Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_01 Read online

  They were looking at her in some kind of expectant way, but she’d told them everything she could think of.

  “Do you know where your sister is?”

  “No. That is, she was here earlier this evening, up in the apartment. That was at about five-thirty, when I left to pick up Jill and we went into Minneapolis for dinner and then to a play. Margot was supposed to go to City Hall for a meeting about the art fair. I can’t believe it’s still going on. It’s after eleven.”

  “Who’s Jill?”

  Betsy said, surprised, “She’s one of you. A police officer, Jill Cross.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Betsy Devonshire.”

  “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Margot Berglund.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “She’s about five-feet-one, slim, blond hair—why? Is she—”

  A sound that had been growing louder got loud enough to impinge on Betsy’s concentration. It was another siren, and it belonged to one of those boxy ambulances that come to the scene of accidents. The officer turned to start toward it.

  Betsy called, “Wait, what’s going on? Is someone in the store? Is it—is she all right?” She turned toward the shop’s entrance, but the officer was in front of her and he put both hands on her shoulders.

  “Just take it easy, Ms. Devonshire.”

  Two people ran from the ambulance into the shop, one carrying a large, square suitcase. Betsy felt her knees growing weak. “What’s going on? Is someone in there?”

  “Yes, ma‘am.”

  “Who? Is it Margot?”

  “We don’t know right now who it is.”

  The door to the upstairs opened and three people came out, a young couple and a middle-aged man, tenants from the other two apartments. Their faces were alarmed, and they stood close together, clutching bathrobes. The older man was wearing unlaced dress shoes. He stared at Betsy.

  “Why don’t you come with me and sit in the squad car?” said the policeman, taking Betsy by the elbow. “Let’s get you out of all this.” His voice was kind but firm. In a kind of dream, Betsy allowed herself to be ushered into the backseat of the squad car, whose engine was running, and lights still flashing. The policeman went away.

  Except for the radio, it was darkly silent in the car. Everything in it was black—the upholstery, the seats, the shotgun clamped vertically to the black dashboard. Betsy could almost smell the testosterone and suddenly wondered how Jill could stand it.

  The radio muttered again, the words too mixed with static to understand. She didn’t like being put in the squad car, it indicated her place in this affair was worse than those spectators standing on the sidewalk, merely alarmed.

  After a while she noticed raindrops on the windshield; it had started to rain again. The people on the sidewalk went back inside.

  After a long while the ambulance people came out. The policeman followed behind them to open the squad car’s back door. “Come with me, please,” he said, and held out a hand.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “We want you to look at something,” he said, and led her into the store.

  Someone had turned on the lights. Betsy could not believe the disarray. The floor was covered with yarn and floss. The spin racks were on their sides, magazines had been crumpled and ripped, baskets that had held knitting yarn had not only been emptied, but stepped on.

  The policeman led her past Margot’s desk, which was pulled out of place, toward the back of the store. Here shelves came out from the wall on either side. Behind them, on the side where the pretty little upholstered chairs had sat around a little round table, was even wilder disarray. The chairs were overturned. The shelves had been divided vertically into cubes, which had once held yarn and evenweave fabrics; books, magazines, and canvas needlework bags had been emptied onto the floor. Behind the chairs was a big heap of wool and books, and beyond them, as if they had been moved aside to uncover her, was a woman.

  She was on her back, her head turned to one side. Her eyes were partly open, as was her mouth. She looked as if she were crying out in pain. Her skin was an odd, pale color. She was wearing a black wool skirt hiked up over one knee and a dark wine sweater, the sleeves pushed up. One of her sensible black shoes was off the heel of her foot and her arms were bent at the elbows, hands clenched. Her blond hair was mussed.

  “Do you recognize her?” asked the policeman.

  “Margot,” whispered Betsy. “It’s my sister Margot.”

  6

  As Jill prepared for bed, she began to smile—though it hardly showed on her face. Betsy Devonshire was an interesting person. And funny; it had been hard to keep from laughing out loud at some of the things she said. On the other hand, Betsy was kind of slow to pick up on a joke. She probably didn’t get Jill’s crack about knitting, and Jill thought it had been pretty obvious. But never mind; Betsy liked Italian food, complimented Buca’s, stayed awake all through the play, and made some intelligent comments on it afterward. And above all, she was the sister of her best friend, Margot Berglund.

  She wondered how long it would take Margot to understand the prank of insisting Betsy take home all that garlic-laden food. Margot disliked garlic almost as much as she did onions. Jill snorted softly and climbed between the crisp sheets. She loved jokes whose punch lines went off sometime later.

  She was fast asleep when the phone rang, and it took her a minute to understand what the caller was asking her—and why.

  “Wait a second, Mike!” she demanded. “Take a breath!” She took one of her own. “Now, what’s this about a burglar?”

  Betsy sat in the dining nook of the apartment. Jill was in the kitchen and there was the smell of coffee.

  “Here, drink this,” said Jill, and a mug of coffee appeared in front of Betsy. She put her cold hands around it, burning them. But she left them there; it was an honest, understandable hurt.

  “What happens now?” Betsy asked.

  “An autopsy. Then the ME—medical examiner—will release the body, and you’ll have to make funeral arrangements.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.” And she didn’t want to learn. She felt sick and weary, all her senses dulled, as if she were coming down with flu. She didn’t even have the strength to lift the mug to her mouth. Margot couldn’t be dead, Margot had just stayed late at her meeting and would be home any minute, asking what all the fuss was about.

  “I assume you want her buried beside her husband?” asked Jill.

  “At Aaron’s funeral she said something to me about being buried in the same plot. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, people do it all the time. Especially if they’re cremated. Aaron was cremated. Call Paul Huber, he’s good.”

  “Who’s Huber?” asked Betsy wearily.

  “The local funeral home. And you should call Reverend John at Trinity.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “Not this minute, of course.”

  Betsy, hearing criticism in Jill’s voice, looked up. And saw that implacable stare looking back. Suddenly she wanted to punch that smooth face. She wanted to rail, scream, and tear her hair, dress herself in sackcloth and pour ashes on her head, and weep for days, weeks, forever. Margot was dead.

  But she didn’t scream, or say anything, or do anything, only stared at Jill.

  Who looked at her watch, a small, delicate thing, clinging to that sturdy white wrist. “It’s very late. You should go to bed.”

  “I’m tired, but I’m not at all sleepy,” said Betsy, looking into the dark liquid in her mug.

  “Then just go lie down for an hour.”

  “I don’t want to lie down! Why don’t you just go? Go bother someone else!” said Betsy, surprised at the venom escaping through her voice. “You don’t understand!”

  “Sure I do. Here, let me get you something else.” Jill slid the mug out of Betsy’s still-clasped hands and went into the kitchen.

  Betsy slid back into her felt
-lined stupor. She shouldn’t shout at Jill, who had gotten out of bed to come and be with her. And there were things that must be done, she knew that. She just wished there could be a period of doing nothing until she could summon some energy.

  Margot had been the coping one. She wouldn’t be sitting here as if wrapped in thick flannel, her brain turned to oatmeal. Betsy remembered when she herself had seen trouble as a challenge, but that seemed a very long time ago. Why couldn’t she be that way now? What was the matter with her? She should be paying attention to Jill, and feeling grateful for her advice. Buck up, she told herself. But her mind replied sullenly that it wanted to be left alone.

  “I don’t understand why Margot went into the store when you knew enough not to,” said Jill from the kitchen, where the refrigerator door was being closed, a pot was being put on the stove.

  Betsy pictured Margot walking home—Margot alive and walking!—and seeing the open door. But Margot went in—no, no; don’t go in!—but she went in, she went in. While clever Betsy had seen the door open and come running upstairs to call the police. Why had it happened that way?

  “Possession,” said Betsy. “Territory. You ever read Ardrey’s Territorial Imperative? Popular sociology, from back in the sixties; forgotten now, probably. He said most animals, including primates, select and defend a territory, whether as an individual or a tribe. That’s what we do, and that’s why humans fear strangers and fight wars.”

  Jill said doubtfully, “You think she saw the burglar and went in to run him off?”

  “No, of course not! Margot’s not an idiot. But she’s been having trouble with Joe Mickels trying to throw her out of the shop, so I guess her territorial instincts were all inflamed anyhow. So when she saw the door open she just went in without thinking. I nearly did—” Something like a sob choked Betsy but the relief of tears would not come. “God, I can’t bear this.”

  “Yes, you can,” said Jill firmly, coming to put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got to, you’re the sole surviving member of your family. But you’re not alone. Margot had lots of friends. When they hear about this, you’ll have all the help you need.” She went back into the kitchen and there was the sound of cabinet doors being opened and closed. “Where’s the cocoa?”

  “I don’t know.” The flannel wrapped her again. She didn’t care where anything was in a world inexplicably emptied of Margot.

  Jill looked everywhere for the cocoa, even, apparently, the bathroom. But she must have found it, because soon a mug of hot cocoa was thrust into Betsy’s hands.

  “Drink this.” It was an order.

  Betsy drank. And to her surprise, in a few minutes she was helplessly sleepy. Jill walked her into her bedroom, helped her undress and get into pajamas, tucked her in. Betsy tried to ask a question but instead fell into a black pit.

  “She okay alone up there?” asked Mike.

  “I put a couple of sleeping pills into her cocoa,” said Jill. “She’s good for a while. What’s the situation?” She shivered against the chill and damp night air—she’d come out only in jeans and a white T-shirt—and glanced into the brightly lit store, where people moved in the routine of a crime-scene investigation.

  “It looks like she interrupted a burglar, all right. Cash drawer broken into. And since there’s no calculator, I assume it was taken. Did she use a computer?”

  “Yes, but it’s upstairs,” said Jill. “In her bedroom. And she emptied that cash drawer every night.”

  “Maybe that’s why he trashed the place. Pissed because there was nothing of any value to steal.”

  “Little he knew. Those hand-painted canvases over there cost a lot of money.”

  The curiosity that’d gotten Mike Malloy promoted from patrol to investigation stirred. He glanced toward where Jill was looking, at the white dresser near the front door. “No kidding?”

  “Of course, I don’t think there’s much call for hot needlepoint canvases; eighty percent of the women who buy them wouldn’t know where to find a fence, and the rest don’t know what a fence is.”

  The interest faded. “I wonder why our burglar picked this shop in the first place,” grumbled Mike. “It’s not like it’s a jewelry store, watches in the window, diamonds in the safe. And even more, I wonder why Mrs. Berglund decided to confront him.”

  “Territorial imperative, maybe.”

  Mike squinted at Jill, who didn’t crack a smile. He gave a dismissive shrug and said, “Well, I better get back to it. You gonna stay?”

  “No, I’m back on first watch. Gotta be up pushing my squad first thing in the morning. Mind if I call you about this later?”

  “If you got anything of value to tell me, be my guest.”

  The phone started ringing early Thursday, first a reporter wanting details, then Irene Potter offering to open the shop—which offer Betsy curtly refused—then another reporter, then someone named Alice who went on and on about how everyone who did needlework would miss her, each word scalding Betsy’s heart. When the woman slowed enough that Betsy could get a word in, Betsy thanked her through clenched teeth and hung up. Before it could ring again, she took the receiver off the hook. And she discovered that no one buzzed at the door more than three times before going away. She spent the entire day watching television, stupid show after stupid show. She didn’t turn the lights on at nightfall, but sat up for hours in the darkness. But she did not cry. At three A.M. she put the phone back on the hook and went to bed.

  The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s call woke her early Friday. A woman said they had released Margot’s body and someone needed to make arrangements for it to be taken away.

  Betsy said she would do so, and wandered the apartment in a mild panic for five minutes. Then she recalled Jill saying there was one funeral home she could trust—but what was its name? She picked up the slim phone directory for Excelsior, Shorewood, Deephaven, and Tonka Bay, and saw there was exactly one funeral home in Excelsior, Huber’s. That was it. She phoned and got an answering service, and left an urgent message.

  She had just finished brushing her teeth when the phone rang. It was Irene Potter, asking if there was anything Betsy wanted done.

  “You want to do me a favor?” said Betsy. “Stay off the phone. I’m waiting for an important call and I don’t want the phone tied up.”

  She was still trying to decipher the coffeemaker’s methods when the phone rang again, and it was Paul Huber.

  Instead of the oily voice she expected, Huber sounded perfectly ordinary, except he was also brisk, knowledgeable, and efficient. He said he would bring Margot’s body to the funeral home; yes, he knew the procedure, it was all routine and she needn’t worry. He then made an appointment with her for first thing that afternoon, to discuss the rest of the arrangements.

  Betsy sat curled in Margot’s chair, sipping coffee and worrying. Didn’t funerals cost a great deal of money? Betsy had some money, not much, and most of it was in an IRA, inaccessible.

  How was she going to pay for this?

  What did other people do?

  Betsy knew there were special life-insurance policies people took out to cover final expenses. But Betsy remembered when her father had died; it took weeks for insurance companies to pay off. Betsy needed money by this afternoon.

  Maybe funeral homes allowed people to charge funerals.

  Betsy had a charge card. She used it sparingly, having learned to fear debt during her first marriage. So it was nowhere near its limit, which on the other hand was a modest five thousand dollars. She had hoped to save it for an emergency—but surely this was an emergency. She couldn’t store Margot in the refrigerator until she saved enough money to bury her. Was it bad manners to ask a funeral director if he took Visa?

  And was the three thousand seven hundred dollars left in credit enough?

  Maybe Margot had cash somewhere. Jill had told her that Margot emptied the cash drawer every night. Where did she put the money? Betsy remembered walking to the bank’s night deposit with Margo
t on Monday evening. But not all the money went into the bank—she needed some to prime the drawer every morning.

  Betsy looked toward the little hall that led to Margot’s bedroom. Betsy had to go see, go pry. Feeling guilty as a child about to steal a quarter from her mother’s purse, she slipped down the short hall to the bedroom door.

  Margot’s bedroom was beautiful, with designer elements Betsy had not expected. The bed had slim iron pillars and a translucent lace canopy. There was a comforter, all ruffles of ivory lace, a shade lighter than the walls. A thin scent of Margot’s perfume lingered on the still air.

  The rug on the floor was thick and lush, iron gray with a gold and green fringe. The window had layers of ivory lace curtains pinched and pulled into a complicated pattern. The small, low dresser was wood, stained gray, the low chair in front of it had an iron frame and a plush seat. The mirror over the dresser was round. A pair of badly snagged panty hose draped half out of the otherwise empty wastebasket. The desk in the comer had a modern-looking computer on it, with an ergonomically correct office chair and a two-drawer wooden file cabinet beside it, the bottom drawer not quite shut.

  Betsy searched the desk drawers first. She found three checkbooks. One belonged to Crewel World and showed a balance of $2,523.50. The other was a personal checkbook and showed a balance of $372.80. The third was a Piper Jaffray money market account with a balance of close to four thousand dollars. And there was also a savings-account passbook showing a total balance of $3,253.74.

  Betsy rubbed her nose, her sign of befuddlement. This was more money than she had expected to find. Why would Margot keep all her money where she could get at it? Didn’t she believe in IRAs or certificates of deposit, for heaven’s sake? Or was there even more hidden away somewhere? Probably not much—Margot wasn’t really wealthy, or she wouldn’t be living in a rented apartment.

  Not that it mattered in the present emergency. Betsy could not sign Margot’s name to anything. What she needed was cash.