Blackwork (24 page)

“Poor Cara. I don’t think she would have made it through Annapolis anyway. Though who knows? She wanted it badly enough. And Billie wanted it for her even more—Cara is Billie’s favorite child, though to my mind, Roger is the better bet. Now that Cara’s going to be tending sick animals, suddenly that’s the best, most prestigious work a young woman can do. Billie not only pays her tuition, she buys her anything she needs for her labs, helps her with her homework, brags about her all the time. She’d take Cara’s tests for her, if she could. Fortunately, Cara’s not much more spoiled than any kid would be from all the attention. Even better, Roger and Eddie aren’t jealous. Maybe it’s because they’re her brothers, and there’s not another daughter to be hurt by the favoritism.”

“And what does Cara think of becoming a veterinary assistant?”

“Well, despite Billie’s best efforts, she knows it’s not quite the same as a commission as a U.S. Navy ensign.”

“How angry was Cara at Ryan for shooting down her chances?”

The smile on Leona’s face melted and she sighed. “
Damn
angry. In fact, if her alibi wasn’t so solid, I’d say you should look hard at her. It’s been two years and more, and she still spits firecrackers when someone mentions him to her.”

A patron came in about then looking for an early supper, so Betsy thanked Leona and left. She drove back to her shop thoughtfully. Was there a clue lurking somewhere in all she’d learned today?

She parked in the tiny lot behind her shop and came in the back way. As she walked through the little back room into the cross-stitch area, she heard two men’s voices. She paused to listen.

One was Godwin, obviously; his light tenor with its manner of emphasizing words was unmistakable. The other man’s voice was deeper, and the more she listened, the more she wondered if he was foreign born. There was just the faintest hint of a brogue in the sharpness of his consonants.

So she shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was when she came out from between the twin set of box shelves to see it was her new tenant, Connor Sullivan, deep in conference with Godwin over a knitting pattern. After all, his name could hardly have been more Irish.

She stood awhile, looking and listening. The talk was esoteric; the man knew knitting. Betsy suddenly wondered if the beautiful Aran sweater she’d seen him wearing the other day wasn’t knit by him. And where she’d thought him rather ordinary looking, now she thought there was something attractive about him. Then she realized it was because he was talking about a subject that really interested him. His hooded eyes were wider open and gleaming, and he was smiling as he gestured at a heap of balls of fingerling wool in a dozen colors, ranging from palest blue to rich maroon.

Godwin had taken up a pair of slender knitting needles and cast on a row of dark green. Now he was working with two colors in a knit two, purl two pattern, switching colors with every switch from knit to purl.

“Before your
purl
stitch,” he was saying, “drop the old color and bring the working color
under
the old color and to the
front
of the ribbing
between
the needles, and purl two.” His hands moved as he did the two purls. “This is on the right side of the work.”

“Hello, Goddy,” said Betsy. “What are you teaching Mr. Sullivan to do?”

“Corduroy stitch. He wants to knit a Fair Isle sweater.”

Fair Isles, done in the traditional way, have extra-stiff collars and cuffs knit in a heavy ribbing called corduroy.

Fair Isles are colorful, with many rows of small, geometric patterns, knit with fine wool on small-gauge circular needles.

“Have you knit with more than one color before, Mr. Sullivan?” asked Betsy, not wanting him to bite off more than he could chew.

“Yes,” said Connor, “but not as many as this. On the other hand, I can do an argyle without looking at a pattern, and I’m looking for something more challenging.”

“Well, congratulations, you’ve found it.”

“Have you knit a Fair Isle, Ms. Devonshire?”

“No,” admitted Betsy. “I’ve looked at them and they’re gorgeous, but they’re complicated and they take a lot of time. Besides, that business of taking a pair of scissors to cut the openings for the sleeves . . . After all that work, to cut in the wrong place . . .” She gave a dramatic shudder. “Too scary!”

He laughed. “A lady as brave as you afraid of a little scissoring? I don’t believe it!”

“What makes you think I’m brave?”

“Godwin here has been telling me of your exploits as a detective.”

“Goddy!” scolded Betsy.

But the apologetic shrug Godwin offered was entirely synthetic.

“So long as you’re here,” said Connor, “may I turn over the signed lease on the smaller of the two apartments you have for rent?” His tone had gone from bantering to serious in the taking of a breath.

“Yes, of course,” said Betsy, matching his tone. “And thank you for being so prompt. Still plan to move in on the first?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Good.” They discussed the terms briefly, then Connor paid for the wool, a book of patterns, and size three circular knitting needles, and left.

Godwin leaned toward Betsy and leered. “He likes you.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, he does not!”

“Oh, but he does. Inside of six months, you’ll have that apartment for rent again, because he’ll have moved into yours. Mark my words—on affairs of the heart, I am never wrong.”

Betsy shook her head at him and burst into laughter.

A
LL Hallows Eve fell on a Saturday that year. The day was cold and blustery, though it didn’t rain. The wind would dash in from one direction, quiet briefly, then come dashing in from another direction.

Excelsior was a small town. This Halloween celebration was one of its more ambitious efforts, but still nothing like Minneapolis’s big-city Holidazzle parade. On the other hand, virtually everyone in town had played a part in making it a success and they were determined to see it through. They bundled up and turned out for the big party. The littlest contestants wore their costumes over their winter coats, which made some of them hard to identify. The teens braved the cold, even the one dressed as a gladiator with blue knees. Sales of hot cider and coffee were brisk, and people tended to cluster around the barbecues rather than the croquet court. Few complained; after all, this was Minnesota, when within living memory there’d been a gargantuan blizzard one Halloween.

As the short day ended and darkness fell, a quarter moon overhead seemed to be racing through the clouds hurrying by. Temperatures dropped into the lower forties with frost predicted before morning.

Still, the parade units bravely gathered in the big parking lot of Maynard’s, a fine restaurant on the shore of Lake Minnetonka just four blocks from downtown.

Their numbers were such that Betsy began to feel claustrophobic—especially when they were crowded around her, shouting questions. She finally resorted to the police whistle Lars had insisted she borrow from him.

“All right, all right!” she shouted. “Listen up! I have here a three-by-five card for the leader of each unit, telling you your place! Any questions you have, ask your leader, and he or she can ask me! Leaders, come here! The rest of you gather with your units and give me some
air
!”

She had to repeat that three times before she had the air she needed, and frosty as it was, it was a relief.

“Now, where is the leader of the Sheriff’s Posse?”

“Here!” said a burly man who was probably about six feet tall in his stocking feet but considerably taller in cowboy boots and a pale Stetson. A gold star gleamed and glittered on the breast of his tan uniform jacket.

She handed him his card. “You are leading off. Do you have your flags?” The three leaders of the posse would be carrying an American flag, a state flag, and an MIA flag. There were eight riders in all.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Any questions?”

“No, ma’am!”

She checked that off on her clipboard.

“Hopkins High School Band!” she called next, and a girl who seemed too young to be in high school, wearing a raspberries-and-cream uniform, came to report that a tuba player and a cornet player were absent but everyone else was in attendance.

“I am sure you can play so well without them that no one will notice,” said Betsy hopefully, handing her the band’s card. “Next, where are my candy clowns?”

Six people in clown makeup came forward. “We don’t have a leader,” said one.

“We don’ need no steenkin’ leader,” growled another in what he thought was a Mexican accent. His costume was that of a Mexican peasant revolutionary with more than a hint of skull painted on his scowling face. Thank goodness his rifle was obviously a plastic toy.

Betsy handed the card to the revolutionary. “Well, you have one now. Oh, and I think you, Pancho Villa, should be careful to steer clear of the really little kids, okay? That face is
serious
. And remember, the candy has to last the whole parade, so while I want all of your crew to arrive at the top of Water Street with empty pumpkins, I want you to make it last the whole trip.”

“Gotcha,” said Pancho, but he handed the card to another clown in the more traditional costume of orange hair, bright red bulbous nose, and outsized, multicolored jumpsuit with a big neck ruffle. On second look, the nose had a stem like an apple and a gummy worm sticking out of it. The sextet walked off, separating as they went toward various units, raising their plastic jack-o’-lanterns in a final salute to one another.

“Thank you! Okay, next, Joey Mitchell!”

Joey stepped up, looking ghastly in whiteface, his torn and ragged yellow rubber fireman’s coat streaked with whitewash. He wore a toy fireman’s helmet with a flashing red light on top of it. “We’re ready to rock and roll,” he announced, waving over his shoulder at the shiny red fire truck parked a dozen yards away, its loud engine running a little raggedly. There were four other people already on board, and when they saw him wave, they waved back. They looked as ghostly as he did, except their helmets were real.

“The fellows say we should run the siren the whole time,” he said. “Is that okay? It’s not very loud.”

“Run it full out once a block, otherwise just growl it. And let it run down every so often,” Betsy decided. “And if you get complaints that people can’t hear the bands, run it only at intersections.”

“You bet.”

Next was the Indian war party, a group of seven real Dakota braves with their spotted ponies. They had opted for something a bit more sinister in war paint, using a solid black from the top of their foreheads down to the bottom of their noses and then a single stripe of color from the upper lip to the bottom of the chin. They were wearing breech clouts, vests, and moccasins—and goose bumps, as another vagrant breeze rushed across the parking lot and the temperature dropped a couple more degrees. Their ponies were skittish and they were riding bareback.

“Are you all good enough riders to control your horses?” asked Betsy. “There’s going to be loud marching music.”

“We’ve been rehearsing them with an old boom box, and they’re all solid with it,” said the leader, a strong-looking man in his forties. “The horses just look flashy; they’re not really hot.”

“Okay,” said Betsy, allowing hope to overcome her doubts as she handed him his card.

On the cards, in big, black letters, were three lines. The first was the name of the unit ahead, the second was their name, and the third was the name of the unit coming behind. (The candy clowns’ card just said SCATTER.) Betsy hoped the cards were enough to keep everyone in proper order.

“Next, Hot Air Express!” called Betsy, and a very tall, thin man with dark hair and eyes, gray coveralls, and a yellow wool knit hat stepped forward to take his card.

“Don’t light that thing off more than twice a block, all right?” ordered Betsy.

“Yes, Ms. Devonshire.”

“Next, Roosevelt High School Band!”

The band director himself was there to claim his card. He and more than half the band were African-American; most of the other half was Somali or Hispanic. A lot of their parents were there for support; most of them were in costumes, ranging from Aretha Franklin to Raggedy Ann and Andy. The band had a huge percussion section, and judging by the joyous licks being played in warm-up, they were going to be the highlight of the parade.

“Betsy?” came a woman’s voice.

Betsy turned to see Billie, jiggling with cold and excitement, coming up to stand beside her. “Hi, Billie, what brings you over here?”

“Everything else is about all shut down in anticipation of the parade. I wanted to make sure you’ve got it under control.”

“I sure hope so.” She checked her Indiglo watch. “Oh, my God, we start in two minutes.”

“Your watch is two minutes slow,” said Billie. “I’ll get the first unit sent off for you.” She hurried away.