Blackwork (21 page)

“I suppose she was angry at Ryan?”

“Oh, lord yes.”

“Billie, is it possible that
Cara
is responsible for Ryan’s death?”

Billie went white. “
Of course not!
”

“Do you know where she was the night Ryan died?”

“How dare you even
think
—wait a minute!” Billie brightened, her expression turning in an instant from that of a mother bear protecting her cub almost to glee. “She was in Chicago at a science fiction convention. Didn’t get home till Tuesday noon. Whew! For a minute there, you really scared me.”

“Let me scare you again: Where were
you
?”

But Billie wasn’t worried. “Oh, I was home. I get nervous when Cara’s traveling, I wake up three times a night, and my getting up wakes Sam—he’s
such
a light sleeper. ‘What the hell time is it now?’ he’ll ask. So he can tell you I was home in bed, out of bed, back in bed with him all night every night starting the Thursday before. Sunday night we went to bed around ten-thirty, after the news.”

Betsy wasn’t sure Sam wouldn’t lie for his wife, but she didn’t say so.

Billie said, “Are you all set for the parade? Do you know the marching order yet?”

Betsy picked up a notebook and turned to a page full of cross-outs, interlineations, notes, lines and arrows, and listings. “I’m going to make a clean copy of this before the parade, of course. We’ve got three bands now. That should be enough, don’t you think?”

“Yes, probably. Do you have enough candy clowns?”

“I’ve got a half dozen. One of the clowns has a pretty scary costume. Is that all right?”

“Depends on how scary. They’re going to be marching along the edges of the parade and coming close to the children to toss them the candy. If it’ll scare a three-year-old, you’d better lighten it up.”

Betsy made yet another note on the page. “Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“Joey Mitchell wants to drive the fire engine. I told him to contact LuLu McMurphy, since the truck is hers now.”

“He did that, and she said she didn’t care who drove it, so I told him he could.”

“Good,” said Betsy, making yet another note.

“Anything else?”

“No, everything else seems to be in order.”

And it was—the parade part, anyhow. The investigation? Not so much.

 

 

 

 

N
EAR closing time, the door to Crewel World opened and Harvey came in, his face white and set in a grim expression. “Ms. Devonshire, I want to talk to you,” he said in a low but angry voice. He took her by the arm and marched her through the back of the shop, where there were no customers, into the tiny back room, closing the door behind them.

“Where the
hell
do you get off telling Mike Malloy you think I murdered Ryan McMurphy?” he demanded, his voice even angrier than before.

“I did not tell Sergeant Malloy that I thought you were a murderer,” Betsy replied in as level a voice as she could manage. “But someone brought a poisonous substance into Shelly’s sewing room the night Ryan died, probably after he went in there and locked the door. There were only two keys to that door, and Ryan had one of them. The conclusion was not hard to draw. I didn’t have to point anything out to Mike Malloy.”

“But I didn’t have a
motive
!”

“Didn’t you? Mr. Fogelman, are you a married man?”

He sucked air through his teeth. “
Who told you that?
”

“No one. But when I suggested blackmail to you in Chanhassen the day before yesterday, you ran off like a scalded fox. And Shelly is starting to wonder if you’ll ever ask her to marry you. The Hennepin County records of marriages and divorces indicate that you married one Melissa Jean Brooks nearly thirty years ago, but not that you divorced her. Nor is there a record of her death. The conclusion is obvious. Less obvious is why you insisted that Ryan be permitted to remain in Shelly’s house when he became a drunken, obnoxious menace.”

He stared at her, and suddenly his anger drained away. “I didn’t kill him,” he said.

“Well, I don’t think Shelly did,” she said.

“Shelly? Of course not!” He sounded shocked that Betsy could even suggest such a thing.

“Then who else had a key?” she asked.

Just then, the door to the back room opened and Godwin stood there with a heavy stitching frame in one hand. “Is everything all right in here?” he asked in his deepest voice, hefting the frame.

“Yes, we’re fine,” said Betsy.

“I have to go,” said Harvey, and he brushed roughly past Godwin on his way out.

 

 

 

 

T
HE shop was closed, and Betsy was taking out the trash. She lifted the heavy, creaky, squealing lid of the Dumpster and got a noseful of something acidic and tingling.

“Whuff!” she said, backing away. Then she went for a more careful look and, to her amazement, the plastic bag of dry ice was still mostly full. Water vapor was curling up and out of the bucket. The inside of the Dumpster was damp—not from the rain but condensation—and very chilly, colder than the outside air.

The effect on her nose made her think of the times she’d been too eager to get a swallow of Coke after opening a can. It wasn’t cola up the nose; it was freshly released carbon dioxide. How interesting to learn that!

And also how interesting about the condensation. That was very likely the explanation for Shelly’s rusty needles.

But most interesting of all was the fact that the dry ice was still there. It had been sitting in the Dumpster for hours. She stood there a minute or two, thinking. If it always took a long time to evaporate, that meant the dry ice could have been put into Shelly’s sewing room far earlier than she had originally thought. Hours earlier. Shelly had been using the room when Ryan was out; it was locked only when he was in there. She needed to find out if Shelly had been in the room on Sunday.

She hustled back into the shop and called Shelly on her cell. But when Shelly answered, her voice sounded strange. Betsy could tell she was in tears.

“Shelly, what’s the matter?”

“It’s Harv. Betsy, he’s
married
. He just told me.”

“Oh, Shelly, I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“He’s been trying to find her. She moved out of town years ago, and he doesn’t know where she is. He didn’t used to care; he didn’t want to get married again. But now he does, and he needs to find her to file for divorce. I
knew
something was wrong, but I never figured it was
this
! He just came in a little while ago and he was all upset. He was almost crying, and it took me a while to get it out of him, but now I’m all upset, too! Oh, Betsy, I’m so
unhappy
! What are we going to
do
?”

Betsy shoved her fingers into her hair. “I don’t know what to tell you. What else did he say? Has this got anything to do with Ryan?”

“What could it have to do with Ryan?”

“Well, I wonder if Ryan knew and that’s how he persuaded Harv to get you to let him move into your sewing room.”

There was a shocked silence. Betsy could tell that Shelly was considering the possibility.

“Shelly, where were you and Harv that Sunday evening?”

“Oh,
Betsy
! How
dare
you think—”

“Shelly, please! I’m trying to help you, don’t you understand that?”

Silence fell again. Then, in a very subdued voice, Shelly said, “We were out. We went to see my Aunt Sally. I don’t think you’ve ever met her—she’s a retired schoolteacher and she lives in White Bear Lake. We had dinner at her place and then sat and talked until probably close to ten o’clock. Then we came home and went right to bed.”

“Both of you?”

“Both of us.”

“What time did you leave for White Bear?”

“Around five-thirty.”

White Bear Lake was to the north and east of Saint Paul, a good forty-five minutes from Excelsior.

“Who knew you were going over there for a visit?”

“Oh, gosh, lots of people. Going to see Aunt Sally is a real treat, and both of us talked about it.”

Betsy thanked her, told her not to worry, and hung up.

So the two of them were out of the house until near eleven o’clock Sunday night. That brought them home a little more than an hour before Ryan.

Was that enough time for Shelly to go to bed and fall so deeply asleep that Harvey could get up without waking her to go put dry ice into the sewing room?

Could he have put it in there before they left?

Which brought another thought: Where did he keep it? Not the freezer, Shelly might see it. So possibly an ice chest down in the basement or on the back porch, because who opens an ice chest in October? But where—and when—did he get it? It used to be, you could get dry ice at any store that sold regular ice, especially if it also sold live bait—fishermen used dry ice to keep their fish fresh on the sometimes long journey home. But when Betsy went looking for dry ice on the Internet, she couldn’t find a regular business that sold it, only wholesalers. And they weren’t open on Sundays.

All right, things were looking a little better for Harvey Fogelman. So suppose someone else put it in there. When? Certainly not while Shelly and Harvey were there and still up. (“Excuse me, just making a delivery of dry ice, pay no attention to me.”)

Betsy knew that Shelly, like many residents of Excelsior, didn’t lock her outside doors; therefore, anyone wanting to get into the house while they were gone didn’t need a key. So long as not enough dry ice had evaporated to cause the nose-tingling effect or to make the candle impossible to light, Ryan might not have noticed the room was filling with it when he got home. Especially if he was drunk—and the medical examiner had said he was.

She went back inside to search the Internet, and found a web site maintained by a scientist named Dr. Robert Sherman who was advising businesses about the uses of dry ice. Sandblasting was one suggestion. She shot him an e-mail asking how long it would take dry ice vapor to fill the bottom third of a twelve-by-ten room.

To her amazement, Dr. Sherman was online and he replied immediately. “I hope you are aware of the dangers of doing such a thing,” he wrote.

“Yes, very,” replied Betsy. “Someone here in town was killed because of carbon dioxide, and I’m investigating the case.”

“All right. To answer your question: About four hours, if the room is above sixty-five degrees, the dry ice is in pellets, spread out a little and not piled in a heap,” wrote Dr. Sherman. “Six hours if it’s a block.”

Up to six hours. That meant someone could have gone in while Ryan, Shelly, and Harvey were all three out and left enough dry ice to stealthily replace the breathable air in the room.

It also meant that none of Betsy’s suspects had an alibi anymore.

B
ING-BONG!” announced the door. Betsy often wished it could announce more than merely the entrance of a potential customer. Then perhaps she would not walk out of the bathroom, where she’d been evicting a spider, into the gaze of a strange man while her nose was ornamented with a smear of dust and a fragment of spider web hung from her left earring.

Because the doorbell was unable to warn her to glance in the mirror before coming out, she spent the entire conversation wondering what he thought was so funny every time he looked at her.

“Are you Ms. Devonshire?” he asked, pronouncing it correctly, Devon-Sheer. He was about her age, mid-fifties, not-quite-skinny but with broad shoulders. His hair was black and curly, going to gray on the sides.

“Yes?”

“I’m Connor Sullivan, and I understand you have an apartment to rent.”

“I have two, actually, or I will in another month. The one that’s vacant now is the smaller of the two. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes, very much, thank you.”

Betsy looked around to tell Godwin where she was going, but he had already anticipated her next move. “You go ahead, we’ve got things under control down here,” he said, giving her an amused look. She frowned at him, and he brushed his nose, as if embarrassed. She did, too, and he nodded.

Satisfied, she turned away and so missed his earlobe-pulling gesture.

Mr. Sullivan’s face was deeply lined, his eyes dark and hooded. His hands had the thickened, callused look that comes only from hard physical work. He wore jeans and walking shoes, and a beautiful Aran sweater on which beads of water stood up like opals. Clearly it had started to rain again.

She led him upstairs and unlocked the door to Doris’s old apartment. It still smelled faintly of fresh paint. Because it was small, Betsy had selected light colors for its decor. The living room was a very pale yellow, barely more than a rich cream, walls and ceiling alike. The drapes were the color called old gold, the carpet sky blue. The blue carpet continued into the bedroom, but here the walls were a pale blue.