Sins and Needles (30 page)

“How very curious,” said Susan. “I think I believe you, but I don't feel the least connection. You'd think I would, wouldn't you? I mean, now that you've halfway convinced me I didn't bury a son, but only mislaid a daughter? It doesn't seem real—it doesn't seem possible.”

“I think that's shock, darling,” said Jan. “I think in a little while, when it's all begun to sink in, then you'll suddenly want very much to meet her.”

There was another long pause, then at last Susan spoke. “Who would want to shoot her?” she asked, in a strange, thin voice. She touched her forehead. “Oh, dear, I'm feeling very odd again. Not the floor this time; help me to the couch, Jan, please.”

Betsy and Jan half carried her from the chair to the couch, where she lay down. Jan put the crewel pillow under her feet again. She was very pale. “I haven't told that story to anyone, not anyone, for nearly fifty years,” she said, and tears began to spill. “It's hard to tell it at last and even
think
it was all a lie.”

“But it wasn't a lie, not your part in it,” said Betsy gently. “You had a baby, you took part in a burial of what you thought was your baby. Edyth Hanraty lied to you. It's not your fault that you believed her.”

“Yes, that's true. So the natural question would be, if I buried a doll, what happened to my real baby? And you come to me with the answer already in hand. Is it possible that she grew up to be a laboratory technician from Texas named Lucille Jones?”

“I think we have good reason to investigate that possibility.”

Susan closed her eyes. “What if she dies?”

“She's not going to die.” Betsy said it fiercely, forcing belief on herself as well as Susan. It was too dreadful even to imagine, especially at the moment of reunion.

“But what if she does? What if she is my baby grown up, and she dies before I can talk to her? I don't know anything about her! Is she married? Are there children?”

Jan smiled. “Yes, she's married to an RN named Bobby Lee, and they have two grown children, an aircraft mechanic and a veterinarian. She herself is a medical lab technician.”

“That's nice, that's nice. And now maybe I have two more grandchildren—and one's a girl. Yes, I want to meet her! I want to meet them all! Edyth wouldn't let me hold my baby. It wouldn't be fair not to get to hold her before she dies!” She began to cry again.

Jan said, “Hush, hush. Betsy's right, she is not going to die. Everything is going to be all right, don't get all fussed about it. Close your eyes and rest.” When Susan obeyed, Jan said quietly to Betsy, “Come out to the kitchen. I want to talk to you.”

“All right.”

In the kitchen, Jan took Betsy by the arm and said, “Would you mind if I sent you away? I think Mother is working herself into hysterics, and she'd be embarrassed to death if you were here to see it.”

“Can you handle her yourself?”

“Yes, we'll be fine. There are some pills in her medicine cabinet. I'll give her one in a little while, and she'll sleep.”

“All right, I understand.”

Betsy came back into the living room and said, “Susan, I have to go now. I have some things to do.”

“Are you going to try to find out who shot Lucille?” That was as much a demand as a question.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Good, that's good. Are you here, Jan?”

“Right here, Mother.”

“Hold my hand, dear, please.”

Betsy slipped out the front door and got into her car. But she had to sit for a minute or two before she could pull herself together enough to start the engine.

 

S
ERGEANT
Rice went to the Intensive Care Unit of Hennepin County Medical Center. The nurse's station was the hub of a wheel of rooms, a circular counter fitted inside with television monitors and computer screens as well as the usual medical detritus.

He walked up to the counter and said, “I'm back. How's she doing?”

A tall, handsome doctor with dark hair and eyes smiled at him. “Better. She's young, and her heart is strong.”

“Is she conscious?”

“No, and she won't be for a while, which is fine. We're monitoring her carefully right now. If there's brain swelling, we may have to induce a coma to protect it.”

“And if there isn't, when might I talk to her?”

“Possibly late this evening. But I'm sure you're aware that when there's concussion there's pretty generally amnesia surrounding events before and after the injury.”

“Yes, I know that, but maybe she can still tell me who hated her enough to do this.”

Rice slouched away to a small office he had borrowed. Its tiny desk was covered with a computer, books, files and paper; a metal bookshelf screwed to the wall was jammed with file folders bulging with paper. How could someone work in such disorder? Never mind, the slob wasn't here right now. Sitting on a black-painted metal chair with a soft gray seat and back was Bobby Lee Jones, looking miserable and scared, which was appropriate whether he was responsible for his wife's condition—what if she woke up and told on him?—or not. He wore bright blue shorts and a non-matching blue shirt printed with palm trees and hibiscus flowers and faded red flip-flops.

Rice edged past him, leaning forward so as not to scrape his back on the shelf as he went past the desk, and sat down on the office armchair.

“When can I see her again?” asked Bobby Lee.

“In a while,” Rice said. The truth was that he could go right now, but Rice wanted to talk to him some more first. “She's still unconscious but maybe improved a little, at least holding her own. The doc says her heart is strong, and they're satisfied she's doing all right.”

“She cain't dah, she jest cain't dah,” he said, his misery somehow strengthening his accent.

“I don't think she's going to die,” Rice said.

“Are you lying to me?” Bobby Lee asked, hope and pain in his eyes.

“No, sir, it's not good policy for the police to lie to someone.”

“Then that's good, that's good,” said Bobby Lee. “I don't know what I'd do if she was to die.”

“I want to talk to you while we're sitting here waiting,” Rice said. “All right if I ask you some questions?”

“Yessir, go right ahead.”

“First of all, about this business of your wife being the daughter of Susan McConnell. Do you think that's actually possible?”

“Well, sure it is! I would never've agreed to come up here if I didn't think there was a good chance it was true.”

“Where were you before you came home and found—”

There was a shouted “Stop, stop!” from out in the hall, and Rice nearly knocked Bobby Lee over getting past him and out the door. He got the merest glimpse of someone in hospital scrubs disappearing into the stairwell at the other end of the hall, then turned to see one nurse bending over Lucille Jones while another was making some quick adjustment to the machinery at her bedside.

He ran to the circular nurses' station. “Call downstairs,” he told the nurse there. “Maybe they'll catch her.”

“Yessir, I'm doing that right now.”

Next stop, Lucille's room. “What's going on?” he demanded.

“Someone was in here pulling out her IVs and resetting the equipment. I shouted, and she ran.”

“Is Ms. Jones all right?”

The nurse nodded. “I think so. We got to her right away.”

“Are you sure it was a woman who did this?” The person Rice glimpsed seemed tall for a woman.

“Well, no, I'm not sure. She walked like a woman but—I don't know. She was wearing scrubs and had a hair cover and a face mask.”

“But you didn't think she was on the hospital staff?”

“No. First of all, I didn't recognize her. Second, there was no reason to be in there doing any procedure. And third, she was doing too much, pulling out the IVs and resetting dials—it was totally wrong. As soon as I shouted ‘Hey!' she turned and ran.” The nurse frowned. “Or he.”

“Could the selection of Ms. Jones be random?”

Another nurse said, “Oh, no. I saw him, too. He was walking past the units, looking at the names. He was looking for Jones. Funny, we only have one Jones right now. Usually there's two. Once, three.”

Rice went back to the nurses' station, but no one matching the description—lousy though it was—had gone running out any exit. Great, thought Rice. Now there's another jurisdiction involved in this mess. Too many cooks, definitely. At least this new department has the manpower to spare a guardian for Ms. Lucille Jones.

S
O
Jones won't talk for awhile, Sergeant Rice thought glumly, back in the little hospital office he'd used earlier. Bobby Lee was sitting next to his wife, determined to stay there until an armed guard arrived to sit outside the door. The incident had occurred while Jan and Betsy were on their way to see Susan, who could possibly have done it and gotten back home, just barely in time to be sitting calmly in her living room when they arrived. But he didn't think so.

And that meant the news wasn't all bad, because the timing eliminated Jan and probably Susan. Not that he hadn't sort of eliminated Jan anyway. Betsy had suggested that an examination of the double-zero Skacels in Jan's needle holder under a strong magnifying glass would find one of them without a scratch—knitting rubs two needles together, which puts tiny scratches on them. Betsy used that method when customers returned “unused” needles for a refund after finishing a project—the same people, she imagined, who returned dresses after wearing them to a wedding. If they all had scratches, then Rice should ask the teen in the Henderson house why he had taken a needle from his mother's collection. It turned out Ronnie had, in fact, “borrowed” a needle for a school science experiment in magnetism. He repeated the experiment for Rice, determining which needle he had borrowed by suspending a succession of them from a thread until one showed it was still magnetized by drifting around until it pointed north.

Rice began to feel he had the list of suspects whittled down to a manageable three.

 

B
ETSY
, faced with a dearth of customers, got out her knitting. Crewel World was involved in an ongoing project to knit tiny caps for premature infants in local hospitals. They were so tiny, and the patterns were so simple, that they worked up very quickly. Customers brought in leftover yarn, and Betsy added a few skeins of yarn too soiled to sell—after washing it, of course. Volunteers could take home the yarn and knit the caps. Every so often, when she got a bag full, Betsy would head off to a hospital with a care unit for these fragile babies.

She sat down at her library table and started on her cap. In barely two minutes, she had picked up the rhythm and felt the welcome settling and clearing of her mind. The humming coming from Godwin as he was getting out the Halloween charts and models barely made an impression on her.

While knitting away, she decided she needed to arrange events in chronological order.

First, there was this old woman named Edyth Hanraty with a great deal of money and a peculiar will.

Second, there was a medical conference in Houston, where Lucille met a woman who looked like her and from whom she stole a hairbrush. A genetic test revealed that the two were very likely related.

Third, Bobby Lee and Lucille Jones came to town seeking Lucille's genetic parents.

Fourth, Lucille and her possible genetic sister met and became friends.

Fifth, the old woman was murdered.

Lucille claimed she didn't know about the rich old aunt, but Betsy—hardly an accomplished surfer of the Internet—had found several stories about Edyth Hanraty, two of which mentioned Susan McConnell as her niece. A story about Dr. “Hugs” Henderson mentioned that his wife, Jan McConnell Henderson, was a nurse in his office. Betsy was sure that someone who really knew her way around the Internet could find the information that linked Edyth, Susan, and Jan.

Lucille had sounded very sincere when she said she did not know about the wealthy, childless Edyth Hanraty when she tried to connect with Jan. But she had tried to make the meeting here with Jan seem like an accident at first, hadn't she? She had seemed very sincere then, too.

There was still a step missing: DNA proof that Lucille was Susan's daughter. Betsy and Jan believed it; but belief is not proof. If Lucille was after the money, then the logical progression was, get the proof, then murder the old woman. Without the proof, there was no need to hasten her death—Edyth was an old woman. She might die of natural causes while they waited for the test results.

Nevertheless, right now, Bobby Lee was Betsy's strongest suspect—or would have been, if he hadn't been sitting with Sergeant Rice when somebody made a second try at killing Lucille.

Could Susan be responsible for the attempt on Lucille's life? The motive would be greed. Lots of people who seemed fiscally secure were actually treading on thin ice. Or maybe she feared the exposure of the secret in her past. Susan thought she had put that portion of her life behind her, until Lucille turned up. She had confessed the truth to Betsy and Susan, but maybe she couldn't envision making it more widely known.

Betsy put down her knitting and called Alida Dove over at the cabins off Oak Lane.

“Are you calling to tell me that yarn I ordered has come in?” Alida asked.

“I'm afraid not. Alida, I want to ask you something in strict confidence.”

After the briefest of pauses, Alida said, “All right.”

“You have a couple staying there, Lucille and Bobby Lee Jones.”

“Yes, they're here until the end of the month.”

“Did they have any trouble checking in? I mean with their credit card?”

The pause this time was longer. “Well…the first two credit cards they tried were close enough to their limit that they couldn't pay the rent on the cabin.”

“Thank you. I was wondering about that. I like Lucille—she's become a good customer—but I don't know anything about her husband.”

“I know he goes off by himself to Wayzata every couple of days, is gone for a few hours, and comes back looking like he's been to church, except he doesn't dress for it. Of course, no one does, any more.”

“Are you sure he goes to church?”

“Well, he carries a New Testament with him. Or maybe it's a prayer book.”

“Does Lucille ever go with him?”

“Nope, never. But she goes to Trinity, doesn't she?”

“Yes, that's right. Have you ever seen or heard the two of them quarrel?”

“No. They're sharp with one another on occasion, but mostly happy. I'd guess they're close, which is nice after being married so long. I just love their accents—and they say the cutest things! Just the other day Lucille was saying to her husband, ‘That Stewart, he's all hat and no cattle.' Cute, huh?”

“Yes, it is. Thank you for the information.”

“You're welcome. Bye-bye.”

Betsy hung up. When, she wondered, had Lucille met Stewart?

And what about Stewart? Had he murdered his aunt in order to get the money for his newest enterprise, Lure of the Lake? He was described as greedy, lazy and feckless, a man with a very high opinion of himself. Betsy's introduction to him had done nothing to disabuse her of those acquired opinions, though she also had to agree that Stewart was very charming and amusing.

Had Katie done it in order to acquire the silver? By all accounts, she and her husband were struggling with a double burden of an incipient baby and college tuition. What might she do to win a prize of tens of thousands of dollars? But wait, Katie didn't know how to wield a thin, steel knitting needle as a murder weapon.

Or did she? Hadn't Jan said something about someone in the family pithing a frog? At the time, Betsy hadn't known what that meant.

But Bobby Lee did. Bobby Lee was good at it. He had done it for his then-girlfriend, Lucille, who was distressed to think a frog suffered during the procedure. There were too many medical experts in this mess.

And as for Bobby Lee going off to frequent church meetings, Betsy didn't think so. She had once been shown a copy of
The Big Book
, the text for alcoholics—also used by other twelve-step programs, such as Gamblers Anonymous. It was about the right size to be mistaken for a Testament or prayer book.

She sat back down and resumed her knitting. She went over her various conversations with Jan, searching for the memory she wanted—and there it was. Stewart, Jan said, had been interested in studying medicine until he had to pith his first frog.

Stewart had told Betsy that he wanted his daughters to have something of value, something he was unable to give them because of his lack of business acumen. Was that sufficient motive? Given his self-centeredness, probably not.

And if the same person who murdered Edyth tried—twice—to murder Lucille, that took Stewart out of the picture. Someone tried to murder Lucille because she was cutting into the inheritance.

The two-note bell of the shop's door sounded, and Betsy looked up to see Heidi Sweitzer coming in. She was struggling with a big cardboard box, and Betsy jumped up to go help. Heidi was Betsy's finisher, the person to whom Betsy brought needlepoint and counted cross-stitch pieces to be washed, stretched and/or blocked, and framed. The box contained all sorts of beautiful handwork: a lovely crewel piece, Angel of Autumn; a stunning “The Sangoma,” a needlework portrait of a South African medicine woman whose braided and beaded hair was made of black yarn and real beads; a framed counted cross-stitch “quilt” of many squares, each containing a toy, basket, teapot, cat, rooster, or little motto (“To live well, laugh often, love much”); a needlework stocking painted by Liz of Tent Tapestry in the form of Santa riding a bentwood sleigh down the sky with a kitten in one hand and a puppy in the other; a reproduction nineteenth-century sampler stitched on uneven-count linen; and a square velveteen pillow with bands forming a sandstone-colored cross filled with a geometric pattern of squares and triangles in brown, green, and garnet. That last pattern had been in the September 2004
Stitcher's World Magazine
. The stitcher was Doris, who became more adventurous in stitchery all the time.

Betsy compared the contents of the box to her master list and declared everything there. She wrote a large check to Heidi and then said, “You do a lot of restoration work, too, don't you?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“I got a call from a Mr. Todd Warner who wants to know if I know someone who can restore a small antique Persian rug.”

Heidi pursed her lips and blew lightly. “Afraid not. But maybe I can find someone. Todd Warner, you say? The guy that owns Mahogany Bay?”

“I don't know. Where's Mahogany Bay?” Betsy thought she knew the names of all the bays on Lake Minnetonka.

“In Mound. It's a store. He restores antique boats. I went there one time with a friend. I tell you, his prices lifted the hair on the back of my head like a Van de Graaff machine.”

“What's a Van de Graaff machine?”

“Oh, you've seen them. They're like silver balls. You put your hands on it and you hair stands straight up.”

“Oh, yes, I've seen photos. But hold on, he sells antique boats? What kind, like Chris-Craft?”

“Them, and Gar Wood and other famous boat builders. He had a little bitty canoe in his display room, a very simple but pretty wooden thing. He wanted ten thousand dollars for it. And people think my prices are high!” She laughed. “Well, if I find out about someone who can restore his rug, I'll let you know.”

“Thanks.”

When she sat down to her stitching again, Betsy thought about what Heidi had said. So Gar Wood was a famous name in old boats? She had never heard of him. On the other hand, she had never heard of Charles Craft or Susan Greening Davis, or Doug Kreinik before getting into needlework, and they were famous.

Hmmmmmm.

She went to her desk and found the phone number of Mahogany Bay.

“This is Betsy Devonshire of Crewel World. Is Mr. Warner in?”

He was, and he came to the phone sounding hearty and pleased to hear from her.

“Did you find me someone to restore my rug?”

“I'm afraid not—my finisher doesn't do that kind of work. But she promised to see if she can find someone. I'm calling for a different reason. Have you ever heard of a Baby Gar?”

“Sure I have. Why?”

“Well, there's an old, beat-up one sitting in a shed over in Orono.”

There was a several-second pause. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I've seen it. The finish is flaking off and bubbly, and it's sitting on a trailer with four flat tires—”

“
Four
flat tires?”

“Yes, is that significant?”

“Maybe, maybe. Is it an inboard or outboard, and is the motor on the boat?”

“The person who showed it to me says it's an old aircraft engine. And it's inboard, in the boat.”

“Well, well, well. That's interesting.”

“Is it? The current owner says it's not very valuable. He wants to restore it, see if he can get it running again.”

“Has he started working on it?” Warner sounded dismayed for some reason.

“No, he hasn't taken possession of it. The boat belonged to Edyth Hanraty.”

There was a little pause. “Is the boat the
Edali
?”