Knit Your Own Murder (17 page)

“What is this ‘impasse'?”

“
Punto muerto
,” said Rafael.

“No, no, no,” said Pilar, with a triumphant smile. “I have arrange things at home for you. Consuela Montserrat is your bride.”

“What? What are you saying?” demanded Rafael.

Pilar continued as if he hasn't spoken. “You remember her, she was best friends with our cousin Maria Eugenia. Very nice woman, her years are but twenty, she is pretty, she look like her mama, she have six brothers, so you see she is perfect! And when I go home, I shall . . .” She paused
to translate her Spanish thoughts to English. “I shall
release
the news that you are promise to, to
diarios
—the media!” She produced the word with an effort of thought, pleased to have succeeded. “The TV, the radio, the newspapers, no? Yes! Then you
must
marry her.”

Rafael said nothing, but when Godwin looked at him, it was as if his partner had turned into a pale marble statue.

So Godwin spoke for him. “You can't do that!”

“No?” she said, pleased. “You jus' watch me, buster!”

Godwin burst into laughter.

Insulted, she retreated again into Spanish. “
Rafael
,” she began, rolling the
R
until it screamed for mercy, “
Rafael, se nota que no estás pensando con claridad! Eres un irresponsable, y por lo visto necesitas que te recuerde cuál es tu deber ante la familia! Tú bien sabes que es tú responsabilidad que la línea familiar continúe de manera honorable, decente y bajo la Ley de la Iglesia.
”

Rafael grew serious, leaning forward out of the chair. “You will not do this thing,” he said to his sister in a voice made of icicles. “You will not arrange my life for me.”

“You cannot stop me unless you kill me!”

Rafael looked about to rise, and for just an instant Pilar looked frightened, as if she'd gone a step too far and he might indeed reach for her with murder in his heart.

But he spoke calmly, although there were razors in his voice, “If one word of my engagement to anyone but Godwin DuLac reaches the media, I will make a release of my own, of a set of e-mails I received from your Franco.”

“What has my husband to do with this?” she said with disdain.

“We used to be friends, Franco and I, before he understood I am gay. He was then, and remains, unfaithful to you.”

“So?” she said, but less certain.

“So not long ago he was very close to a certain woman, and still may be. He bragged about her to me. He sent me a picture of the two of them smiling at me. She is called Si-Si, do you know of her?”

All the color drained from Pilar's face.

“I see you do. She is notorious, is she not? Franco is like many men of our class, who marry for advantage, not love. But this, this is too much; she is promiscuous to an infamous degree, she discolors all she touches.” He looked at Godwin. “Is ‘discolors' the correct word?”

“I think the word you want is ‘taints.'”

Rafael looked at his sister. Now she was the one sitting pale and frozen. “I think we have again reached a
punto muerto.
”

T
hat
same evening, Betsy called Mike Malloy at home.

“May I ask a favor?” she asked.

“Tell me why I should do you a favor,” he growled.

“Having a hard week?” she asked.

“All my weeks are hard. What's making this one hard is that Joe Mickels's alibi turned up.”

“You mean the man he was interviewing for a job?”

“That's the one. Wayzata PD found him up in Duluth. He agrees he went to a late dinner with Joe, didn't like the terms of employment he was offered, and turned him down.”

“Well, that's good, that's progress!” Then she remembered he liked Joe a whole lot for the murder of Harry Whiteside. “Still . . .” she said.

“What do you want?”

“I understand you've got some video of the reception over at Mount Calvary, and Joe's on it.”

“Can't
nobody
keep their mouths shut anymore?” he complained, intentionally colloquial.

“Apparently not. But is it true? You actually saw Joe there and going into the janitor's closet where the bags were kept?”

“In the video footage he's there, all right.”

“But not going into the closet.”

“You can't see the closet on the camera. He was near it, going toward it, we got that much.”

“Mike, can I watch the videos?”

“What for?”

“I want to see who else was near that closet door. Have you watched all three of them?”

“Of course I have.”

“Did you see anyone else on the footage who is significant to the case?”

“Sure, I did. Chaz and Bershada Reynolds were there; both the Larsons, Jill and Lars. My wife and oldest daughter were there. Sergeant Larabee of Wayzata PD was there. Hell, Harry Whiteside was there.”

“Harry was there?”

“Sure, why not? He came to all kinds of events. Looking for more clients. Letting people see him talking to important clients. You know, being a big shot. Showing the flag.”

“I don't remember seeing him around,” said Betsy, who went to a number of “events” herself. Then she had a second thought. “Well, I might have. I didn't know him and I don't remember anyone introducing him to me. Unless he wore a name tag, I wouldn't have recognized him if he stood right beside me.”

“I didn't see you on the videos at Mount Calvary,” Mike said.

“That's because I wasn't there,” said Betsy. “I was doing taxes. But what I want to ask is, may I come over to the station and borrow those discs?”

“No, you may not. But you can come over and watch them at the department.”

“When?”

“How about right now?”

He was being sarcastic, but she decided to take him at his word. “Thank you, I'll meet you over there shortly.”

*   *   *

I
t
was a little after six when Betsy drove up to the little brick and white stone building that was Excelsior's Police Department.

Betsy went into the air lock that was the entrance to the station. She got out her cell and called Mike. “I'm out front,” she said.

“I'll be right there,” he said.

A minute later, Mike came up to the thick glass that looked into the station and pressed or levered something that made a door to the inside open with a clack. Betsy went through, and Mike escorted her to his little office with the twin desks pushed up against each other. There was no one at the other desk.

“Where's Elton?” asked Betsy.

“Home eating dinner,” said Mike.

“Mike, I'm sorry to get you out like this. But you offered, and I'm grateful you agreed to let me see the recordings.”

Mike said, reluctantly, “Well, sometimes you come up with things, I have to admit.”

On Mike's desk was an old gray laptop computer, and beside it were three dark brown plastic computer disc cases. One was open, and a disc was shoved halfway into the side of his keyboard.

Mike sat down on the office chair behind his desk, gesturing at the armless wooden chair next to it.

Betsy pulled it around to sit next to Mike. He pushed the disc the rest of the way in. The computer gulped and twinkled and displayed a menu with only one item on it. Mike moved his mouse to bring a fat arrow to the item and clicked on it.

His computer grumbled and hummed, and suddenly they were looking at the big rotunda that was Mount Calvary's church hall. There were six or seven people there, nicely dressed for church in light spring coats, all adults. Along a far wall was a long table with a white tablecloth on it, ornamented with two punch bowls, one full of something orange, the other full of something pink. Between the punch bowls were various platters displaying very small crustless sandwiches, crackers with dabs of cheese topped with slices of something dark, probably olives, and small cookies. Plastic glasses rose in towers behind the punch bowls, and while Betsy watched, two women came to dip ladles into the bowls.

Meanwhile, the room was filling up. Betsy leaned forward. She saw Joe accepting a clear plastic cup of orange punch and one of the little sandwiches, tucking a tiny napkin into a curled little finger. He wandered off around the room. She followed him until he went out of camera range.

She recognized several of her favorite customers, then Jill and Lars, without the children.

“There's Harry,” said Mike, touching the screen.

“Where?” she asked, leaning forward.

“There,” he said, touching the screen again. Harry Whiteside, tall and silver haired, in a dark topcoat, turned away from the camera then turned back. He seemed to be looking for someone. Then he wandered out of the camera's range.

He looks like Heck
, she thought.

The room became increasingly crowded, and it was harder to pick out individual faces. She thought she saw Alice, but the figure turned away and didn't reappear.

The recording lasted a little over an hour, the crowd thinning slowly at first, then more rapidly. By the time it was down to the cleanup crew, it suddenly cut off.

“Seen enough?” asked Mike, pushing a button to expel the disc.

“Does one of them show the door to the janitor's closet?” she asked.

He rattled his way among the plastic boxes and picked one. “None show the closet door,” he said, “but this one comes closest.”

He popped the disc into the computer, which grumbled again, and suddenly the church hall was back on Mike's computer screen.

Mike touched a spot on the screen. “The door is just about two, two and a half feet from here, this way.” He moved his finger out and up off the screen.

Betsy studied the screen and located herself in the scene. “Yes,” she said, “right over there is Kari's office.” She
touched the screen up and to the left of where Mike had touched it.

She focused in on that part of the screen and just watched. Alice came near it, Joe came near it, Harry came near it, several other people Betsy recognized came near it. Harry came back a second time, went off camera in its direction for a short time, perhaps fifteen seconds, then came back. He was smiling, as if someone had told him a cruel but funny joke. Then Joe came back, thrust a hand into his pocket, and went off camera and was gone longer, nearly half a minute. When he came back he looked around as if for spying eyes.

Uh-oh
, thought Betsy.

Then Alice came back. Betsy saw her reaching out, as if for a doorknob, as she went off camera in the direction of the janitor's closet. She backed away from it, frowned at it, then turned and walked away.

“It seems to me,” said Betsy, “that Alice is behaving as suspiciously as Joe or Harry.”

“Harry's dead, and Alice has no motive I've been able to find.”

“Hmmm,” said Betsy, and she went home discouraged.

*   *   *

W
hen
Betsy came down the next morning a few minutes before opening-up time, she found the shop lit and dusted, smelling of fresh coffee, the teakettle singing to itself in an undertone. Godwin was sitting at the little round table in the back of the shop, a cup of tea in front of him. He was looking very pensive.

Betsy made a very sweet and milky cup of coffee for herself and came to sit across from him.

“What's on your mind?” she asked.

“Oh . . .” he began, then sighed.

She asked, alarmed, “Is the marriage off?”

“Oh yes,” he said but not unhappily, and she took a drink of coffee, unable to reply.

“Oh,” he said, looking at her, “not our marriage, the other one, the one his family arranged for him in Spain, to a woman named Montserrat—isn't that a Spanish mountain?”

“Goddy!”

“All right, all right. Let's see, where to start. When we drove Pilar to the airport to wait for a plane that will begin her journey home, she and Rafael talked. She had to change in Chicago, I think. She wasn't angry anymore.”

“No, sweetie, that's the end of the story, not the beginning. Who is Pilar?”

“She's Raf's big sister. She came on behalf of the family, I think. Trying to talk him out of marrying me.”

“Was she difficult?”

“Difficult?” He raised pale eyebrows at her, making his light blue eyes open very wide. “Oh, Betsy, ‘difficult' is entirely too mild a word to describe her. She was a screaming harridan. She actually attacked Rafael, knocked him down, tore his clothing half off him, tried to scratch his eyes out.”

“Are you serious?”

He nodded, frowning painfully at the memory. “Knocked me down, too. Collateral damage, but still. Gave me a knot
on my head.” He touched a place above his left ear tenderly. “It was a total war. She frightened me to
death
! I managed to crawl away, then actually had to pour cold water on her to make her let go of Rafael.”

Betsy felt uncertain laughter start to bubble up and severely choked it down, sending down a big swallow of coffee to drown it. “What about this woman, Montserrat?”

“Apparently Pilar thought that if she announced their engagement in the papers, Rafael and this woman's engagement, he would be shamed into going to Spain and marrying her.”

“She
announced
it? Before she
talked
to him?”

“No, it hadn't actually been announced; she just told us her plans. Thought the fix was in because she—or maybe the whole family—did apparently get the unfortunate woman to agree to marry him. She's supposed to be very pretty, and she's got six brothers.”

“What does six—oh.”

Godwin nodded, now amused himself. “They really, really want Rafael to father a boy, to carry on the family name. Do you think there's a title in his family somewhere? Maybe if enough people die childless, Raf can be Sir Rafael. Maybe that's what's got them so excited. Rafael was instructed to take back the ring from me and to be sure to wear it when appearing before his grandmother at home in Spain.” Godwin straightened in his chair and flourished his left hand, which twinkled. “
Which
he is not going to do!”

“So how did he persuade Pilar to abandon this plan and go home by herself?”

Godwin looked uncomfortable. “Blackmail,” he said.

“He is going to blackmail his
grandmother
?”

“Oh no, she is halfway already to being on his side; says after he fathers a boy, he can divorce the Montserrat and come back to me. Or he can stay married to her and keep me like a mistress on the side. Whichever.”

“Oh, Goddy!”

“Not to worry, he refused absolutely. Said he would not do that to an innocent woman. Or me.”

“So who is he blackmailing?”

“Pilar. Her husband is some kind of rutting pig, and he's not at all faithful to Pilar—which amazes me, seeing how beautiful
and
how vicious she is. Anyway, he had a clandestine affair with a notorious woman—and made the mistake of bragging to Rafael about it—sent pictures and everything. Rafael said he would release Francisco's e-mails to the media the day after she releases the news of his engagement to the mountain.” Godwin smiled, an ugly smile, and hid it behind his cup of tea.

“Oh, Goddy! But wait, if she's notorious, isn't everyone already aware of it?”

“Raf told me that it's like the English royals and Hollywood stars back in the day. People around them knew, but not the public. It was never in the papers.”

“And Rafael has threatened to tell the papers.”

“Yes. I know, it's all too, too utterly shabby!” He frowned unhappily. “Needs must,” he mumbled.

“But it's over, right? She's going home and will not do anything further.”

“It looks that way. But I hate what Raf had to do. I hate it.”

“Poor fellow.” She reached for his hand, and found it cold. “Come on, let's take your mind off it by opening up.”

An hour later, checking her e-mail, she found a message from Heck Whiteside.