Embroidered Truths (7 page)

Godwin’s bedroom was larger than John’s den, and it overlooked a garden ablaze with flowers and a small pond with a tiny waterfall. “A man comes by every week to take care of the yard,” said Godwin. “In June he puts koi in the water. They’re greedy things, always sticking their heads out to beg for treats.”

“Scaly versions of Sophie?” said Betsy.

Godwin smiled. “Yes. We should introduce them.” He waved that thought away. “Maybe not, one or the other would get eaten.”

Betsy laughed and looked around. Godwin had a sleigh bed in what looked like maple, heaped with pillows. An upholstered chair sat by a window, with a wooden frame on wheels beside it, a Dazor light bending over from the other side. In the far corner was a small desk, its top empty. The two windows in the room, half covered with Roman blinds, were also closed and locked. Betsy looked around, wishing she could open drawers.

“Where’s your computer?” she asked.

“It was in the box he sent over.”

“Weren’t you working on a project?” Betsy asked, noting that the frame was empty.

“John sent over my needlework projects.” He asked Lars, “Can I take the stand? And the light? They’re mine, I bought them with my own money.”

“Not right now. This house is a crime scene, remember. You can claim all your things when they settle the estate.”

“Estate? Yes, that’s right, John was rich, so he had an estate. And he had a will, I know he had a will, he mentioned it once. I wonder if he left me anything?”

Betsy asked, “Did he say he did?”

“No, just that he had a will. That was a couple of years ago. He said I should make one, too. But I said I intended to die broke and so I didn’t need a will.”

The closet door was ajar, Betsy went to open it with the toe of her shoe. Inside was a riot of hangers, some on the floor. A pink straw hat with a crushed crown was on a shelf. Godwin reached around Betsy and took it before she could stop him. “We bought this in Mexico City,” he said. “I was going to leave it behind, but it was such a great trip I couldn’t leave anything behind. John stepped on it when he came to talk to me in here while I was unpacking. He was in a bad mood, but I don’t think he stepped on it on purpose.” He put it on and went to look at himself in the mirror over his dresser. He tipped it a bit to the side, made a funny face, then took it off and broke down completely.

Betsy led him to the beautiful bed, sat him down and went into the bathroom to look for tissues. She found a box of Kleenex pop-ups encased in a needlepoint holder designed to look like a box of Kleenex—Godwin had an interesting sense of humor—and pulled out four, which she took back to him. Lars had gone away.

“Thangs,” he mumbled and blew his nose.

Betsy sat down beside him and thought. She went back over the house in her head, looking with her memory at everything.

“Did John wear a watch?”

“Sure, he had a Rolex, a nice fat one.”

“He isn’t wearing one now.”

“He isn’t? Are you sure?” Godwin twisted up his face, trying to remember. “I didn’t notice it was gone. He wore it all the time.”

“I’m going back to look again,” said Betsy. “You wait here.”

She went back into the living room and found Lars all by himself with John’s body. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“We’re waiting for someone from the Medical Examiner’s office,” he said. “Phil’s out on the porch, and I sent the ambulance away. No need to tie them up. The BCA is on its way, this place will be pretty busy in a little while.”

Betsy went to stoop beside the body.

“Don’t move him!” barked Lars.

“I won’t, I won’t. I’m just trying to see if he’s wearing a watch. Goddy says he has a Rolex but I don’t see anything on either wrist.” The body’s arms were drawn up close to the chest, but Betsy was pretty sure both wrists were empty.

Lars came to lean over her. “Huh,” he said, and pulled a flashlight from his belt. He shone it at various angles. “Nothing, and it didn’t fall off,” he noted, probing the shadows with his light.

“That’s funny, because it didn’t look as if anything was disturbed in the bedrooms,” said Betsy. “We should look in the basement next, I suppose—” She was interrupted by a yell from Godwin’s bedroom.

“Godwin? What’s wrong?” She had barely straightened when the young man came running out toward her. In both hands he was holding a small, cedar-wood chest.

“Gone!” he shouted. “My jewelry’s gone!”

Betsy put out a hand to stop him. “What are you talking about? I thought John sent all your things!”

“Not my diamond studs! And my gold ring, my beautiful gold and emerald ring!” He held out the box. “He sent my silver bracelets and the amethyst ring, but my
good
stuff, he kept that. My gold chain, gone! Even my beautiful ormolu birdcage,
gone
!”

“What the hell’s an ormolu birdcage?” demanded Lars, notebook in hand. “And I thought I told you not to touch anything!”

Godwin sank to the floor with a groan. “This’s my jewelry box, I can look in it if I want to! And it’s empty! All my good pieces, gone, gone,
gone
!”

“I didn’t see a birdcage in your room, Goddy,” said Betsy.

“Not a
big
one, a little, little one,” said Godwin, holding up a thumb and finger about an inch apart. “Ormolu is gold plated, gold over silver,” he explained to Lars. “Like gilding, only better. It was a tiny, little bird cage with a weentsy wee bird made of two diamonds in it. A bird in a gilded cage, like the song, like me. It was our own little joke—and now it’s
gone
!”

“Maybe he sold the stuff,” suggested Lars.

“No, no,
no
!” raged Godwin. “He
wouldn’t,
especially not the ormulu bird!” His face was wretched, streaked with tears. Betsy’s heart went out to him; it wasn’t just the jewelry, it was what the jewelry meant.

She turned to Lars. “Perhaps it
was
a robbery. If so, there are other things missing. If we could open drawers and closets, I bet we’d find more nice little things gone.”

Six

THE Medical Examiner’s representative was a short, gray-haired woman in a dark brown pantsuit. For a doctor, she had no bedside manner—perhaps, Betsy reflected later, this was why she went into the autopsy line. She was taciturn to the point of rudeness, and cast so chill an eye on Betsy and Godwin that they stood quietly against a wall, too intimidated to speak and afraid to walk away. Officer Phil Ott, the dark cop who’d come in after Lars, picked up on her suspicious glances, and came to stand next to them with an air of keeping custody. Even Lars, normally at ease with anyone of any rank, simply stood to one side and didn’t ask any questions.

Of course, there being no hope of life in John Nye, and the probable cause of his death both apparent and present, there weren’t many questions to ask.

Mike Malloy was investigating another crime and so arrived after she did; minutes later a crew from the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension came in. The Medical Examiner became distracted by the investigators, so Betsy raised a hand to draw Lars’s eye and indicate she was taking Godwin into the den. When he nodded permission, they slipped away.

There was some kind of rumpus going on out front; Betsy heard the noise coming through the front window of the den. She went to look out and saw a small crowd gathering, talking to one another and on their cell phones, gesturing vehemently at others to come where the action was—though there wasn’t any outside the house.

This part of Excelsior had no sidewalks, so they stood in the street or on the broad driveway to the garage, and two even ventured close to the picture window to try to peer inside. This last move evidently drew the attention of the people in the living room. Betsy heard an exclamation from someone, and watched as Lars and Phil went out to do a little crowd control, waving people off the property. A new uniformed officer enforced the retreat by running a yellow plastic tape from tree to lamp post to tree along the edge of the lawn and across the driveway.

Betsy went to half-sit on the desk and put a comforting hand on Godwin’s shoulder as he sat slumped in the office chair.

After about a quarter of an hour, Mike Malloy looked into the den and asked, “What were you two doing here?”

“We found the body,” said Betsy.

“I figured that,” said Mike, sounding a little aggravated. “How did you come to be here in the first place?”

“John’s secretary called me to ask if I knew where he was, because he hadn’t come to work,” answered Godwin. “I didn’t want to come alone, so Betsy came with. We came in and . . . and here he was.” Godwin put a trembling hand in front of his mouth.

“Did you move him?” asked Mike, coming in and shutting the door.

Godwin shook his head emphatically. “No.”

“I touched him,” said Betsy, “which made me realize he really was dead. Lars took us to look around to see if anything’s been taken, and so far there’s jewelry missing. Lars said not to disturb anything, leave fingerprints or smudge them, so we didn’t open any drawers.”

“And we haven’t been down in the basement, yet,” said Godwin. “Because the door is closed and we didn’t want to touch the doorknob.”

“What kind of jewelry’s missing?” asked Mike, pulling out his notebook.

“Well, Godwin said John always wore his Rolex, but there’s no watch on his arm,” said Betsy.

“And I had some nice diamond stud earrings and a ring with a big emerald and two small diamonds, and a gold chain—twenty-two carat—and a gold necklace with a little . . . diamond bird in . . . in an ormolu cage.” Godwin was tearing up under this recital, so Betsy reached for his hand and began to rub it gently. He gulped and regained control. “John has some nice pieces, too, but his jewelry box is in a drawer in his dresser, so we couldn’t look. Nothing else seems to be missing—I mean like television sets and cordless phones and all.”

“Was the door locked when you got here?”

“Yes.” Betsy nodded. “Godwin has a key, so he unlocked it. And the back door was locked, too, right?” She looked at Godwin.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Oh, I did touch that doorknob, sorry. But I didn’t unlock it. We didn’t see any windows broken, and they all seem to be locked.” He looked at Betsy, who nodded confirmation.

“Who else has a key to the house?” asked Mike.

“The Molly Maid,” said Godwin after a moment’s thought. “She comes once a week while we’re at work.”

“Anyone else?”

Godwin’s forehead crinkled. “Not that I know of.”

Betsy said, “I looked in the laundry hamper in the master bath, and there’s evidence John had . . . company recently.”

Godwin explained, “There’s a robe he keeps for guests—like for when we go swimming, if someone didn’t bring one.” His mouth twisted up, but Betsy squeezed his hand hard and he sniffed lengthily, then sighed and nodded that he had himself back under control.

“But the towels were damp, like from a bath or shower,” Betsy said to Mike. “I’d add ‘or swimming,’ but it’s a little early for swimming.” Spring-fed Lake Minnetonka didn’t get warm enough for swimming until mid-June.

Mike had some more questions, and then a tall, very slender blond investigator from BCA also questioned them, and had them fingerprinted before they were allowed to leave.

Godwin again came close to losing his composure when they came into the living room to find two sturdy young men zipping John’s body into a blue bag. But he only sobbed once as they crossed the living room and went out the door.

Someone must have called in a tip because there was a professional-size television camera perched on a man’s shoulder, and another man with a beautiful haircut and a light blue shirt moved into their path to ask questions. “Are you the ones who discovered the body?” he demanded. When they kept going, he followed, pushing a microphone into their faces while a cameraman hurried backwards down the driveway so he could keep his camera aimed at them. “What brought you to the house? Do you know who murdered Mr. Nye? Are you relatives?” And as Betsy brought out her keys and made her Buick chirp its locks open, he hurtled a final question. “Are you Mr. Nye’s gay lover?”

Betsy shoved Godwin into the passenger seat, gave the inquiring reporter an icy stare, then stalked around to get into the driver’s seat, start the car, and drive off with a little squeak of tires. “Jackals!” she growled.

Beside her, Godwin wept.

 
 
BACK at the shop, she hustled Godwin through the entrance to the apartments on the second floor, then into her apartment, then into the guest bedroom. The room was light and airy, painted in mottled shades of blue, with an iron-gray four-poster bed set at an angle in one corner. Godwin went right to it and curled into the fetal position on top of the blue and gray quilt. Betsy spoke soothingly to him while pulling off his shoes. She went to the closet and got a lightweight blanket from the top shelf and floated it over him.

“Do you want me to sit with you?” she asked.

“No,” he muttered.

“Would you like something to drink? Cocoa? Scotch? Orange juice?”

“No. Can I be alone for awhile?”

“Sure. I’ll go down to the shop. But I’ll come up as often as I can to see how you’re doing. And of course you can call down there if you want anything.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’ll never be all right again.”

“Oh, Goddy, of course you will. You are so surrounded by people who love you, you can’t be anything else.”

He sniffed but did not reply.

She paused at the door, a hand on the knob. “Let me predict something. If you thought it was ridiculous the number of hot dishes I was gifted with after I got out of the hospital, wait til you see our kitchen by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Huh,” he said, but something in his tone said he was comforted by the prediction.

Betsy went downstairs, and down the back hall to her shop. It was nearly noon, and she found Nikki Marquez nibbling on a bunch of red grapes.