Hanging by a Thread (6 page)

It was Halloween. In honor of the holiday, Betsy had made a five-gallon urn of hot spiced cider for her customers, and all five members present had a steaming cup in front of them. Despite the holiday— or perhaps because of it—every one of them was working on a Christmas project. But the talk was of Halloweens past, when children in homemade costumes went door-to-door soliciting candy. “I remember one year when my brother, who always dressed as a tramp, came home with a pillowcase nearly full of candy,” said Comfort. “Mother made him take most of it to the children’s hospital in St. Paul, and he still had enough left to give himself three or four stomachaches.” She was knitting a child’s sweater dappled with snowmen, a gift for a great-grandchild.

“My father used to say that when he was a boy, they pulled awful pranks, soaping windows and tipping over outhouses,” said Martha, who was working on Holiday House, a complex work in two pieces. One, lying finished on the table, was the front of a two-story house done in Hardanger and other fancy white-on-white stitches. The second had an elaborately-decorated Christmas tree down low and a lit candle up high; when the first piece was laid over it, the tree appeared in the living room window and the candle in an upstairs bedroom. She was working on the tree, using silks, metallics, and tiny beads. “Once, they dismantled a neighbor’s Model A and reassembled it in the hayloft of his barn.”

Alice said, “My brothers never thought up anything more imaginative than stealing the mayor’s front gate.”

Godwin, fashionable in a blue-and-maroon argyle sweater that set off his golden hair beautifully, said, “I always
loved
dressing up on Halloween.” He was knitting a red-and-green scarf without looking, his fingers moving swiftly and economically. A tiny smile formed.
“Never
as a tramp, however.”

Emily, her dark eyes focused on the Cold Hands, Warm Heart sampler she was cross-stitching, said, “Oh, I wish there were fancy dress balls nowadays, the really elaborate kind, where people come as Harlequin and Marie Antoinette and go dancing in a gigantic ballroom all lit with candles.” She paused to complete a stitch. “But I’ve never even heard of someone holding one, much less been invited.”

“You just don’t move in the right circles, my dear,” said Godwin. The ladies laughed. Godwin loved to hint at scandalous gay parties, but they were almost sure he’d never been to one in his life.

As on last Monday, Betsy yearned to sit down with them, but today she was stuck at her desk designing a new seasonal display. As soon as the store closed this evening, the cross-stitched black cats and jack-o’-lanterns would be cleared away to make room for a framed counted cross-stitch cornucopia, and a stand-up pillow shaped like a turkey. But there would be only a very few other acknowledgments of Thanksgiving-not with the retailers’ most important holiday on the horizon: Christmas.

Her window and the major components of her seasonal display were due to go up tonight. Already she was behind other retailers, whose Christmas lights had begun to twinkle right after school started.

She glanced at the soft fabric sack under the table, three steps but many hours away. It held her Christmas stocking and a Ziploc bag of floss. If she was to get it to her finisher, she would have to work on it every night after the shop closed—and starting this weekend, the shop would be open all day Saturday and Sunday. That meant she couldn’t go to Orchestra Hall Saturday night. She took a sip of hot spiced cider and sighed. She enjoyed stitching, and she enjoyed owning a needlework shop, but there never seemed to be enough time left over for anything else.

She looked down at her barely-started plan for the front window. Betsy kept a few needlepoint Christmas stockings out year round and, of course, Marilyn Leavitt Imblum’s Celtic Christmas hung with the counted cross-stitch models year round. But there were other big, complex Christmas patterns it took cross-stitchers months to finish. They needed prodding to remind them to buy these projects in March, when everyone else was thinking about tulips and Easter bunnies. Betsy envied Cross Stitch Comer in Chicago, a shop with enough floor space to have a big, year-round Christmas display. As it was, her customers who bought the big ones now would display them next Christmas.

She studied her list of Christmas patterns in stock, her list of finished models, and her floor plan. She hadn’t owned Crewel World very long, and while she was more sophisticated than when she began, she was still feeling her way into the retail stitchery business. Learning on this job was a dangerous undertaking; if it weren’t for her other sources of income, Crewel World would have gone under months ago. And she knew she’d be much further along if she hadn’t also encumbered herself with ownership of the building her shop was in, with its own numerous demands.

And weren’t so often sidetracked by crime.

Interesting at this stage of her life—Betsy was in her middle fifties—to discover a heretofore latent talent for sleuthing. But once uncovered, it proved a powerful draw, eating up time she would otherwise have devoted to ordering stock, paying bills, record keeping, tax planning, salesmanship, and home improvement.

And designing her displays.

She looked over the assortment of patterns and models, and was satisfied with the plentitude and variety. Now, which was to go in the big front window to catch the eye of potential customers? She had already used a ruler to make a rectangle scaled to her window’s dimensions, and had cut some blue scrap paper into rough shapes scaled to represent the items she thought should go in the window—too many, of course.

This scrap represented a spectacular, hand-painted needlepoint Christmas stocking, very eye-catching—but there was only the one, so if it sold at once, it would make a hole in the display. She put its paper shape aside. Maybe she should put up one of the knitted stockings instead? But which, the one knitted in bright Christmas colors? Or the one knitted in Scandinavian blue and white? Or the buff one knitted in fancy stitches, like an aran sweater? Not all three, that might make passersby think this was primarily a knitting supplies shop, which it wasn’t, and also wouldn’t leave room for the beautiful and complicated Teresa Wentzler Holly and Ivy sampler Sherry had begun for Betsy’s predecessor and only finished a week ago. Betsy also had a nice collection of counted cross-stitch stockings. Maybe her window could be all stockings, knit, cross-stitched and needlepointed. Yes!

No. She’d already decided there must be a place for Just Nan’s Liberty Angel, the one done in red, white and blue with a star-spangled banner.

There was the large and magnificent Marbek Nativity, but that would go in the back, on a low table against the wall, looking out through the opening between the tall set of box shelves that divided the counted cross-stitch area from the front of the shop. She would arrange one of the ceiling spots to shine directly on the big, glittery figures, so customers in front would feel as if they were looking into the Stable.

She pulled her attention from the back of the shop to the window. She’d put some of those small, adorable,
affordable
needlepoint canvases of Santas and rocking horses and alphabet blocks that could be finished quickly even by beginning stitchers. And she’d better save a corner for an announcement of January classes that needlepoint and knitting customers should sign up for.

And, of course, there were the fairy lights that would frame the window—she sketched some loops to indicate the space they’d take.

Already the window was looking overcrowded. Hmmm, if she took out two of the inexpensive canvases, and moved this stocking over here, and then this counted piece could go ...

Her sketching was interrupted by the
Bing!
of the front door. Betsy looked up to see Mrs. Chesterfield coming in, and went at once to greet her. Mrs. Chesterfield was a good customer, but she could not pick a skein of wool from a basket without spilling all the contents, or pull a pattern from a rack without tipping it over. Equally bad, she often stepped on whatever fell near her feet.

“May I help you find something, Mrs. Chesterfield?” Betsy had decided that the next time Mrs. Chesterfield came in, she would follow her around, trying to keep her from bumping into racks and picking things up she knocked over before they got stepped on.

“I’m looking for a sampler pattern. But I don’t know who it’s by.”

Mrs. Chesterfield went into the back room of the shop, where the counted cross-stitch patterns lived, and was reaching for a book on samplers when the rack behind her tipped over. Betsy was almost sure the woman’s hip had bumped it and sent it rolling crookedly across the floor, shedding Water Colors floss as it went.

“I’ll get it, it’s all right,” said Betsy. “You go ahead with your selection.” She stooped to gather the beautiful pastel skeins.

Perhaps because she was concentrating on that task, she didn’t see how Mrs. Chesterfield managed to pull a book from the middle shelf and at the same time cause half of the pretty display of clear glass “ort collectors” on an upper shelf to tumble to the floor. She must have reached up to brace herself—Mrs. Chesterfield was a bit arthritic.

“Watch where you’re stepping!” said Betsy more sharply than she meant to, as one of the ornaments crumbled under Mrs. Chesterfield’s heel.

“Well, where did those come from?” asked Mrs. Chesterfield, looking about her as she moved away from the shelves. “Honestly, Betsy, you should be more careful how you set up your displays. Every time I come in here, something gets broken.”

“I know, it’s awful,” said Betsy, frowning because that was true. “I’ll try to do better in future,” she promised. “Here, why don’t you sit at this table and look at your book. I’ll bring you some more so you can see which one you like best. And would you like a cup of hot cider?”

“Why, thank you, Betsy, that would be lovely. Do you still have that tea-dyed linen in thirty-six-thirty-eight count? The pattern I’m looking for is an old one. I think it has a Tree of Life on it.” Women who did samplers often found that to do an exact replica of very old patterns, they needed linen woven, like the antique original, with fewer strands per inch in one direction than the other. Thank God for Norden Crafts, which not only had such linen, but could supply it in a number of colors and counts.

Betsy said, “Yes, I have that. What size piece will you need?” Betsy selected three books on samplers and brought them to Mrs. Chesterfield. “Here you are.”

“I won’t know until I find the pattern. I know it’s in one of these books, Margaret told me about it.”

Betsy didn’t do samplers, so she couldn’t help look. She brought a Styrofoam cup of cider to Mrs. Chesterfield, and on seeing she was securely seated in the chair, went back to her desk.

She had barely taken her seat when there was a soft crash from the back, its exact location hidden by one of the twin walls of box shelves that made a separate room of the back of the shop. Before Betsy could move, Godwin, winking and grinning at Betsy, was through the opening. Mrs. Chesterfield was heard to say, “How did that happen?”

And Godwin to reply, “It’s just a few magazines, Mrs. Chesterfield. Nothing to worry about.” His tone was very dry, pitched to reach Betsy’s ears.

“I told you so,” said Martha to Alice, and to Comfort, “What’s she doing?”

“Told her what?” asked Betsy.

“Godwin says Mrs. Chesterfield has a poltergeist,” said Comfort. “And Martha agrees with him.” She was leaning back in her seat, trying to see what was going on. “Looks to me like she’s sitting down.”

“If Godwin is as bright as he seems, he’ll make sure she stays in that chair.”

Emily giggled. “Do you all really believe Mrs. Chesterfield is haunted?”

“I don’t,” said Alice, but quietly. Last Monday she had disagreed that Foster Johns was a murderer; she didn’t like being the one who always disagreed. “No such thing,” she added, and checked the count on the bright blue mitten she was knitting with an air indicating she would say no more, and continued working down the palm.

There was another crash, this one louder. Emily stood and went to the entryway between the box shelves.

“Oh, my goodness, look at that!” she said.

“What?” asked Betsy, standing and leaning forward for a look. “Oh, no, that rack of scissors!”

“I’ve got it, you all stay out of here,” said Godwin. He could be heard adding to Mrs. Chesterfield, “Please sit down again; I’ll bring you whatever you want.”

Emily and Betsy went back to their respective seats, too, and Emily said in a low voice, “Did you see how Mrs. Chesterfield was nowhere near that rack?”

“She never is,” said Martha, rolling her gaze around the table.

“She moved away when it fell, of course,” said Alice in a barely audible voice.

“Of course she did,” agreed Betsy firmly, hoping to quash the gossip, and annoyed with Godwin for spreading it.

“Well, this is interesting,” said Comfort, looking around the table, her knitting forgotten. “Do you mean to tell me that some of you believe in ghosts?”

“I don’t,” said Alice.

“Anyway, it’s not a ghost, it’s a poltergeist,” said young Emily. She picked up her sampler. “And whether or not anyone believes it, Mrs. Chesterfield is haunted.”

“What’s a poltergeist?” asked Comfort.

“It’s a mischievous spirit that throws things and breaks things and moves things,” explained Martha. “It tends to hang around a particular individual, usually an adolescent.”

“Mrs. Chesterfield is hardly an adolescent,” noted Alice.

“Only
usually
an adolescent,” underlined Martha. “And usually these things happen only in their homes. But Mrs. Chesterfield’s poltergeist isn’t active in her home at all; instead, it follows her everywhere. It doesn’t always ‘act out,’ but obviously today it is very active.”

“Why, because it’s Halloween?” asked Comfort.

“Could be,” agreed Martha. “But I remember one Fourth of July when all the fireworks went off at once, scaring the men getting ready to fire them half to death, and there she was, sitting on the beach watching.”