Knit Your Own Murder Read online

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Monica Ferris

  CREWEL WORLD

  FRAMED IN LACE

  A STITCH IN TIME

  UNRAVELED SLEEVE

  A MURDEROUS YARN

  HANGING BY A THREAD

  CUTWORK

  CREWEL YULE

  EMBROIDERED TRUTHS

  SINS AND NEEDLES

  KNITTING BONES

  THAI DIE

  BLACKWORK

  BUTTONS AND BONES

  THREADBARE

  AND THEN YOU DYE

  THE DROWNING SPOOL

  DARNED IF YOU DO

  KNIT YOUR OWN MURDER

  Anthologies

  PATTERNS OF MURDER

  SEW FAR, SO GOOD

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2016 by Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld.

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  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ferris, Monica, author.

  Title: Knit your own murder / Monica Ferris.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2016. | Series:

  A needlecraft mystery ; 19

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016009072 (print) | LCCN 2016015743 (ebook) | ISBN

  9780425270127 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101638309 ()

  Subjects: LCSH: Devonshire, Betsy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. |

  Murder—Investigation—Fiction. | Women detectives—Fiction. |

  Needleworkers—Fiction. | Needlework—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery

  & Detective / Women Sleuths. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. |

  GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3566.U47 K57 2016 (print) | LCC PS3566.U47 (ebook) |

  DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009072

  FIRST EDITION: August 2016

  Cover illustration by Mary Ann Lasher.

  Cover design by George Long.

  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.

  Version_1

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank Maru Zamora, Alicia Vázquez-De-Ortiz, and Ricardo Ortiz-Nava for language help with the intense quarrel in Spanish that is described in this book.

  Dr. Michael Austin of the University of Minnesota’s Safety and Environmental Protection Facility was extremely helpful about poisons. He even showed me how, under extraordinary conditions, including coincidence, someone might bypass their safeguards.

  Thanks to the Davisson people Allan and Lief, who deal in coins, for selling me an Edward the Confessor early medieval silver penny—and thereby giving me the information I needed to allow Rafael Miguel Antonio de la Valencina Zamora Soto (isn’t that a great name?) to add one to his own collection.

  Thank you, Bill Staines, for permission to quote the chorus of your song “River (Take Me Along)” in this novel.

  And of course, thanks to Diane Davis, the talented needlework artist who created the little knit pattern of Sophie in the back of this book.

  Contents

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Monica Ferris

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Craft

  Chapter One

  Joe Mickels sat alone in his big old car. He was a thick-bodied man with a harsh face set on either side with long, old-fashioned sideburns. It was the last Tuesday in March, near the end of winter in Minnesota. The sky was overcast, the sun showing its location by a light spot in the clouds. The temperature was above freezing by two degrees.

  Joe was tired; not just physically tired, but spiritually tired. Tired to his bones, tired to his soul. He had worked hard all his life, and what did he have to show for it?

  There was the money, of course. Lots of money, actually. Once, that was enough. Every time he worked a deal successfully he got paid, so it became a way of keeping score. It was a game he was good at, and he had played it for a long time, racking up points, until he was so far ahead the numbers had become almost meaningless.

  The problem was—and who would have thought it?—the money itself had also become meaningless. He’d never married, had no children, so there was no one standing by, eager for him to die and leave it to them—so they could blow through it in a couple of years and wind up on welfare. Or to rebel and go all anti-money and declare they didn’t want any of it. Or to be grateful for his ability to earn money because they’d inherited that trait themselves. Or to give him grandchildren to tease and love and spoil. There was no one to give a damn.

  When he died, his money would dissipate like fog on a sunny morning.

  He’d finally thought of a way to leave his mark, a good, solid method. He’d tried and tried and tried to make it happen—and failed. Two days ago he’d failed at what he thought was his last, and best, chance to build the Mickels Building right here in his hometown. A building that would stand for at least a century, maybe two, with his name proudly spread across the lintel. Now it was never going to happen. And he was tired, maybe too tired to care.

  Today was his birthday. He was eighty years old. A really big number, eighty. Until two days ago he hadn’t felt eighty. Hell, he hadn’t even felt seventy. But today he felt every year—every minute—of eighty.

  When Joe Mickels was a kid, fifty was old. One foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel was how he would have described it. But nowadays fifty was still middle-aged.

  On the other hand, even today eighty was old. The chance to put his permanent mark on the world was almost certainly past. Eighty was summing-up time, not make-your-mark time.

/>   He’d had one last shot at it, a beautiful shot, and almost succeeded. But he was spread a little thin right now, unable to convert holdings to sufficient cash quickly enough to get that property, to raise his bid past the soaring bids of Maddy O’Leary and Harry Whiteside.

  He was almost depressed enough not to be angry.

  Almost.

  Chapter Two

  On Friday afternoon, the Monday Bunch was in session at Crewel World. They had met on Monday earlier that week but were eager to complete a group project and had been meeting two, sometimes three times a week. They were sitting around the big library table in the middle of the shop. The Bunch was a long-standing group of women—and two men—who normally met weekly at the needlework shop to stitch on a wide variety of projects and to gossip. But all seven people in attendance today were knitting, and all were working on toy animals. A heap of excelsior stuffing was in the center of the table.

  “I always thought Harry Whiteside would come to a bad end,” said Bershada, a handsome black woman. She was casting off the last row of a small Paddington bear she’d been knitting.

  “Yes,” said Connor, his tone just a little remonstrative, “but murdered? Surely that’s a bit harsh.”

  Harry Whiteside had been found in the kitchen of his fine Wayzata home, his skull broken and his house vandalized.

  Bershada responded coolly, “I knew his second wife, poor thing, and helped her pack the day she left him. I thought at the time—that was, what, three years ago?—that he deserved worse.”

  “I’m surprised she stuck with him as long as she did, knowing what a bast—pardon me—what a hard man he was,” said Phil, who was knitting, of all things, a large fruit bat. “But I thought it would be bankruptcy doing him in, not murder. He started small, built slowly, then all of a sudden he’s rich. Happened so fast, it seemed bound to fall down around his ears. But he wasn’t actually a crook, was he?”

  “No,” admitted Bershada. “Well, not completely a crook,” she amended. “But a lot of people thought they got taken by his methods of doing business.” She glanced around the table and added in a quieter voice, “Not excluding our own Maddy O’Leary.”

  Maddy wasn’t exactly one of Crewel World’s “own.” She was an ardent knitter and did some tatting as well, buying her supplies in the shop. But she didn’t come to the weekly gathering of stitchers, and her cruel tongue kept the Monday Bunch from inviting her to do so.

  “Hey, Maddy got the better of him over the Water Street property,” said Cherie. She was knitting a big macaw whose bright colors were echoed in the bunch of feathers on the natty green hat she wore. “After all, she’s the one who wound up with the deed.”

  “True, but he—and Joe Mickels, don’t forget—bid her up well over what she thought she’d have to pay, didn’t they?” said Godwin, the store manager, a young-looking thirty-year-old man with a dulcet voice and very swift fingers. He had been showing off by knitting a leopard, a difficult task because of its random pattern of yellow-centered black spots. As he spoke, he was knitting the fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second stitch in the row of forty-five that made up the long tail of the animal.

  “I agree Joe Mickels has to take a share of the blame for the high price it sold for,” said shop owner Betsy Devonshire, who wasn’t sitting at the table but was working on an order for Silk and Ivory floss over at the checkout desk.

  Everyone knew Joe Mickels had long harbored a desire to put up a building in Excelsior with his name over the door. At one time he’d thought to build it on the site of Betsy’s building, and his ultimately futile attempts to force her out had led to plenty of bad feelings on both sides. He had recently tried to accomplish his goal when the great big car dealership at the top of Water Street had closed and the property had been divided in half and offered for sale. A whole-foods grocery had promptly bought the southwest end, and after an initial shaking out of half a dozen bidders, three people had contended for the northeastern half.

  “It’s very satisfying to make your dreams come true,” said Valentina, who was driving her contractor crazy because she insisted on supervising every element of the reworking of a house she’d inherited. “So I guess I’m feeling a little bad for Mr. Mickels.” She was knitting a beautiful ram, complete with horns.

  Joe, Maddy, and Harry had taken up cudgels in a bidding war, all the more ferocious for the big egos of the three participants. All three refused to speak on the record about the struggle, but some local folks knew a few interesting details, and enough of them talked about it that many of the people living around Lake Minnetonka were able to follow with amazement as the bids were raised and raised again. Maddy won at the end, but the dust was yet to settle, and the hard feelings lingered.

  And now one of the three final bidders, Harry Whiteside, was dead, murdered in his own home.

  “You don’t suppose—?” said Valentina, and paused. As the newest member of the group, she wasn’t sure how far to go in speculating about people.

  “Suppose what?” asked Doris, encouragingly.

  Valentina shook her head, but Godwin was braver. “That Joe had something to do with Harry’s death?” He looked at Valentina, who nodded, then at Betsy, his expression amused. “Maybe trying to get the bidding reopened?”

  “Goddy,” said Betsy, a little miffed at his flippancy, “Mr. Whiteside was killed by a burglar he interrupted in his home. That is not a matter for joking.”

  Connor said, “Anyway, if Joe was out to get the bidding reopened, he’d go after Maddy, not Harry.” He was finished with his orange-haired orangutan and was stuffing it from the big heap of finely shredded wood chips on the table.

  But Godwin was incorrigible. In his most flamboyant tone and gesture, he said, “We don’t know that. Maybe he decided first to go after his rival, so he’d be less obvious. You all just keep watching. If something happens to Maddy, then you’ll know I’m right.” But he made a face to show he was just kidding.

  “Pooh,” said Emily, who didn’t use strong language.

  “Ha, finished!” announced Bershada, tossing down her knitting needles. The Paddington Bear, complete with blue duffel coat and yellow rain hat, lay in a severely collapsed condition across one of her hands. The bear was about eight inches long and without eyes or the black tip of its nose, and its bottom was open. Bershada reached for the excelsior and began to fill the toy, her beautiful, long fingers moving deftly.

  “Awwwww,” said Emily as the little bear took shape. “How many does that make?”

  “Of critters? An even dozen. This is Paddington number five.”

  “That’s amazing!” said Valentina. “I’ve made six of these rams and thought I was doing well.”

  “You are doing well,” said Bershada. “Compared to that ram, this bear is really easy.”

  “I’ve only done three toys,” said Doris, “so you both are doing well.”

  Emily said, “I’m glad you’re making the bear’s coat and hat part of him, Bershada, because otherwise they’d get lost by the second day.” She spoke from experience, having three young girls in her household whose ability to remove and lose accessories from their toys held, she was sure, national speed records.

  Emily was working on a toy kitten with “tuxedo” markings: It was mostly black with white on its face, chest, and paws. She had a big plastic sewing needle and was using it to fasten the fourth leg to the creature. On the table in front of her was a pair of green glass cat’s-eyes with little metal loops on their backs, waiting to be sewn on.

  Doris, sitting next to Emily, frowned, sighed, looked away and back, then snatched up a linen bookmark with an Easter bunny stitched on it and tossed it over the glass eyes. “Well, they were staring at me,” she explained as the others looked at her, surprised then amused.

  Doris was less than half finished with a lion, her most ambitious project to date. She was using the directions in
Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne’s delightful Knit Your Own Zoo to make the toy, which would be about ten inches long—not counting the tail. At this point the lion’s front left limb and both hind limbs were opened out in front of her, their upper ends suspended on separate knitting needles, waiting for her to get that far. She was working on knitting the right front leg onto the right side of the body. There was no head in sight.

  “Are you going to have that finished by tomorrow?” asked Godwin. With a contented little sigh he closed his copy of the book in front of him, Knit Your Own Zoo. He didn’t need instructions on how to stuff his leopard.

  “You just mind your own project,” advised Doris cheerfully, her fingers moving in the patterns of knit one, purl one. She was not as fast a knitter as Godwin, but neither was she as slow as her husband, Phil, sitting beside her.

  He was knitting the second wing on his bat, consulting the pattern he’d photocopied from his wife’s copy of the book, then pausing to count the number of stitches on his needle.

  Godwin had found a doorbell device that played music whenever anyone opened the door. It sounded like a toy organ and would play anything programmed into it. Godwin hadn’t settled on one tune. Today it was playing “Hail to the Chief” and the knitters looked up to see Maddy O’Leary enter, holding a big brown canvas bag in one hand. She was a large woman with masses of gray hair pulled back into an untidy bun, a habitually downturned mouth, and a habit of wearing sturdy wool suits with long skirts.

  She turned toward the source of the music, then glanced at the Band-Aid around one of her fingers: a patriotic one in red, white, and blue.

  Phil sniggered, and she whirled back to impale him with a glare.

  “Ms. O’Leary,” said Betsy to distract her. “What can I do for you?”

  “I brought some more toys,” she said in a strong, unfriendly voice. She walked to the table and upended the bag carelessly. Its contents landed on the excelsior, scattering it onto everyone else’s work. Her contribution consisted of four knit dogs: a border collie, a Scottie, a whippet, and a silly-looking flop-eared mutt; and a bald eagle with glaring eyes and folded wings.