for aluminum cans found this stuff, I got called and here we are. And I appreciate your thoughts as well. I don't want you to think I'm dismissing them just because you aren't a professional like I am.” He smiled, stood, and held out his hand.

Betsy, following suit, shook it. Malloy only nodded at Irene, who nodded back. He opened the door to his office.

“I hope you don't mind if I keep working the burglar angle,” he said. “After all, the calculator wasn't found in that trash barrel. Maybe he hasn't dropped out of school yet and needs a calculator. But it's that embroidered horse that will identify him as the thief when we catch him, and help us get a confession.”

Irene asked eagerly, “You have a suspect?”

“I think I can safely say that significant progress is being made,” he said, gesturing her out.

Betsy reluctantly followed. “Who's your suspect?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I don't want to say anything at this point that might jeopardize the case or put an innocent person in a false light,” he said, dodging around them and leading the way down the hall. “I will keep you informed, I promise. What I need from you now is a little more patience.”

And before Betsy knew it, she was alone with Irene in the little foyer.

Irene thanked Betsy profusely for “this most interesting experience,” and went her way. Betsy returned to the shop.

When she walked in, Joe Mickels was waiting for her. “I've come to see who's paying the rent,” he said. “Or are you going to make me put in a claim against the estate?”

“I can't do that,” she said. “The corporation didn't die; it is an immortal entity.” She remembered reading that somewhere and was pleased to note he was familiar enough with the concept to look a trifle diminished. In fact, as she approached him, she saw that he wasn't a whole lot taller than she was. Funny how she remembered him as a big man. Perhaps it was that fierce Viking face, with its bristling sideburns. And the fact that he was a landlord and the bane of Margot's life for many years. His legs, she noticed now, were very short and a little bowed. She wondered if there had been a shortage of milk while he was growing up.

“I assume you want the check sent to the same address where Margot sent it,” she said, stepping around him to go behind the desk and opening the center drawer to get out the Crewel World checkbook. “Or, since you're here, shall I just give it to you directly?” She pulled a pen from a small basket of pens, pencils, foot rulers, and scissors and prepared to write.

“The September rent has been paid, so you have a month's grace,” he grudged, and handed her a business card with his name and a post office box number on it. “Send October's rent here.” Some of his arrogance returned. “And don't be late.”

“I won't be,” she snapped, and promised herself she'd live on milk and crackers if necessary to make that true.

He turned and looked around the store, nearly restored to its former state. “Not many customers,” he noted.

“We're doing fine,” she said. “By the way, I've just been talking to the man investigating Margot's murder.”

“Yeah?” he grunted, but there was a flicker of interest in his ice-blue eyes.

“He told me he has a suspect in the case.”

“Who?” The word came sharply.

“He wouldn't say. I told him—say, would you like a cup of coffee?”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What for?”

She feigned exasperation. “Because I'm having one, and it's only common courtesy to offer. Do you take cream and sugar?”

Wordlessly, he nodded, and wordlessly took the pretty cup when she brought it to him. His fingers were too thick to fit even one through the small handle.

“It was so horrible about Margot,” she said, stirring her own sugared cup. “I didn't think things like that happened in small towns.”

“It's a city.”

“That's right. Margot told me. Something about a law that every town had to reconfigure itself as a city or go out of existence. So why didn't Excelsior make its boundaries city size?”

Mickels shrugged his heavy shoulders. “The town council had a big fight over where to set the borders, either city size, way beyond where the town already was, or just where it was then. They figured that if they expanded the borders, they'd get stuck with high taxes bringing water and sewage to everyone, so they chose to limit the borders. They're still arguing over whether or not it was a good idea.”

“What do you think?”

He shrugged again. “It doesn't matter to me. It saved downtown, I guess, but the tax base is too small. There are other towns that had the same choice, and most of them stayed small, too. Then once their borders were settled, Shorewood took the rest. So anytime you're not sure what city you're in out here, you're in Shorewood.”

Betsy smiled. “Are you from Excelsior?”

He nodded.

“Do they have a good police department?”

He frowned. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to be sure they can find out who murdered my sister, Mr. Mickels.”

“I thought you said the police have it solved.”

“I said, the detective thinks it was a burglar. But if he has a suspect, why isn't he under arrest? And what if it wasn't a burglar at all?”

His bushy eyebrows met over his nose. “Not a burglar? Then who?”

“Someone who had a reason for wanting the owner of this shop out of the way. Someone, perhaps, like you, Mr. Mickels.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then put his cup on the desk, turned, and started for the door.

“Where were you the night she was murdered, Mr. Mickels?” she called after him.

He stopped at the door and there was another long moment of weighty silence. “I was at a business meeting in St. Cloud,” he said at last. “Not that it is any business of yours.”

“Of course it's my business! She was my sister.” Betsy felt her eyes start to sting, and turned away. “Just go,” she said, but the door had already closed.

 

That night up in the apartment, she remained furious at herself for openly accusing Mickels before finding out if he had an alibi. Of course he'd claim to have one, asked the way he had been! And she wasn't sure how to go about proving it false.

She opened a can of soup for supper, watched the early news, then convinced herself she was tired and went to bed.

But she couldn't fall asleep. She got up and dragged on her robe and wandered the apartment for a while, wondering if she might be hungry. But a look in the refrigerator convinced her she wasn't.

Finally she found a radio station that played classical music, sat down in her sister's chair, and took up her knitting.

To her surprise, after ten minutes of it, she felt her mind, like a pond that has been disturbed and then left alone, settle and grow clear.

Mickels's remark notwithstanding, Crewel World had had a good day, saleswise. But there had been more deliveries—most of them, fortunately, with an invoice that gave her thirty or more days to pay. But even ninety days to pay was shorter than the five or six months it was going to take to close the estate. She hoped she could do enough business to make those payments.

Shelly had come back in soon after Joe had left, and said it was time to plan the Christmas display. Shelly and Godwin—who were going to be essential to the continuance of the shop, Betsy was already aware—put their heads together and came up with a design for the front window that looked okay to Betsy.

Later both of them, having apparently discussed it between taking an order for a thousand dollars' worth of silk and metallics for a woman doing an enormous canvas of an Erté-like portrait and explaining the use of an eggbeaterlike device for twisting yarn into braid to a woman who bought two as gifts, had come and sat her down and wanted to know what her plans were. It was obvious they wanted her to keep Crewel World open. She'd been nearly as touched as alarmed. She hadn't agreed—it felt too much like a trap for someone of her ignorance to promise to stay and run a small business in a state notorious for fierce winters. Didn't blizzards close the stores and schools around here for great hunks of the winter?

Hey, she didn't even have a winter coat. And she didn't know how to knit a pair of mittens. She looked down at the red scarf, which was now over a foot in length. She'd put another inch on it sitting here musing, and there was not an error in it, amazingly. So maybe she could do a mitten.

No, wait, mittens had that thumb sticking out. How did one do a thumb? She recalled Godwin knitting his sock. He'd been using four needles, three of them stuck in the project and the fourth used to make and lift off the stitches, around and around, so there was no seam. One set of four to do the hand and another set of littler ones to do the thumb? No, wait, she remembered her mother's hand-knitted mittens. The thumb's stitches weren't smaller than the rest of the mitten. She smirked a little at being able to figure that out. She was learning.

But her ignorance wasn't the main problem. There were people who knew how to run the shop, and they were eager to help. But Betsy needed to decide if she was going to stay, and if not, to decide where she was going to go. And to start making plans to do one or the other.

She turned her knitting around and started back across the row; purl two, knit two. The first three inches of the scarf didn't have the promised welts or ridges or whatever in them, and she had figured out all by herself that when she began a new row, she should do the opposite of what she'd done; that is, where she'd knitted, now she should purl, and vice versa. In two more rows, there were the ribs, boldly standing up. And now that it was long enough to really see, the pattern was very attractive. She had thought about tearing out the beginning, but decided it made an interesting edge, kind of lacy. She'd make the same “mistake” at the other end, if she ever got that far. Shelly had said a good scarf was at least six feet long.

She looked at her knitting. Where was she? Ah, knit two.

First of all, was she going to stay in Excelsior at least until her sister's murder was solved? Yes.

Well then, she'd better make a success of the shop, because she was scared how swiftly the Crewel World bank balance was draining out. She was down to the dregs of what she'd brought with her, and her credit cards were near their limit. It was great that Margot had left so much money, but Betsy couldn't touch any of it for months, according to Mr. Penberthy. And while today's sales were good, Godwin had remarked on the amount that had come in, which meant it was unusual, which meant tomorrow and the day after might not be good at all.

So, maybe she should go ahead and hold that going-out-of-business sale and try to live over at Christopher Inn on the proceeds until Detective Mike Malloy arrested the burglar with a mother who had a birthday coming up.

Because she was not leaving Excelsior until Margot's murderer was behind bars.

But suppose it wasn't a burglar? Suppose she was right and Detective Mike Malloy was wrong, and Margot's murder had been a personal matter? Since her body was found in Crewel World, she probably had been murdered by someone with a connection to the shop. Then, since the motive involved the shop, if Betsy closed the shop, her contacts with people connected with the place ended. And if Joe Mickels's alibi checked out, she might have to look elsewhere for the murderer.

So the shop had to stay open, at least for now.

But on the other hand, Betsy still didn't know what she was doing at Crewel World. Okay, she could write up sales slips, she could read and understand invoices. And she could knit, embroider, and just today she realized she could tell silk from perle cotton from wool at a glance. Just as she could tell at a glance that she had knitted one and needed to knit another. Purl two.

But what about payroll? When were paychecks issued? And in what amount? And how did one figure withholding taxes? And what did one do with the money withheld? She felt the familiar despair come over her. How in the world did she think she was going to do this? She was a fool—an old fool! Her fingers cramped and she realized she was gripping the needles too tightly. She forced herself to open them, wriggled them a bit, then slowly knit and purled her way across the rest of the row, waiting for her mind to settle and clear again.

When it did, a memory rose up. Years ago, right out of the navy, Betsy had worked in a small office, and had helped the office manager do payroll. She remembered it fiadn't been all that hard.

And Jill had said that Margot kept all her business information in her computer.

It was time to have a look. Betsy put down her knitting, careful to stick the pointed ends of the needles into the ball of yarn to keep the stitches in place, and marched into Margot's bedroom.

Everything was as it had been, the bed smoothed rather than properly made, Margot's makeup still on the dresser, the scent of her perfume still lingering in the air.