Blackwork (13 page)

But the wharf was unoccupied at present, its wood slick with rain. The lake itself was choppy, with little whitecaps dotting it here and there, gleaming in the streetlights. Far away were the lights of Wayzata, and all along the lakeshore glowed the ample windows of the year-round mansions that were replacing the modest summer cottages.

Betsy leaned on a railing and thought dark thoughts. What was the matter with her? She hadn’t even begun to sleuth in this case. What was she waiting for? A clue or two to drop out of the sky into her lap? Why wasn’t she going around asking questions?

Was it because she was afraid of the answers she might find?

Lisa’s casual remark—that blackwork wasn’t magic, but trickery—crossed her mind again. That might describe the murder of Ryan McMurphy. Of course, she didn’t believe in black magic. What modern person did?

Right?

It wasn’t blackwork that killed Ryan, but it was trickery. However, what she needed in his case was not just the method, but the name of the magician.

Betsy leaned on the railing again. She was feeling about as hopeless and incompetent as she had when she first started sleuthing. She hadn’t a clue about Ryan’s murder—literally. Not one clue.

Lots of people disliked Ryan, and for good reason. While drunk, he was a singularly unlikable person. Jill had told Betsy what she’d heard from Mike Malloy, that the person most likely to have done him in, his wife, had a solid alibi.

So who else was there?

Well, Joey Mitchell was alleged to hate him, because Ryan had spoiled his ambition of a career as a firefighter.

Who else?

Godwin’s murmured reply echoed in her mind: Leona Cunningham. But Betsy was sure in her heart that it wasn’t Leona.

Right?

Or was she afraid it might be Leona? Was that why she was afraid to get serious about sleuthing?

She sighed and lifted her head to let the wind and rain beat at her face. Perhaps the pummeling would clear her thought processes.

And then there was blackwork. What on earth possessed Betsy to sign up for the course? Her job was to sell the fabric and threads and yarns her customers desired to work their projects, not to sit at a table showing everyone how slow a learner she was. By tomorrow every needleworker in town would know that Betsy couldn’t master a simple blackwork pattern. People would come in and laugh at her.

Betsy heaved another heavy sigh. The wind started to blow at a new angle, making the ends of her scarf slap her in the face. She took the scarf off to retie it, when a huge gust of wind snatched it from her hands. It went whirling up the wharf, across the bit of park, and into the street, where a large truck immediately ran over it.

Well, didn’t that just put the cherry on top of her evening? It was a good scarf; she’d knit it herself in a cheerful pink wool-cotton-blend yarn. Worse, it was the one where she’d learned a lot of stitches by making a sort of sampler of the thing.

She trudged off the wharf, up the bit of soggy grass, and into the street. The scarf was soaked, of course, and seemed to have picked up a heavy load of road grime as well as an enormous black tire print.

Betsy wrung it out and shoved most of it into a pocket. She set off walking again, holding her hood closed at her throat with one hand. Without really having a goal in mind, she found herself on Oak Street, where Leona lived. Leona’s house was on a corner lot, set well back from the street. It was a late Victorian house, sort of Queen Anne style, not really large but with roofs angling off in all directions. She stopped at its front gate. Not a light shone anywhere within it. A wrap-around porch seemed less an invitation to call than a device to hide the entry. The lot was large, set with mature trees, edged on three sides by overgrown shrubbery. The front was marked by a tall, wrought-iron fence topped with spikes—
à la
the Addams Family. The trees were mostly leafless now, though one was still shedding, its leaves flying as though running away from something.

The gate was ajar, but for some reason Betsy did not feel like walking up to ring the doorbell or heading around to the back to see if a light was on in the kitchen.

As she turned to walk away, a movement caught her eye. Something—no, someone—was coming along the line of trees leading to the sidewalk where she stood. Whoever it was—a short woman, dressed all in black—kept looking at the house and therefore didn’t see Betsy until she stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Irene!” exclaimed Betsy.

The woman started violently, then clutched her black-gloved hands to her breast. “Goodness gracious, Betsy, you frightened me!”

“I meant to! What are you doing sneaking around Leona’s yard?”

“I’m not sneaking!”

“Then what are you doing? The house is dark. It’s obvious no one’s home.”

“Well . . . well, someone has to keep an eye on her, you know! I didn’t know she wasn’t at home! The woman’s dangerous—there’s no telling what she’s getting up to, mixing up potions in her backyard, casting spells hither and yon.”

“How long have you been spying on her?”

“Um . . . not long.”

“Who put you up to this?”

“No one! It was my very own idea!”

“Well, stop it. If you don’t, I’ll tell Leona, and she might call the police about it. Lars Larson would adore to arrest you, you know.”

Irene turned as white as paper, and gasped twice, but could not manage a reply. Instead, she turned and hurried away.

Betsy watched her go, then realized she’d had enough of braving the dark and rain. She would just go home.

Seeking light, she walked over to Water Street and turned down it. As she came nearer the lake, she saw a bright patch outshining the streetlights and closed shops’ night lights. It was a sign, an imitation of the painted boards found outside British pubs. The picture on it was of a sheaf of barley and a spray of hops, arranged like a bouquet in an old wooden barrel with simplified Old English lettering: THE BARLEYWINE. It was swaying in the wind, making a faint creaking noise.

She almost walked past, but the light from the big mullioned bay window glowed pale gold, an invitation to escape the chill rainy night. She paused to look inside.

The place had just four customers. The jukebox was showing its rich jewel colors and Betsy could hear, faintly, the big band sound of “Little Brown Jug.”

Billie Leslie stood behind the bar. She was smiling and pulling a big white vertical handle that released a stream of beer into a large glass mug.

Billie laughed at something her customer said. Then a movement behind her caught Betsy’s eye and she saw there was someone in the microbrewery room behind the glass wall. Leona.

Betsy opened the door, and several people looked around. “Hi, Betsy!” Billie shouted to her, a little louder than necessary over the talk and music. There was a smell of fried meat and potatoes and beer.

“Hi, Billie!” called Betsy. It was all so jolly after the cold, dark outdoors that her spirits lifted immediately. She came to the bar as the jukebox segued smoothly from “Little Brown Jug” to “String of Pearls.” “Could I speak to Leona?”

“She’s in the brewery. Want me to go get her?”

“Yes—wait, maybe not. I’ve never seen a microbrewery up close. Would it be all right if I went back there?”

Billie teased, “Are you a responsible adult?”

“I think so.”

“Are you drunk?”

Betsy smiled. “No.”

“Do you plan to play with the dials and knobs or turn on one of the hoses?”

“No.”

“Then go on in.” She pointed to a glass door framed in stainless steel.

The customer Billie had just served looked petulant. “You never let me go back in there.”

“That’s because I suspect you want to see how much beer you can slam down before we catch you at it and toss you out.”

“Awwww, Billie! Only a gallon or two!”

Betsy opened the door and was greeted by a strong smell of beer wafting on a chill breeze. She stepped inside quickly and closed the door.

All the noise from the bar was cut off, and in the silence she could hear a stiff-bristled broom scrubbing the floor and another sound, of a little motor. And floating above those noises, an alto voice, singing what sounded like an Appalachian folk song.

Betsy took a step away from the door to peer around the first of a row of three tall stainless steel tanks. In front of the row near the other end was Leona, pushing a slightly sudsy liquid across the red tile floor toward a drain. She was wearing a pair of very elderly twill pants, black Wellingtons, a chambray shirt under a Barleywine apron, and heavy rubber gloves. An odd little machine, sort of like an old-fashioned tank vacuum cleaner on tiny wheels, had a really long red hose hooked up to it somehow. The hose was running into the top of one of the tanks, and liquid was oozing out the bottom. A double handle on the machine had a meter on it with several black knobs and a little green flashing light.

Betsy found she was holding her breath and thought herself a fool for eavesdropping. She let out the breath and knocked hard on the nearest tank.

Leona stopped short, turned, and saw Betsy, who had put on her most harmless quizzical look.

“Hey, hello, Betsy,” Leona said. “What brings you out on such a night?”

“I’d like to talk with you.”

Leona nodded and gestured at an old office chair, pulled up to a very cluttered desk across from the row of tanks. “I’ll be finished in a few minutes,” she said, “if you want to wait.”

“All right.” Betsy came closer but did not immediately sit down, as she was still shedding rainwater. “Tell me what you’re doing,” she requested.

“Cleaning out this tank with a caustic. I’m almost done. Then I’ll rinse it good, and do a transfer of wort from that tank over there”—she pointed to a big, squat stainless steel tank at the other end of the brewery near the front window—“to this tank here, and start brewing a new batch. Then I’ll check the progress of the beer in this vessel here”—she rapped on the tank next to the one being rinsed—“and then I’ll be done.”

“How long does it take to make beer?”

“It’s eight hours from mash to wort—” Leona saw Betsy’s incomprehension and started over. “Mash is what you get when you take roasted sprouted barley, grind it coarsely, and mix it with water. Wort is what you get after you cook the mash and strain the solids out.”

Betsy nodded.

“Then it’s cooled, yeast and hops are added, and it’s put in one of these temperature-controlled fermenting vessels.” Leona pointed to the tall tanks beside her. “I can make a good stout in nine days at seventy degrees.”

Betsy looked around. “I guess there’s a lot more to it than a bucket of water, a bushel of oven-roasted barley, and a handful of yeast.”

Leona sighed. “Yes, people think they yearn for the good ol’ simple days of home-brewed beer, until they get a mouthful of something really bad.” She resumed her sweeping. “Are you here to ask me something specific, or just finding a place to rest out of the rain?”

At that moment, Betsy decided not to tell Leona about Irene spying on her. “Well, a bit of both, I suppose. You’ve heard about the dead mice in Shelly Donohue’s sewing room?”

Leona stopped pushing the broom to lift it one-handed, and lift her shoulders and her eyebrows as well. She nodded all the while, to show she had heard—and heard, and heard. Back when it was the Waterfront Café, her place was the biggest single source of gossip in the community. Apparently its transformation into a brew-pub hadn’t changed that aspect of it much.

Betsy laughed.

“I’ve heard even bugs died of whatever was in that room,” Leona said.

Betsy asked, “Any idea what it might have been?”

“I think it was something Ryan brought in there to eat, something poisonous or with poison put into it. He ate enough of it to make him pass out, and the mice and bugs came out and ate what was left and they all died of it.”

“But there wasn’t a dirty plate or foam box found in the room.”

“Plate?
Ryan?
He probably had it in his hand, or his pocket.”

“Hmmmmm.”

Leona nodded. “I hear the medical examiner is taking another look at whatever he kept of Ryan, and I bet he is going to say there’s strychnine or arsenic or maybe something more subtle in his blood.” She turned the tank thing off and finished sweeping, then went to hang the broom in a corner.

When she came back to the desk, Betsy said, “Okay, here’s the sixty-four-dollar question: Where were you on Sunday night?”

“‘The sixty-four-dollar question’?”

Betsy waved dismissively. “From an old radio show. Goddy loves them, and I keep picking up terms from him. So where were you?”

“What time are we talking about?”

“Ryan was found around noon on Monday, and it was estimated he’d been dead for about eight hours, so that would make it around three a.m.”

“Then relax, I have an alibi. I worked here from four to midnight, went home to bed, but at a little after one I got a phone call from my neighbor, Lynn Morepark. By one-fifteen I was sitting on the couch in my living room with two of my neighbor’s three children while she took the third one to the emergency room with what turned out to be whooping cough. The two are Wallace and Fredericka, ages nine and seven. We sang camp songs—which I had to teach them—and made s’mores in my fireplace. They didn’t fall asleep until nearly half past three, the little darlin’s.” Leona made a face. “And their mother didn’t come get them until four.”

“No ghost stories?” Betsy was grinning in relief. Leona had a solid alibi.

“And have them wake from nightmares the rest of the week? Their mother had enough to deal with.”

“How’s the third kid?”

“Andrew’s recovering at home. And Lynn’s taking her other two for their shots, which she used to think were unnecessary, as soon as their father gets home from Poughkeepsie.”