Knit Your Own Murder Page 4

  “Yowser!” shouted someone—the same someone who’d cheered before. It sounded suspiciously like Godwin, sitting in the row facing the audience with the other champion knitters.

  “Yo! Two fifty, two fifty, I got two fifty, how about three, do I hear three, three hundred, two fifty, two fifty, two fifty, do I hear two seventy-five, two seventy-five, I got two fifty, two fifty, lookin’ for two seventy-five, two fifty, two fifty—” There was a brief pause. “Two fifty, all done, all in? Two fifty, I got two fifty. All in, all done? Sold! Two hundred and fifty dollars! Paddle number forty-seven. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!”

  The audience applauded. Bershada made a note.

  Max’s assistant picked up the knit fruit bat, saw what it was, and dropped it, pulling her hands up and back in disgust.

  “No, no!” called someone. “Let’s see it!”

  “Yeah, bring it!”

  “What is it?” asked someone else.

  “Lemme see,” ordered Max, and his assistant very gingerly picked it up by one wing, her face reflecting her reluctance.

  “Hey, lookit this!” Max shouted, holding it up. He adjusted his grip so each hand was holding a wing and it was spread wide.

  “Ewwwww!” went half the audience. The other half laughed, and someone called, “One dollar!”

  “Two dollars!” said someone else.

  “Seven dollars!” said a third, and they were off. With Max urging them on, Phil’s fruit bat sold for seventy-five dollars.

  The auction, back in full swing, continued for another hour. At the end, Irene Potter’s amazing dragon was brought forward.

  “Five hundred!” shouted someone before Max could say anything, and the bidding built swiftly from there until the creature finally topped out at five thousand seven hundred dollars.

  Chapter Nine

  “Dead?” murmured Betsy. “Oh, but she can’t be! They did CPR right away, and the emergency people got here quickly—she can’t be dead!”

  Betsy was standing in the parking lot beside her car. Jill had seen her, waved to get her attention, and now was standing close to her, talking in a low voice.

  “She was dead on the gurney,” said Jill. “You know how nowadays they can bring the freshly dead back to life, at least for a little while—well, not in this case. There was no obvious cause, so they’ll do an autopsy.”

  “I thought it was a stroke.”

  “Did you, Doctor Devonshire?”

  Betsy blushed and shrugged. “Just a layman’s opinion.”

  “Probably as good as mine.”

  A voice called, harsh and alarmed, “Hey! Hey, anyone!” Jill and Betsy whirled to look toward the church hall, where Max was standing shouting at them. “Hey! Is there a doctor still around?”

  “What’s the matter?” called Jill, starting for him, Betsy on her heels.

  “We got a man sick in here!”

  Jill went through the door into the hall. Betsy stopped to ask, “Who is it? What do you mean, sick?”

  “Sick to his stomach, big headache. He’s sitting on the floor. I don’t know who it is. He was helping pick up after the auction.”

  Betsy put her fingers to her lips. Connor had volunteered to stay and help put things away.

  A woman, white-haired, thin, short, put her hands on Betsy’s shoulders. “Excuse me, let me by, I’m a doctor.” She had been one of those who had rushed to help Maddy.

  Betsy hastily stepped into the hall. “Sorry,” she said, “sorry.”

  Without replying, the woman hurried by her.

  Betsy followed, half afraid of what she was going to discover. To her dismay, it was Connor, sitting bent forward on the floor in front of the row of chairs where the honorees had been placed. His face was red, distorted by pain. Jill and another woman were standing nearby, and the woman doctor was kneeling beside him, with one arm around his shoulders and the other taking his pulse. There was a towel across his knees, another under his feet.

  As Betsy watched, he picked up the towel from his lap and wiped his face with it. She ran to him. “What’s the matter? What happened?” she asked.

  “Dunno,” said Connor, forcing the words out. “I was folding the chairs,” he gestured to his right, where half the row had been folded and leaned against the wall. “Saw someone’s knitting . . .” He stopped to retch, then wiped his mouth with the towel. “God, my head!”

  Betsy looked around and saw the knitting, about seven inches of plaited basket weave stitch in dark blue. She recognized the yarn; it was Maddy’s. She picked it up. Maddy had been about halfway across a row. The last two or three rows were a mess, hardly recognizable as a pattern.

  “Look at this, Jill,” she said, holding out the knitting. “I think Maddy did have a stroke.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” said Jill, who was still focused on Connor and the doctor.

  Betsy picked up the ball and wound the yarn onto it, following the unspooled yarn to the bag under a chair, and stuffed the ball and knitting into it. The fingers of her right hand felt odd, and she rubbed them with her thumb. “Oof,” she said. Her heart was beating fast. “Oof,” she said again, and put her hand to her forehead, which had begun to ache.

  Connor said, “I was winding the yarn back on the ball, which had rolled away, and all of a sudden I got this headache.”

  “Jill,” said Betsy, dropping Maddy’s bag. “Jill!”

  Jill started at the sound of her friend’s voice. “What is it?” she said. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Here, Betsy, come with me.”

  She helped Betsy get to her feet and hustled her off to the restroom, so she could wash her hands. Then she had Betsy wash them again. And again.

  “Wow,” said Betsy. “Wow.” She splashed cold water on her face, which was very pink, and dried it and her hands with paper towels. Her hands felt normal, but her pulse still seemed a bit rapid.

  “What happened?” asked Jill. “What were you doing when you started feeling like this?”

  “All I did was pick up Maddy’s knitting and wrap loose yarn around the ball and put it in the bag. Then my fingers started tingling and my heart started beating a hundred miles an hour.”

  “Did you touch anything else? Drink something?”

  “Nuh-uh. Wow. Whew! But I’m feeling better now. How’s Connor? Can we get back to Connor?”

  “Sure, let’s do that.”

  When they came out of the restroom, they saw Connor, over his objections, being walked out to an emergency vehicle by the doctor. “I’m all right,” he kept saying, “See? I’m feeling much better now.”

  But his face was still red, and he was walking with a stiff gait unlike his usual smooth one.

  “Wait a minute,” called Jill, and she ran to the bright green canvas bag into which Betsy had pushed Maddy’s needlework. She picked it up carefully by its string handle. She brought it to the doctor, hanging it over her fingers, and said, “Maddy is dead, Connor is sick, and Betsy had a bad reaction, all because the three of them handled the contents of this bag. Give it to someone who can tell us what the problem with it is.”

  Chapter Ten

  Connor was treated and released the same day. “I haven’t been taken that sick for a long time,” he said, as he got into Betsy’s car. “Do they know what did it to me?”

  “No, not yet,” said Betsy. “But they’re pretty sure it’s the yarn she was knitting with.”

  “The yarn? That’s odd. Didn’t you give the same yarn to everyone?”

  “No, Bershada and I asked each one of the knitters what kind they wanted. Maddy’s the only one who picked the dark blue merino. Maybe I’d better pull the rest of that yarn until we find out what’s wrong with it.”

  “Do you think it could be the needles instead of the yarn?” Connor asked.

  “Nnno,” she drawled, thinking. “Everyone got the same size bamboo
needles from the same box. Besides, it was the yarn you and I were handling, not the needles.”

  Connor nodded. “That’s true. So yes, you should pull the merino.”

  * * *

  The following Monday, the Bunch was in session, and the participants spent a few minutes talking about Maddy’s strange passing. Betsy, as crack amateur sleuth, was asked for an opinion, but she said she didn’t know what to think. Phil suggested it was a sudden allergy to wool brought on by all that knitting Maddy had done in aid of the auction, but his theory was voted down. No one else had any ideas, so the members dropped the subject and began working on needlework projects—any kind but knitting, as they’d all had their fill and more in the last few weeks.

  Fulsome congratulations went around to all those who contributed: to Godwin, for the amazing price his knit leopard had brought; and again to Godwin, for winning a place among the honorees who had knit the most toys; to Betsy for contributing time, effort, and material to the auction; but most of all to Bershada, whose idea it was, and who ran the committee organized to pull it off.

  Betsy said modestly she hadn’t done all that much, Godwin smiled and allowed that the leopard had come out rather well, but Bershada just sat and raked in the accolades, secure in the knowledge that these people didn’t know the half of it.

  Just then the door chime broke into “I Want to Be Happy” and Jill came in. She was not a frequent attendee of the Monday Bunch anymore, with three young children and a part-time job at the police department (administrative assistant to the chief, a job she shared with another woman). She had her stitching with her and was brimming with grim news.

  “What is it?” demanded Godwin before she had even said a word.

  “The preliminary autopsy report on Maddy is back. It appears she was poisoned with nicotine.”

  Everyone at the table stared at her in surprise.

  “Nicotine?” said Emily. “You mean she smoked herself to death?”

  “No, nicotine was found on the yarn she was knitting with at the auction.”

  “Ick,” said Emily. “I hate the smell of cigarettes. But how did it get from the yarn into her stomach?”

  “It didn’t go into her stomach. It went through her fingers into her bloodstream. You can absorb nicotine through the skin. When she handled the yarn while knitting, she absorbed a fatal dose.”

  “Then how come people who smoke cigarettes don’t die from it getting on their fingers?” asked Phil. He looked around the table. “I smoked for over twenty years, and so did just about everyone I knew back in the day. Many’s the time we stayed up all night, playing cards, talking, drinking beer, and smoking like chimneys. Didn’t kill any of us. Not right then, I mean. Lung cancer might’ve got one or two of us, but I don’t know, I haven’t seen many of them in a long time.” He sighed and looked a little sad about that.

  Jill said, “I guess the paper wrapping protected your skin. Besides, tobacco leaves aren’t pure nicotine, it takes a special laboratory process to extract the nicotine.”

  Betsy said, “You mean, nicotine all by itself is a poison?”

  “That’s right,” replied Jill. “Someone poured pure liquid nicotine over the ball of yarn in Maddy’s bag, and by handling it, she absorbed a lethal amount through the skin of her hands. It doesn’t take much. It’s an ingredient in insecticides; a squirt or two will kill a whole nest of yellow jackets. I know, I’ve done it.”

  “If liquid nicotine is so dangerous, why can you buy bottles of it in those e-cigarette stores?” asked Alice, a senior woman with a deep voice and rather a lot of chin. She was crocheting a fluffy blue prayer shawl for her church.

  Godwin asked, surprised, “How do you know about bottles of nicotine?”

  “There was a news segment about it back around Christmas. The bottles come in different sizes and different strengths. And they said even one small bottle can kill a child who drinks it—they come in tempting delicious flavors, apparently. I was quite appalled.”

  But Phil said, “I think those bottles aren’t pure nicotine, they’re diluted. And at least the smokers are not getting all that tar and other things you find in tobacco leaf. E-cigarettes are a lot safer than the real thing.”

  “No, they’re not!” said Alice, surprised. “It’s the nicotine that causes lung cancer.”

  “No, it’s the tar,” retorted Phil, equally surprised.

  “I think it’s the formaldehyde,” volunteered Godwin.

  “Formaldehyde!” said Doris. “In cigarettes?”

  “Absolutely,” said Godwin.

  “What, do they embalm the tobacco leaves before they chop them into cigarettes?”

  Godwin leaned sideways, laughing. “That’s good, Dorie!”

  “Surely you’re joking; there isn’t any formaldehyde in cigarettes,” said Emily.

  “Oh, there are all kinds of chemicals in cigarettes,” said Godwin. “Nitrogen oxide, benzopyrene, hydrogen cyanide, and ammonia are just a few, besides formaldehyde.”

  Jill, meanwhile, had sat down at the table and brought out a project: a cross-stitched inspirational motto ornamented with a big, elaborate feather. It read, “She took a Leap of FAITH and grew her Wings on the way down.” Done all in shades of blue, Jill had bought it in Betsy’s shop as a kit.

  “Has Joe Mickels stopped in to talk to you, Betsy?” she asked.

  “Joe? Why on earth would he want to talk to me?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? The poison that killed poor Maddy was nicotine.”

  “What has that got to do with Joe Mickels?”

  “Right around Christmas he bought a little chain of e-cigarette stores.”

  Betsy stared at her. “He did?”

  Godwin said, “Why didn’t we hear about it?”

  Valentina said, “I heard he’d gotten into e-cigarettes, that he’d bought a store that sells them.”

  “Where did you hear that?” asked Jill.

  “At the Leipold’s store. Somebody was smoking one in there, said he’d bought the outfit to do it with at Joe’s new store in Uptown.” Uptown was an artsy neighborhood of Minneapolis famous for its night clubs, sophisticated shops, and ethnic restaurants.

  “Oh my God,” said Doris.

  “But he wouldn’t—he just wouldn’t!” said Emily.

  But Betsy was remembering some years back, when she and Jill stood in Joe’s Excelsior office while he ranted viciously about another murdered woman, saying that if he’d known then what he knew now, he would have killed her himself. She looked at Jill, wondering if she was remembering that, too. But Jill had her deadpan cop face on, so Betsy couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “Wait a minute,” said Phil. “I’ve looked at those bottles of nicotine they sell, and like Alice said, they all smell like candy or flowers, plus they look thick, like syrup. How could Maddy use yarn that smelled like strawberries and stuck to her fingers?”

  “There!” said Emily. “See? There!”

  “Why are you so hot to defend Joe Mickels?” asked Godwin. “He is not a nice man.”

  “He is a sad man. I think he’s lonesome and doesn’t know what to do about it.”

  “My goodness, Emily,” said Alice. “Where on earth did you get an idea like that?”

  “I saw him the other day—he didn’t see me—just sitting in his car, and his face was sad, so sad. I almost went over to him, but he drove away. Honest, he was sad!”

  “When was this?” Jill asked.

  Emily thought briefly. “I’m not sure. Maybe a week ago? Or longer?”

  “Before Harry Whiteside was murdered? Or after?”

  Emily thought some more. “Before. I’m sure it was before.”

  “Maybe it was around the time he found out that Maddy won the bidding war for that property on Water Street,” suggested Godwin.

  “I hope
so,” said Betsy. “Much better that he was sad, not angry.”

  There was a thoughtful silence.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Well, well, well,” murmured Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy, looking over a photocopy of a single document laid in the center of his small desk in a back room of the Excelsior Police Department. He spoke to himself—the desk pushed up against his was unoccupied. Elton Marsh, the second investigator in the department, was taking a day off to attend a school concert his youngest daughter had a solo part in.

  The document was a record of the sale of three e-cigarette stores to one Joseph Alan Mickels on receipt of “one dollar and other good and valuable considerations.” Malloy had run across that phrasing before; it virtually always meant more money.

  Malloy wasn’t interested in how much more money; he was interested in the fact of the e-cigarettes. His fellow investigator was a smoker, and it had taken an order from the chief to get him to take a smoker’s break outside the building. The problem now was, he was a heavy smoker and was frequently gone during the working day for five to ten minutes at a time. In Malloy’s never humble opinion, he had just about gone from full-time to part-time employment and ought to be given a commensurate cut in pay.

  Apparently the chief thought so, too, because the instant e-cigarettes appeared on the market, Elton had been persuaded to transfer his addiction to them and began smoking at his desk again. He and Malloy exchanged research on them, and Malloy was forced to admit that e-cigarettes were not a source of the tar that instigated lung cancer, and that what a “vaper” exhaled was merely scented water vapor.

  “That’s why we call it ‘vaping,’” Elton had said smugly.

  The only concession Malloy had managed to get from Elton was a switch from scented nicotine to the unscented variety. Filling the office with the smell of wintergreen or oranges was distracting and unprofessional, in Malloy’s never, ever humble opinion.

  Maddy O’Leary had been killed by nicotine. It had been absorbed through the skin on the palms and fingers of her hands—shocking to learn that nicotine could be absorbed through the skin. It could be absorbed quickly, too, judging by the way Connor Sullivan had gotten so doggone sick just from handling the yarn while helping clean up after the auction.