Cutwork Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Praise for Monica Ferris’s other Needlecraft Mysteries:

  HANGING BY A THREAD

  “Colorful and humorous . . . Instead of knitting on a Minnesota wintry night, [read this] perfect work.”

  —BookBrowser

  A MURDEROUS YARN

  “A delightful cozy . . . Monica Ferris is a talented writer who knows how to keep the attention of her fans.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  UNRAVELED SLEEVE

  “A comfortable fit for mystery readers who want to spend an enjoyable time with interesting characters.”

  —St. Paul Pioneer Press

  A STITCH IN TIME

  “A fun read that baffles the reader with mystery and delights with . . . romance.” —Romantic Times

  FRAMED IN LACE

  “An enjoyable, classy tale. Betsy is everyone’s favorite grandma, who proves life begins after fifty . . . Engaging . . . A fun-to-read story.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  CREWEL WORLD

  “Filled with great small-town characters . . . A great time.”

  —Rendezvous

  “Fans of Margaret Yorke will relate to Betsy’s growth and eventual maturity . . . You need not be a needlecrafter to enjoy this delightful series debut.” —Mystery Time

  Needlecraft Mysteries by Monica Ferris

  CREWEL WORLD

  FRAMED IN LACE

  A STITCH IN TIME

  UNRAVELED SLEEVE

  A MURDEROUS YARN

  HANGING BY A THREAD

  CUTWORK

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CUTWORK

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with

  the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / January 2004

  Copyright © 2004 by Mary Monica Kuhfeld.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without

  permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via

  the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the

  publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only

  authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage

  electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s

  rights is appreciated. For information address: The Berkley Publishing

  Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014.

  Visit our website at www.penguin.com

  eISBN : 978-0-425-19389-1

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing

  Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME

  CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  I am exceedingly grateful to a lot of people who helped with the many details of this novel. Julie Norton designs and teaches Hardanger (and cutwork). Ivan Whillock taught me a lot about the art of carving wood. Tom Yarborough let me try his electric welding torch. A dear relation who wishes to remain anonymous explained to me how the world of modern art works. Deb Hart allowed me to “help” with Excelsior’s annual Art on the Lake fair so its details as presented here are mostly accurate. My writers’ group, Crème de la Crime, made me work really hard, for which I thank them. And Ellen Kuhfeld, as ever, did her wonderful “invisible editing,” thereby improving my reputation as a detail-oriented mystery novelist.

  PROLOGUE

  It was a few minutes after ten on a warm June Sunday. Art on the Lake, Excelsior’s annual art fair, had started yesterday, so those who simply had to come had already been; and the threatening weather today had made others decide to wait and see if it cleared. Still, it was a very popular fair in an attractive location; so when the rain started, there were several hundred shoppers wandering the outdoor aisles. Then thunder boomed and the aisles cleared as customers hustled into the nearest booths for shelter.

  Betsy Devonshire was a member of the volunteer committee who ran the fair. A small-business owner, she’d really been pressed to find time for the planning meetings, and because her needlework shop was open on Saturdays, she had only Sunday to offer her services. Deb Hart, chairman of the fair, had been ruthless with her schedule. Betsy had been in the service building on The Common since daylight, which came very early in June. Artists could not open to the public until ten—but there was cleanup, rearranging, and restocking to do, the entertainers wanting to know where they could set up, and the food vendors needing to get cooking. Betsy had fielded a steady stream of artists and workers, coming for the free donuts and coffee she had laid out for them on the counter and to ask questions: Was it against local ordinances to—, could they run a line from—, was there a mechanic in town who could fix—, would she mind if the balloon artist stored his spare balloon inflater in here?

  “Here” was the information booth in a corner of a brick building on the southwest corner of the big field in which the fair was held.

  Betsy was surprised at the number of times she had to refill the urns and make more coffee.

  But with the approach of ten o’clock and customers, the stream slowed to a trickle. Betsy unplugged and washed the coffee urns, put the six remaining donuts into a paper bag, then stocked a big refrigerator with soft drinks and the counter with T-shirts, both for sale to the public.

  The intense downpour cooled the air but raised the humidity, and only dampened slightly the scent of broiled pork, popcorn, whipped fruit, hot dogs, blooming onions, and other delectables being sold from stands around the corner from her, out of sight but not nose.

  Right in front of Betsy, glittering under a wash of rain, was a big red fire truck, the kind with a cubicle back end. It was at the fair as a boast and exhibit; the art fair was sponsored in part by the Excelsior Chamber of Commerce, and the fire truck was new. Despite the rain, a few adults stopped to show the truck to their children, and a fireman in a yellow raincoat and helmet answered questions.

  Suddenly the fireman jerked around and hurried to the front of the truck. He climbed up and in and its engine roared to life. Adults and children scattered. A man appeared from the other side of the truck, hauling a toddler by his arm, splashing through a puddle hidden in the grass. No hard feelings; he laughed as he ran for the porch of Betsy’s bu
ilding and the toddler, now over his shoulder like a sack of grain, was doing a happy imitation of the siren.

  Instead of coming back past the building to the street, the fire truck did a Y turn and went forward, down between booths, past the little band shell, toward the lake. Shelter seekers in the shell waved as it went by, but Betsy frowned. The only place the fire truck could go from there was along the lakefront. Surely none of the artists’ booths could be on fire, not in this rain? So it must be a medical emergency. Here at the fair, or perhaps, thought Betsy, it’s headed for the docks where big excursion boats and smaller private craft tied up. People sometimes fell on wet decks, or had heart attacks lifting sails.

  Betsy heard another siren approaching distantly. It got louder, then cut off. The sound seemed to come from the opposite end of the field, in the direction of the docks.

  Here and there, artists or their assistants were braving the storm to check guy lines. One stood on tiptoe, then hurried back inside to push up on his sagging roof and dump water off it. Another was replacing short tent pegs with long ones, kneeling in a big puddle to feel for the ground, his wristwatch pushed up past his elbow. The faint “tink, tink, tink” of his hammer could be heard over the rain.

  The booth at Betsy’s end of the row was a singleton, set apart from the others. The sides were rolled up all around and the artist was sitting in the very middle, on a wooden folding chair. She had a big artist’s sketch tablet braced on her lap, and was drawing swiftly. Caricatures hung all over the inside of her booth, but she didn’t have a customer at present. She seemed to be looking off toward the band shell, toward which another young man was wading. Betsy smiled; the little dog with him was swimming. Lightning cracked and thunder boomed, and the young man grabbed his dog by its collar and waded more swiftly for the band shell.

  It rained hard for fifteen minutes, less hard for another ten, then the storm began to rumble north across the lake, headed for Wayzata, Saint Louis Park, and Minneapolis. A watery sun appeared, and everything sparkled as if freshly painted. The little crowd on the porch stepped out, looking upward, blinking in the sunlight, smiling at one another.

  Betsy decided she needed a Diet Coke and was bent into the refrigerator for one when someone said in an excited voice, “Betsy, have you heard?”

  Betsy looked around the refrigerator door to see Irene Potter looking wilder-eyed than usual, an accomplishment so unlikely that Betsy came to her at once. “Heard what, Irene? Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s Mr. McFey.” She added proudly, “I found him. I screamed so loud my throat still hurts. Did you hear me? I was really loud.”

  “No. Why did you scream—Irene, what’s happened?” Betsy tried to think if she knew who Mr. McFey was. And suddenly remembered the fire truck going off in the wrong direction.

  “I told you, it’s Mr. McFey. He’s dead.”

  “Did he have a heart attack?”

  Irene shook her head vigorously. “It was murder,” she said solemnly. She leaned closer, eyes gleaming. “I walked over to look at that carving he did of the lion, so powerful, and he wasn’t in there, which was wrong because the fair was opening, but then I saw blood, and then I saw him.” Her hands went over her nose and mouth, and froze like that a few seconds, until she made a snoring sound as she tried to take a breath through her fingers. She took her hands away, uncovering a mouth pursed into an O as round and nearly as small as her eyes, and took a deep breath. As she let it out, she whispered, “I have never seen anything like that. Ever, ever, ever. Poor man,” she added, an afterthought.

  “Perhaps it was an accident of some kind,” said Betsy, not sure if she believed this strangely told story.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no. Someone cut his throat.” She made the old-fashioned gesture for that, drawing a skinny forefinger across her own throat. “No one knows who did it. The police are there, but of course I thought of you. You will look into this, won’t you? It can’t go unpunished. Oh, he was such a good artist! His work, so magnificent, such a loss!” She rolled her eyes heavenward.

  Irene saw the world in a very peculiar way, Betsy knew. Still, it couldn’t be possible Irene was making a joke in such poor taste. And the sirens had been real. And her mention of a carved lion . . .

  Back in March, when the slides and photographs of artwork arrived from artists seeking a place in the fair, Betsy had been allowed to sit in on the jurying process one evening. Some of the art she thought was pretty good didn’t move the jury. Other stuff that made the members gasp and exclaim in pleasure meant nothing to her. Then, click, and up on the screen came a magnificent wood carving, seen a little to the left from head-on. A murmur of pleasure swept the room.

  A big-maned lion was in a fully extended run, one big paw reaching out for the back leg of a fleeing antelope. The artist had cleverly used a natural dark place in the wood to place and accent the lion’s flowing mane. But it was the terror in the antelope’s eyes, and the businesslike intensity captured in the lion’s, that had been remarkable.

  “Well, are you coming or not?” asked Irene impatiently, pulling Betsy out of her reverie.

  “I thought you said the police were already there,” said Betsy.

  “Oh, yes, and they’ve been talking to me and taking pictures and all. I sneaked away to get you.”

  “They won’t want me over there,” said Betsy, “and besides, I have to stay here, I have things to do here.”

  Irene stared at her. “I can’t believe you don’t care if a murderer gets away.”

  “I doubt very much if a murderer could kill someone in a place as crowded as this and get away with it,” said Betsy truthfully. “There are probably all kinds of witnesses. Including you, right? Shouldn’t you get back over there? They’re probably looking for you.”

  Irene looked over her shoulder. “Yes, I imagine they are. Very well, I’ll go back. But you call me when you’re ready to take over the investigation.”

  Betsy watched her go, a skinny woman in a long, shapeless brown dress and old-fashioned sneakers. It was true. Betsy had been involved in several murder investigations, but strictly as an amateur. How could Irene think the police would be eager to have her barge in? Besides, this probably wasn’t a murder at all. Irene was growing more eccentric every month, it seemed, now that her needlework inventions were being taken seriously by the art community. No, Betsy would stay right here and wait for someone more reliable to come and tell her what was going on. Murder, indeed!

  1

  For a while, Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy thought this was going to be another one of those screwy cases, the kind his amateur nemesis would get involved in. (Mike couldn’t have defined “nemesis,” not exactly like in the dictionary, but he was certain it described a certain woman who was messing up his career by interfering where she wasn’t needed.)

  It started Sunday morning, during a thunderstorm. The town of Excelsior had only two investigators in its little police department, so in addition to normal working hours, Malloy and his partner had twenty-four on-twenty-four off standby duty. Today Malloy was on, and so had to restrict his fishing to Lake Minnetonka. Which was fine, Minnetonka was the finest bass lake in the state, one of the finest in the country, probably. Plus, the weatherman Malloy had come most nearly to trust said it would clear before eleven.

  Excelsior was also a very quiet town, so when his beeper went off while he was still in the garage loading up his boat, he was surprised.

  Walking to the kitchen to phone, he decided it was probably another in the short series of burglaries plaguing the town. Someone was climbing into unlocked cars parked over at Maynard’s for Sunday brunch and, if there was a garage door opener on the visor, checking the glove box for insurance cards that gave the home address. Then when the folks came home from brunch, they’d find someone had gone in through the garage and stolen all the easy-to-fence stuff.

  So instead of going fishing, Mike would have to spend most of the day taking statements and filing reports.
Damn.

  He dialed the number and got an answer on the first ring.

  “Sergeant Cross,” said Jill Cross.

  “Malloy here, whatcha got?”

  “A homicide down at the art fair on The Common.”

  This was so far from what he was expecting that all he could say was “Huh?” He hated when he did that; it made him sound dumb.

  Jill repeated herself in that cool voice of hers—she had never said “Huh?” in her life, probably—adding, “The reporting person is Irene Potter—”

  “Oh, Christ!” he interrupted. Because Irene Potter was Excelsior’s craziest lady. And the only time Irene had been in his office on official business, she had brought along Betsy Devonshire, AKA Mike Malloy’s nemesis. (That had been when Mike began to learn he had a nemesis.)

  But just as if he hadn’t interrupted, Jill continued, “And the person in charge of the fair is Deb Hart. Ms. Hart is here at the scene, which has been secured. I’ll ensure that Irene is here for you, too. The forensics team is on its way. Be warned, the scene is kinda, um, messy.”

  Oh, Jeez. That last, coming from the unflappable Jill Cross, didn’t help. “I’ll be right over.”

  Mike called the woman next door to tell her he had a call and could she keep an eye on JR and Mary Beth until he or his wife got back? The woman sighed but then said sure, send them over.

  Mike got into his wife’s voice mail at the nursing home and left a message, then drove his blue Chevy four by four over to the park. It was only six minutes away, but the rain had about quit by the time he got there. He pulled into the single vacant parking space on Lake Street that overlooked the park. A wilted cardboard sign marked it as reserved for emergency vehicles. Since he was wearing faded jeans and a chambray shirt with fraying patches on the elbows, he turned his ID folder inside out and hung it on the shirt’s pocket so the gold badge showed. Just like the cops on TV. He remembered to take his lucky fishing hat off and leave it in the truck.