Embroidered Truths

Table of Contents

 

 

“Ferris’s characterizations are top-notch, and the action moves along at a crisp pace.”—
Booklist

 
“A comfortable fit for mystery readers who want to spend an enjoyable time with interesting characters.”

 
“Filled with great small-town characters . . . A great time . . . Fans of Jessica Fletcher will devour this.”—
Rendezvous

 
“Colorful and humorous . . . perfect.”
—BookBrowser

 
“Delightful . . . Monica Ferris is a talented writer who knows how to keep the attention of her fans.”

—
Midwest Book Review

 
“Another treat from Monica Ferris.”—
Mysterious Galaxy

 
“A fun read that baffles the reader with mystery and delights with . . . romance.”—
Romantic Times

 
“Fans of Margaret Yorke will relate to Betsy’s growth and eventual maturity . . . You need not be a needlecrafter to enjoy this . . . Delightful.”—
Mystery Time

CREWEL WORLD
FRAMED IN LACE
A STITCH IN TIME
UNRAVELED SLEEVE
A MURDEROUS YARN
HANGING BY A THREAD
CUTWORK
CREWEL YULE
EMBROIDERED TRUTHS

 
Anthologies

 
PATTERNS OF MURDER

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 
EMBROIDERED TRUTHS

 
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

 
Copyright © 2006 by Mary Monica Kuhfeld writing as Monica Ferris.

 
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eISBN : 978-0-425-20612-6

 
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
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Acknowledgments

Mexico City is wonderful. Godwin is right, John is wrong, it’s a great place to vacation. The places I mention down there are real, except for the night club—I was privileged to see and hear a flamenco guitar performance in a private home. Maru is real, she designed the tlattoli pattern in the back of this book. The places described in Excelsior and Minneapolis are real, except that a sushi bar has replaced the Waterfront Café. I wish to thank Ellen Kuhfeld, my own private editor, sounding board, and idea person. Also Berkley Prime Crime and my agent, Nancy Yost. Needleworkers everywhere: I am more grateful than I can say.

Everything depends on the color of the glass you see through.

—Spanish saying

One

IT was a glorious spring morning in Excelsior. Trees were showing off their bright new leaves, and while tulips were dropping their petals, lilacs and lily of the valley were sweetening air already throbbing with the call of robins. Betsy would have left the door of Crewel World open if her shop manager, Godwin, had been there.

Uncharacteristically, he was late, so she had to keep it closed so its
Bing!
would warn her of a customer’s entrance—she was busily rearranging the back of the shop. The idea came from Susan Greening Davis, whose newsletter had become Betsy’s Great Guide. The layout of a shop should be changed at intervals of, say, six months, suggested Ms. Davis. Regular customers typically went to the same spot to look at familiar stock, and moving merchandise to a new spot would make them hunt around, and perhaps discover a new designer or even a new skill. One of the happiest things a shop owner can hear is a customer crying, “I didn’t know you had these!”

Interestingly, rearranging the layout would often bring a similar cry from an employee—occasionally even a shop owner. Of course, if something has been on a shelf so long even the owner has forgotten it, it should go into the deep-discount basket by the cash register forthwith.

On the other hand, there is, or should be, a pattern to a shop layout, a way of drawing the customer in, teasing with a spinner rack of cute and inexpensive charts, then another one of new flosses, and yet another of the familiar and popular, and so on, building desire, until the customer finds herself standing before a display of expensive kits, the hunger to buy at a peak.

Or so Betsy hoped. She was standing on a little ladder, reaching to rearrange one of the track lights so it shone on the lovely new Kreinik silks when she heard, “Betsy? Betsy, are you in here?”

The voice came as something of a shock, because she hadn’t heard the door make its annoying
Bing!

Betsy jumped down and hurried out between the two stacks of box shelves that divided the needlepoint-knitting area from the counted cross-stitch area. “Here I am! Oh, hello, Mrs. Wells. How—I mean, when did you come in? I didn’t hear the door.”

Mrs. Wells, a regular customer, turned to look at it. “You know, I didn’t either. Do you suppose . . . ?” She went to the door, opened and closed it again. It did not emit its harsh ring. “How about that?” she said, then, “I’m here to pick up my Spectrum canvas.”

“Oh, wait til you see it, it looks wonderful!”

Mrs. Wells had recently finished stitching a needlepoint canvas using a chart rather than stitching over a canvas with the pattern already painted on it. Painted canvases cost hundreds of dollars, while the chart was a mere twenty-five dollars. Plus materials, of course. Betsy had seen an ad for the Amybear chart in an issue of
Needlework Retailer
and ordered it on spec. Mrs. Wells’s glad cry on seeing it on Betsy’s shelf prompted Betsy to order two more.

Now, Betsy went behind the big desk that was her checkout counter and picked up a fourteen-inch square wrapped in brown paper. She carefully picked the tape away from one end of the package to disclose a framed circle of twelve segments, each segment a different color done in squares and rectangles of different stitches. Like a proper color wheel, the colors ranged from cool purple and blue to hot red and orange.

It was the stretching, matting, and framing Mrs. Wells was here to pay for today; she had selected an antique gold frame that was a perfect choice.

“Wow!” said Mrs. Wells, reaching for her checkbook.

“You did a great job,” agreed Betsy. “And so did Heidi.” Heidi was Betsy’s finisher.

“Where’s Godwin this morning?” asked Mrs. Wells a few minutes later, as she stood at the door looking around, the retaped needlepoint piece under one arm.

“He’s a bit late this morning,” said Betsy. “I expect him any minute.” She tried to keep the concern out of her voice. Godwin was rarely more than a few minutes late, and then he always called to say what had happened and when he’d be in. But today the shop had been open an hour with no sign or signal.

Mrs. Wells left, and Betsy went back to the track lighting.

“Betsy!”
Again she was startled by the voice of someone in her shop without the warning
Bing!
But it was Godwin’s voice, and it sounded distraught.

“Goddy?” Betsy hurried out to the front of her shop to find her store manager leaning on the library table that stood in the middle of the floor. He was unshaven and wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, now badly rumpled—and Godwin was a very fastidious dresser.

“What on earth’s the matter?” she said.

“It’s John. He’s thrown me out.” John was Godwin’s lover.

“Again?” Betsy regretted the query the instant it came out of her mouth. Godwin was a good man, but very sensitive.

Still, John had thrown Godwin out on several other occasions—and they had always made up after a few days or a week.

“It’s different this time, this time he really means it,” said Godwin in a low voice.

It was always “different this time,” but this time Betsy held her tongue.

He fell into a chair and rested his forehead in his hands. “He wouldn’t take two minutes to explain what the problem was, he wouldn’t even let me take a change of clothes, just tossed me out on my ear. I drove around for awhile, then I went back home and thought I’d park in front with the top down so he’d look out the window and feel sorry for me. But he didn’t, so I slept the whole night in my car.”

That explained his appearance.

“At least he didn’t throw your clothes out into the street this time,” Betsy pointed out.

“Yes,” agreed Godwin. “But you know something? The time he did that, he was mad for a
reason
. I don’t know
why
he’s mad this time. He’s been getting crankier and crankier all week.
Nothing I do
suits him. And last night was the final straw. He yelled at me for doing the dishes—I am
serious,
for doing the dishes! He
hates
coming into the kitchen in the morning and seeing dishes in the
sink,
but last night he didn’t want me to do them. That was the
last thing
in a
string
of things he didn’t like. He didn’t like the
shirt
I wore to work yesterday, he didn’t like the
music
I put on for dinner—and it was one of our
favorite
albums!—and then he stomped in to shout about the
dishes
. It’s like he was
looking
for a fight! So I thought
fine,
and gave him one. And he ordered me to leave. ‘Out!’ he said, just like that. And I don’t know why, I just don’t know
why
.”