Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 Read online

  “The September rent has been paid, so you have a month’s grace,” he grudged, and handed her a business card with his name and a post office box number on it. “Send October’s rent here.” Some of his arrogance returned. “And don’t be late.”

  “I won’t be,” she snapped, and promised herself she’d live on milk and crackers if necessary to make that true.

  He turned and looked around the store, nearly restored to its former state. “Not many customers,” he noted.

  “We’re doing fine,” she said. “By the way, I’ve just been talking to the man investigating Margot’s murder.”

  “Yeah?” he grunted, but there was a flicker of interest in his ice-blue eyes.

  “He told me he has a suspect in the case.”

  “Who?” The word came sharply.

  “He wouldn’t say. I told him—say, would you like a cup of coffee?”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What for?”

  She feigned exasperation. “Because I’m having one, and it’s only common courtesy to offer. Do you take cream and sugar?”

  Wordlessly, he nodded, and wordlessly took the pretty cup when she brought it to him. His fingers were too thick to fit even one through the small handle.

  “It was so horrible about Margot,” she said, stirring her own sugared cup. “I didn’t think things like that happened in small towns.”

  “It’s a city.”

  “That’s right. Margot told me. Something about a law that every town had to reconfigure itself as a city or go out of existence. So why didn’t Excelsior make its boundaries city size?”

  Mickels shrugged his heavy shoulders. “The town council had a big fight over where to set the borders, either city size, way beyond where the town already was, or just where it was then. They figured that if they expanded the borders, they’d get stuck with high taxes bringing water and sewage to everyone, so they chose to limit the borders. They’re still arguing over whether or not it was a good idea.”

  “What do you think?”

  He shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter to me. It saved downtown, I guess, but the tax base is too small. There are other towns that had the same choice, and most of them stayed small, too. Then once their borders were settled, Shorewood took the rest. So anytime you’re not sure what city you’re in out here, you’re in Shorewood.”

  Betsy smiled. “Are you from Excelsior?”

  He nodded.

  “Do they have a good police department?”

  He frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I want to be sure they can find out who murdered my sister, Mr. Mickels.”

  “I thought you said the police have it solved.”

  “I said, the detective thinks it was a burglar. But if he has a suspect, why isn’t he under arrest? And what if it wasn’t a burglar at all?”

  His bushy eyebrows met over his nose. “Not a burglar? Then who?”

  “Someone who had a reason for wanting the owner of this shop out of the way. Someone, perhaps, like you, Mr. Mickels.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then put his cup on the desk, turned, and started for the door.

  “Where were you the night she was murdered, Mr. Mickels?” she called after him.

  He stopped at the door and there was another long moment of weighty silence. “I was at a business meeting in St. Cloud,” he said at last. “Not that it is any business of yours.”

  “Of course it’s my business! She was my sister.” Betsy felt her eyes start to sting, and turned away. “Just go,” she said, but the door had already closed.

  That night up in the apartment, she remained furious at herself for openly accusing Mickels before finding out if he had an alibi. Of course he’d claim to have one, asked the way he had been! And she wasn’t sure how to go about proving it false.

  She opened a can of soup for supper, watched the early news, then convinced herself she was tired and went to bed.

  But she couldn’t fall asleep. She got up and dragged on her robe and wandered the apartment for a while, wondering if she might be hungry. But a look in the refrigerator convinced her she wasn’t.

  Finally she found a radio station that played classical music, sat down in her sister’s chair, and took up her knitting.

  To her surprise, after ten minutes of it, she felt her mind, like a pond that has been disturbed and then left alone, settle and grow clear.

  Mickels’s remark notwithstanding, Crewel World had had a good day, saleswise. But there had been more deliveries—most of them, fortunately, with an invoice that gave her thirty or more days to pay. But even ninety days to pay was shorter than the five or six months it was going to take to close the estate. She hoped she could do enough business to make those payments.

  Shelly had come back in soon after Joe had left, and said it was time to plan the Christmas display. Shelly and Godwin—who were going to be essential to the continuance of the shop, Betsy was already aware—put their heads together and came up with a design for the front window that looked okay to Betsy.

  Later both of them, having apparently discussed it between taking an order for a thousand dollars’ worth of silk and metallics for a woman doing an enormous canvas of an Erté-like portrait and explaining the use of an eggbeaterlike device for twisting yarn into braid to a woman who bought two as gifts, had come and sat her down and wanted to know what her plans were. It was obvious they wanted her to keep Crewel World open. She’d been nearly as touched as alarmed. She hadn’t agreed—it felt too much like a trap for someone of her ignorance to promise to stay and run a small business in a state notorious for fierce winters. Didn’t blizzards close the stores and schools around here for great hunks of the winter?

  Hey, she didn’t even have a winter coat. And she didn’t know how to knit a pair of mittens. She looked down at the red scarf, which was now over a foot in length. She’d put another inch on it sitting here musing, and there was not an error in it, amazingly. So maybe she could do a mitten.

  No, wait, mittens had that thumb sticking out. How did one do a thumb? She recalled Godwin knitting his sock. He’d been using four needles, three of them stuck in the project and the fourth used to make and lift off the stitches, around and around, so there was no seam. One set of four to do the hand and another set of littler ones to do the thumb? No, wait, she remembered her mother’s hand-knitted mittens. The thumb’s stitches weren’t smaller than the rest of the mitten. She smirked a little at being able to figure that out. She was learning.

  But her ignorance wasn’t the main problem. There were people who knew how to run the shop, and they were eager to help. But Betsy needed to decide if she was going to stay, and if not, to decide where she was going to go. And to start making plans to do one or the other.

  She turned her knitting around and started back across the row; purl two, knit two. The first three inches of the scarf didn’t have the promised welts or ridges or whatever in them, and she had figured out all by herself that when she began a new row, she should do the opposite of what she’d done; that is, where she’d knitted, now she should purl, and vice versa. In two more rows, there were the ribs, boldly standing up. And now that it was long enough to really see, the pattern was very attractive. She had thought about tearing out the beginning, but decided it made an interesting edge, kind of lacy. She’d make the same “mistake” at the other end, if she ever got that far. Shelly had said a good scarf was at least six feet long.

  She looked at her knitting. Where was she? Ah, knit two.

  First of all, was she going to stay in Excelsior at least until her sister’s murder was solved? Yes.

  Well then, she’d better make a success of the shop, because she was scared how swiftly the Crewel World bank balance was draining out. She was down to the dregs of what she’d brought with her, and her credit cards were near their limit. It was great that Margot had left so much money, but Betsy couldn’t touch any of it for months, according to Mr. Penberthy. And while today’s sal
es were good, Godwin had remarked on the amount that had come in, which meant it was unusual, which meant tomorrow and the day after might not be good at all.

  So, maybe she should go ahead and hold that going-out-of-business sale and try to live over at Christopher Inn on the proceeds until Detective Mike Malloy arrested the burglar with a mother who had a birthday coming up.

  Because she was not leaving Excelsior until Margot’s murderer was behind bars.

  But suppose it wasn’t a burglar? Suppose she was right and Detective Mike Malloy was wrong, and Margot’s murder had been a personal matter? Since her body was found in Crewel World, she probably had been murdered by someone with a connection to the shop. Then, since the motive involved the shop, if Betsy closed the shop, her contacts with people connected with the place ended. And if Joe Mickels’s alibi checked out, she might have to look elsewhere for the murderer.

  So the shop had to stay open, at least for now.

  But on the other hand, Betsy still didn’t know what she was doing at Crewel World. Okay, she could write up sales slips, she could read and understand invoices. And she could knit, embroider, and just today she realized she could tell silk from perle cotton from wool at a glance. Just as she could tell at a glance that she had knitted one and needed to knit another. Purl two.

  But what about payroll? When were paychecks issued? And in what amount? And how did one figure withholding taxes? And what did one do with the money withheld? She felt the familiar despair come over her. How in the world did she think she was going to do this? She was a fool—an old fool! Her fingers cramped and she realized she was gripping the needles too tightly. She forced herself to open them, wriggled them a bit, then slowly knit and purled her way across the rest of the row, waiting for her mind to settle and clear again.

  When it did, a memory rose up. Years ago, right out of the navy, Betsy had worked in a small office, and had helped the office manager do payroll. She remembered it fiadn’t been all that hard.

  And Jill had said that Margot kept all her business information in her computer.

  It was time to have a look. Betsy put down her knitting, careful to stick the pointed ends of the needles into the ball of yarn to keep the stitches in place, and marched into Margot’s bedroom.

  Everything was as it had been, the bed smoothed rather than properly made, Margot’s makeup still on the dresser, the scent of her perfume still lingering in the air.

  Betsy nearly fled, but told herself not to be an idiot, and went to sit at the computer. She found the power switch and turned it on. The screen flickered, the computer grumbled, and then came the chord of music: ta-dah!

  At first Betsy just explored, noting the AOL icon, finding games (FreeCell solitaire and something called You Don’t Know Jack, which made her smile wryly) and the word-processing program. Margot had Windows 95, which Betsy had had on her own computer, so it didn’t take long to get comfortable.

  She began looking for a business program and found Quicken. But when she tried to get into it, it demanded a password. She tried Margot and Berglund and Crewel and World and Crewelworld, and then all the needlework terms she could think of, to no avail. She sat back, frustrated.

  She remembered her own computer, and the list of her assets she had kept in a file that required a password. She had used “Margot.” She looked at the screen, its cursor flashing impatiently. She typed “B-E-T-S-Y” and hit Enter.

  And she was in.

  And there she found the business courses she needed to run Crewel World, Inc. In Payroll was a list of employees, their pay scales, their hours (none entered since Margot died, of course, but Betsy knew where the time sheets were kept, so that was all right). Also Social Security paid, and withholding for state and federal income tax, for herself and for each employee. (“That’s my first business decision: as CEO, do I get a raise?” she muttered.) The inventory file had a list done in January. And another done a year ago January. And another, and another, going back five years. Taxes, paid and due, the special account it was paid into. A list of suppliers and what was ordered, when it was due, the amounts owed, the amounts paid.

  She printed out much, read more. Hours later, heavy-eyed, she could no longer make sense of anything. She shut down the computer and went to bed. She could do this, she was going to stay in business, paying her workers and herself. But she dreamed for the remaining four hours of the night of audits and penalties and bankruptcy.

  14

  Late the next morning, she left the shop in Godwin’s hands and went to the First State Bank of Excelsior. She found a seat in the little waiting area, feeling important. She was wearing a light gray skirt, white blouse, and jacket-cut gray sweater; she carried an attaché case she’d found in Margot’s closet, now weighty with printouts.

  The magic word, she had learned, was line of credit. Margot had had one, a nice big one. When someone has considerable assets, a bank can issue a line of credit, which is sort of like getting a preapproved series of loans. Betsy was sole heir to two and a half million dollars; surely that was an asset worthy of a considerable line of credit, even if the asset hadn’t paid its taxes yet. She had called earlier and gotten a very prompt appointment with the vicepresident—okay, a vice-president-of the First Bank of Excelsior.

  When her name was called, she rose with the air of someone who is about to do a banker a big favor and allowed herself to be shown into a small but nicely decorated office.

  And left it half an hour later greatly humbled. The vice-president had read with interest the notes Betsy had written about Margot’s estate—but then pointed out that since Margot had banked with First State, the bank was even more cognizant of Margot’s financial status than Betsy was.

  However.

  Bankers were, according to this one, reluctant to make a loan based on an estate that was in the process of being settled. “There is occasionally a slip between the cup and the lip,” quoted the vice-president, not quite accurately.

  Perhaps when Betsy had been officially named as personal representative, they would consider making a loan against the assets of the shop in order to buy more inventory, because of the fact that the business was of long standing. Perhaps the loan would be as much as one hundred percent of the value of what she was purchasing. They might also lend her money based on the insurance settlement for the burglary.

  Even this was not usually done, the banker concluded, but after all, it appeared that Betsy would be coming into a lot of money one of these days, and the bank would love to do business with her, as they had with Margot.

  With an effort, Betsy refrained from leaping across the desk and watching the vice-president’s pink complexion turn to mauve as she throttled him. Instead, she pointedly snapped the attaché case shut, shook his hand perfunctorily, and left the bank.

  First State was on the comer of Water and Second, where she’d almost missed the turn the first time she’d come into Excelsior. She walked toward the lake and reached the tavern, but couldn’t make herself turn down Lake Street toward Crewel World. She dreaded going back to the shop. She had been so sure she’d come bursting back in with the glad news that their troubles were over, the shop could keep running, and everyone would be paid. Now…

  She dithered awhile, and finally crossed Lake Street and walked down to the wharves. They barely met the definition of the word, since no actual ship tied up here, only excursion boats. Still, the boats were large, multidecked objects, painted white, made of Formica. Or was it fiberglass? Queen of Excelsior, one was named. Beside them, the streetcar boat Minnehaha looked very odd and old-fashioned. Betsy walked out on the wharf it was tied next to.

  The Minnehaha was made of wood painted a brownish red with mustard-yellow trim. A black metal chimney stuck up from its midsection. Its stem sloped sharply away from the rear, like a warship back in the days of the Great White Fleet.

  The lake twinkled in the sunlight. Betsy looked down into the clear water. She could see three good-size crappie swimming among t
he waving water weeds, into and out of the shadow cast by the Minnehaha. How much was a fishing license? Maybe it would be a savings to invest in one, and a cane pole. If she ate fish a few times a week, it would cut back on her grocery bills.

  Sophie would probably like that, too. She thought of Sophie, curled on a cushion in the shop, injured leg uppermost so everyone would see her cast and offer sympathy and treats. Sophie, regaining weight almost hourly, had not stopped purring since she’d returned from the hospital.

  Some way would have to be found to pay the vet.

  She went back up to the comer of Lake and Water. A short block away was Second Street, a little way up that was the entrance to that big parking lot with City Hall on the other side of it. No wonder Margot walked over to the meeting and then home again. It wasn’t very far. That’s also why she had been wearing those sensible low-heeled pumps instead of her flashy high heels.

  Betsy started up Lake Street toward Crewel World. Margot had come home this way on the last night of her life.

  Had the murderer been waiting in the shadows for her? Did he come out and introduce himself and find some reason for her to take him up to her apartment?

  When did he strike Sophie? Because the vet said he doubted if Sophie had been hit by a car. There was a deep, narrow bruise over the break in Sophie’s leg, he said, as if someone had hit her with a rock or club. That confirmed that Sophie and Margot had entered the shop together, where the murderer struck both of them. Perhaps the murderer swung first at Sophie, and Margot could not help crying out, because Margot never struck, nor would she allow anyone else to strike, Sophie. But if he had hit Sophie with the weapon, why didn’t Sophie have a hole in the middle of her bruise?

  Why wasn’t it Sophie who was dead and Margot walking around as if she had a square wheel?