Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 (2 page)

“She liked to put her name or her initials or her husband or daughter's name somewhere in her work. One time she did it by crossing blades of grass so they spelled out
Lucy.
You'd never notice it unless someone told you it was there.”

“That's right, I'd forgotten about that.” Patricia started to come closer, then waved a hand in front of her nose and sneezed twice before she could step back out of range. “Allergic to mildew,” she said thickly. “Whew!”

Phil asked her, “Still think we should toss it?”

She hesitated, then asked back, “How sure are you this is Lucy Abrams's work?”

“I'm not sure about anything except death and taxes. We can ask her daughter to confirm it, but I'll bet you a dollar she'll say it is. You sound like you're changin' your mind.”

“Well, you know the parish thought the world of the Reverend and Mrs. Abrams. And mildew's not hard to get out. From here it looks like it's done in continental or basket weave, so it should be easy enough to repair. And it is a very nice piece. So yes, I am changing my vote—on a contingency. If it is her work, we should try to restore it. And if we succeed, I think it should go in the columbarium. Or better, the new library.” She brightened.
“Which
we should rename in honor of Father Keane.”

“Say, that's an idea!” said Phil. “I'll help you with the repairs, if I may.”

“I was counting on you to volunteer.”

Phil saw the look Father John was giving him and said, “I'm a pretty good needleworker, took it up when I retired.”

Patricia said, “He designs and stitches steam engine needlepoint canvases. He has them all over his living room. Extremely nice work.”

“Thank you, Patricia,” said Phil with a little bow. “Coming from you, that's a real compliment.” Phil had very old-fashioned manners.

“How much will this cost?” asked Father John. He had been increasingly alarmed at the ever-rising estimates of this renovation—the hammer-beam roof being a particularly costly item—and the reluctance of his parishioners to be as generous with donations as they were with ideas.

Patricia gave him a quelling look. “I'm sure this won't cost Trinity a cent, Father,” she said. “Once people find out what it is and what our plans are for it, they'll be more than willing to contribute to restoring this marvelous find.”

Father John had heard that tone of voice before. It meant that will he, nil he, this tapestry was going to get cleaned and repaired in time to hang in the Reverend Keane Abrams Library.

 

When Betsy came down to Crewel World on Friday morning, she saw out the big front window that it was snowing, huge flakes like the ending of a Christmas movie. Betsy sighed. It had seemed so beautiful a few weeks ago—and it was no less beautiful now. But also, she was now resentfully aware, snow had to be shoveled. Shoveling was not pretty.

Even the Christmas lights around the window didn't jingle her pleasure circuits. White Christmases should be a novelty to Betsy, who had spent many years in California. But they were no novelty in Minnesota, which often saw white Thanksgivings—they had, this year. This was the sixth snowfall since mid-November. Hardly any had melted between the last three storms, so it was really piling up. Betsy was already tired of snow.

She went to unlock the front door and let Godwin, her one full-time employee, in. He stood a moment on the plastic mat, dusting his shoulders and stamping his feet. He was young, blond, good-looking, an expert at all kinds of needlework, and Betsy's most valuable asset. She was ashamed she couldn't pay him what he was worth.

He hung his beautiful navy blue wool coat up in back, and they began the opening-up routine, turning on lights and putting the start-up cash in the register. Betsy stooped to turn on the radio hidden on a shelf half behind three counted cross stitch books. A local station was playing all Christmas music all the time, and Betsy kept the radio tuned to that, though at this point she was more than weary of singing heraldic angels and Rudolph's cruel companions.

Godwin got out the feather duster and began dusting.

She looked around. “A-rew?” came a cat's polite inquiry.

“I see you, Sophie.” The big white cat with the tan and gray patches had come downstairs with Betsy and made herself comfortable on “her” chair, the one with the blue gray cushion. The sweet-mannered animal was as much a part of Crewel World as the Madeira silks or the eighteen-count needlepoint canvases.

“Rrrr?” trilled Sophie hopefully.

“No snacks,” said Betsy, and the cat sighed and put her head down to wait for a more malleable visitor.

Betsy went to the back room to put on the ugly but warm coat she'd found at a secondhand store and went out to clear the sidewalk in front of her shop.

When she came back in, breathless, falling snow had already laid a thin white cover upon her work. She went to plug in the teakettle and put the shovel away. Godwin had finished dusting and was restocking the yarn bins.

The shop door opened—
bing!
went an electronic bell—and George Hollytree came in, feebly stamping snow off his galoshes. Betsy hurried to take his attaché case and help him with his heavy tweed overcoat. “Hello, Betsy,” he piped in an old man's voice.

Mr. Hollytree was eighty-nine. His small, rheumy eyes were set in a pale face as rumpled and folded as an unmade bed. His hands were roped with blue veins and his fingers were gnarled, the fingernails thick and yellow. He was, God help her, Betsy's accountant.

But for all his years, he looked Betsy up and down with an appreciative smile. Betsy was plump by today's standards, but the old man would have described her as voluptuous. More, her complexion was fresh, her clear blue eyes were friendly and intelligent. Her cropped hair had some natural curl to it, and she had recently converted its gray streaks to blond with a home coloring kit. And she was nearly forty years younger than he was, a mere child.

Mr. Hollytree walked stiff-kneed to the library table in the middle of the shop. He sat on the chair at the head of the table and opened his attaché case and brought out a very up-to-date calculator, the kind with several memories and the ability to print a tape.

“You are doing quite well keeping up with transactions,” he piped, speaking slowly around ill-fitting false teeth. From a pocket in the lid of the case, he extracted a file folder with Crewel World in thick black letters on its tab. Betsy noted two other file folders in the pocket as she walked behind him, and wondered who else was keeping this man from a happy retirement in a warm climate. She sat down at his right, prepared to listen.

Mr. Hollytree had turned up a couple of weeks after her sister Margot's death. He'd explained that Margot kept computer records of sales and purchases related to the shop, and he turned them into tax records and an account of profit and loss. Frail as he appeared, he seemed to know his business. And Betsy, helplessly ignorant, had reached for his expertise like a drowning sailor grabbing at a broken spar. She had followed his instructions, and the second time he appeared, she had a computer disc ready for him. He had insisted on explaining the charts he made of her data, and though he'd been as slow and patient as he could, she understood only that so far, the shop was paying for itself.

Until today. Today, his high-pitched sigh was deeper, his shuffling of papers more snippy, his patience with her ignorance more fleeting.

“Now look here, young woman,” he said at last, causing her to blush like a teenager, “what it comes down to is this: You are on the verge of spending more than you are taking in. This cannot continue. Early winter is supposed to be the best time of year for a business that serves the public, but yours is actually doing worse than last month.” His mouth formed a grim line. “Unless you do remarkably well this month, this will be the third or fourth worst Christmas since I have been keeping Crewel World's books.”

Betsy felt a rush of defiance. “Perhaps if we checked, we'd find the bad Christmas seasons occurred for reasons beyond the owner's control, such as a bad economy or,” she rushed to add, since the economy could hardly have been hotter, “bad weather?”

The old man glared at her, then his face wrinkled alarmingly as he began to cackle. “You are Margot's sister, all right!” he crowed. “I wondered if you would ever show your spunk, or if maybe your sister got it all.”

Betsy smiled. “There's far too much spunk in our family for just one of us to hold it all, Mr. Hollytree. And I'm sorry we're not doing so well right now. But I'm doing the best I can, and I don't know what changes I can make.”

“Since salaries are your biggest expense, you need to cut your employees' hours. Check what your competition is charging and charge less, even if it's only a penny less—and make sure your customers know your prices are lower.”

Betsy nodded. “I'll talk to my employees about working fewer hours. Perhaps, with Christmas so close, they've got all their shopping done and won't be so disappointed in smaller paychecks. And I'll look into competition prices.”

“Perhaps you should hold your after-holiday sale now. That means a special advertisement, but you'll more than make it up in extra sales.”

Betsy hadn't done any advertising at all, and her face must have shown that, because he said, “I thought so, when I saw no expenses for ads. Some people may think Crewel World's gone out of business because its original owner is dead. I am sorry to add another expense to your burden, but advertising always pays, especially when there's a change of ownership.”

Betsy hadn't thought about that. There had been so many people who rallied around her when her sister was murdered that it never occurred to her that there were people out there who didn't know about her. What a terrible thought; once-loyal customers who had found another source of supply! Customers who might still be loyal, who might keep Crewel World in the black, if only they knew.

Oh, yes, she must advertise, tell these people Crewel World was still here, ready to serve all their needlework needs.

But how, with money already in short supply? How much did advertising cost, anyhow? Where was the best place to put it? What should she say in her ad? She didn't want to make a further display of ignorance by asking her accountant. Maybe Godwin would know.

Mr. Hollytree was making a neat stack of her copies of his report. He paper-clipped his calculator printout to it before rising. Godwin brought his coat and helped him back into it.

Betsy answered his good-byes almost absently. Crewel World's logo, needle and yarn spelling
Crewel
World
in cross stitch, should appear in the ad. And how deeply could she cut the prices of—what? What bargains would be most likely to bring customers in?

Though Godwin must have wondered what she was thinking, for once he didn't ask. Instead, he went to take inventory of the stitchery books in the box shelves toward the back of the store. Such books were a big favorite as Christmas gifts, and he wanted to make sure they weren't out of the most popular ones.

When the phone rang half an hour later, he was putting an order of little scissors, thimbles, and other items on a spinner rack near the back, so Betsy put down her pencil to answer it.

“Crewel World, good morning, how may I help you?”

A mild voice said, “Good morning, Betsy. This is Father John Rettger of Trinity. Are you busy at present? I can call back.”

Betsy said, “Oh, hello, Father. Unfortunately, no, we're not busy. What can I do for you?”

“I don't know if you are aware, but we're about to start a major renovation of the church hall and business offices of our church.”

Betsy had seen the story in the weekly
Excelsior. Bay Times.
(What would it cost for a two-column ad in the Times?) “Yes, I read about it.”

“Well, we're in a great uproar, moving furniture, cleaning out storage areas, and so forth. Not surprisingly, we are finding things we thought were lost or sold or given away long ago.”

“Mm-hmmm,” Betsy murmured. Her eye fell on the ad she had been designing. Would it cost a great deal more to put the word
SALE
in red?

“One of the things we're going to do is expand our library. We have found a tapestry in a basement storage closet that would be very appropriate. Unfortunately, the tapestry has been damaged by moths—not very badly, but noticeably.”

“Mn-hmm.” A tapestry, a huge ruglike thing people hung on castle walls.

“Patricia Fairland, who is a member of our vestry, has kindly volunteered to coordinate the restoration of the tapestry. She said I should tell you that it is not woven but stitched, a distinction I am afraid is lost on me. It is about six feet long and four wide, a beautiful thing, very appropriate for the use we hope to put it to.”

That wasn't so enormous. But Betsy, mindful of those extra hours she was going to have to work, said, “I don't think I'll be able to volunteer right now, this is the busiest part of—”

“Oh, I wouldn't presume to make demands on your time. I understand that as new and sole proprietor of a business, your time is very limited. No, I was hoping you would be able to make a contribution of materials for the restoration.”

This, on the heels of a warning of imminent failure to break even, should have made Betsy refuse immediately. But wait—surely there would be more stories in the paper as renovation continued, and a big one on completion. If there was a photo that included the tapestry, perhaps Betsy could be mentioned as contributing to its restoration.
Free advertising,
whispered the merchant in her.