Knit Your Own Murder (21 page)

“Why not?”

“Well . . . I guess the thing is, I want to do this myself.”

“My dear, dear heart,” he said, coming to take her by the elbows. “‘Pride goeth before a fall.' It seems to me you either have to lie—which is never a good thing to do to innocent bystanders in a criminal investigation—or tell the
truth and be rebuffed. I suggest you take the third choice, the high road, and talk to Mike.”

“But he—he doesn't like me.”

“That's not true. He respects you, but you make him nervous. He wishes you'd stay out of his business, or at least get a license. You're a wild card, and law enforcement officials don't like wild cards. When you do things that break open a case, he probably has a hard time explaining you to the chief, to prosecuting attorneys, to defense attorneys, to judges, maybe even to his wife.” He was smiling warmly at her, and her heart turned over—who else in the whole world could criticize her, warn her, advise her all in a couple of sentences, and make her like it?

She put her arms around him, and he took her in a warm embrace. They stood that way for a couple of minutes, until the threat of tears went away, and she stepped back.

“I'll call Mike today,” she said.

“G
ood
morning, Mike,” said Betsy on the phone.

“What do you want now?”

“I have an idea, but I need your help.”

“What kind of help?” he asked, warily.

“I think I know who killed Maddy O'Leary.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Harry Whiteside.”

“Harry Whiteside? But that's not possible! He died before she did!”

“Yes, but that yarn was poisoned before he died. He was at Mount Calvary's Lenten service—or at least at the reception afterward—and he approached the closet where the knitting bags were being kept. And he hated Maddy, had hated her for a long time. He saw an opportunity to get at her, an opportunity he was sure was safe—”

“What are you talking about, what was safe?”

“A chance to get hold of a deadly poison without having to buy it. A chance theft no one would think to blame him
for. He did some work at the University's hazardous waste disposal building.”

“And this has something to do with his work at the hazardous waste place?”

“It could.”

“How?”

“One of the last jobs Harry did was to replace the pipes in their fire-extinguishing system. So he was there. The term ‘hazardous waste' can cover things like poisons used in laboratory research testing, which they do a lot of at our university. You can't pour radioactive material or plague germs or poisons down the sink. You need that kind of waste professionally handled; that's what places like that are for. The question is, could someone just passing through get hold of a dollop of something he could use to kill?”

“Hmmmmm.”

“Right.”

“So maybe I should go have a look at this place,” said Mike.

“And you'll take me with you.”

“The hell I will!”

“Mike, I brought this to you. I think I deserve a reward for that.”

“I'll send you a dollar in the mail. Two dollars if it plays out.”

“You want me to go over there by myself?”

“You wouldn't get past the receptionist, probably.”

“All right, you're probably right. So please? Didn't you say yourself I sometimes see things other people miss?”

There was a long silence, followed by a heavy sigh. “I'll call you back.”

“Thank you very much.”
It'll probably take him an hour to think of a way to tell me to butt out
, she thought, disgruntled.

“Anything else?” he asked in a sarcastic voice.

“Um . . . actually, yes.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know if Sergeant Larabee has gotten the results of that DNA test he was running on the blood found on the doorknob at Harry Whiteside's house?”

“Yes, no matches.”

“What? None at all?” Betsy was incredulous. How could she have been so wrong?

“That's what he says. Why, whose did you think it would match?”

“Maddy O'Leary's.”

There was a silence of several seconds. “Mike?” she asked.

“I'm here. Why in the
hell
do you think that blood would be Maddy's?”

“Well, I'll tell you,” she said, and she did. Then the penny dropped—as her father, who was British-American, would put it, meaning she saw the whole picture. “He didn't test her DNA, did he?” she asked.

“No. I saw the report, and no, he didn't. I'll give him a call later today.”

“What's the matter?” asked Godwin, when she'd hung up.

“Oh, that dreadful man!”

“Who, Mike? I've already told you he's hopeless!”

“No, not Mike, that detective over in Wayzata, Larabee. Mike's going to talk to him. I hope he can get results. The other thing is, there's a place I want to visit, over at the U,
but I can't think of an excuse to get in there, and Mike doesn't want to take me.”
Jeepers
, Betsy thought,
I sound like a spoiled nine-year-old who's been told she can't go to the zoo
.

“Never mind,” she said aloud. “I'll find a way. I just need to practice a little patience. Tell me, what's going on with you and Rafael?”

“So,” he said, drawing out the word, “I screwed my courage to the sticking place—isn't Shakespeare wonderful?—and told him I had made up my mind a long time ago that I wasn't the parenting kind and the idea of taking on a baby scared me witless.”

“Uh-oh,” said Betsy. “What did he say?”

“He said he felt just the same way! Isn't that amazing? I was so shocked!”

“So you're not going to go through with it.”

“Oh, but that's not decided yet for sure.”

“What?”

“Well . . . you see, the more we talked about what a bad idea it was, the less of a bad idea it seemed. There are nurses and nannies and babysitters in the world, and when kids get older, they're in school all day, and there are even boarding schools where they go all the school year. So it's not like a twenty-four-seven job, is it? Rafael says that when he was a little boy, he saw his parents for about twenty minutes a day, sometimes less, until they sent him to a boarding school when he was eight and then to a prep school and then college, and he only came home for Easter and Christmas. And even then he saw more of his grandmama than his parents. He says he's surprised he can remember what they looked like, though I think he's joking.”

“So it's back on again.”

“Well . . . maybe.”

“What do his parents say about this plan to use a surrogate to have a child?”

“Not a thing. They're dead. They died in a plane crash when he was twenty-three.”

“Oh, that's sad.”

“So maybe ours'll be one of those angelic kids, and if so, we're thinking maybe not a boarding school.”

“You are? That's good.” Rafael would be the strict parent, and Godwin would be the indulgent parent, and the thought of Godwin being indulgent with a toddler made her smile for the rest of the morning.

*   *   *

“L
arabee.”

“Frank, this is Mike Malloy.”

“Say, little buddy, how's life over on the wrong side of the lake?”

“Not good. I read that report you copied to me on the DNA results from the Whiteside house.”

“Yeah, looks like we're back to square one on that case. Too bad. I was betting on a match with Howard Whiteside.”

“Why didn't you order up a test on Maddy O'Leary?”

“In case you didn't hear, the lady is dead.”

“The ME stores samples from murder victims, and there's more than enough for a DNA sample to be taken.”

“The lady had no reason to be in that house.”

“I have information that would indicate otherwise.”

“What information is that?”

Mike started to explain but hadn't said more than three sentences before he was interrupted. “That damn amateur you got over there planted that idea in your head, right?”

“That damn amateur, as you call her, has broken more than a few cases. She may be wrong, but her reasoning is solid. I think you—”

“I don't give a rat's ass what you think! We're doin' just fine without your help, especially if it comes secondhand from some old spinster seamstress who sells silk thread for a living!” And crash went the phone in Mike's ear.

*   *   *

S
he
was barely through with the turkey salad Godwin had brought her for lunch when the phone rang.

“Crewel World, Betsy speaking, how may I help you?”

“It's the Safety and Environmental Protection Facility,” said Mike.

“What is?”

“The hazardous waste disposal plant on the campus.”

“Oh. And, am I coming with you to tour it?”

“Yes, I'll pick you up tomorrow morning, nine o'clock sharp. Don't dress froufrou, and don't ask any questions without asking me first.”

After a startled pause, Betsy said meekly, “All right.”

*   *   *

O
ver
supper that evening, Connor was pleased that his advice to contact Mike Malloy had worked out well. But he was a little more concerned about Godwin's talk about having an angelic baby. “No matter how angelic,” he
said, “there are times when you'd cheerfully leave them in a basket at the side door of an ophanage.”

Betsy wan't sure what Mike meant by not dressing froufrou. She contemplated the contents of her closet the next morning before picking a dark green lightweight wool dress with a modest hemline and filling its décolletage with a green and tan silk scarf. She put on gold earrings and a little gold watch and slipped into low-heeled tan shoes, transferring her notepad, wallet, lipstick, comb, cell phone, and other items to a matching tan purse that hung from her shoulder. She almost decided against perfume but thought she needed the reassurance of just a trace of good old-fashioned Chanel No. 5.

Connor said, “You look good enough to hire.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling gently at him, and went downstairs.

The day was bright and cloudless, but the temperature hovered at sixty-eight. Of course, it was early, and the forecast was for it to rise to seventy-five.

Mike was very prompt. He drove up in a big old sedan that wasn't marked as a squad car, though it had the complex regalia inside—except there was no shotgun attached to the dash.

“Does this belong to the Excelsior Police?” asked Betsy, letting herself into the front passenger seat.

“Yes,” said Mike in a tone that discouraged further inquiry. He pulled away from the curb, went up Lake Street to cross at the asterisk of streets, and then turned onto Highway 7 headed east.

“The man in charge of the facility is Dr. George Seely—a PhD doctor, of law. He's an adjunct instructor at the law
school, but his primary job is director of the Safety and Environmental Protection Facility. The building is on the campus across from the University's TCF Bank Stadium.”

“All right,” said Betsy, getting out her notebook and beginning to write. “Did you ask him about Harry Whiteside?”

“Yes, and as a matter of fact, Dr. Seely knew Harry personally. They started pre-law school together. But Harry dropped out and went into engineering.”

“Is that how Harry got the job of repairing the fire control system?”

“I don't know; we didn't get that far. I do know that Harry was in and out of the facility for over a week back in early March.”

“Does Dr. Seely know you're bringing me along?”

“I told him I might bring someone with me, but that's all.”

They got off the highway at University Avenue and went over to Twenty-third, around the stadium, and pulled up in front of a good-size, new-looking brick building with no windows.

Dr. Seely was evidently looking for their arrival, because he came out and leaned down to speak to Betsy, who rolled down her window. Mike produced his ID and badge, which Dr. Seely looked at for several seconds, though he did not take hold of it. He was a very tall man, with keen, dark brown eyes and a lot of nose. His iron gray hair grew down over his ears. He wore a pale blue dress shirt with the sleeves turned back and crisp black trousers.

“You'll need a special pass to park here or you'll get a ticket,” he said, handing Betsy a red and white striped card about the size of an iPhone. She gave it to Mike, who
put his badge away and hung the card from his rearview mirror.

Then they both got out of the car and followed Dr. Seely to the deeply inset entrance on a corner of the building. Seely had to press a card against a box on the wall to gain entrance.

He led them down a severely plain corridor with a high ceiling, past an office with a big window, to another door, and this time he had to slide a card down a slot to make the door unlock.

Then they were in a very large, oddly shaped room that looked kind of like a factory, only with no machinery, all hard surfaces. Paths were marked with narrow stripes of white paint on the gray concrete floor. Overhead were pipes: boxy green pipes, fat yellow round pipes, narrower red pipes, very narrow pipes in tan and black.

The air smelled faintly of . . . something. A kind of chemical odor, as if it had passed through a number of extremely efficient filters before being allowed in.

Off to the left was a room set with big panes of glass, and inside were three or four people at consoles facing the glass. The rest of the room was studded with big, sturdy-looking red metal doors. The whole place looked very clean.

Dr. Seely gestured at the doors and said, “We sort the incoming material according to kind—the really dangerous stuff goes into one of those rooms to be unpacked, which room depending on what kind of hazard it presents. Some materials, for example, react badly to moisture in the air. Some are dangerous to breathe.”

Mike said, “I hope the people who work here are very picky about what they're doing.”