Crewel Yule Read online

  The sleet froze on contact with anything on the ground. The ice closed everything for most of the next morning, then the freeways opened. They took I-74 to Champaign-Urbana, then I-57 most of the rest of the way south. The ice melted and as they started seeing signs for Carbondale, Betsy began to feel optimistic and let Godwin drive again. This lasted until the landscape started to climb. By the time they rode I-24 into the corner of Kentucky they needed to cross to enter Tennessee, the ice was back. And Betsy was driving again.

  Godwin, aware Betsy was getting very tired, protested, but his car back home was a bathtub-size Miata and Betsy’s big Buick had the trailer to complicate steering and stopping. She stopped for a six-pack of Lemon Diet Pepsi, and drank deeply.

  Sleet turned back to snow. Cars filled the ditches and tangled messily on the highways. Betsy, a good winter driver, managed to avoid having an accident, but the delay was vexing. It was late Friday afternoon before they came into Nashville, and though the precipitation had turned back to rain, she was still driving and worn to a frazzle.

  Godwin read the directions to the hotel off the INRG Nashville Market brochure and after bypassing most of downtown, they found themselves climbing a very steep hill in a series of switchbacks. THE CONSULATE read a sign in front of a big pink building at the top.

  Betsy let Godwin out under the portico with the luggage and then very carefully chose a parking space she could pull forward out of. She’d had an embarrassing experience trying to back the trailer out of a parking space yesterday and was not anxious to see if she could make it work on a second try.

  It was nearly dark on that rainy Friday evening before she pulled the key from the ignition. They were seven hours behind her most pessimistic estimated time of arrival.

  The lobby of the Consulate Hotel was broad and gleaming, careful lighting marking the the check-in counter and seating areas while leaving the corners in dim, friendly shadows. Recorded guitars harmonized on “Silver Bells.”

  Godwin was leaning on the shining wood counter, filling out their registration cards, a wheeled cart piled with their suitcases behind him. There were two clusters of couches nearly filled with women talking and stitching. Against the wall opposite the check-in desk was a long table behind which women were handing out name tags and packets of information about the Market. Little Christmas trees and menorahs ornamented the table, and a huge Christmas tree nearly covered one of a trio of tall doors leading to the inward spaces.

  Betsy looked at the women stitchers and sighed. She and Godwin had missed all the classes. Friday was for classes on stitching techniques, finishing techniques, and staying out of the red in the needlework business. She had really wanted to attend the classes on the last topic given by Susan Greening Davis and Betsy Stinner.

  She went to present her credit card. She and Godwin were sharing a suite, since the original arrangement was with Shelly, and there was not another suite available. Then they went to get the information packet and ID tags.

  “I’m sorry we missed Davis and Stinner,” said Godwin.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Betsy, “I would’ve been too tired to pay attention anyhow. Is the food any good here at the hotel? I don’t want to go out again tonight.”

  “You’d better stay in,” the front desk clerk said. “This rain is supposed to turn to snow, and Nashville just shuts down when it snows. Which it hardly ever does, so that’s why. But they run a very good kitchen here.”

  Godwin, as parched as Betsy was hungry, said, “I’d settle for stale pretzels if they come with a beer.”

  “You’re Miss Devonshire?” asked the desk clerk. “Here’s a message for you.”

  It was from Jill: Call me as soon as you get in. Let me buy you dinner here at my hotel. Goddy was right.

  “Right about what?”

  “The fabulousness of the Grand Ole Opry Hotel, of course,” said Godwin, suddenly looking much fresher, reading over her shoulder. “Let’s get up to our room and dial that number. Do you like Cajun food?”

  Two

  Saturday, December 15, 10:21 A.M.

  Marveen Harrison, night manager of the Consulate, was a tall woman of sturdy build and brisk, cheerful manner. But she blinked slowly at the cold gray light pouring in through the big windows and double doors to the portico. She could see the white shapes of snow-covered cars beyond it, and yet more snow twirling down in large, beautiful flakes, coating the leaves on the trees—some trees stayed green year round in Nashville. It was beautiful—but strange.

  Marveen had been night manager for over a year, and had gotten unused to natural light at work. She should be snuggling down to sleep about now in her heavily draped bedroom. But there had been an ice storm yesterday, followed by snow last night, and it was still snowing this morning. While she had made it to work yesterday evening, barely, she wasn’t about to go out there again until the streets were clear—and, of course, the day manager had called to say there was no way he was coming in.

  So pour me another cup of coffee, she thought, with a little lift of confidence, I can do this. She’d sometimes wished for an emergency that would prove her value and capabilities to the Consulate’s owners. And here it was, with a vengeance. It had been busy yesterday evening with late arrivals—Midwest airports had been closed most of yesterday, delaying flights—and cancellations by guests unable to get there at all. Unfortunately, more guests managed to arrive than could leave, so she had four women camped in the big ballroom, using an old couch, a lounge chair, and two rollaway beds; and three men in the small ballroom with an inflatable mattress and two sleeping bags supplied by other guests. Fortunately, there were showers in the swimming pool complex they could use.

  It was coming up on ten-thirty, and Marveen was checking the employee list to see who was here and who wasn’t. They were going to be operating seriously short-staffed, all right. This would have to happen on a weekend when they were more than fully booked. Chef Brian Selph was here, that was one blessing; but the head of maintenance wasn’t, nor was her lead housekeeper. Kayesha was next senior housekeeper, she would do—

  The sound of a descending scream interrupted her planning. It cut off as something big hit the atrium floor. One of the birds started to shriek, and then people joined in. There were shouts of alarm, too.

  Marveen froze. Her mind tried running in all directions, but every direction was blocked by denial. That couldn’t be what it sounded like.

  When she first came to work at the Consulate, she’d been concerned that there was only a railing between the guests walking in the halls—galleries was the correct term, but she thought of them as halls—and the great open space of the atrium. Suppose someone fell over a railing, and came smashing down on that hard tile floor? she’d asked. Couldn’t happen, she’d been told. No way.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured, keeping her voice down only with an enormous effort. She just stood there a few seconds, trying to remember how to breathe, listening to her heart knocking on her breastbone really hard.

  Then her training and experience kicked in. She picked up the desk phone—and put it down again. She couldn’t call anyone yet because she didn’t know for sure what had happened, or how bad it was. Maybe it was a big old suitcase. Maybe it was only a broken leg.

  Those thoughts gave her hope. She came out from behind the counter and hurried, reluctantly, to see.

  There were three sets of doors leading from the lobby into the atrium. The one on the left was blocked by a huge Christmas tree, the one on the right led to a ramp for wheelchairs. The center doors were always open and Marveen stopped short just through them. Right at the foot of the carpeted steps was a solid mass of people all looking at something, all talking at once. Marveen heard words like awful, and ambulance, and even dead. She gathered herself and, starting down the stairs, asked in her most authoritarian voice, “What happened here?”

  “She fell,” said a woman in a pink fleece jogging suit.

  “From the top floor,” added a w
oman in a deep-red sweater with a pattern of white snowflakes on it.

  “I saw the whole thing,” said a third, an older woman whose navy knit slacks were stretched to their limit over her tummy and thighs. “I was on the elevator and I saw her way up there, looking over the railing. Then she just went over and . . .” She touched her lips in a tentative way, apologizing with her eyes, clearing her throat as if to dislodge the words stuck there.

  Marveen reached out to touch her on the arm. “Could you do me a really big favor and wait for me over by the front desk? I want to talk to you.”

  “Hr-um. Hem. All right.”

  Marveen turned and used her height and voice to make her way through the crowd. There was a little clear space in the center. No one wanted to touch the body, which was a body, all right—a woman. The inside border of the crowd was boiling like a pot. People wanted to see. Then they wanted to get away from the sight. As they went away, they were replaced by others who wanted to see, and then didn’t. Marveen forced her attention away from the boiling to the body.

  She had once seen a deer that had been hit by a big truck. That was what the woman looked like. Blood on a white sweater and broken bones in red slacks and blank eyes over an open mouth. Oh horrible, oh Jesus have mercy on that poor soul. Marveen looked away. But then she steeled herself and looked again, more closely. The woman was in her late thirties, maybe. Her hair was a bright blond. She wore one of those clear plastic card holders the people running the stitching event issued. It had twisted several times on its black elastic cord, but was, thank you, Jesus, face up. BELLE HAMMERMILL, it read. BELLE’S SAMPLERS AND MORE, MILWAUKEE, WI.

  Marveen straightened and pushed her way back through the crowd, then ran to the front of the check-in desk, snatched up the phone, and dialed 911.

  Thursday, December 13, 4:17 P.M.

  Lenore was packing, her mind running on a well-worn track. Belle deserves to die. She should fall off a cliff. She should drink poison. She should go swimming where sharks can rip her into pieces and eat her down to her toenails. She should be hit by a train, which should back up and run over her again, just to be sure.

  Lenore could not believe she could hate someone this way—but she did. Belle was evil. She loved doing wrong, hurting people, ruining their lives. She was the worst person on earth; she was wicked, a devil.

  “Sorry about that,” she’d say, but she wouldn’t lift a finger to make it right. “Sorry about that,” with her sickening smirk, but she wasn’t sorry. She bragged to her friends about how lazy she was, about how she was always messing up orders, forgetting it was her turn to open early or stay late. “I guess I must be the silliest girl to ever own her own business,” she’d say and actually giggle, like it was something to be proud of. Cow.

  But now Lenore’s chance at becoming a successful designer, at making a living doing what she loved, was destroyed, smashed to ruins, and Belle, smiling, shrugging, was “sorry about that,” too. As if Lenore would get another chance like this. As if Lenore should smile and shrug back, as if Belle deserved to keep on shrugging, being sorry—or breathing.

  It all began when Lenore started fooling around with a piece of dark teal Cashel linen. She was thinking of making a sampler, yes, a holiday sampler in red and gold. Use Kreinik metallics, seed beading, Soi Cristale silk, and yes, Rainbow Gallery’s Precious Metals Mini-Garland.

  But if it was a holiday sampler, then not done on the usual rectangle, no. Cut out into a Christmas tree shape—no, wait, done three-dimensional! Cut out, yes, and laced onto cardboard stiffeners—no, stuffed. Like a slender pillow, only in parts, eight parts or maybe even twelve parts. And it would stand up when assembled, a table centerpiece. A Christmas tree centerpiece for the holiday table, all sparkly and twinkly.

  And keep the sampler idea. Ornament it with samples of fancy stitching: Hardanger stitches, counted cross-stitches over one and two, Rhodes stitches, star stitches, satin stitches, feather stitches, French knots, bullion stitches, even surface embroidery. And couching the gold mini-garland, some of it draped from pointed branch to pointed branch. Oh, happy days, oh, beautiful!

  Weeks of planning followed. Go for a realistic tree, or pull out all the stops and make it a showpiece of fancy stitches? Bigger work on the bottom, tiny work on top? Try out this, practice that on doodle cloth, and even so, lots of frogging on the actual model. Blood, sweat, and tears. It became an obsession, but it was going to be fabulous; it would be a huge hit. Lenore described her idea and showed one section to a few stitcher friends, who didn’t squeal and shout but made soft, awed sounds. And hinted that they would be honored, truly honored, to have a go at a section, pretty, pretty please?

  Lenore sent a sketch and the stitched section to Bewitching Stitches, who immediately offered to buy it. And said they wanted the pattern to be introduced, with a model to display, at the INRG Nashville Market in February. And the money they offered was very, very nice.

  Lenore started working on a new and better model of the piece. This one would be professionally finished—Lenore was a stitcher, not a seamstress. Like most stitchers, when it came to the washing, blocking, and framing, or the stuffing and sewing of a piece, she was barely competent. If she made a serious mistake, there were hundreds of hours of work spoiled. Besides, this important piece needed to be perfect. Good finishers were costly, but Lenore decided this piece would really have to be finished right.

  She continued working on her practice model, correcting her pattern as things changed. All the while, her excitement level stayed high. It would be even more beautiful than she thought. This was going to be the design that gave her a name to remember.

  And then a curt e-mail from the International Needlework Retailers Guild:

  You have a reservation to attend next year’s February Nashville Market. Due to a booking mistake on the part of the Consulate Hotel in Nashville, the February Market has been cancelled. The hotel, in an attempt to make things right, has offered us the second weekend of this December with one night’s free stay. Please let us know as soon as possible if you can change your plans and attend the Nashville Market this December 14-17.

  Could she make the new deadline? No choice—she had to. Actually, it would be better to have her new design introduced this December rather than the following February. The last time she showed the piece in progress, at a needlework guild meeting, a rival designer who had been lurking in the back of the room had left with a gleam in her eye, and Lenore’s good friend Jeanne had said, “You watch, she’ll have a pattern of her own that looks a whole lot like yours in six months.”

  Any designer who comes up with something new will find imitators. But the designer who had it first gets the undivided attention of pattern publishers for any designs she may dream up thereafter.

  So Lenore labored hard on the practice piece. At last it was finished. She stitched, stuffed, and assembled it herself. The fabric was roughened and distorted here and there from all the frogging—rip it, rip it!—of stitches as she changed her mind after seeing how they looked on the cloth. And because she wasn’t a tailor, the assembly wasn’t perfect; for one thing, it sagged to one side a little. And the stuffing was not evenly distributed inside all the sections. Yet, flawed as the finishing was, anyone could see how truly magnificent it could be, if it were professionally finished.

  So she started in again. This time she just followed the re-worked pattern, so the stitching went rapidly.

  Now, the only question was, could Belle Hammermill’s finisher get it ready in time?

  Belle said, “Certainly, no problem.” The witch. The lying, lazy, slattern. The incompetent, wicked, corrupt, evil, stupid slut.

  The day before Lenore was supposed to leave for Nashville, she went to Belle’s sampler shop, and Belle acted all surprised that Lenore actually expected to pick up the design. Well, no, it wasn’t ready. It wouldn’t be ready until February seventh—wasn’t that when Lenore asked to pick it up?

  Lenore had been too astonished t
o get angry. Lenore had talked to Belle about the change in the date of the Nashville market back in August; she had told her again when she brought the piece in, back just before Halloween, that she was going to introduce her newest design at the Market. She had even called the shop around Thanksgiving to remind Belle that the new date of the Market was just over three weeks away.

  “Yes, I know,” Belle had said. “Cherry and I are signed up. We’re going to have a big sale when we get back.”

  But when Lenore went to pick up her model, Belle had said, with that cute little shrug she was a little too fond of, “Well, isn’t that just too stupid of me? I guess I forgot to write the new due date down. Your model isn’t here. Sorry about that.”

  No, someone like Belle needed to die. Die in some grotesque, painful way.

  Three

  Friday, December 14, 7:27 P.M.

  Betsy wanted badly to tell Jill she was too tired to be good company, but Godwin was beaming with eagerness. So she called and said, “We’ll be waiting in the lobby.”

  Jill came in a black rented Sable. As predicted, the rain had turned to sleet, and the twenty-minute trip to the Grand Ole Opry Hotel was an exercise in driving on streets and highways full of icy patches.

  As they drove into the immense parking lot, Betsy looked at the acres of white clapboard building with various pillar-marked entrances and asked, “Is the hotel in a mall?”

  “No, this is the hotel,” Jill said. “Well, there are stores and a canal and a park and buildings inside, but they’re surrounded by hotel rooms.”

  “I bet the entire population of Excelsior could stay in one wing of this place.”