The Drowning Spool (A Needlecraft Mystery) Page 17

  There was a little silence as Mrs. Cunningham visualized the result. “Oh,” she said softly, then, “Oh, my, that would be lovely.”

  After she left, Godwin said smugly, “There goes another satisfied customer.” Then he mused, “I wonder if that fairy is a gift for Leona.”

  “Why would you think that?” asked Betsy.

  “Well, they’re both Wiccans, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. But both are solitaries—not members of a coven. And I don’t think fairies are Leona’s style. She’s more into the pragmatic uses of magic. Like brewing.”

  “Is brewing magic?”

  “Well, you take a powder that contains invisible living creatures and mix it with roasted barley sprouts and well water while you recite a spell. Then you boil it in a cauldron, and it will make beer.”

  Godwin laughed. “All right, magic. But don’t you think Leona and Mrs. Cunningham know each other?”

  “Sure—the same way you know every gay man in the area.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah, I see what you mean.” A little embarrassed, Godwin went to the checkout desk to file the receipt for Mrs. Cunningham’s purchase.

  When the phone rang, he picked it up. “Crewel World, Godwin speaking, how may I help you?” he said. He held the phone a little away from his ear. Betsy could hear a frantic voice shouting incomprehensibly. “Hold on, hold on!” said Godwin. “Slow down. Who is this, please?” He listened briefly, then said to Betsy. “It’s Frey Kadesh. Something about Teddi’s parents.” He held out the phone.

  “Hello, Frey?” Betsy said. “Is there a problem?”

  “Oh, yes indeed! Mr. and Mrs. Wahlberger are here to begin sorting out Teddi’s things. They brought the clothes that were left at the Watered Silk pool—the ones Teddi was supposed to have worn? Well, they’re mine! I don’t know what to do, I was going to call Sergeant Malloy, but they don’t want me to. They say the police are rude and incompetent, but I say this might be important. So what should I do?”

  “The clothes are yours? Are you sure—I’m sorry, of course you’re sure! That’s very strange, isn’t it? And anything strange could be important.”

  “Could you come over and tell Mr. and Mrs. Wahlberger that?”

  “How about I tell them over the phone?”

  “No, come over, could you?” Frey’s voice suddenly dropped to nearly a whisper. “They’re being very difficult. I tried to tell them who you are, and I don’t think they believed me.”

  Betsy thought briefly. “All right, I’ll be right over.”

  ”I have to go over to Frey and Lia’s house for a little while,” she told Godwin. “Teddi’s parents are there, and Frey says they’re being difficult.” She thrust her fingers into her hair, a sure sign of frustration. “I’m not sure what she expects me to do with them.”

  “You’ll calm them down. You look perfect for a meeting with people who are being difficult,” said Godwin.

  Betsy looked down at herself. She was dressed in a sedate navy blue suit with white piping on its cuffs and collar, the jacket over a white camisole. She refreshed her lipstick, put on her Jean Paul Gaultier confidence-building coat, and hurried out the back door. There was a tiny parking lot behind the building. It ended in a steep, tree-dotted rise currently covered in snow. Betsy’s Buick was crouched beside a Dumpster kept there for her tenants. A thin layer of salt and sand crunched under her feet, and her breath smoked as she hurried to her car.

  The car’s heater had barely stirred to life before she pulled up in front of the blue-shuttered house where Teddi had lived—and died. Betsy was already regretting her decision to come over. What could she possibly say to these people, who were angry and grief-stricken?

  Still, she’d agreed to come, and she was already here. Suck it up, she told herself, and got out of the car.

  Frey answered the door, lifting her eyebrows and rolling her eyes in a swift signal of distress, as she said with false cheer, “Why, Ms. Devonshire, how good of you to visit! Come in, come in!” She was wearing jeweled sandals, tight blue jeans, and a loose-fitting dark green shirt. Her ears twinkled with lots of earrings, and she was wearing too much mascara in an attempt to disguise the redness and puffiness of her eyes.

  Betsy came in and remembered to take off her shoes. She selected a pair of stretchy slippers and went to the squashy couch to put them on. The house smelled of freshly brewed coffee.

  “How’s Thai?” asked Frey.

  “He’s fine,” said Betsy, not wishing to burden the young woman with complaints about the war between Thai and Sophie, as each battled for a place in the household. She stood and took off her coat, which Frey took away with her out of the living room. Only then did Betsy notice the handsome senior couple behind the breakfast bar in the kitchen. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” said the woman, who was short and stocky, with silver hair and a deep tan. She was wearing a black dress, and a silver crucifix hung around her neck.

  She looked at her husband, who obediently said, “How do you do?” He was medium-short, even more darkly tanned than his wife, with thick silver hair and a deeply creased face dominated by a lot of nose and small, sad eyes. He was wearing a purple turtleneck sweater.

  “My name is Betsy Devonshire,” said Betsy. “I own a needlework shop here in Excelsior.”

  “I’m Stan Wahlberger,” said the man, “and this is my wife, Louise. We’re from Marathon, Florida.”

  Betsy smiled. “Isn’t that out on the Keys? I’ve always wanted to visit the Keys.”

  “Yes,” said Louise. She sipped from a mug.

  “Good fishing,” contributed Stan, earning a quashing look from his wife.

  “I understand you are here to begin the sad business of picking up your daughter’s possessions,” said Betsy.

  “Are you three getting acquainted?” asked Frey brightly as she came back into the room.

  “Not really,” said Louise. “Why did you ask her over?”

  “Because she’s a detective, a private eye,” said Frey. “And I wanted her to tell you to tell the police about some of my clothing ending up over at Watered Silk.”

  “I thought she owned a needlework shop,” said Stan.

  “I do,” said Betsy. “But I also sometimes try to solve crimes when people ask me for help. I don’t have a license, but the police are aware of my work.”

  “Ms. Kadesh, did you ask Ms. Devonshire to investigate?” asked Louise, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “No. It was someone else.” Frey looked at Betsy to explain.

  “Your daughter was murdered, which is absolutely horrible,” said Betsy. “I was shocked to hear about that; you must be devastated. The police are investigating, of course, and have shortened the list of possible suspects to three people. One of them is Thomas Shore, who is the grandnephew of two very good friends of mine. Those two friends have asked me to look into the case, with an eye toward clearing Tommy.”

  “And have you, er, ‘cleared’ him?” asked Louise, her voice hard.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Of course you haven’t—and you won’t, he is the father of Teddi’s unborn child . . .” She sobbed once, a heavy, choking sound, and her husband gathered her into his arms and looked angrily at Betsy.

  “But don’t you see,” Frey broke in, “this case can’t get solved if the police—and Betsy—don’t have the information they need to solve it.”

  “What information?” demanded Stan, still angry. “So the filthy beast who murdered our daughter grabbed some clothes from the wrong closet to take along with her body—” He stopped to take a high-pitched breath. “Her body,” he continued, struggling to get the words out, “to that indoor pool. I don’t see how that’s relevant. And I don’t want to subject my wife to more of that . . . that rude cop’s questions!”

  “But Sergeant Malloy—” started Betsy.

  “I don’t know any Sergeant Malloy. We’ve had to deal with a cop—what’s his name—Burgoyne!”

 
; “Oh, him,” said Betsy. “He does have some kind of attitude problem. But we’re in Excelsior, not Hopkins. The policeman you want to talk to is named Mike Malloy. He’s a good man.”

  “I don’t care if he’s Michael the Archangel,” asserted Stan. “No more cops.”

  And they could not be moved from that position.

  Betsy asked to see the clothing that had been returned, and Frey took Betsy upstairs, away from the couple—which was what Betsy wanted.

  “I’m not sure this is a real problem,” she said, once they were inside Frey’s room with the door closed. The room was a little larger than Teddi’s, painted, curtained, and carpeted in a neutral buff color, but with brilliant splashes of red and orange in the duvet, the peacock blue cushion on the little upholstered chair, and a single abstract painting on one wall that might have been the climax of a ballet performance as seen by someone needing glasses. On the duvet lay a sad little heap of clothing: gray wool slacks, a butter yellow sweater, a black bra and panties, a cropped fur jacket that looked like pale mink. On the floor were a pair of high-heeled boots with silver metal trim on the toes and heels.

  “These are from your closet?” asked Betsy.

  “Yes,” said Frey. “Though I would never put these together as an outfit. I mean, those slacks and that sweater? Really! Especially with those boots!”

  “And Teddi never borrowed your clothes?”

  “How could she? I’m four inches taller and ten pounds lighter than she was! None of my stuff fit her, not even my shoes!”

  • • •

  “SO obviously someone came into Frey’s room and pulled this stuff out to take along with Teddi’s body to Watered Silk,” Betsy said to Godwin a little while later.

  “I don’t see why Frey wanted you to come over,” said Godwin. “I agree with you, Teddi’s parents couldn’t control whether or not Frey called the police to tell them about the clothes. They weren’t Teddi’s clothes, after all.”

  “I think they made her nervous, and she wanted an ally to stand with her on her decision. Plus, she feels guilty about Teddi’s murder.”

  “Why should she feel guilty?”

  “Well, suppose something awful were to happen to Rafael—God forbid, of course—but it happens in your condo. Now it’s not your fault, perhaps you were not even there. Wouldn’t you beat yourself up over it, anyway? ‘Why wasn’t I at home? Why didn’t I see this coming?’ Those kind of questions.”

  Godwin nodded. “Oh, wow, yes, you’re right. I think anyone would think those things. Poor Frey. Poor Lia.”

  “And poor Stan and Louise Wahlberger. I have heard repeatedly that the death of a child is the hardest kind of loss there is. Even an adult child—she was still their baby, no matter how old she was.”

  “How awful this all is!” exclaimed Godwin. “I wish it were over!”

  He looked at the drawings of Pres, picked up the one with the three images on one page.

  “I keep thinking I’ve seen him somewhere,” he murmured, attempting to distract himself.

  “I wish you could remember where,” Betsy said, a bit more sharply than she probably meant to. She walked into the back.

  Godwin sat down behind the desk and thought for a minute, then took out a pencil from the soft foam fish head that was a souvenir of a trip to Florida. It was meant to hold a soft drink or beer can, but Betsy used it to hold pens and pencils, a pair of scissors, a crochet hook, a plastic ruler, and a pair of ebony knitting needles, size ten.

  He opened a couple of drawers and found a thin box of tracing tissue paper, took one out, and placed it over the drawing. He traced just the face of the man, and drew a cowboy hat on him. He shook his head no, then traced it again on the same piece of paper, this time giving him lipstick, mascara, and a woman’s bouffant hairdo. Again no. He sighed.

  In the back, Betsy was restoring order to a slanted holder of counted cross-stitch patterns. A customer looking for something had pulled them out in handfuls and left them scattered on the floor. She grew so irritated when that happened.

  “Hey!” shouted Godwin, “here he is!”

  Betsy came rushing out to the desk and halted, surprised. No one was in the shop but Godwin. Nor was anyone walking by outside.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “Here! Here! Look at this!”

  Betsy came for a look at the sheet of tracing paper Godwin was holding out. There were two faces on the sheet. On one of them Godwin had drawn a baseball cap with the Twins logo on it; on the other he had drawn hair parted on the side, hiding the widow’s peak, and redrawn the eyebrows so they were less satanic. He’d lowered the eyelids, and adjusted the mouth from a firm line to an ordinary smile.

  “Okay,” said Betsy, confused. She still didn’t know who he was.

  “He’s the manager at an auto parts store,” Godwin said. “Remember when I needed a new pair of windshield wipers and a new brake pedal pad? I had worn my old one right down to the metal. And you would not believe what the Miata dealership was going to charge me for it. So I went to Halloway’s Auto Parts, and this man”—he took the paper back from Betsy—“got out a huge catalog and looked it up and ordered it for me. Cost me less than half what the dealership would have, so it was worth putting up with his attitude.”

  “Attitude?”

  “Rude. Partly because I’m gay, partly because he’s so important and I’m a time-wasting, ignorant member of the public who just happens to keep his store in business.”

  Betsy smiled.

  Godwin continued, “I had to ask another person to show me how to put the wipers on because he couldn’t be bothered. I was mad at him for three whole minutes, and I broke a nail doing it myself, but it was worth it for the money I saved.” He held out a slim-fingered hand complacently.

  “So what’s his name?” asked Betsy.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. But hey,” he added, “at least I’ve told you where you can find him.”

  • • •

  BETSY took her Buick to Halloway’s Auto Parts in Saint Louis Park. She noted the pale blue pickup trucks with the fiberglass tires on their roofs, a memorable advertising gimmick. The building was large, white, and single story. TONY HALLOWAY AUTO PARTS, read a long blue and yellow sign across the front, the o’s shaped like tires.

  Betsy pulled into a parking slot near the main entrance and went in to find stacks of tires—their smell was overpowering—and row upon row of automobile parts and supplies, from many kinds of engine oil to air filters to headlights to brake pads, and so on. After a brief search, she found in one aisle a bewildering number of windshield wipers in myriad sizes.

  She went to the long counter in back to ask for help. There were three men standing behind it, none of whom looked like Pres. One of them was helping a burly man in work clothes. Cut into the middle of the wall behind him was a broad door into the back. There must be a big warehouse behind it, Betsy thought, remembering the sheer size of the building from when she first entered the parking area. She wondered if Pres was back there and how to summon him if he was.

  But first, she might as well attend to the errand that brought her to Halloway’s Auto Parts. The counterman she chose to talk to was young, of medium height and average build with dusty-brown hair, amiable blue eyes, and very large hands. He wore dark blue coveralls with a HALLOWAY logo over the pocket and above it his first name, James.

  “My windshield wipers are streaking,” she said, “so I want to replace them. Normally I go to my dealer, but I’ve decided to save some money by buying new ones here and putting them on myself.”

  “What are you driving?” asked James with a smile.

  “A three-year-old Buick Regal,” she replied, and added, in case it mattered, “four door.”

  James’s amused smile told her it didn’t. He consulted a thick catalog to find the right kind of wipers for her car. She went back to the wiper aisle to choose a heavy-duty variety that promised to sweep away sandy salt-water as well as snow. />
  She paid for the wipers, then went out to install them, a task she’d seen done many times in her driving lifetime but had never tried before. To her surprise, she couldn’t even get the old wipers off.

  Embarrassed, she went back inside, to the same young man, and asked him if he could show her how it was done.

  He turned and went to the warehouse door and shouted, “Pres, you back there?”

  And to Betsy’s gratification, out came a medium-tall, slender man with dark hair and eyes, looking a whole lot like Goddy’s reinterpretation of Teddi’s sketch. He was not dressed in coveralls but was instead wearing a nice black sport coat and gray trousers. He followed James to where Betsy stood.

  “This young woman,” said James, “can’t put the wipers we just sold her on her car. Okay if I help her?”

  Pres looked at Betsy with an impatient grimace, looked around to see no customers waiting, then lifted a what-the-hell hand. “All right, go ahead.”

  James made his own grimace of apology at Betsy for the man’s attitude, shrugged himself into a winter-weight jacket, lifted the wipers off the counter, and said, “Follow me.” He went down to the end of the counter and led Betsy out to the parking lot.

  “Where—oh, there.” He strode quickly to Betsy’s car and in a few seconds had her old wipers off.

  “Will you show me how to do that?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He put one of the old wipers back on and showed her the little lever on its underside that could be lifted so it slid off. “Easy peasy,” he said with a smile.

  She watched as he opened the package holding her new wipers. But before he could put them on, she asked, “Is your boss always so rude to customers?”

  He almost dropped the empty package. “What did you say?”

  “He gave me such a look when you asked if you could help me put those on. Is he always like that? Who is he, anyway?”

  James looked over his shoulder at the big front windows as if afraid he’d find Pres watching. “He’s the store manager, Preston Munro. And he’s all right.” But that last was said in a tone of resigned disbelief.