Knit Your Own Murder (7 page)

She sat back with a sigh of contentment, thinking about little pebbles of bone carrying her spirit into the place all life began, the ocean.

*   *   *

H
aving
delved all she could into Maddy's life, Betsy decided to switch direction and try to find out something about Harry Whiteside. She knew very little about him. She'd read the newspaper accounts, but in her experience, newspapers didn't always have complete or accurate information. She'd heard the gossip about the three-way struggle to buy the big property on Water Street. But a lot of gossip could be described as exaggerated and
unsympathetic speculation, and in any case, it made two-dimensional caricatures of its subjects. The word
triangulate
appeared at the front of her mind. She needed another source, so maybe she could triangulate and from three flawed angles find information she could trust. So where else to look?

She turned to Whiteside's obituary in the
Star Tribune
. That at least would be a compassionate summary of his life.

There, as elsewhere, she learned that he was sixty-seven, the father of three children, all boys, all grown and married, with children of their own—and that he had two ex-wives. The children were all by his first wife. He had an MBA from the College (now University) of St. Thomas. He was the founder and CEO of Whiteside Design, Incorporated, the fourth-largest designer and builder of commercial property in the state.

He was to be interred in Lakeview Cemetery—where the elite were buried—on a date yet to be announced. Memorials were to be sent to the University of Minnesota.

The tone of the obituary was staid and respectful, without flowery or sorrowful prose. She wondered who had written it.

Now she felt prepared to talk to someone who knew Harry Whiteside personally. One of his children or ex-wives would be best to start. Bershada, who helped his second wife move out, could probably help her connect with the ex-wife. But Bershada was in Arkansas for the marriage of her youngest daughter and had apparently shut off her cell phone. Nor was she reading her e-mail. Both decisions were understandable; Bershada had talked several times about the “Bridezilla” her daughter Leeza had become, and about
her overbearing and even bizarre behavior as the wedding date approached. Doubtless Bershada had her hands full with her large and sometimes volatile family's issues.

Then she remembered Phil's remark that Harry's downfall would be bankruptcy, not murder. What did Phil know about Harry?

She called him. Pleased to be consulted, he said, “I got a friend, he's a contractor. He says ol' Harry's a manipulator. He can be—excuse me, he used to be—your best friend when he was looking to hire you for a job he had pending. Saw you in a restaurant, he'd pay your tab. Out on the town, he'd buy you a drink—hell, two drinks. A real hail-fellow-well-met. See? Then you signed the contract and all of a sudden he was mad at everything you did. It wasn't good enough, it wasn't fast enough, you weren't working hard enough, he was losing money and it was your fault. He'd grind you down till you agreed to give him a discount. Once the job was done, he'd grudge that maybe you did all right, and in a few weeks he was fine with you, happy with the work you did, and if your paths crossed again, he'd shake your hand and offer to introduce you to someone he thought may be useful to you.”

“What awful behavior!” said Betsy. “Do you think maybe he was bipolar? How did he stay in business behaving like that?”

“According to what I heard, when he was being nice, his deals were more than fair, and in the end he paid the amended amount in full and on time—which is not always the case with these big-time builders. Any contractor who could develop a tin ear to Harry's rants could make a living
off him. But if enough people got tired of his methods, his business could suffer.”

“This is wonderful information—thank you!”

“Hey, remember, this is all what they call hearsay. On the other hand, it's not just from my friend but a couple of his friends, too—during a late-night poker game when we were all half in the bag. Or is it still hearsay when it's from three drunk people?”

Betsy chuckled. “I think so. Still, this is very useful. You don't happen to know anything about his wives and children, do you?”

“‘Wives'? What was he, a polygamist?”

“No, they were in succession; he married his second wife after divorcing his first one.” She stopped short. “You know, I actually don't know if that's true. Maybe she died?”

“Sorry, I don't know, either.”

“Well, do you know anything about his children? All I have is that there are three boys, all grown and married.”

“'Fraid not. I guess that's what comes of him living on the other side of the lake. Like I told you, he owned a big architectural design company, and he had property all over the state. So this would be just another notch cut in the handle of his pistol.”

Betsy said, “I wonder what will happen to it. I mean, who will come into possession?”

“If he left a will, you can find out.”

“I can?”

“Sure, once it's filed, you can read it. Wills are public information.”

“That's good to know. Where would I go to find it?”

“Now that I don't know. Call City Hall in Wayzata.”

“Thanks, I will. You've been a great resource on this, and I'm grateful.”

“You're welcome.”

But the will hadn't been filed yet. So Betsy decided to run a Google search on Harry's sons. She went back to the obituary and found their names: Hamilton, Howard, and Hector. Whiteside surely wasn't a common surname. Or was it? Out of curiosity, she did another search and discovered about one person in twenty-five thousand is surnamed Whiteside. With that in mind, she searched the three sons by their first and last names and found links to three men named Hamilton Whiteside, two named Hector Whiteside, and five named Howard Whiteside. Five were businessmen, one was a builder, one was a hog farmer, one was an architect, and one was a college professor, but only four were of the right age to be Harry Whiteside's sons. One was a very old man and another perhaps of an age to be Harry's younger brother. None lived in Minnesota—was that a clue?

One of the Hamiltons and both the Hectors had contact information, and Betsy sent a brief e-mail to them, asking each if he was Harry Whiteside's son.

Now all she could do in that direction was wait, so she turned her attention back to Maddy O'Leary. Maddy was a longtime resident of Excelsior. Her life, like that of almost everyone in town, had been thoroughly sieved. Maddy, she knew, had begun her adult life as a legal secretary in a Minneapolis law firm specializing in real estate. She took classes and became a paralegal and a few years later caused a minor scandal when she married a senior partner in the firm—
who died after three months. Betsy held that thought out in front of her mind for a short while. What did her husband die of? She didn't know, but it couldn't have been something violent, or that fact would be prominent. Maddy wasn't left pregnant and never remarried.

Though her brief marriage left her well-off, she stayed with the law firm for a few years more, then began to buy distressed and/or repossessed properties, hiring people to rehab them, then selling some, keeping and renting others. Over time she moved from single-occupancy homes to duplexes and fourplexes and then to apartment buildings. As her holdings became more numerous and complex, she quit the law firm to focus on them. Gossip had it that nowadays some renters moved out when she took over a building because she was a harsh landlord, but she was never the subject of a successful tenant's lawsuit. When she sold a rental property, it was usually at a profit because of the upgrades she'd done. But a not inconsiderable part was because her tenants tended to be orderly. Betsy, who had twice suffered with difficult tenants, had often promised herself that she would ask Maddy her secret. Was it because she intensely interviewed prospective renters in order to screen out potential problems? If so, what did she ask them? How would she make that kind of interview legal? Or was her manner of supervising her properties such that she overawed her tenants? Betsy had never learned the art of overawing.

Or was it something else, something Betsy could emulate?

But Maddy had been abrupt to the point of rudeness to everyone, and Betsy had found herself shying away from
asking her questions. Not that there was a lack of opportunity. Maddy bought a lot of yarn and other stitching materials in Betsy's shop. If she wanted something, she tended to buy it at once, only rarely waiting for a sale. Despite the amount of yarn and other items she purchased, she never asked for special consideration, such as a discount for buying in quantity. On the other hand, she was quick to return a product she found faulty or inappropriate for its intended use. Betsy was equally quick to make reimbursements, though she was careful not to overcompensate. As far as possible, she had wanted to keep both Maddy's custom and her respect.

She could remember only one time Maddy came into her shop in such good humor that Betsy dared to banter with her. It was the day Maddy had won the bidding war on the Water Street property.

“Hello, Betsy!” she had boomed in her loud voice, her eyes sparkling and her long skirts snapping in the speed of her stride.

“Well, something's made you cheerful this afternoon,” Betsy had responded, surprised.

“I took down two people who were giving me grief,” Maddy had said.

“Looks like they never laid a glove on you,” Betsy had dared to say.

“Oh, metaphorically, I'm all over bruises,” she had said, coming down to almost her usual brusque tone. “But unlike them, I'll be more than fine. I want three more skeins of that green Appleton wool I bought in here last week.”

That was the only time she had been anything but abrupt. Too bad it was so shortly before her death; Betsy would have liked to look behind that shield to see what
Maddy was really like. And now it was particularly sad to learn there was another, softer, side to the woman. It appeared she gave generously but worked always in the background, not just at her church but in the toy auction. She knit more toys for it than any other person. But she had objected strenuously to Bershada's insistence that she sit in a place of honor for doing so.

I believe I was right, she was shy
, thought Betsy now. Maddy hated being singled out, even for praise.

Betsy wondered what kind of childhood she had had.

But first, and more importantly, she wanted to find out if that gruff exterior and overweening ambition had created an enemy so angry that he—or she—had resorted to murder.

I
t
was a slow time in the shop. Godwin had gone across the street to have lunch with Rafael in their condo. Betsy was at the big checkout desk writing checks for suppliers—and sighing over the numbers—when the door announced its opening with a bright chorus of “Anchors Aweigh.” She looked up to see Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy coming in. Backward.

Actually, he had turned around to stare in bemusement at the door frame. He held the door open until the tune finished. Then he closed it and turned to see Betsy looking bemused at him.

“You don't know that melody?” she asked.

“Of course I do. Doesn't everybody? But you are going to get very tired of it after a few dozen repeats,” he predicted.

“I won't have time to get tired of it. Godwin changes the music at least once a week. He's working his way down a very long list of titles.”

Malloy looked back again at the door. “That's the Navy Hymn, isn't it,” he said.

“No, the Navy Hymn is ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save.' What you just heard is a traditional Navy drinking song.”

He looked at her. “You sure?”

She offered a snappy salute. “Ex–Navy WAVE here. I know at least two verses of ‘Eternal Father.' I even know the countermelody to ‘Anchors Aweigh.'” She would have sung it to him, but he didn't look interested. Instead, she asked, “How may I help you, Mike?”

“I'm here about the Maddy O'Leary case.”

“I'll be glad to help any way I can.”

He smiled his thin smile and came forward, a slim man of average height with a densely freckled face. His hair was a shade of tan, which happens to some redheads as they age. His light blue eyes were tired.

“I made a fresh pot of coffee less than half an hour ago,” she said.

“Yes, thanks. Black.”

“Have a seat.” She gestured at the library table in the center of the room.

When she came out of the back, carrying two mugs, one of coffee and the other of an herbal tea, he was seated near the far end of one long side. On the table in front of him was a notepad with sewn-in pages and a fat ballpoint pen.

She put his coffee beside the notepad, put her own tea in front of a chair across from him, and sat down.

“Where do we begin?” she asked.

“Whose idea was this auction at Mount Calvary?”

“It was Bershada Reynolds's idea. I can't believe you don't already know that.”

He nodded, but whether in agreement or not, she couldn't tell. “Who supplied the yarn for those little canvas bags?”

“I did. And the bags themselves, too.” Surely he must have known that already, too.
Aha
, she thought, he's asking questions he knows the answers to in order to see how I tell the truth. Or don't. But that must be from habit; he knows me, and he knows I don't lie. She looked at him and smiled.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Just recognizing your style of interrogation.”

“This isn't an interrogation, it's an interview. I interrogate suspects, I interview witnesses.”

“Noted, thanks. Next question.”

“How did you select the yarn that went into the bags?”

“Bershada told me who the people were, and I asked them what kind of yarn they wanted.”

“How far in advance of the auction did you pull the yarn?”

“About ten or twelve days.”

“Was the yarn from your stock?”

“Yes. One person came in to look at what I had, and two people told me directly what they would like. Goddy, of course, picked his own yarn.”

“Which way did Ms. O'Leary go?”

“She asked me if I had dark blue merino wool. I did, so I turned the skein into a ball—”

“What? Why?”

She turned away in her chair. “Those are skeins,” she said, pointing to a basket full of fat ovals of yarn cinched in the middle by a broad paper wrapper. “It's how yarn comes, in skeins. I have a device that will turn a skein into a ball. It's easier to knit from a ball.”

“So why don't they come already in balls?”

“Because balls roll away, and they unwind as they roll.”

He wrote that down, paused, brightened, and said, “I remember how in old movies a man would sit with yarn kind of wrapped or draped around his wrists while a woman pulled it off in a single strand to make a ball.” He held his hands about two feet apart, palms facing in.

Betsy nodded. “That's the traditional method. You can also drape it around the back of a chair, but my device is much faster. It depends on what the knitter is after, a quick ball of yarn or a chance to sit and talk with someone. Interestingly, it was also used as a safe kind of courtship. The man and woman could talk at length, but they couldn't get up to anything while his hands were engaged like that. Plus she got a ball of yarn with which to begin to knit him a pair of argyle socks.”

“That's kind of nice,” said Mike, nodding thoughtfully, and Betsy recalled he had two daughters of dating age. One of them was a knitter.

But the task of writing checks prodded, so she pushed forward. “What else do you want to know?”

“Where were the bags kept after you put the yarn in them?”

“I have a storage room in the basement.”

“Is it locked?”

“No, but the front and back doors to this building are, as is the door to the basement.”

“Who has the keys?”

“I have keys, my tenants have keys, Connor has keys, Godwin has keys. Only Godwin and I have the keys to the front and back door of the shop. We lend a key to the shop's
front door to an employee who is coming in early, but only that one key. And we take it back when we come in. All the locks are dead bolts.”

Mike, writing swiftly, nodded, then paused. “Your tenants have keys to the basement?”

Betsy nodded. “A washing machine and dryer are down there.”

“Would they lend their keys to a friend?”

“Maybe. I ask them not to when I give them the keys, but you know how people are. The Pearsons, who have the front apartment, have a big family who drop by a lot, so it's likely their keys have been temporarily loaned out. It's even possible they've made copies for them.” She frowned. “I should ask them about that.”

“So getting at the bags of yarn might have been inconvenient for a non-tenant or non-employee, but not impossible.”

“I would prefer difficult and complicated to inconvenient. But yes, not impossible.”

“Did you see any evidence of tampering when you took the bags of yarn over to Mount Calvary?”

“I didn't take them over. Bershada came with another woman, and they took them out of the basement. Have you talked to her?”

“Not about that. When did the transfer take place?”

“The Wednesday before the Saturday auction.”

“Did you see the bags in the basement at any time before that?”

“Probably. I mean I went down to the basement a few times between putting them down there and Bershada
taking them away. I think I would have noticed if they'd been moved around or some were missing.”

“Were they on a row on a shelf, or kept in a box, or what?”

“In a double row on a shelf. It was deep enough so the bags could line up two by two.”

“But plainly visible to anyone going into that room,” Mike said.

“Or just standing in the door, yes.”

“Was Ms. O'Leary's yarn in the front row?”

Betsy thought. “I'm sorry, I don't remember. Godwin and I put the yarn and knitting needles in the bags and took them down.”

“You didn't pack each bag yourself?”

“No. I had made a list of who got which ball of yarn. Goddy took the list, loaded the bags, and I took them downstairs. It didn't take long, but I remember waiting till after closing that day, so he wouldn't be thrown off stride by having to wait on a customer.”

“Do you know of anyone involved in the auction who smokes e-cigarettes?”

Betsy shook her head. “No.”

Mike sighed, made a note, sighed again, and closed his notebook. “Okay, thank you.”

“I take it you're trying to clear Joe Mickels?”

“No, I'm trying to clear everyone else so I can arrest him.” He stood, looked into her shocked eyes, and said with a straight face, “If you believe that, you're not half the sleuth I've taken you for.”

Relieved, she laughed. “And sometimes I need to
remind myself you're twice the investigator I used to take you for.”

*   *   *

“S
ee,
I told you he's not the sharpest hook in the tackle box!” said Godwin.

“He was kidding, Goddy! Kidding! He's out to find the person who killed Maddy. Right now he thinks it might be Joe. So do you, remember?”

“Yeah, well, he hasn't had your experience with Joe, so what does he know?”

“He knows plenty—and he's had the training to see it properly. Plus, he has the backing of a very large set of scientific testing methods we have no access to. Let him do his thing.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe you're right. But we'll do our thing, too, right?”

“Of course.”

“So where do we go next,
kemo sabe
?”

“I want to talk to people who knew Mr. Whiteside and Ms. O'Leary.”

“Looking for what they were like?”

“Looking for who hated them.”