Monica Ferris_Needlecraft Mysteries_03 (25 page)

Betsy looked at Shelly, who had her hand up in a
Call on me!
gesture. “I'm sure she will. So consider yourself covered tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I'll see you Friday. Oh, and Betsy . . .” There was a lengthy silence. “I guess I don't know what to say.”

“That's okay, I wouldn't know what to say back, either. 'Bye, Godwin.”

“So what do we do first?” asked Jill, when Shelly and the insurance man had gone.

“Let's go beard the lion.”

A few minutes later, the two were climbing the old wooden stairs to the second floor of the Water Street building. At the far end of the hall they found a glass office door painted with plain black letters: Mickels Corporation. Jill went in first. They found themselves in a small room in front of a gray metal desk. A row of gray metal filing cabinets took up most of a wall. The young woman at the desk was working on a very modern computer. She glanced up and said, “May I help you?”

Betsy said, “I'm Betsy Devonshire. Is Mr. Mickels in?”

She glanced at Jill in her uniform and said, “Just a moment, please.” The woman went through a back door, shutting it behind her. The door must have been a good one; they couldn't hear a sound through it. She came back, leaving the door open, to say, “Go on in.”

Mickels's inner office was barely more opulent. It did have a big wooden desk with carved corners that was probably a hundred years old, but the chair behind it was an old wooden thing on casters with a back that curved into the arms. The single window overlooking the street was uncurtained. There was a wooden filing cabinet against one wall, and a low bookcase contained law books and three-ring binders. The floor was bare, and there were no pictures on the walls. A thick metal door probably led to a strong room.

Mickels sat behind the desk, his back to the window. “Ms. Devonshire, Officer Cross,” he said. His white sideburns lined a very good poker face.

“Mr. Mickels,” said Betsy, who had thought hard about how to approach Mickels on this, “you own the building that contains Crewel World, am I right?”

Mickels nodded, frowning a little. “You know that.”

“And you know I am the sister of the founder of the company, the late Margot Berglund?”

Again Mickels nodded, his frown deepening.

In exactly the same tone, Betsy asked, “And you know that Mrs. Berglund was the founder and silent partner in New York Motto, right?”

Mickels blinked, then jumped to his feet. “
What?
” he shouted.

“I said, my sister was the owner of New York Motto.”

“By God, I might have known!” roared Mickels, flinging his arms in the air. “That
bitch!
That sweet-talking, milk-faced, embroidering, conniving
bitch!
” His anger fed on itself, and the madder he got, the stronger his language became. Betsy, backing away, was further startled when the door to the outer office opened and the secretary stood in the doorway, her eyes wide.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “Shall I call—” She stopped, confused, because Jill Cross was the police.

“Get out!” shouted Mickels. “Just get out!”

“Yessir,” she said, and went, closing the door behind her.

“I think you'd better sit down, Mr. Mickels,” said Betsy, a little alarmed at the color of his face.

But Mickels was too upset to sit down. “And she told you this, so you could just keep on grinding me down!” he growled.

“No, I didn't know about it until Mr. Penberthy came to see me last night—”

Mickels exploded again, describing the attorney in atrocious language. “It was probably all his goddamned idea!” he concluded, leaning on his desk, his breathing alarmingly loud and uneven.

“Mr. Mickels, if you'll just calm down—” said Jill in her smoothest voice.

“Calm down? I ought to go and shoot him down!” shouted Mickels. “Cheat me, will she?” And he spoke again about Margot Berglund in language that exasperated Betsy as much as it embarrassed her. Jill took her by the arm and signaled with nod and lifted eyebrows that they should just stand back and let Mickels get it out of his system.

When Mickels was reduced to merely walking around and around his desk, clenching and unclenching his fingers and grinding his teeth, Betsy tried again.

“It appears you didn't know anything about this until I told you,” she said. “And a good thing, too.”

“What?” Mickels seemed surprised to find them still in his office.

“Mr. Mickels, someone has made three attempts on my life.”

“Yes, I know.” Mickels's wide, thin, mouth pulled suddenly into an ugly smile. “I wish him luck.”

“You don't mean that, Mr. Mickels,” said Jill.

“Don't I? Do you know what this New York Motto has done to me? Ruined me, that's what! My whole life is going to slide into the toilet in less than a month! It's not just the goddam waterfront property, it's my credit rating! My reputation as a man of business! I may have to give up on The Mickels Building, the dream of my life! All because some dotty woman wanted to sell the means to make a piddling
doily!
She's
ruined
me, d'ya hear? She—and now you,
Ms.
Devonshire, who haven't the littlest clue how to run a business! And all over what? A piddling
doily!
I hope whoever's after you squashes you like a
bug!
I hope when he finishes with you, he takes after Penberthy! Now get out of my office!” Mickels stopped to do more of that effortful breathing, his fingers working. He threw a sudden glance at his strong room, then glared at Jill. “You, take her out of here, now!”

But that glance roused Betsy's sleuthing instincts, and when Jill stepped forward, she could tell that Jill had noticed it, too. With a crack of authority in her voice, Jill said, “We're not finished talking with you, Mr. Mickels. Why don't you sit down and answer a few questions?”

Mickels stopped pacing and actually went to his chair and sat down. But it was with an effort, and he sat so rigidly that Betsy felt if she were to tap him on the shoulder he'd shatter like cheap pottery. Mickels's hands were in white-knuckled fists, and again he glanced at the strong room.

“Something in there, sir?” asked Jill.

“In where?”

“In that room behind the steel door.”

“Just some records.”

Betsy asked, “Records of that deal with New York Motto?”

Mickels's shrug seemed sincerely confused. “Yes.”

“What else?” asked Jill.

“You can't search that room without a warrant, you know.”

“I could with your permission.”

“There's nothing in there.”

Betsy said, “Show us.”

Mickels hesitated a long while. Then, with a too-elaborate shrug, he stood and fished in his pocket for a big, old-fashioned key.

The strong room was the size of a walk-in closet. There was a small, long-legged table beside a gray filing cabinet with a combination dial on its top drawer. A huge old green safe bulked large at the back. The light came from a naked bulb hanging on a wire from the high ceiling. The cabinet and safe were open. Betsy, remembering the old game of hot and cold, watched Joe closely as Jill looked first into the filing cabinet, pulling open one drawer then the next, fingers walking quickly along the file folders. Mickels didn't show much, so Betsy said, “Maybe it's in the safe.”

Jill pulled the safe door wide. Mickels tensed, and Jill, aware of what Betsy was doing, touched various papers, while Betsy played hot and hotter. When Jill touched an old metal box with a padlock on it, Mickels actually trembled.

“What's in the box?” asked Betsy.

“My coin collection,” grated Mickels.

The box was extremely heavy, and Jill couldn't lift it alone. Betsy hurried to help. It made a metallic noise when it tilted, and Mickels became a white-hot statue in order not to rush to their aid.

“Open it for me?” asked Jill, after they succeeded in sliding it onto the tall table.

Mickels came to unlock the padlock with a mild show of reluctance—or was feeling so much reluctance some leaked out around the edges of his attempt to disguise it. He put the padlock on the table beside the box and stepped back.

Jill opened the box. It was nearly filled with bright silver coins, mostly half dollars, but with dimes, quarters, and dollars mixed in. The coins were loose, not in the little cardboard holders collectors use.

Betsy, puzzled, picked up a few. They were badly worn and a trifle greasy, as if from much fondling. She turned and looked at Mickels, who looked back, grim-faced.

“I don't get it,” said Jill, scooping up a handful of coins. She turned and held them out to Joe.

“They're all real silver, not those cheap alloys the government issues nowadays,” said Mickels, staring at them, fingers working. “They're badly worn, and of no interest to real collectors, so I bought 'em at face value. I don't know why I keep them.” He shrugged stiffly, and tore his eyes away. “Anything else I can show you in here?”

Betsy, feeling she'd come to the heart of a mystery without solving it, glanced at Jill, then said, “No.”

Jill closed the box and would have snapped the padlock shut, but Mickels said, “Just leave it.” He turned and walked stiffly out of the strong room, and they followed. “Anything else you want to look at?” he asked, going to his chair. He put his hands on the back of it, a seemingly casual gesture, except that his grip was so tight his fingernails were pressed white.

Jill said, “Are you the one trying to murder Betsy Devonshire?”

“Not.”

“She really didn't know about New York Motto until Penberthy told her, you know.”

Mickels nodded once, sharply. “Yes, that's probably the case.” The nostrils of his big nose flared suddenly. “If I'd found out she owned New York Motto on my own, I might be asserting my right to silence and phoning my lawyer right now. But before God, I didn't know.” The anger suddenly left him, and he said, with an air that seemed close to despair, “I suppose this'll be all over the business pages tomorrow morning?”

“I have no intention of sharing this with anyone, Mr. Mickels,” said Betsy. “And neither does Officer Cross.”

“That's something, at least.”

They left him still standing behind the chair.

Out on the street, Betsy said, “What was that about the coins?”

“Beats me. But I'd say it was pretty clear he didn't know about New York Motto. Whew!”

Betsy giggled suddenly. “I haven't heard language like that since I dated a first class bosun's mate.” She sobered. “But damn. All right, let's go to Trinity and talk to everyone. Find out when the tapestry was last seen, or if maybe someone walked out of the church hall with a suspicious bulge under his coat.”

Things were bustling in the church office. Jill and Betsy stood a moment inside the door, taking it in. A delivery man was standing beside a stack of boxes with a local printer's logo on them, waiting for someone to sign his clipboard. A plump, sad-faced woman in a head scarf waited on a hard wooden bench, and next to her a thin, nervous man in a light jacket, far too light for the weather. Betsy was surprised to see Patricia Fairland next to him. She was staring at the floor in front of her, looking ill with worry. Betsy thought,
Maybe she's going to ask Father John to ask me to leave town.

Two chatting women were sorting green pledge cards on a table, and the secretary was at her desk and on the phone, saying in a calm voice that no, Christmas day being on a Saturday did not mean that Sunday services were canceled. She had the receiver tucked under her chin and continued typing some text onto her computer screen as she talked.
Probably Father
John's
Christmas sermon,
thought Betsy.

A noise came through the floor, as of a timber being torn in half the long way, and everyone paused to look down, waiting to see if the floor was going to collapse. In the silence, Betsy realized there were other sounds of destruction from the same source.

When the floor didn't open, the secretary said to the room, “Renovation,” and everyone nodded and went back to whatever they were doing.

The door to Father John Rettger's office opened, and a woman was heard saying, “But her sister was Mary two years ago, and Jessica is even prettier than Tiffany!”

Father John's mild voice replied, “But rehearsals for the Christmas pageant have been going on for weeks. We can't possibly make a last-minute substitution.”

“Can she at least be the understudy?”

“We already have two understudies, and—” something like laughter appeared in Father John's voice “—I'm afraid every one of them is in very good health.”

A tight-faced woman came marching past Father John into the outer office. She had a gorgeous blond-haired child about seven years old in tow. “But Mother, I don't want to be Mary,” said the child in a reasonable voice.

“Of course you do, darling,” replied her mother, weaving her expertly through the people and objects between them and the door to the outside hall. “We'll call the bishop.”

Betsy wondered if it was in the bishop's power to make Jessica Mary. It might be worth a try; she remembered how the girls who played Mary in her childhood pageants were forever marked as special.

Father John stood in the doorway. He already looked tired, though it was still morning. His secretary hung up and started to sign to Patricia, who rose, but Betsy spoke up quickly.

“Can I just ask something first? Father, can you tell me anything about the disappearance of the tapestry?”