Hanging by a Thread (20 page)

“Do you remember that Paul Schmitt was also friends with Alex and Jory?”

That put an end to the laughter. Betsy could hear Foster drawing a long, be-patient breath. “Yes, I do remember that. Actually, we were all friends back then, Paul, Alex, Jory, and me. And three other guys, Max, Mark and Mike, the 3M Company, they hung out with us sometimes, too. We played softball, went to Twins games, pulled practical jokes on each other, talked about cars and girls.”

“Did Paul strike you back then as the jealous kind?”

“No, not particularly. But we didn’t pair off like the kids do today, getting serious in sixth grade. Dating was casual for most of us; in fact, I don’t remember that Paul had a real girlfriend at all, until he met Angela. And that was in college.”

“Do you remember Paul getting angry with any of you?”

“Well, yes. Not viciously angry, not enough to quit hanging out with us altogether. He’d be sore for a day, then pull some kind of prank, you know, a practical joke, and we’d all laugh at the poor sucker he’d done it to, and we’d be friends again. Well, except one time he really set up the 3M boys. I don’t remember all the details, it was kind of complicated, but Mike ended up on suspension and Max actually transferred to another school. Mike blamed Max, but Paul told us later he rigged the whole thing—whatever it was. I thought at the time Paul started something that turned into more than he meant it to. I do know he ran quiet the rest of the semester.”

 

When Betsy went down to open up, there was yet again a figure standing in the doorway, this time a Minnesota-style Valkyrie, a tall, sturdy guardian of lives and property. But this one wore her armor under her shirt and carried her weapon in a holster. In other words, Jill.

Betsy hurried to unlock the door. “Did you talk to Malloy? What did you find out?” she asked.

“Mike says he checked the gate in the bookstore basement. He says it was fastened shut and so he didn’t feel a need to check the other gate. He recalls being told by the owner of the building that the gates were nailed shut in 1973. Note once again the use of the word ‘nailed.’ But he says it’s possible that Paul’s alibi can be considered broken.”

Betsy said, “That’s good, that’s great! Anything else?”

“Not much. I read the report on Paul Schmitt’s murder.”

“What time did it happen?”

“The 911 call came in at nine twenty-seven.”

“Okay, Alex works second shift now, but maybe he was working graveyard or first shift back then. Can you find out?”

“If I call up there, they’ll want to know who I am. When I say Officer Jill Cross, they’ll want to know why I’m asking, and what can I say? I’m not an investigator, I’m not doing it because a supervisor asked me to.”

“Jill—”

“No. You want to know, you ask.” Jill wasn’t speaking sharply, she didn’t even look annoyed. But her cool, Gibson-girl face gave Betsy no hope at all.

“Turn the radio on for me, will you?” Betsy asked, and went to the checkout desk to haul a phone book out of a bottom drawer. She found the number of the Ford plant and dialed it. She said to the person who answered using her most brisk and impersonal tone, “Personnel, please.” When a man from personnel got on the wire, Betsy said in the same voice, “I need a confirmation of employment for one Alexander Miller, please.” This was the term credit card people used when they asked Betsy about her employees.

There was a pause while computer keys rattled faintly. “Yes, he’s our second shift engine assembly line supervisor,” reported the man in personnel.

“How long has he worked for you?” asked Betsy.

“Hmmm, twelve years.”

“Always second shift?”

“Why do you ask?”

Betsy allowed her voice to soften. “Well, I’ve got a cousin who’s working first shift and he has an idea he’d like to try second, now he and his wife have a baby. This way, they don’t have to put him in day care. But I was wondering if people who work second shift stay with it. I mean, the hours are screwy, you’re trying to sleep when everyone else is up, and so on.”

She looked over and saw Jill staring at her with raised eyebrows, and looked away again, lest she start laughing.

The personnel manager said, “Well, I’ve never worked second shift, but Mr. Miller has been on it for seven years.”

“Is he late a lot, or taking a lot of sick leave? I mean, Will is very reliable and all, but I’m wondering if that might change.”

“I don’t think checking just one record is going to help you much, you know.”

“You know, you’re right. I shouldn’t be asking you all this, anyhow. His wife asked me for advice and I don’t know what to tell her. He says the pay is better if he’ll move to second shift, and they could really use the money.”

The manager sighed. “Tell me about it. And for what it’s worth, Miller takes all his vacation in one lump every December and he hasn’t been late or off sick since he started that shift.”

“Say, that’s very encouraging.” Betsy resumed her brisk voice. “Thank you very much. Good-bye and have a nice day.” She hung up.

Jill, leaning against the box shelves that divided the counted cross-stitch back of the shop from the knitting and needlepoint front, said, “Girl, I had no idea you were such a con artist.”

“Well, what else could I do? You wouldn’t help me!”

“I take it the news is bad.”

“Not for him. He was at work the night Paul was murdered.”

“Ah. Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re back to Foster, then.”

“Yeah.” Betsy opened the cash register and began to put the opening-up paper and silver into the drawer. “Alex did tell me he didn’t know what Paul was doing to him until after Paul had been dead a while. I was hoping he was lying.” She mulled that setback over while the soft airs of something classical played on the radio. Then she asked, “Do you know where Comfort Leckie lives?”

“No, why?”

“I want to ask her something.”

Jill murmured, “Bulldog, bulldog, rah, rah, rah.”

“What?”

“Just glad you’re not quitting. I’m sure she’s in the phone book, why don’t you call her?”

“All right, in a while.”

Jill, smiling, said, “How about I buy you lunch in a couple of hours? You can tell me all about it.”

Betsy laughed. “All right. But it’s my turn to buy.”

 

“Comfort, it’s Betsy Devonshire.”

“Hello, Betsy. What’s up?”

“I was thinking about your story of seeing Paul’s ghost in the bookstore. Do you know about what time of the evening that was?”

“Let me think. It was such a long time ago ...”

Betsy waited patiently, and at last Comfort said, “Near as I can remember, it was after six-thirty. It was dark—real dark, not the dark you get when the weather is bad, but I don’t think it was as late as seven. It was windy, the wind turned my umbrella inside out. It was sleeting hard and had been for a while, there was slush on the streets and sidewalks. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes, that’s it. Thanks, Comfort.”

“I take it you’ll explain that question one of these days.”

“I sure hope so. Bye.”

 

“May I special-order the linen?” Mrs. Hubert asked Godwin. She had just paid for several Marc Saastad iris patterns—she grew varieties of iris in her beautiful front yard, and the Saastad patterns were very accurate about varieties—and the expensive silks to stitch them. But Crewel World didn’t have the high-count linen in the shade of green she wanted.

Godwin considered that. Special orders were a special pain for a small business. It cost twice as much per yard to order a small piece as it did to order five or more yards, plus there was the rapid-delivery cost, and of course the customer grudged the difference—and only too often found the fabric at another store before the special order arrived, or changed her mind altogether about the project.

“Can you pay in advance?” asked Godwin.

Now it was the customer’s turn to consider the problems with that. “How much?” she asked after a pause. Godwin had already calculated the add-on charges, and named a price that included a small profit.

“I’ll write you a check—can you get it before the fifteenth of November? We’re leaving for Florida the twentieth.”

“Certainly. I’ll call Norden Crafts today.” Godwin wrote up the order and phoned it in as soon as Mrs. Hubert left. He bantered a bit with salesman/owner Dave Stott and, so long as he had him on the line, placed another order for three more Kwanzaa patterns. Stott reported the linen was in stock, and said he might be able to get it in the mail yet today.

The door went
Bing!
a few minutes later, and so did Godwin’s heart when he saw the incredibly handsome Rik Lightfoot come in.

“Hi,” said Rik in his rich voice.

“Hi,” said Godwin, batting his eyelashes furiously. “May I help you, I really, really hope?”

Rik laughed. “Down, boy, I’m heterosexual. I thought I had enough Anchor 308 for that lab pattern, but it turns out I don’t.” He went to the wooden cabinet and ran a forefinger down the sets of shallow drawers until he found the deep golden brown he was looking for. He bought two skeins and said, “Where’s the lady who was behind the counter last time I came in?”

“She’s at lunch. She’s heterosexual, too.”

Rik laughed and Godwin thought he’d melt right into his penny loafers.

“Is it true that the best bass fishing in the state is right here in Lake Minnetonka?” asked Rik.

“I’ve heard that,” hazarded Godwin, who didn’t know one of the biggest bass fishing tournaments in the country was held on the lake every year.

“Can people fish off the docks here?”

“Sure,” said Godwin, who had no idea at all if that were true.

“I want to see if a technique I learned in Montana works here. You see, you skip your jig sideways so it goes under the dock, where fish hang out in the shadow of the boards, just like they hide around sunken logs or under water lilies.” Rik made a sideways casting gesture and Godwin melted all over again at the display of shoulder and back.

“You make it sound really interesting,” said Godwin fervently, leaning on the desk to get just a little closer to the man.

“Well, Minnesota makes a lot of famous lures, and with all those lakes, I should think just about everyone here likes to fish.”

“Oh, I agree with that,” nodded Godwin without mentioning he was an exception.

“It must be nice, living right on the shore of such a great lake.”

“I love to go out on the water,” said Godwin. “I get out there whenever I can in the summer.”

“Of course, Mille Lacs is good, too,” continued Rik.

“That’s what I hear,” said Godwin, whose only trip to that lake was to visit an Indian casino.

“Nothing like a fresh walleye. The best I ever had I caught in a Canadian lake that didn’t even have a road to it, we had to fly in. Caught my limit in less than an hour. Used a spoon. Dropped it ...” Again Rik made a casting gesture, this time forward, toward the door. “I barely started to reel it in when all of a sudden,
bam,
he hit that line and took off with it. I thought I was gonna lose him, he ran right up along the shore, wound himself around tree roots, practically buried himself in some big rocks. But I just set the reel and let him go, and pretty soon he came right back at me, and five minutes later he came alongside the boat, tame as a kitten, practically asking me to take him out of the water.”

“How ... interesting,” said Godwin, a little desperately.

“I tell you, after eating those fillets, I just about swore off fishing back in the States. But it’s the sport that draws me, I do a lot of catch and release now.”

“I suppose that happens a lot,” said Godwin. “I mean to people who have eaten walleye fillets, er, caught with a spoon in Canada.”

Rik, enlightened, laughed. “Yes, you’re right. Well, thanks for an interesting conversation—what’s your name?”

“Godwin DuLac. Nice to meet you. Come back again when you need anything in the needle arts line.”

He watched Rik go with a little sigh, and when Betsy came back from lunch, he announced that he had saved her from a terrible fate: having to listen to fish talk. “I tell you, I thought that man was perfect, he is so handsome and he does needlework and he drives a
Porsche,
for heaven’s sake. But he not only fishes, he
loves
to talk about it. Do you know what he told me? He said he fishes with a spoon! Is that possible? Or did he see my eyes glazing over and start to spoof me?”

“There’s a kind of fishing lure called a spoon,” said Betsy, laughing at his woebegone expression. “So I take it he is gay?”

“Oh. Well, no, he said he. was heterosexual when he heard me panting at his approach. But if you are wise, Betsy, when he comes in again, run for the back room or he’ll start teaching you how to cast under a dock.”

“All right,” lied Betsy, who used to love to fish. “Anything else interesting happen while I was gone?”

“Well, I sold a set of Kwanzaa patterns, that’s the third set, so I told Dave to send us three more. And—I hope you aren’t angry about this, but I took a special order. I know you don’t like them, but it’s for Mrs. Hubert, and she bought all the silks as well as the patterns for three Saastad irises, plus she paid in advance.” He held out the order.

“And she agreed to pay a premium for the fabric, so it’s all right,” said Betsy, looking at it. “But before it happens again, I want to try something Susan Greening Davis suggested, and call some other shops to see if we can’t order some of this less popular stuff together. If I can get three others to go in with me, the order will be big enough to get a price break.”

“But you don’t have room for more fabric on your shelves,” warned Godwin. “And you’re already storing stock in the bathroom.”

“I know. Goddy, do you think it would be a good idea to set up some storage shelves in the basement? I was thinking of moving all the household stuff out of there and putting the stock in that back room into the basement. I nearly broke my neck yesterday trying to reach that top shelf.”