And Then You Dye Read online

  Of course, not everyone agreed she was truly an Artist, but the people who thought she wasn’t were wrong. It was because she used a needle instead of a paintbrush. But that made her unique, and being unique was a really big part of becoming a famous Artist. And having some “attitude” helped, too, though Irene wasn’t sure exactly when she was showing “attitude” and when she was simply giving an opinion.

  What she did know was that she wanted to start work on a new piece. (How glorious it was to be able to not work on a piece until the drive to do it was firmly established!) It was going to be a small one, after several years of increasingly larger ones. But dense, very dense. She closed her eyes and could almost see it. She knew it was going to be busy, with lots of overlapping detail in lots of fancy stitches. An abstract, of course. Done in shades of yellow, green, tan . . . and white? Maybe not white. And maybe some touches of blue. The vision was not yet clear. She needed to see the fibers she was going to use, touch them with her fingers, inhale their scent.

  And where was she going to buy the wools and flosses to use on her piece?

  She could call a cab—she had never learned to drive—and go to Stitchville USA over in Minnetonka, or Needlework Unlimited in Edina. But perhaps she should start at her favorite needlework supply store, Crewel World. They were right here in town and had been the ones who first recognized her amazing skills and encouraged her to present herself not just as a skilled stitcher but as a true Artist. They were among her oldest friends.

  Irene rose onto her toes, swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees, then started walking swiftly down the sidewalk. She was a slender woman in her late forties with very curly black hair cropped short, dark shining eyes, and a slightly crooked smile. She wore a brightly patterned heavy cotton skirt that came nearly to her ankles, brown sandals over navy blue socks, and a white peasant blouse with a scoop neck and puffy short sleeves under a navy blue sweater vest she’d knit herself. Irene bought most of her clothes at secondhand stores, a holdover from her impoverished days, and she saw no reason to change, especially since a reporter had once described her dress habits as “endearingly eccentric.”

  So she sailed down the street with her head held high, looking forward to a pleasant, profitable visit with her good friend, Betsy Devonshire.

  Meanwhile, Betsy and Godwin had their heads together at the library table. “I don’t think this will be as difficult as you’re thinking,” Godwin said, gesturing at the legal-size pad with notes scrawled all over it.

  “Have you ever run a contest?” asked Betsy.

  “Well, no, but I know Margot did, and she said they weren’t hard to do.” Margot was Betsy’s late sister, who founded Crewel World years ago. Godwin had worked for her before starting to work for Betsy.

  Betsy remembered her sister as an incredibly organized and hardworking woman, traits more feebly present in herself. She said, “We’ll want to keep this as simple as possible.”

  What had happened was that Alix Jordan, a steady customer of Betsy’s shop, had been moving into pattern designing, and had come in ten days ago with an open chevron pattern of nine vertical rectangles outlined in black to be filled with—what? She had several ideas and brought them to the shop for opinions.

  Betsy couldn’t decide, and had offered to conduct a poll among the shop’s customers. But Godwin had had a better idea.

  “Hey, Alix, how about we offer just the template you’ve designed, and hold a contest for the best filler?” he’d said. “We could buy the template pattern from you, and sell it to customers with an offer of a prize for the best-designed filler.”

  Betsy had said, “But who will we get to be the judge?”

  Godwin had said, “Oh, neither of us. We’ll get a committee to do it. And I think it would be better to offer several prizes.”

  “You mean first, second, and third?” Betsy had asked.

  “How about Best Execution, Cleverest Use of Space, and Just Plain Wow?” Alix had suggested.

  “Yes! I like it!” Godwin had cheered.

  Now, Betsy and Godwin were discussing the rules and other parameters for the contest when the shop bell rang. Irene Potter walked in, and by the big smile on her face, it was clear that she was flush with some grand stitching idea.

  Betsy’s spirits rose at the sight of Irene, even as a tiny worry tempered her joy. Irene spent a lot of money on stitching materials, but she was picky, contentious, and demanding. Betsy was glad Godwin was working today; Irene respected his opinion more than hers.

  “H’lo, Irene,” said Godwin, the cheer in his voice also tempered by wariness. But he added with a smile, “How can we help you today?”

  Irene hurried to the table, her dark eyes shining, the very curls on her head trembling with excitement. “I have this wonderful Idea!” she exclaimed. “And I just know you’ll be able to guide me in realizing it!”

  Betsy’s heart sank. Irene in the grip of one of her Ideas could be very difficult. Still, she never complained about the prices Betsy charged. And, Betsy admitted to herself, Irene’s art was never boring and often gave a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a person who perceived the world in a way very different from her own.

  So, “What is it we can do for you, Irene?” she asked.

  “It’s time for my next project,” Irene replied. “And I want to focus on the materials. You know, pay tribute to silk, or wool. Only maybe not them, but something else, something different. So I want to talk with you about how to do that.”

  “You mean, use both silk and wool as materials in the composition?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But that’s been done,” said Godwin in a puzzled tone. “You’ve done things like that in many of your own pieces. Even more than two kinds—lots of stitchers use more than one kind of fiber in their needlepoint work. I’ve done it many times myself.”

  “Me, too,” said Betsy, remembering a needlepoint canvas of part of a Christmas tree with lots of fancy ornaments. What fun it had been selecting the wool, silk, metallic, cotton, and blends of floss for it!

  “No, not used separately, but a blend,” said Irene. “Like the silk-wool blends of yarn. Only I want an exotic blend. How about soy-bamboo? Or corn-soy? Wouldn’t that be interesting?”

  “I’ve never seen or heard of those blends,” said Betsy.

  “Yes, see? I haven’t, either. I like the way soy-bamboo sounds, better than corn-soy. Soy-bamboo sort of bounces off the tongue, don’t you think?” She made a bouncing gesture with one thin finger. “Yes, soy-bamboo, soy-bamboo, soy-bamboo. I want it specially made for me, for this project. Can you tell me where I might get it?”

  Godwin said, “You’re going to need only a limited quantity, so I doubt you’ll get a factory to do it for you. What you need is someone who can spin it by hand.”

  Betsy said—reluctantly, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to burden someone new with Irene—“I know someone.”

  “You mean the person who did that dyeing demo here Wednesday night, right?” said Godwin.

  “Yes, because she spins, too.”

  “Hand-spun,” said Irene in a thoughtful voice. “Is she local?”

  “Yes, in fact she lives right here in Excelsior,” said Betsy.

  “Betsy . . .” warned Godwin.

  But Betsy was thinking of the malicious way Hailey treated Marge at the dyeing demo. “Let me get you Hailey’s phone number,” she said.

  Three

  SUCH a brilliant inspiration she’d had! Irene was sure she was blessed with a swift, clever imagination, and could be justly proud of it. A blend of exotic fibers! Yes! What an amazing and wonderful idea! She would make the stitchery a tribute to the blend, which would have been impossible—unthinkable, really—just a few years ago. Who back then would have thought bamboo could be made into embroidery floss or ya
rn? Or soy? Her fingers twitched as in her imagination she ran them across the amazingly soft and smooth fibers coaxed from woody bamboo.

  Progress! That would be the exultant theme! She would make the piece an explosion of joy and triumph! Another success! More praise! Her fame would endure forever!

  Hold on a bit, she thought. She seemed to have gone from a successful piece of Art to her own success. But what a delightful thought, her fame lasting forever!

  Hold on again, maybe not forever. There were lots of Artists famous in their day whose names were forgotten. Perhaps her own name would vanish, too. Worse, it seemed most still-famous artists were unsung in their own day, discovered only after their deaths. So maybe it wasn’t such a good thing that she had recognition now.

  If she were offered the choice—fame while living or fame after death—which would she choose?

  That was a difficult question, which Irene earnestly contemplated while walking in the brilliant spring sunshine, its warmth lightly soaking through her dark blue sweater vest onto her thin shoulders.

  Distracted by the warmth, she was sidetracked into thinking about how much she liked the vest, with its complex pattern of welts and big knots, and a heavy but unnoted scatter of orts, tag ends of floss from various cross-stitch patterns she’d worked on. It was her lucky sweater, one she’d knit herself. She often wore it while working on a new project.

  She wasn’t going to work just yet on her newest creation, she decided. Instead, she was going to talk to Hailey Brent again. Hailey was a very interesting woman, very artistic, like herself. Full of ideas and observations. And actually enthusiastic about the soy-bamboo blend Irene wanted for her new project. She had a few samples of it, which she’d given to Irene to try out. The samples had been smooth and easy to work with, so she’d ordered fifty yards. Only eleven days later, it was ready and Hailey was about to dye some of the completed yarn for her. Irene was going to go watch it happen. It was very intelligent of Betsy to put her and Hailey together. Betsy was a good friend.

  Irene had initially thought to find someone to weave some fabric from the soy-bamboo blend, but it turned out that would take too long. Spinning and then weaving the fabric in a large enough piece would take months, and Irene’s creative urge was screaming and yelling for her to get on with it right now. If she disobeyed, the project might never be completed. It had happened once before, when her sister was so sick with cancer and Irene had gone to stay with her. She had abandoned that project about birds during that difficult time, and when she finally came back home, all she wanted to do was throw away all those feathers she had collected, the project having somehow decayed in her absence. Even the smell of the feathers was sickening, and she couldn’t get them out of the house fast enough. She’d lived with open windows—in December!—for two weeks to get rid of the smell, it was so awful. The cold coming in through the windows had frozen a pipe in her kitchen, but Irene hadn’t minded. It was worth it, to cleanse the house of the feather smell. Her small nose wrinkled at the memory. She still couldn’t stand to be around feathers.

  Her agent had been very annoyed, but it was worth that, too. She had to do what her muse—what an interesting word!—wanted her to do.

  Hailey, when told the story, had been amazingly sympathetic. Unlike everyone else, who thought Irene was insane. She wasn’t insane, she was just being an Artist. Sensitive, that’s what she was, Hailey had said. And Hailey, being an Artist, too, understood these things.

  Hailey was wonderful, Hailey was going to be such a help. And she was going to see Hailey right now, see how far along she was with the dyed yarn.

  If Irene had been the type, she would have burst into song at the prospect of finding that Hailey had dyed a usable amount of yarn. But she wasn’t, so she merely smiled as she strode along in the lovely late afternoon sunshine.

  Soon she came to Green Gaia Gardens—look, the tulips were at their peak—and just beyond it stood the white and green cottage that was Hailey’s home. Set back from the street, it was further protected by three big trees, and two smaller ones that were densely covered with deep pink blooms. There was a faint hum coming from the trees—bees, there were hundreds of bees feasting on the sweet nectar. Irene paused to look and listen. She wondered if the honey they would be making was influenced by the kind of flowers they visited. Probably, probably. She had a vague childhood memory of eating a honey so dark it was almost black. Buckwheat honey, it was called. Was buckwheat a flower?

  She went up the narrow old sidewalk, made uneven by the roots of a big tree, neared the offset front porch—it made the house look lopsided to not have the porch in the center, how could Hailey stand it?—and continued past it to the side entrance near the back of the house. There she pulled open the screen door and pushed on the dark green wooden door.

  “Hailey?” she called, stepping into the middle of the small kitchen. The screen door slapped shut behind her. “Oh, HAY-leeee!”

  No answer.

  She was probably down in her basement, where she had set up a space in which to dye things, doing something exceedingly interesting. Like Irene, when Hailey was focused on her work, she became deaf to outside sounds.

  Irene went to the narrow, dark stairway and took the steps down into the well-lighted basement.

  “Hailey? Are you down here?”

  Still no answer.

  Then she saw her. Hailey was lying on the floor near the sink in the second kitchen. And there was a big black puddle of—Oh my God, it was blood, dried blood! And Hailey’s face looked odd, her eyes all starey and kind of bulging. And she wasn’t breathing.

  Dead, she was dead.

  Irene stood there for a few seconds, her heart pounding, her own breath stuck in her throat.

  Then she remembered something she had done a few years ago when she’d found another dead body. Hadn’t that been the right thing to do?

  She tried to scream, but it was a pitiful effort. She threw her head back and that opened her chest so she was able to scream again and again with all her might.

  * * *

  MARGE was standing with a customer at the far eastern border of her garden center. They were discussing the purchase of a young potted hydrangea bush.

  “I have some nice pink ones over there. This one is a pure white,” Marge was saying. “It’s called a snowball hydrangea.”

  “Did you hear something?” asked the customer, looking around.

  “Hear what?”

  “I don’t know—listen, there it goes again.”

  Marge heard it, too, very faintly, a high-pitched noise.

  “Do you suppose it could be the steam whistle on the Minnehaha?” asked the customer.

  “It could be, I suppose.” The steamboat Minnehaha plied Lake Minnetonka in the summer, but the lake was nearly a mile away. Marge had never heard its whistle at this distance before. Anyway, she thought the Minnehaha didn’t start up until Memorial Day.

  The scream was suddenly much louder, and this time it came with words: “Help, help, help! Murder, she’s been murdered!”

  * * *

  MIKE Malloy hated this kind of murder. Actually, he hated all murders. And he wasn’t fond of murderers, for that matter. But he particularly hated this kind, done by an amateur, undoubtedly for amateur reasons. Hailey Brent was not a drug dealer or a gangbanger or a thief. She wasn’t rumored to keep large sums of money in her house, and she didn’t allow her home to be used by crooks as a safe house. She was a nice, if rather eccentric, older woman who liked to mash roots, leaves, and flowers and use the juice to color yarn.

  So no snitch was going to come forward and tell him something useful, like who had done this.

  What he did know gave him a slight frisson. Did the fact that there were skeins of yarn hanging on a clothesline mean that Betsy Devonshire might get involved?

  He’d come t
o cautiously admire Ms. Devonshire for her sleuthing abilities. On the other hand, she was an amateur detective, and amateurs were not restrained by the rules that governed the building of an airtight case against the perp.

  It didn’t help that the person who discovered the body was Irene Potter. Irene was scatty and opinionated; you never knew what she was going to say or do. Worse, she was a big fan of Ms. Devonshire, and was already declaring that Mike could do worse than call her in for a consult. As if.

  Irene claimed she hadn’t disturbed the crime scene at all, but she had, of course. She’d entered by the only unlocked door on the premises, for one thing, laying her fingerprints over any others that might be on the handle of the screen door and the knob of the wooden door. And who knew what else she’d touched while standing in the basement making a spectacle of her emotions.

  Malloy was a volatile Irishman, not a stoical Scandinavian like a whole lot of Minnesotans, but he didn’t think female hysterics were very helpful in a crisis. It had taken him a considerable amount of time to bring Irene back down to earth, and he angrily suspected she enjoyed every minute of the attention.

  The sheriff’s department’s forensics team had finished their work, and Hailey Brent’s body had been removed to the custody of the Hennepin County Medical Examiner for autopsy.

  Now that he was alone in the space, Mike realized that Irene had been right. What he had thought was a second kitchen in the basement was actually a setup for some other task. Irene had said Hailey Brent was a dyer, a statement it took him a minute or two to understand. It wasn’t about D-I-E, it was about D-Y-E. This place down here was like an ordinary kitchen, in that it had a gas stove, and a refrigerator, and a double sink.

  But on the stove were three pots, one much bigger than the others. The big one had a lid on it, and the liquid in it was a dark green. The other two had yarn floating in the colored liquid. One of the officers responding to the initial call had noticed that the gas burners beneath the pots had been turned on low, and he had shut them off. One of Malloy’s first questions had been, who would want to cook yarn? Then Irene Potter had said this wasn’t just a second kitchen, but a setup in which Ms. Brent had dyed things.