Hanging by a Thread (2 page)

Godwin said, “It’s true. I’d have warned you, Betsy, if I’d known you were thinking of hiring him. I thought you hired the roofer yourself.”

“I told you I was having trouble deciding who to hire; that’s why I went to a general contractor. Mr. Johns seemed very competent.”

Martha said, “Competence has nothing to do with it. No one in town will have anything to do with Foster Johns since it happened five years ago.”

“The accusation was never proven,” said Alice in a low, firm voice. She was about Martha’s age, a tall woman with big hands, broad shoulders, and a mannish jaw, currently set hard.

“Only because Mike Malloy is a stupid, incompetent investigator,” said Martha, still pink with indignation.

“Even so,” said Betsy, “if it was never proved, why are you all so sure he’s guilty?”

“Because he’s the only one who could have done it,” said Godwin.

Comfort added, “Certainly he was the only one with a motive.” She had a very pleasant, quiet voice.

“Who did he murder, his wife?” asked Betsy.

Comfort finished another French knot using Bershada’s suggestion and nodded with satisfaction. Without looking up, she said, “He murdered his mistress one night and a few nights later murdered her husband.”

“He killed
two
people?”

Young Emily, nodding, said, “I can’t believe no one warned you about him.”

Betsy said, “Maybe because it’s not a question that occurs to me when asking around about a contractor: ‘By the way, has he ever murdered anyone?’ I called him and he seemed to know his business, and his fee was reasonable. Not one of the references I called said don’t hire him, he’s a killer. And I like working with him, he seems very competent.”

“No customers were from Excelsior, right?” said Godwin.

“Well, as a matter of fact, no,” agreed Betsy.

“He has to go out of town for customers,” said Martha. “No one from right around here will hire him, because we all know what he did.”

Alice unset her heavy jaw to say, “Because it’s everyone’s opinion that he murdered those people. There was never any proof.”

Godwin said, “All right, it’s true Malloy couldn’t find the kind of evidence it would take to convict him before a jury of his peers. That’s why he had to let him go. But it’s not because it wasn’t
there,
it’s because he didn’t look
hard
enough, or in the right
places.
I heard he nearly lost his job because he bungled the investigation.”

“I’ve often said he should be busted back to patrol,” offered Bershada, a trifle diffidently, as she was still feeling her way into this group.

Betsy nodded; she knew Investigator Malloy. “I’ll grant that Mike’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” she said. “Still, it must have taken a depressingly large amount of incompetence to allow a man who has murdered twice to walk free.” Free so that innocent shopowners could hire him to arrange repairs, restorations, and/or renovations of commercial properties. Betsy looked out the rain-spattered front window, but Foster Johns was already out of sight. It was almost an equally shattering thought that she, with a talent for uncovering amateur criminals, had found this alleged murderer to be an honest, trustworthy sort, with an attractive personality. Betsy tended to trust her feelings about people. How could she be so wrong?

“
W
hat can you tell me about these people he murdered?” asked Betsy, sitting down at the table, her work forgotten.

Martha said, “They were Paul and Angela Schmitt. It was the old, old story. Angela was married to Paul but having an affair with Foster.”

Alice said quietly, “I remember how shocked and sad Foster was the day Angela was found dead. I know everyone thinks he did it”—she looked at Martha—“but there is someone sitting right here at this table who knows the value of ‘everyone thinks.’ ”

Martha, who had once been popularly suspected of a double homicide, said in a shocked voice, “That’s different!”

“No, it isn’t.” Alice looked at Betsy. “You told me that one reason you look into crime is not so much to discover the guilty as to rescue the innocent. If Foster Johns is innocent, he certainly could use rescuing. His life has been extremely difficult since those murders.”

Godwin said, “Don’t even think about it, Betsy.”

“Never fear, it’s about to become the busiest time of year for me. I don’t have time for distractions.” Reminded, she stood and went back to the desk.

“All he had to do was move away—” began Emily.

Alice said, “Do you think if he had gone away, he wouldn’t have lived in fear the rest of his life that someone from his old hometown would show up and tell that story to his new friends? Anyway, he has a business here that took him years to build! If he tried to sell it, who’d give him a good price? No one!”

“Well, if he’s guilty,” said Bershada, “that would be about what he deserves!”

“That’s
right,”
declared Godwin. “Are you saying he should be treated nicely, Alice? He should be in jail! And since that hasn’t happened, the least we can do is cut him right out of our lives! It was horrible that a man Angela Schmitt loved and trusted
murdered
her!” He turned to Betsy. “She was the
sweetest
little thing,” he said, “like a timid child, and Paul loved her for it—he was very protective of her.”

Emily said, “I remember him. He had that kind of face that’s always smiling. He’d see you coming and he’d always say hello. He loved Angela and bought her anything she wanted.”

“ ‘A man may smile and smile and be a villain,’ Shakespeare wrote,” said Alice.

“So what?” said Godwin. “It wasn’t true in this case. He even took that second job in the gift shop so he could be near her.”

“She couldn’t have been afraid of him,” said Martha, “if she started an affair with another man.”

Betsy put down the packing list to ask, “Why did she start an affair with Foster if Paul was such a wonderful husband?”

Godwin said, “The lure of the new and exciting, I suppose.” He made a sad-comical face. “Of course, I’m no expert in heterosexual affairs of the heart, but are they all that different from my own?” Godwin was gay, and his flirtatious ways sometimes infuriated his partner. “But she found out the hardest way that the grass isn’t always greener on the wrong side of the fence.”

“Possibly Foster didn’t want her to leave her husband,” suggested Bershada. “This way, Paul bought the cake and Foster got the icing.”

“Well, that brings up another question,” said Betsy. “Suppose she was going to leave him. That’s a common pattern: The husband finds out that his wife wants a divorce, so he murders her and then himself. Couldn’t that have happened here?”

“No,” said Emily. “Paul’s death was a murder, all right. There was some kind of fight in his house the night he was shot.”

Martha said, “And the gun was never found.”

Emily said, “
I
think Angela came to her senses and told Foster she wanted to break it off. There was a quarrel, and he murdered her. And he was so mad at Paul, he murdered him, too.”

Comfort said thoughtfully, “There are women who, for whatever reason, pick domineering men. She married one, and when he made her unhappy, she chose another one as a lover.”

Betsy said, “But Foster doesn’t strike me as domineering. Maybe it’s more that she was the kind of woman who liked to make her man jealous. Maybe she was making Paul angry by taking up with Foster.”

Alice said, “I never, ever saw her do anything that would make me think she was a flirt or a tease. She was quiet and a little standoffish.”

“How sure are you that she really was having an affair?” asked Betsy. “If it was all a tease—”

Godwin said, “Oh, Foster admitted it! It was on the news and everything. He probably seduced the poor thing.”

Betsy said, “While my relationship with Foster is strictly business—”

“Yes, how is Morrie?” asked Godwin sweetly. He’d been delighted and amused to learn Betsy had a beau. Morrie Stephens was a police investigator with the Minnetonka Police Department. He had met Betsy last summer and admired her sleuthing ways. They were seeing a lot of each other and he was already hinting he wanted her to sell Crewel World and move to Fort Myers with him, after he retired this winter. Betsy hadn’t told Godwin this not-so-amusing detail.

“Hush,” she said, blushing lightly. “I’m about to make a point here. Am I so wrong about Foster, is he the sort who goes about seducing shy married women for sport?”

“Well, no, he didn’t impress me that way,” said Alice. “I was surprised to find out about him and Angela. But when I was married to a pastor, I found out things that happen between men and women you wouldn’t believe.”

“The thing is, there isn’t any other explanation,” said Comfort. “No one else was close to Angela, no one else had any reason at all to murder her.”

“Except Paul, if he had found out his wife was making a fool of him with Foster Johns,” said Betsy. “Any husband—or wife, for that matter—is apt to be very angry when they learn something like that.” Betsy had divorced her husband when she found that he had been repeatedly unfaithful. “So it’s logical to suppose that if Paul found out about Foster, he murdered Angela. Then perhaps Foster, in a rage, murdered Paul. That would make sense.”

Martha said, “But the police said the same gun was used to kill both of them.”

They looked at Betsy to explain that, if she could. So of course she tried. “Well, okay, still say Paul murdered his wife. Foster, in a rage, went to see Paul, who naturally became frightened and pulled out his gun. They fought over it, and Foster got it and shot Paul.”

That made sense, and the challenging looks faded.

“But then why didn’t Foster call the police?” asked Emily. “Isn’t that self-defense?”

Betsy, remembering the cool, competent way Foster had handled the complex details of getting the building permits, hiring a roofer and the company to haul away the remains of the old roof, and while he was about it someone to replace the gutters, frowned. The Foster she thought she had come to know would certainly call the police if he had shot someone in self-defense. She thought a bit, then asked, “Why suspect only Foster Johns in this case? Couldn’t someone else have murdered Paul Schmitt? Doesn’t Angela have family in the area who might have avenged her murder?”

“Her father lives in Florida most of the year. He was down there when she was murdered, and was just about to fly back when Paul was killed,” said Godwin. “She has two brothers, but one lives in California, and the other was overseas with the Army. So, you see, there really isn’t anyone else. Paul wasn’t the kind to blow his cool. He wasn’t as sweet as Emily thinks, but who is?”

Emily blushed but said, “He was too!”

“He managed that Scandinavian gift shop really well,” Godwin continued, “expanded their reach into British and Irish stock, which improved their bottom line—he was bragging about it at a party. I can’t think of a single enemy he had. And, of course, no one in his right mind had any reason to hate Angela.”

“Maybe a robbery?” suggested Betsy.

Martha said, “Well, I think that’s what the police thought, right at first. Angela was alone when she was shot there, she was closing up that night. But she wouldn’t have resisted if someone came in with a gun, she wasn’t the least brave. Anyway, nothing was taken.”

Alice said, “That’s because the gun being fired brought people’s attention, so whoever it was had to leave or be caught.”

Martha said, “That’s right, a bullet broke a window, and the bookstore’s right on Water Street, so there were a lot of people who came rushing to see what was going on. And of course everyone thought it was a robbery. But then Paul was shot, and at home. So then everyone thought what you suggested, Betsy, that Paul shot her and then himself. But when we heard about the fight, and that the police couldn’t find the gun, we knew it was something else.”

Godwin said, “And that time it wasn’t Malloy doing the investigating. Paul lived in Navarre, that’s where he was shot.”

Martha said, “But Mike was over there because they thought there might be a link between Paul’s and Angela’s murders. And there was: The same gun was used in both murders.”

Comfort said, “I remember hearing on the news the morning after it happened that a neighbor heard shooting at the Schmitt house and called the police.”

“You meant there was a gunfight?” asked Betsy.

“No, no, there was just one gun involved, but there were several shots fired.”

“That’s right, I remember reading that in the Minneapolis newspaper,” said Godwin. “The neighbors were too scared to look out their windows, or there might have been a description of Foster running away or a license plate number or something. But there wasn’t. And that’s one reason he wasn’t arrested. Which is too bad; Paul Schmitt was shot two or three times, so it wasn’t an easy death.”

“Dreadful,” murmured Emily, and there was a little silence.

Betsy said, “Wait, it doesn’t make sense that Foster would murder Angela and then Paul. In fact ...” Her frown deepened. “I suppose I can see Foster going to Paul to tell him he was in love with Angela and demanding Paul divorce her, then getting in a fight and killing Paul. And I suppose it could happen that his mistress was so upset about it, she threatened to turn him in, so he killed her, too. But that’s not the order this happened in. I suppose it’s possible a man might be so exasperated and infuriated with his mistress that he murders her. But then, having done that, why round it off by murdering her husband? I mean, he’s so handy as a suspect, isn’t he?”

“But maybe Paul knew Foster did it, maybe he even had some kind of proof, so Foster had to kill him,” suggested Bershada.

“There you go,” said Godwin, his eyes lighting up at this evidence of clever thinking. He smiled at Bershada.

“Instead of going to the police?” asked Betsy.