Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 (6 page)

Shivering under her shawl, Betsy smiled. “I should think in Minnesota, you don't need cold storage; just put things out on your back porch.”

Hud laughed. “Wait till next July, you'll change your tune.” He turned to Margot. “That's when we had summer this year, right, Margot? July seventh and eighth, as I recall.”

Margot chuckled. “I think you're right; that was the weekend you took your Rolls off its blocks, right? Hud, I'm coming to the art museum on Wednesday to take a new look at the T‘ang horse. It's for another needlepoint project. So long as I'm in the city, I'd like to stop by your office and talk about some board business. How's your schedule?”

“Pretty tight, but I can make a hole Wednesday morning, I think. About eleven, say?”

“Thanks. It won't take long.”

Mayor Jamison came over then to ask Margot what she had done with the Founders' Day parade sashes, and from there the talk wandered to other things.

4

Shelly Donohue sat at the white plastic table on a white plastic chair outside the Excelo Bakery shop on Water Street. She was eating a “wicked” sandwich—so designated on a hand-lettered placard—consisting of sprouts, tomato, avocado, two kinds of cheese, and green-goddess dressing on herb-flavored foccacio bread baked on the premises. Her own designation of it was “messy but interesting,” as in, “Will you make me one of those messy but interesting veggie sandwiches?” Shelly would not describe anything as wicked except murder and child abuse.

She also had a cup of cranberry juice, not further designated.

She was feeling frazzled, and looking a trifle frazzled as well; her hair was coming out of its bun and tendrils of it were lifted up here and there by a cool, vagrant breeze. An all-day preschool session was under way, and there were new laws and regulations to master, new textbooks (one with several egregious errors of fact) to study, and a new principal full of new ideas. And retirement was twenty years away.

But the morning's harsh edge was being smoothed away by a bit of friendly gossip. She was sharing her table with Irene Potter, a fellow needleworker, who was not drinking her coffee and was pulling fragments off a poppy-seed muffin with her lean, nimble fingers in lieu of eating it.

Irene's shining dark eyes encouraged Shelly to go on with what she was saying.

“You know, you'd hardly think they were sisters at all,” Shelly continued. “Margot's such a dainty little thing, so sweet and ... and ... oh, I know the word's not considered nice anymore, but she's a lady. A real lady. Betsy's nice, too, don't get me wrong. But it's not just that they don't look very much alike; I mean, that sort of thing happens in any family that doesn't marry one another's cousins. But Betsy's ...” She paused to think of the right words. “She's ... more so,” she said with an air of having at last put her finger on it. “You should have seen her putting the moves on Hudson Earlie Saturday night. And Hud was moving right back—you know Hud—but Margot couldn't say anything right there in front of him.”

“Yes, we all know Hud,” said Irene, waggling her eyebrows.

“But did you know Margot hired Betsy to work in the store?”

“She did?” Irene had worked a few hours in Crewel World, and wanted to work more.

“And Betsy doesn't know anything about running a store, or all that much about needlework, for that matter. She asked the dumbest questions.”

“No!” said Irene.

“Yes. But she's trying really hard to pick up on things. And she's fun to have around, she really seems to like talking with the customers. She sold a whole lot of yarn to this woman by asking her questions about knitting. It was so funny to watch.”

By her face, Irene didn't get the joke. “I hear she used to live in
San Francisco
.” Her expressive voice turned the name into a synonym for depravity.

Shelly shrugged eloquently. “Yes, she mentioned that.
And
London,
and
New York. As if none of us ever go anywhere. She's been married a few times, too. But no children.” Her face was disapproving of both those facts, though she herself was divorced—once—and had no children.

Irene said, “Of course, Margot never had children, either. Though I always
understood
it was Aaron's fault.” They shared a slightly different expression this time, then smiled to show it was all just in fun. Each considered herself very close to Margot.

Shelly glanced at her watch then quickly stood and began gathering the remnants of her meal. “Lunch break's about over. I have to get back.”

“Yes, you only get forty-five minutes, don't you?” said Irene, also rising. Her job as a supervisor in the shipping department of a local manufacturer wasn't as prestigious as Shelly's, but they gave her an hour for lunch. “So,” she went on, walking Shelly to the trash barrel, her voice hopeful, “if Betsy doesn't know much, it seems Margot will still be in the market for a part-timer to help out in the shop?” Irene Potter's ultimate goal in life was to own a needlework shop, and meanwhile to gain full-time employment in Margot's. When she'd heard Margot's sister was coming to stay, she had trembled for the few hours of work Margot would give her.

Shelly, secure in her summer hours in Crewel World, smiled. “Probably not, but why don't you go talk to her? Meet Betsy, too. Maybe you two would get along. Got to run. Bye-bye.”

Irene stood on the sidewalk in the bright sunshine, staring after her. Irene had a tendency to see everyone as a rival or potential rival, so Shelly's parting remarks gave her an idea that was positively
brilliant.
Know thine enemy, that was biblical, wasn't it? Or was it Shakespearean? Never mind, if she went over there and made friends, then she might see how to sabotage this Betsy person. Who, after all, knew next to nothing about clerking in a needlework store, while Irene knew everything; that alone might nullify the blood connection.

She hurried to scoop up the remains of her muffin and the paper coffee cup and toss them into the trash container. She dusted crumbs off herself with her napkin, then inspected herself in the window of the bakery. Dark slacks, white blouse, gray vest hand-crocheted herself with cotton thread in a pineapple pattern, and her favorite earrings, shaped like tiny scissors. She patted her dark curly hair, cropped close to her narrow head. She looked neat and competent. She smiled at the reflection, admiring the whiteness of her teeth. Perfect!

She rose onto her toes before stepping off in the direction of Crewel World, a mannerism she had seen in a musical once and copied whenever she was feeling ebullient. She had twenty minutes left of her lunch hour, time enough to get there and start
making friends
with her new rival. What fun!

 

 

Betsy sat behind the big old desk that Margot used as a checkout counter. She was biting on her lower lip. In her hands were two metal knitting needles and a ball of cheap purple yarn. Open on the desk was a thin booklet that promised to teach her how to knit in one day.

The reason her lower lip was being held in place was that doing so prevented her from sticking her tongue out.

Betsy considered herself very well coordinated. She could ride, she could shoot, she could thread a needle on the first try. Back when her hair was long, she'd taught herself to French-braid it down the back of her head without looking. But knitting was different.

“Casting on” she could do. She'd cast on twenty-five stitches, as instructed, and on the second try done it loosely enough so that knitting was something she now could also do, after a fashion. She'd proved that by doing about an inch of knitting.

But purling was not possible. The needle went through the knitted stitch, apparently as illustrated, and allowed itself to have a bit of yarn wrapped over it, but it wouldn't capture and bring through the purl stitch. Not without the aid of a third hand, which she didn't have.

Not that she could see why anyone wanted to purl anyhow. It looked like the same thing as knitting, according to the illustration, except up and down instead of across. Which is why it was impossible. One knitted from one side to the other, not upward.

Could it be some kind of secret knitters' thing? They let outsiders try and try to purl while they, the cognoscenti, the in-crowd, the clique, rolled on the floor snorting and giggling? And after a week or two allowed as how there was no such thing as purling? Sure, it was just a hazing thing they did to people who wanted to join the knitting fraternity—er, sorority. Though Betsy knew there were men who knitted. Sorternity?

Wait a second. If she tucked the end of the empty needle under her arm ... Rats, for a second there she'd thought she'd got it.

She gave up and went back to knitting another row, slowly easing the needle through, wrapping the yarn, lift-twist-tipping it back, slipping the old stitch off.

She remembered how her mother would sit and watch television or her children play in the park, while her hands, as if with an intelligence of their own, moved in a swift, compact pattern and produced sweaters and scarves and mittens by the yard.

And she'd watched Margot do the same on Sunday evening up in the apartment.

While here she struggled slowly, stitch by stitch. Still, she was actually knitting. If she kept this up, in a year she'd have a potholder.

Margot hadn't watched television while she knitted, but talked with Betsy. Of course, there had been the odd pause while Margot counted stitches—knitters were forever losing track, it seemed—but on the whole, Margot had been able to keep up her end of the conversation.

It had been very comfortable up in that apartment, the puddles of yellow light making everything warm and intimate. They'd done some catching up—though now that she thought about it, Betsy had been allowed to do most of the talking, about Professor Hal (the pig), and the cost of living in beautiful San Diego (the sunlight in April on the white buildings and the endless sussurant crashing of the ocean, the dry, harsh, beautiful desert), and the big El Niño of ‘97 spoiling things.

Margot had said El Niño had even reached as far as Minnesota that year, giving them a very mild winter. Betsy, recalling the news footage of snow up to the eaves of Minnesota houses, decided that mild temperatures were a relative thing. Was she up to a Minnesota winter, she who could not knit well enough to produce a pair of mittens? Maybe she should cut this visit short and be on her way before the hard freeze set in.

She had asked, “Is living in a small town like it is in books, everyone knowing everyone else's business?”

“It is harder to be anonymous, because there is only the one main street where everyone shops, so even if you don't know someone's name, you recognize the face. It's like when you take the bus to and from work; you don't know the people who ride with you, not really, but you recognize their faces. And if someone's been absent for a few days and then gets on with his leg in a cast, you might express concern, even ask him what happened, as if he were a friend.”

Betsy had nodded. Okay, living in a small town was like sharing a commute. She could do that.

“And if you get really sick of small-town living there's Minneapolis and St. Paul down the road—and hey, there's the Mall of America, right? Is it as big as they say? How often do you go there?”

“About as often as you visited the Statue of Liberty when you lived in New York City.”

“But that was different! You go, you climb, you look out, you go home. At the Mall of America you can ...
shop
.”

“That's true. I went when it first opened, and I've been back, I think, twice. No, three times, twice to take visitors and once because they have a specialty shoe shop. You wouldn't believe it, but I'm hard to fit.” Margot had stuck out a small foot complacently. She counted stitches for a bit, then continued, “But you know, there's so much stuff there, a great deal of it things you don't really need, like dried flower arrangements and personalized scents for your bath. To be so rich that you can shop as a form of recreation is ... sinful. Yet people come from all over the world to entertain themselves by buying things they don't really need.” She moved her shoulders. “It makes me ashamed somehow.” She stopped to count stitches again, and then twinkled over at Betsy. “I know, you want to go glut yourself in all that shopping anyhow, be sinful for a day. Okay, maybe a week from Wednesday?”

And while they had continued talking, about movies and books, Margot's hands performed the same compact dance as Mother's had, and before they stopped to get ready for bed, the sweater she was knitting had become longer and developed a braid pattern.

So if Margot and Mother could do it while talking, by gum Betsy could do it while concentrating. She bit down harder on her captured lip and sped up to three stitches a minute.

She was concentrating so hard that when the door made its electronic sound, she jumped and, dammit, the needle slipped and pulled out of about seven stitches. Before she could figure out what to do, a bony, ice-cold hand covered hers.

She glanced up and saw a stick-thin woman with short dark hair that stuck up in odd-looking curls all over her little head. Like Betty Boop, thought Betsy. Except the face wasn't Boop's merry square, it was long and narrow, with deep lines from nostril to mouth. The eyes were dark and intent. The woman suddenly showed bright, patently false teeth, and Betsy wanted to back away, but was held by the icy grip.

“M-may I help you?” she asked.

“No, my dear, may I help
you
?” said the woman in a chirpy voice that rang as false as the teeth.

“Help me what?” asked Betsy.