Blackwork (11 page)

She raised the saber, and suddenly envisioned it as flaming. She brought it down hard so its tip struck into the wet ground at the very corner of her property, and began to walk the border, pulling the blade behind her, its tip still stuck in the earth. At the northwest corner she stopped again, sprinkled more herbs, repeated her prayer, then cut a line to the northeast corner, repeated the prayers, then to the southeast, then back to the southwest corner, to complete the circle. She raised the sword again and felt it trembling in her hands as she set the wards, made the protection spell permanent.

“It is done,” she murmured then and had to sit down among the soaked thistles for a minute or two as her knees threatened to give way.

With her vision of the real world still blurred and her perceptions altered, Leona did not see the movement of a short, slim figure behind the trees at the back of her lot, slipping away into the night.

B
UT I did look, and there’s not a dead mouse in there anywhere.” At the breakfast table, Shelly and Harvey talked about yesterday’s discovery of an unpleasant smell in Shelly’s sewing room.

“Let me see.” Harv hunted and Shelly made another search, without success. Harv went and fetched a claw hammer, and he pried off a section of baseboard near the door, where the smell seemed strongest. To his amazement, not one but two dead mice tumbled out.

“Whuff!” he said, trying not to inhale. Shelly retired to the kitchen. She may have been a strong, independent woman, but she still considered some things to be man’s work.

Remembering an old trick, Harvey went up to the bathroom and found what he remembered was in the medicine cabinet: an old jar of Vicks VapoRub. He put a dab under his nose, which killed his sense of smell for anything but menthol, and went back down to the basement.

He pulled Shelly’s little desk away from the wall, stooped, and pried another length of baseboard off. There was another mouse in a nest of insulation with her babies, dead. In total, he found four adult mice and four babies, all in about the same degree of decrepitude—and he had a feeling there were more higher up in the wall.

Since Shelly insisted they not use any mousetrap but the old-fashioned kind, with metal springs—much as she hated mice, she couldn’t bear knowing of the long suffering surrounding their deaths by poison or sticky-board methods—there should not be dead mice in the walls. So why were they there? And why only in Shelly’s sewing room? Harvey did a careful search of the basement, including an experimental pulling away of a section of drywall near the washer and dryer. Nothing, nada, no more dead mice. Nothing upstairs, either.

He told Shelly what he’d found, put the problem in her capable hands, and went off to work, sure she could handle it.

Shelly called an exterminator and explained the dilemma. The exterminator, despite a busy schedule, made an appointment to come out that afternoon, as soon as Shelly got home from work at three-thirty. While as puzzled as she was, he seemed more alarmed.

“You haven’t been putting down poison?” he asked on arriving.

“No, we only use traps.”

“And this is the only place in the house where there are dead mice?”

“We haven’t found any in the rest of the house, and don’t smell them anywhere else, either.”

But people miss things. He took a careful look himself but found nothing. Still, a lot of dead mice could mean some kind of disease, and sick mice could mean, eventually, sick people.

“Well, isn’t this a strange thing,” he said at last. “Have you heard from your neighbors about them finding dead mice in their houses?”

“No. But I haven’t told anyone about this yet, either. Isn’t it strange that there should have been baby mice dead, too?”

“Not if it’s some disease. Did you find any dead rodents in the garage or maybe in the grass the last time you were out raking your lawn?”

Shelly’s fact twisted up in distaste. “Ish! No.”

“Well, maybe it’s a coincidence that you found them all in one place. But if some kind of disease did this, it could be the start of an epidemic.”

While writing up a report, the exterminator asked her if anything odd had happened in her house about five days ago. “Flood, or gas leak, perhaps?” he hinted.

“A man died in that room last Sunday night. But the medical examiner said it was from natural causes.”

The exterminator strongly recommended she report the presence of the dead mice to the Minnesota Department of Health, and gave her their dead bodies in a plastic bag. “They’ll want to take a look,” he said.

But the first person Shelly called was police detective Mike Malloy.

 

 

 

 

J
ILL Cross Larson came into Crewel World that afternoon, a reflective look on her face. Her infant son, Erik, whom she carried in a sling, was making motor noises inside his cocoon of blankets. All that could be seen of him was the rich carrot color of his hair. He was a big baby, seventeen pounds and twenty-five inches long at four months old, and very cheerful.

“Where’s Emma Beth?” asked Betsy. Emma Beth was Erik’s big sister.

“Preschool,” said Jill briefly.

“Already? It doesn’t seem all that long ago she was a babe in arms like little Erik there.”

“I know, I know. Betsy, I have something important to tell you.”

Mildly alarmed—Jill almost never rushed or pressed—Betsy said, “Jill, what is it?”

“They found a pack of dead mice inside the walls of Shelly’s sewing room.”

Betsy frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Whatever it was that killed Ryan McMurphy also killed every mouse hiding in that room, too.
And
a slew of Japanese beetles and box elder bugs looking for winter quarters as well.”

“All over the basement, right?”

“No, just in that sewing room.”

“Oh,
Jill
.”

“You bet. Someone from the Department of Health went over the house and yard, but the dead critters were all in that sewing room. The medical examiner will be retesting some specimens he kept after Ryan’s autopsy, to see if he missed something, and the MDH is autopsying the mice—and the insects.” Her smile at this mild jest was frosty.

“So what do you think happened?” Betsy asked.

“You’re the sleuth, I never made detective. What do
you
think?”

Betsy thought. “First, I don’t think we’re talking about natural causes anymore, of course. But what is it, then? Poison gas? No, how would you get poison gas into a room and not get it all over the rest of the house? Some other form of poison, maybe? Suppose Ryan brought some food into the sewing room that was poisoned, and the bugs and mice ate the leftovers.”

“I’ll ask Lars if there was a dirty plate in the room.”

Jill left and half an hour later Police Sergeant Mike Malloy called Betsy. “Are you getting involved in this?” he demanded angrily.

“I think I might have to, the way people keep bringing it up to me,” she snapped back, feeling harassed.

“It’s just that when you do, things get screwy.”

“I know. I’m sure all of us wish this was just what it seemed at first: a man drinks too much and dies in his sleep. But Mike, what do you think about the dead mice and bugs? Isn’t that strange?”

“Of course it’s strange. But strange things happen all the time.” His anger flared again. “Especially when your name comes up!”

“So leave my name out of it,” she said in her most reasonable tone. “But before you do, tell me: Was there a dirty plate in Shelly’s sewing room?”

“No. She wouldn’t allow food in that room. And I already asked her if he could’ve fixed something in the kitchen, and she said no, unless he washed the plate and put it away, and he never washed a plate before while he was there.”

“And that won’t do anyway. He would have needed to bring the poison into the room so the mice could come sneaking out after he went to sleep and eat it. And then the bugs would have had to eat the last crumbs.”

Mike said, “The man who brought him home says he didn’t have a carryout box with him.”

There was a thoughtful silence.

Mike said, “So, what do you think?” Once upon a time, he would have cut out his tongue before admitting he wanted the opinion of an interfering amateur. But Betsy had proven herself competent and useful a couple of times; maybe she could do so again.

“Well, if it’s not poisoned food or drink, then it seems to me it could only be poison gas—but how to confine it to just the basement room? Is it airtight?”

“Close. The window is tight, and if you stuff a blanket or rug under the door, it might work. But I’m amazed Fogelman or Donohue didn’t smell something, or wake up sick the next day. And they didn’t. Maybe it’s simply someone with a big, soft pillow and a grudge.”

“And what kind of teensy pillow would you use to smother a box elder bug?” asked Betsy.

Mike laughed. “Damned if I know. Let me know if you come up with something.”

 

 

 

 

A
s it often did when word got around that Betsy was working on a case—and in Excelsior, the grapevine was a vigorous plant—the shop was crowded all the next day. People came in to look at the trunk show of Peter Ashe needlepoint canvases, to buy a skein of DMC or Kreinik or Weeks Dye Works floss, to choose among the just-arrived mohair-blend skeins of knitting yarns—or so they would have Betsy and Godwin believe. What they really wanted was to know what Betsy was going to do about Ryan’s murder.

They’d all decided it must be murder, even as they decided Betsy must solve it.

“I think it’s Leona,” said one of the first customers. “Oh, maybe not with witchcraft, but it’s Leona, definitely. I don’t like her—I never did like her. And now she’s a murderer. I guess we should have known.”

“We don’t even know it’s murder, much less that Leona is responsible,” Betsy said to her, and to others, over and over. “There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for his death.”

Coming out of the back room after making a fresh urn of coffee, Betsy overheard, “There’s no such thing as witchcraft!” and brightened.

But, “Yes, there is,” came the prompt reply. “I saw it on a television show—it was on The Learning Channel, so it must be true—about psychics and witchcraft and ghosts and everything. They said the police use psychics all the time.”

“They do? Well, maybe there’s something to it—maybe to some of it, then.”

Over by the knitting yarns: “What do they call it? Sky clad. That means they go naked. Even in winter!”

And among the overdyed silks: “Have you ever seen her eyes? There’s a strange look in them. She looked at Irene Potter in the grocery story yesterday, and Irene says she went all trembly.” But surely no one took Irene Potter seriously.

Billie Leslie came in, and for a wonder just grimaced dismissively at the gossip about Leona. She had something more important to talk about, and it was rolled in a towel in her hand. “Maybe you can help me with this.” She unrolled the towel to reveal a piece of dark gray even-weave fabric about twelve by twelve inches. Centered on it, at about ten by ten inches, was a square border made of two rows of cross-stitching in a checkerboard pattern of darker and lighter shades of yellow-green. Inside the border was a complex pattern of white geometric lines, like vines conceived by an Art Deco artist. There was an opening in the center, wider at the bottom than the top.

“Say, that’s attractive!” said Betsy. “Where did you get the pattern?”

“I made it up. That is, I think I made it up. I woke up two days ago with it in my head. I may have seen it somewhere, but if so, I can’t remember where. You know how that is.”

“Yes,” said Betsy, who indeed knew how it was. She had often worked out problems with a knitting or cross-stitch pattern in her sleep, waking without memory of a dream but the solution clear in her mind.

“So what’s the problem?”

“I’ve got two problems with it.” Billie turned it over to show that the backside of the piece was as flawless a design as the front. “Blackwork is supposed to be the same on both sides. But see, I missed a few stitches.”

“Is this blackwork?”

“Yes, of course.” Billie seemed surprised that Betsy didn’t know that. “Didn’t Lisa tell you? It doesn’t have to be black on white, it can be white on black, or red on white, or green on purple, even blue on blue.”

“I’m afraid my first blackwork lesson is this evening,” said Betsy.

“Oh? Oh, I thought you’d already taken the class. Darn. Well, I can’t figure it out. I’m not sure it can be done without missing at least one stitch right in that place.” Billie touched a spot on the fabric with a disappointed expression.

“Well, can’t you fudge it somehow? You know the motto of this shop, don’t you? Better done than perfect.”

Billie nodded sadly. “Yes, I know.”