Hanging by a Thread (12 page)

“
H
ello, Carol? It’s Betsy at Crewel World. It’s hard to know when to call someone who works at home, so if I’m taking you away from your work, just tell me when would be a better time to call.”

“This is a good time, in fact; I’m rolling around the kitchen waiting for the water to boil for a cup of tea. What’s up? More ghost stories?”

“No. I wanted to tell you that the new DMC colors are in, but also ask you if you’d be interested in stitching another model for the shop.” Betsy sometimes asked experienced customers to stitch a pattern to hang on Crewel World’s wall. A color photograph could not always do a cross-stitched pattern justice; it took an actual model to entice customers.

After some discussion, they came to terms for the stitching of Janlynn’s complex Once Upon A Time, which was of a rearing unicorn about to be mounted by a medieval lady holding a spear with banners. “I’m sure it’s lovely, but it sounds so incredibly Freudian, I’m surprised you dare to hang it in your shop!” said Carol with an amused gurgle.

The deal concluded, Betsy said, “You were saying the other day that your sister and Angela Schmitt were best friends. Is she a stitcher, by chance?”

“You want to talk to Gretchen about Angela, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. But I don’t know her, and so I’m not sure how to approach her. I was hoping to do it through the shop.”

“Well, she doesn’t stitch.” Carol paused in a pregnant way. “But she knits.”

“Ah,” said Betsy. “What level, beginner?”

“Just about. She’s looking to try a sweater.”

“Perhaps I should tell her that Rosemary is going to teach a sweater class in February. It’s one of her most popular.”

Carol made that gurgling sound that meant she was amused. “So not only are you going to pick her brain, you’re going to pick her pocket. How much is the class?”

“Forty-five dollars, not including materials. Can she afford that?”

“From her change purse, probably. She married really well this time, and they go to New York City at least once a year to buy a bauble at Tiffany’s and catch a Broadway show.”

“Great. May I have her phone number? Or her e-mail address?”

Carol gave her both and they hung up.

Betsy was too busy to go upstairs and log on, so after she sold Mrs. Peters a winter solstice pattern and the floss she didn’t already have to complete it, she picked the phone up again and dialed the number Carol had given her.

The voice that answered sounded so much like Carol’s that for an instant Betsy thought she’d had a senior moment and dialed Carol’s number again. But she glanced down at the number Carol had given her and her fingers recognized it, so she said, “This must be Carol’s sister Gretchen. I’m Betsy Devonshire, of the needlework shop Crewel World.”

“How do you do? Yes, I’m Gretchen Tallman. What can I do for you?”

Something in Gretchen’s impatient voice made Betsy discard her roundabout ploy. She said directly, “I’m looking into Angela and Paul Schmitt’s murders, and I’d like to talk to you.”

“What do you mean, you’re looking into their murders? Isn’t Crewel World a stitchery store? Are you also a private investigator?”

“No, I’m working as an amateur. Foster Johns wants me to look into the case.”

Now the voice was distinctly frosty. “Foster Johns? Isn’t he the man who did it?”

“I’m looking for more information to see if I can figure out just who did it.”

“But of course it was him!”

“He was never charged with the crime. Can you tell me something that can be used as evidence, so he can be arrested and brought to trial?”

“Wait a minute. If you’re working for him, why would you tell the police anything I might tell you?”

“I’m not working for him, or for the police. What I’m looking for is some new evidence I can bring to the attention of the police.”

“And they’ll listen to you because ... ?”

“Because I have discovered evidence in other cases. I have ... connections in two police departments.”

“Hey, do you know Jill Cross?”

“Yes, I do. Why?”

“What’s your phone number there?” Betsy gave it to her, and Carol said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. Betsy picked up the receiver and said, “Crewel World, Betsy speaking, may I help you?”

“Okay, let’s meet somewhere.”

“Gretchen?”

“Who did you think?”

“Well, you sound a lot like Carol.”

“So they tell me. Jill says you’re all right, that I should trust you. So when and where can we meet?”

Betsy smiled, relieved Gretchen had called Jill and not Mike Malloy. “I’m working today, so you can come to the shop. Or we can meet for lunch, or after we close. We’re open till five tonight.”

“Lunch at Maynard’s. One too late?”

“No. How will I know you?”

They tell me I look like Carol, too. See you at one.” Carol rang off.

Betsy was prompt, but a woman who looked a lot like Carol, except she wasn’t in a wheelchair, was waiting, a highball in one hand. Maynard’s was a waterfront restaurant, slightly upscale, with a large wooden dock running around two sides of the dining room. In the summer, the dock nearly doubled the seating area. This time of year it was bare of tables, and today the water beyond was gray and choppy. A windsurfer made rooster tails across the bay, as sleek and anonymous as a seal in his black wet suit.

“You ever try that?” Gretchen asked Betsy as they sat down at their table, beside a big window.

“Not I,” said Betsy. “I swim and I sail, but not at the same time. How about you?”

“Not for a while.” Gretchen watched the surfer for a minute, giving Betsy a chance to study her. Gretchen could be either Carol’s older or younger sister, it was hard to tell. There was a strong family resemblance, but she had that careless arrogance of a woman with a lot of money, which Carol lacked. Gretchen was lightly tanned and very fit, her blond hair streaked and cut in that expensive way that falls back into place with a shake of the head. Her hands were knobbier than Carol’s, possibly because she was thinner, possibly because she was older. She wore pleated black trousers and a black cashmere sweater. Her Burberry was draped over the back of her chair. Her eyes came back to Betsy. They were large and a blue so dazzling that Betsy deduced tinted contacts.

“So why don’t you think Foster Johns murdered a very dear friend of mine?” asked Gretchen.

“Because the same person who murdered her also murdered her husband, and Foster has an alibi for that crime.”

“An ironclad one, no doubt. It’s those watertight alibis that are so often carefully planned for, don’t you think?”

“Sometimes,” agreed Betsy. “But this isn’t iron clad. Paul called Foster and asked for a meeting. Paul said he had evidence of who really killed Angela, but that if he presented it to the police, they’d think he contrived it. But he said perhaps Foster would be believed. Foster agreed to meet Paul in his office on Water Street, but Paul never showed. Foster got out some paperwork while he waited, plans and figures, but he finally went home. His cleaning lady told the police the office was perfectly clean when she left, and Foster said he couldn’t possibly have had time to both drive to Navarre to murder Paul and get his office that entangled in paper.”

“If I were Foster, and I thought Paul murdered Angela because she was having an affair with me, I’d be damned if I’d agree to meet him alone. If Paul killed Angela for messing around with me, he might kill me, too. No way would I have agreed to meet him alone.” She took a swallow of her drink and made a wry mouth. “Actually, I did meet him alone one time when I was me, and wouldn’t do that again.” She frowned. “I mean, I
am
me, and Paul’s not meeting anyone again. But when he was alive I wouldn’t have met him again at the Mall of America on the day after Thanksgiving surrounded by a platoon of cops on horseback.” She made a big, sloppy circle in the air with her glass.

After a pause while Betsy made sense of that, she said, “How did you happen to meet him alone?”

“It was down at the docks. I’d been sailing with some friends and got in after dark. I’d had some vodka gimlets and was thoroughly shellacked. This was pretty soon after Angela said we shouldn’t see each other anymore, so I never told her about it. Another thing I’m sorry about, because that might have been enough to pry her loose from that bastard. Anyhow, I came up the dock all by myself and I stopped by that kiosk thing on the shore, where they have announcements and historical information and like that inside it?”

Betsy nodded. She’d made a contribution to the Excelsior Chamber of Commerce and been rewarded with a paving stone outside the kiosk that came with the name of her shop cut into it. Most of the stones had names of individuals or companies on them; a few were still blank.

“The strap of my sandal was twisted so I was leaning against the wall of the kiosk trying to straighten it with a finger when all of a sudden he was there. I could see his teeth gleaming in the streetlight—he was always smiling, did I tell you that?” She blinked a little owlishly and Betsy wondered if the drink in her hand wasn’t her third or even fourth.

“Yes, you did.”

“ ‘Need a hand?’ ” he asked, all nice. ‘Nope,’ says I, ‘I’m just fine.’ And he kind of grabs me around the waist, only lower, and I slither away and say something like, ‘How dare you?’ only I put it stronger, and all of a sudden he’s on me like paint on a fence, and I have this thing I do, where I stomp on an instep and it will make just about anyone alive yip like a dog and back off. Only all he says is, ‘Hey, quit that,’ and keeps on coming, so I send my elbow hard into his midriff, and he had to let go then, because he couldn’t breathe anymore.” She widened her eyes and shaped her mouth like a fish out of water, gulped a few times in imitation of a man with the wind knocked out of him, then chuckled maliciously. ”That was the only time I ever saw him without that damn grin.” She lifted her glass and drained the liquid, tonguing the ice to shake loose the last of it.

“Good for you,” said Betsy as Gretchen put the glass down with a victorious thump. “Nice to be able to take care of yourself like that.”

“Well,” said Gretchen, tossing her head to make her hair shift and fall back, “when you start moving in the upper class, you either learn or go under.” She snickered.

“When you heard about Angela, did you think right away that Foster Johns murdered her?”

“Of course not. I was sure Paul did it.” She stared out the window, those amazing eyes filled with tears. “He pretended to be a nice person, but he didn’t have many friends, though lots of people are saying now how much they liked him. I went to high school with Paul, and even back then I thought there was something wrong with him. It was like a glass wall between him and you. He was always smiling and doing favors, but you couldn’t get close to him. And it didn’t change after he married Angela. He was nice to me, but all he’d talk about was sports or fishing or hunting—never about anything deep or important. I sometimes wondered if he didn’t have any deep thoughts. There was just this weirdly happy guy, with a smile a yard wide—and an inch deep.”

“How long had you known Angela?”

“Since middle school. She was like the opposite of Paul. She was really shy, but when you got to know her, she was deep. I remember when she was twelve, she had worked out what it must be like after you died. She said time was a river and we rode down the river all our lives, seeing the shoreline in sequence; and then when we died, we were like flying over the river and could see where it started and all the places it went and where it ended. And everything that ever happened or was going to happen was all happening on the river, so that’s why God knew what we were going to do before we did it. I mean, she was
twelve,
and she had this all worked out. I was the only person she told. She was good with books and tests, but her grades suffered because she almost never talked in class. There were some boys she liked in high school, but she never went out with them because she was too shy to let them know she liked them. I was the wild and crazy one, dances and parties and midnight movies, and people used to ask me why I liked Awkward Angie, and I’d say, ‘But she’s so
deep
!” Gretchen laughed self-deprecatingly.

“So why did she marry Paul?” asked Betsy.

“I asked her that once and she said, ‘Because he asked me.’ I think she had a real self-esteem problem, she could have done so much better if she knew what a great person she was.”

Their waitperson brought the big menus at this point and there was a pause while choices were made. Gretchen ordered another Manhattan, Betsy a sparkling water; Gretchen ordered a big salad, no dressing; Betsy a salmon steak that came with fresh fruit and a frozen yogurt dessert for fewer than a thousand calories.

“What did Angela tell you about Paul?” asked Betsy when the menus were taken away.

“That he was wonderful, outgoing, and always cheerful, with lots of friends. That was at first. Then she said less and less and finally didn’t say anything. Then it got hard to get hold of her, and she finally said Paul didn’t like her to spend so much time out with her friends, he wanted her at home with him. Well, I was working on wrecking my first marriage about then, so what the hey, we didn’t move in the same circles anymore and it was easy to let things slide.” Gretchen shrugged, but her mouth was weighted down by regret. She rattled the ice in her empty glass, looked around and brightened. “Here come our drinks, about time.”

When their entrees arrived, Betsy said, “If Paul was such a nasty piece of work, he must have had enemies. Any idea who they might be?”

“Not a clue. Angela never said anything about him having trouble with anyone, and I don’t remember anyone else saying they hated his guts. You really believe Foster Johns didn’t whack him, don’t you?”