The Drowning Spool (A Needlecraft Mystery) Read online

  “That’s right, I do. This is a sideline. It’s something I’ve been doing for several years. I have a list of satisfied clients.”

  Pam hesitated so long that Betsy was sure she’d refuse. But finally she threw up her hands and said, “Oh, what the heck. Sure. See me in my office, off the exercise room, as soon as you get dressed.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wilma was on time for the class, appearing bright, interested, and energetic. But she looked at Betsy without any sign of recognition, so Betsy didn’t tell her she’d found the cross-stitch pattern she’d asked for. There’d be time for that later.

  Pam was in an imaginative mood today. She called for different sets of exercises, such as touching the right foot with the left hand, and then touching the left foot with the right hand, repeating that movement four times before changing it to lifting alternating feet behind and reaching for them with opposite fingers four times. Repeat. Repeat. She had them do jumping jack arms while making cross-country ski movements with their legs. She even had them skipping across the pool, a movement Betsy hadn’t done since childhood and found surprisingly difficult to do in the water.

  Wilma, whooping with glee, did the exercises with no apparent trouble and a lot of splashing. Since it was easier to splash in the shallower end of the pool, she stayed there—which was just as well, since the others mostly stayed in the deeper water.

  At the end of class, as they climbed up the ramp to the apron, Wilma winked at Betsy and said, “See you on Thursday!” So she had recognized her. Or maybe she just had a lucid moment. Whatever the case, she stayed in the pool to splash some more.

  Betsy showered and dressed hastily, then went through the exercise room and between the two treadmills to Pam’s little office. It was brand new—like the rest of this end of the facility—and ferociously neat. It was also stiflingly hot.

  “They’re working on the heat problem,” Pam said. She was dressed in a sleeveless knit top with white and blue stripes and white shorts. She stood to shake Betsy’s hand across her small desk.

  “Too bad you don’t have an outdoor window you could crack,” said Betsy. The temperature outside was seventeen degrees, which would have cooled things down in a hurry. Three of the office walls were solid, painted cream, bordered by a couple of file cabinets and a credenza topped by a computer. The computer screen displayed the logo of Watered Silk (a red streaming banner with a single watered silk mark like a stylized kiss in the center, which Betsy thought amazingly risqué for a retirement center). The logo drifted across the screen, bumping diagonally off its borders.

  The wall with the door into Pam’s office also featured a large window overlooking the exercise room, the kind of double-paned window that does not open.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Pam, sitting down again, and resting her clasped fingers on a single file folder in the center of her small gray desk.

  Betsy sat in the wooden-armed upholstered chair. “Tell me how people can get into the pool area without going through the door.”

  Pam looked past Betsy at the door to the pool she could see through her window. “They can’t,” she said.

  “I did,” Betsy pointed out. “I came to it from the locker room.”

  Pam shrugged that off. “But you came into the pool area first through that door.” She nodded at it. “Then into the locker room, and then out again. There’s no back entrance.”

  “What about the men’s locker room?” asked Betsy. “Is there another way into the men’s locker room than from the pool area?”

  Pam hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I’m sure there isn’t.”

  “Ethan told me that the door to the pool has a key lock, not an electronic one.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who has a key?”

  “I do, as does my fellow physical therapist, the administrator, and the head of maintenance.” Pam’s fellow physical therapist had come into the pool room near the end of that morning’s class, and remained there with Wilma.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “So even if someone managed to get into the building without being seen, she couldn’t get into the pool area.”

  “Not without a key,” Pam said, a trifle smugly.

  “But someone did, obviously.”

  That wiped the smug look away. “Yes.” Pam put a slender hand sideways over her mouth for a few moments, her eyes wide and blank. “It was the most awful thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  Betsy did not reply, and after another pause, Pam continued, “I can’t think how she got in there, if the night guard didn’t let her in. I mean, there’s just no way.”

  “But Ethan didn’t have a key, so he couldn’t have let her in, or the person bringing her into the pool,” said Betsy. “I’d like to know why he was fired.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t fired, maybe he quit. I mean, it doesn’t seem fair to fire him, does it? So maybe they didn’t. They haven’t told me anything about it.”

  “Have you ever loaned your key to someone?”

  “No . . .” Pam frowned and bit her top lip. “Well, actually that’s not true. The last time I went on vacation, I gave my key to my substitute. She left it in the desk drawer, I found it when I got back.” Pam gestured at her desk.

  “When was this?” asked Betsy.

  Pam thought, then turned to her computer and brought up a calendar. “Five months ago. I was gone for twelve days.”

  “Was your office locked? The desk drawer?”

  Pam drew up her shoulders a little. “No.”

  “So how long was the key to the pool in the drawer?”

  “Just overnight. I called my substitute about it, and she said it never left her key ring until she left it in the desk drawer on her last day.”

  “May I have her name?” Betsy had been rummaging in her purse for the reporter’s notebook she carried when sleuthing. She brought it out, along with the beautiful wood-cased ballpoint pen Connor had given her.

  “Heidi Langstrom. She’s now at Courage Center.”

  Betsy nodded. Heidi was one of her water aerobics instructors over there, and a licensed physical therapist. She would call her later today.

  “Now, Teddi Wahlberger was found naked in the pool, right?”

  Pam frowned and her lips thinned as if in pain. Clearly she was distressed that Betsy knew this. But then she nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Betsy continued, “We know she was brought to the pool already dead, possibly in an attempt to make people think she came here to swim and drowned in the pool. But to make that ruse work, her clothing should have been here, too. Was there clothing belonging to her in the locker room?”

  “No, it was piled up near the ramp. I didn’t look through it, of course, but I remember there was a beautiful fur jacket on top. It might’ve been fake fur, but it looked real. And a pair of high-heeled leather boots. Both black.”

  “Was there a purse?”

  “I didn’t see one, but it could have been under the coat.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I think I remember seeing one end of a bra sticking out at the bottom. It was black or dark brown.” She was frowning in an earnest attempt to be thorough. “That’s all I remember. But it was a pile of clothing, obviously more things were under the coat.”

  “You’re sure you’ve never seen the woman before?”

  “I’m sure.” She shuddered and rubbed her fingers together as if to wipe off the remembered feel of dead flesh.

  “Any idea how long she’d been in the water?”

  “No. She was stiff—that’s rigor mortis—but I don’t know how long it takes for that to set in. I understand that the warmer the body is, the faster it takes hold, though, and our pool is right around ninety-three degrees. I locked up at four in the afternoon the day before. Residents can get into the exercise room at any time; their pass keys will open that door. I haven’t heard that any resident reported someone in the pool.�
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  “Have you ever left the key to the pool in your office?”

  “No, I keep it on my key ring.”

  Betsy could see that Pam was getting impatient, and she couldn’t think of anything else to ask, so she thanked Pam and left the building.

  She was sitting at a stoplight when it struck her: That coat should not have been on top of the pile. When a person undresses, the outer garments come off first, then the inner. Underwear last. But Teddi’s bra was on the bottom, her coat on top. Did that mean anything? It would have if it were not already known that Teddi didn’t stand there, undressing herself. Right?

  The car behind Betsy’s honked; she was in danger of sitting through a green light. Betsy hated when she sat behind an oblivious driver. Connor had once remarked that she was a little quick to blow her horn at drivers slow to realize the light had turned. Betsy had determined to reform, and once sat while a woman in the car ahead of her carried out some interaction with an unseen person in the passenger seat—changing a diaper, judging by the movement of her arms—through two green lights. She had turned to Connor then and said smugly, “See?” And Connor had not said anything about it again.

  The car behind her honked again. So here she was, caught in the same error. Blushing and angry, waving an apology, she hurried through the intersection and focused on her driving the rest of the way back to Excelsior.

  Once in the shop, she took care of a customer, then phoned the Courage Center and left a message for Heidi Langstrom to call her at her convenience.

  A little before noon, Heidi called. “Just a few quick questions,” Betsy said.

  “The repairs on the pool are moving right along,” Heidi said promptly. “We’ll reopen on schedule.”

  “That’s great,” said Betsy, “but that’s not what I’m calling about.”

  “Oh?”

  “You took over at Watered Silk while Pam Fielding was on vacation, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Is that where you’re going in the interim?”

  “Yes. Pam says she gave you the key to the pool, and that you left it in her desk drawer the last day you worked there.”

  “That’s right. Was there a problem about that?”

  “Was her office locked when no one was in there, do you remember?”

  Heidi hesitated. “I . . . don’t remember—I don’t think so. Why, was her key missing?”

  “No, it was there. It’s just that the key is the only way into the pool area, and they’re supposed to keep a tight hold on it.”

  Heidi chuckled. “Skinny-dippers a problem over there?”

  Betsy dutifully chuckled back. “Not that I know of. Well, thanks, Heidi.”

  “You’re welcome. Say, wait a second! You don’t think that’s how that drowned woman got into the pool over there, do you?”

  “I don’t know how she got in. Nobody does.”

  “Oh my God, I hope not. But wait a minute, I don’t see how I could be responsible, that was nearly six months ago, and this woman drowned just last week. But now I’m gonna worry till somebody finds out how. Jeez. Well, see you in a few weeks.”

  Eight

  THE following Monday, Betsy asked Bershada to stay after the Monday Bunch meeting broke up.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t solve Ethan’s problem with Watered Silk,” she said. “The police no longer think Ethan drowned that poor woman, but they reached that conclusion on their own, not because I brought them some information.”

  Bershada nodded. “But they still believe he let into the building whoever brought her body to Watered Silk. Maybe they don’t believe it with the same conviction as before—but still.” She thought for a moment. “It turns out there are some holes in their security. It could have been someone else who works there, or even someone who lives there. I think it was a resident; after all, some of them are no longer thinking very clearly.”

  “That’s true. But the problem remains: There are only four keys to the pool itself, and Ethan had access to none of them.”

  “So that would seem to mean the people they should look at are those four. Who are they?”

  “Pam and Jaydie, the physical therapists, and Felicia Colt—she’s the administrator of the complex—and whoever is the head of maintenance. I don’t know his name.” Betsy frowned at this lapse. “I should find that out, shouldn’t I?”

  Bershada nodded. “Maybe Ethan knows, I’ll ask him.”

  She called Betsy later that day. “Ethan says his name is Paul Juggins, with two g’s. He lost his job, too.”

  Betsy, surprised, laughted. “Juggins? Are you serious?”

  “That’s his name, according to Ethan. Why?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Does Ethan know how to contact him?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  But Juggins was not a common surname, and Betsy quickly found a phone number for a Paul Juggins living in Hopkins.

  Mr. Juggins was an angry man. He kept saying, “Who is this? Who is this?” And “Well, what do you expect me to say?” And, “I don’t work there anymore, I don’t know what they’re doing now.” His voice was deep and resonant, and might have been pleasant if he weren’t so angry.

  Finally, Betsy said, “Can I buy you lunch? Or dinner?”

  “What?”

  “If you will agree to sit down and talk to me, let me explain what I want from you, I’ll buy you lunch at the restaurant of your choice.”

  He asked suspiciously, “Talk about what?”

  “The woman who was found drowned in the therapy pool.”

  That brought on an explosion of remarkably creative profanity, mostly regarding the improbable recreational habits of Watered Silk staff. Betsy held the receiver a little away from her ear until the image-laden noises faded to mere grumbling. Then she said, “I want you to tell me how you think someone brought that already dead woman into the building.”

  “Already dead? Who told you that? How do you know she was already dead? Hold on; do you think I had something to do with it?”

  “I’m not asking if you did it, I’m asking you—an expert on the layout of that building—how it was done.”

  “Who told you I’m an expert?”

  “You worked there how long?”

  There was a brief pause, then, “Six years, since it first opened.”

  “So you must know every nook and cranny of the place. You know all the entrances and exits. You went into places nobody else gets into. I bet, if you thought about it, you could tell me probably three ways to get into that building that nobody else knows about.”

  Juggins fell silent, except for some noisy breathing. “Well . . .” he finally said.

  “Will you meet me so we can talk?” she pressed.

  “Who are you again?”

  “My name is Devonshire, Betsy Devonshire, and I’m doing a private investigation into the firing of Ethan Smart.”

  “Yeah, they tossed him out, too, the poor bastard. Private investigation, huh? How much will you pay me?”

  “Not one red cent. The motive here is justice—maybe we can get you your job back, too.”

  “Huh.” Another noisy interval. Then a long, deep sigh. “All right, okay, and I’ll let you choose the place to buy me lunch.”

  “Can you come to Excelsior? We’ve got a couple of nice places. When can you come?”

  “Gimme your number, I’ll call you back.”

  Betsy half expected him not to call, but he did, thirty minutes later. “How about Wednesday at noon?” he said, nice and calm.

  • • •

  BETSY was surprised to see that Juggins was an African American man, then a little ashamed of her surprise. But his grin on seeing her expression made it clear that he enjoyed her reaction.

  “Yo, y’all want me to talk lak this?” he drawled. “Or, p’raps you would prefer this?” he continued in a very convincing British accent.

  They were standing beside a table in Sol’s Deli. Juggins was short, broad, and balding, with intense brown
eyes in a brown face. He looked to be in his middle thirties, maybe a little older. He was dressed all in brown, jacket, denims, boots. A tiny gold earring gleamed in one ear. He had a close-cropped black beard only a little longer than his hair, and he smelled strongly of cigarette smoke.

  “Who are you, really?” asked Betsy, amused and confused in equal parts.

  “I’m an actor,” he said.

  “Ah, of course,” said Betsy, enlightened.

  “And I want to apologize for my behavior when you first called me. I’m going through a complicated breakup with my wife and I keep getting phone calls from people trying to get in the way.”

  Betsy said, “I understand. Shall we sit down?”

  She suited the action to her words, taking off her coat, pulling out the little chair with wire legs and back, and sitting down at the tiny, marble-topped table, one of two in the room. Juggins pulled off his jacket to reveal a brown sweater and sat down across from her.

  Sol’s Deli was probably original to the building. It had a white stone floor set with random black squares. The front window was large, uncurtained, streaked in the corners with condensation. Across from the window were two big, white, slant-fronted cases, one filled with meats, cheeses, olives, peppers, lettuces, and other sandwich fixings, the other with salads: potato, egg, macaroni, two kinds of coleslaw. Behind the cases lurked the owner, whose name was Jack, not Sol. He was a tired-looking man with dark, sad eyes, and a stomach that slopped into his stained white apron. He wore loose-fitting clear plastic gloves on his hands. The smells of preserved meats and vegetable soup filled the air.

  Juggins sat down across from Betsy. “Surprised I’m an actor?” he asked.

  “Yes, and I’ll bet you at least started out with a specialty in comedy.”

  He grinned. “Why do you think that?”

  She grinned back. “Because Juggins is an obscure British nickname for a simpleton.”

  His grin disappeared. “Funny how many people don’t say that out loud, at least to my face.”

  “Yet . . .” Betsy began, and stopped herself from going on. Because what if she was wrong?

  He laughed at her discomfort. “All right, it’s a stage name, picked because I know what it means. And I still specialize in comic roles, so I’ve never changed it. But I’m also a janitor. A very good janitor, a certified pool operator, with a boiler license. I’m also a competent pipe fitter, a good electrician, and an adequate carpenter. When I told my dad I wanted to be an actor, he said I should acquire some backup skills that couldn’t be outsourced to India or China. I apprenticed myself to my mother’s uncle, who is a contractor, and got a college degree in fine arts, and so I can support myself while I wait for my big break. Meanwhile, I do commercials and get various roles in theaters in the area. I’ve been to LA twice but had to come back both times.”