Framed in Lace Page 6

  “You’re welcome, Mrs. Liljegren.” Betsy had thought she’d never get used to people calling her by her first name while she must address them more formally, but at these prices they could call her anything they liked.

  “What’s this about some lace you want identified?” asked a very handsome woman Betsy recognized as one of the Monday Bunch. She had a fistful of silk floss and a packet of needles for Betsy to ring up.

  “Hello, Patricia. Detective Malloy found something on the Hopkins and hopes someone here can help identify it.” Betsy indicated the Xerox copy taped to the desk. “It’s a corner of a handkerchief or maybe a bit of a silk dress, and that tangle- of string may be crochet lace.”

  Patricia bent over the paper, frowning. Betsy wrote the sales slip, then rang up her purchase, but Patricia didn’t move. Betsy gave her a minute, then saw Godwin bringing another customer to check out. “Er-hem, excuse me?” Betsy said. “That’ll be seventeen dollars and fifty-three cents, including tax. Patricia?”

  Patricia said, “Hmm?”

  “That’ll be seventeen dollars and fifty-three cents.”

  “Okay.”

  “Excuse me, Patricia?” said Godwin politely, instead of making a wisecrack. Godwin knew which customers enjoyed him at his outrageous best and which didn’t.

  Patricia straightened. “I wonder why someone thinks that might be crocheted lace. It doesn’t look like crochet to me, the loops are all wrong. It might be tatting, but is more likely bobbin lace.”

  Betsy looked at the copy. “You mean you can actually make sense of that?” She had thought the original unidentifiable, but the photocopy was even worse.

  “Oh, it’s definitely lace,” said Patricia. “Question is, what kind? There are a number of ways to make lace, but I think I’d want to see the original before I said for sure what kind this is.”

  Godwin’s customer crowded in for a peek but frowned and stepped back again. “I can’t see any pattern to that,” she said as if in complaint.

  “Patricia, Sergeant Malloy is going to be so pleased if you can really tell him something helpful,” said Godwin.

  Betsy added quickly, “That is—would you mind talking to him?”

  “No, of course not.” She pulled her checkbook from her purse. “I’ll pay for my silks and you may copy the phone number on the check to give to him.” Her cheeks were pink with pleasure, her brown eyes alight. “This will be a poke in the eye for my husband, who says nothing of real value ever came out of a needleworker’s basket.”

  Hours later, closing time approached. Betsy, near exhaustion, was trying to rearrange a basket of half-price wool so that it didn’t look so picked-over. Her feet were like a pair of toothaches. Shelly and Godwin were in back, quarreling tiredly over whose turn it was to wash out the coffeepot.

  The door went bing (Betsy gritted her teeth and swore that someday soon she was going to replace that thing), but she forced her features to assume a pleasant look and turned to greet her customer. She was a small, thin woman with dark hair standing up in little curls all over her head. She had shiny dark eyes in a narrow face and a smile as false as the leopard print of her coat.

  “Hello, Irene,” said Betsy neutrally—that being the best she could manage.

  “I hear you’ve had a splendid day, lots of customers,” said Irene.

  “Yes, the Christmas rush has begun, it seems.”

  “Won’t last till Christmas,” warned Irene.

  Irene Potter was one of the thorns on Betsy’s rose. She was an extremely talented needleworker and a steady customer, but she was also opinionated, rude, hyperactive, nosy, and impatient. She thought Betsy incompetent and was watching hopefully, even cheerfully, for any sign the shop might slip into bankruptcy. Because if it did, then she, Irene, could take it over, fire that dreadful Godwin person, and run it as it should be run. Meanwhile, a mass of contradictions, she was also willing to share her considerable business and needlework expertise with Betsy. She was serenely unaware of this and other contradictions in her behavior.

  “Why won’t the Christmas rush last till Christmas?” asked Betsy.

  “Projects done as gifts or decorations have to be bought well in advance, to be done by Christmas. Once it’s too late to get the projects finished on time, they’ll stop buying them.”

  “Oh,” said Betsy. “Of course.”

  “Unless they are given as projects to be done by the recipients,” said Godwin. “Hello, Irene.”

  “Goddy.” Irene gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head in Godwin’s direction. She was sure of a number of vicious and untrue things about gay people, so vicious she was ashamed she knew about them and so never alluded to them, even obliquely. But the knowledge made her unable to look Godwin in the eye—which was as well, because his reaction to her shame was to grin tantalizingly.

  “H‘lo, Irene,” said Shelly tiredly.

  “Why, Shelly, I thought you’d be home grading papers or something.”

  “Now, Irene, you know that’s how I spend my Sunday afternoons, smoking and drinking and grading papers.” When she was tired, Shelly could be difficult, too.

  “May we help you, Irene?” asked Betsy, anxious to get this over with so she could go upstairs and sit on the edge of her bathtub and do that trick of running cold then hot then cold then hot water over her feet.

  “I’ve come to look at that picture you have of the lace collar.”

  “What? Oh. It’s not a picture, it’s a Xerox copy. And we don’t know exactly what it was part of. Sergeant Malloy left it in hopes that people can identify it.” Betsy led the way to the desk.

  Irene studied the copy from different angles, coming beside the desk and even behind it. Betsy, seeking a second to Patricia’s opinion, was beginning to feel optimistic when Irene said, “Humph, doesn’t look like much of anything to me.”

  Betsy sighed. “I agree, and I saw the real thing.”

  Irene straightened so abruptly that Godwin, who had been standing close behind her, was forced to jump backward, which he did adroitly. Irene said, “I thought perhaps I could be of significant help with your second case, as I was with the first one”—she smirked proudly, then her face fell—“but I suppose not.”

  “This isn’t my case, Irene,” said Betsy, annoyance lending strength to the assertion, which she had made several times that day. “I am not involved. I am only allowing Sergeant Malloy to leave a request for information here. He probably has also left it at Needle Nest and Stitchville and who knows where else.”

  “Do you mean to tell me, Irene,” purred Godwin, “that there is a needlework style you can’t identify? I am stunned to hear that, Irene, at a total loss for words.”

  Irene did look him in the eye then. For about three seconds. Then, silently, she turned and walked out of the shop.

  Shelly, giggling, said, “Godwin, you are the limit.”

  “Thank you, Shelly, I try.”

  5

  Today’s Monday Bunch more resembled the usual gathering, with four present. Oddly, one of the most faithful wasn’t there: Martha Winters.

  Her best friend Jessica explained, “The refrigeration unit in her dry cleaning machine has been acting up for weeks, and Jeff had the repairman over at least once, but now it’s broken down completely, and everyone’s cleaning is going to be late. So Martha decided to supervise the replacement herself.”

  “Jeff’s her grandson,” Alice explained briefly to Betsy.

  Jessica nodded. “Her grandson is careless about repairs and replacements, but you can be sure Martha’s going to stand right behind that poor repairman to make sure he does it right.” Jessica sniffed righteously and then added, “Oh, she said to ask if anyone knows how Emily and her baby are doing, and she’ll be here next Monday.” The baby blanket Jessica had been working on was nearly finished. It gleamed in soft white folds in her lap, and her crochet hook moved as rapidly as if it were attached to a machine rather than a work-thickened hand.

  Alice sai
d, “Emily’s named her Morgana Jean. Six pounds, twenty inches, both at home, grandmom’s there helping.” She sighed and shrugged her big shoulders, fingers working on yet another afghan square.

  Jessica said, “Then I’ll have that pink wool, Betsy; just one skein, please. I’ll embroider little pink daisies around the edge of this.”

  As Betsy got up to get it, Kate, a trim woman working on a complex counted cross-stitch of a horse-drawn carriage on a rain-wet cobblestone street, asked, “Have they identified that skeleton yet?”

  Betsy replied, “I haven’t heard anything. But Patricia is going to meet with Sergeant Malloy to take a look at the bit of silk they found on the boat. She seems to think she can tell what that tangle of thread is, or was supposed to be.”

  The women started talking in low voices as Betsy went for the wool, and as she came back into earshot, a sudden silence fell. Jessica’s thin mouth was a mere line, Alice’s complexion was a bright pink, and the other two women were trying out poker faces. Honestly, thought Betsy, the way these people gossip! I wonder what they’re saying about me.

  She sat down with a sigh and asked a question a customer had brought in, about how to get colors that run out of needlework (soak in frequently renewed ice water or milk, wash in Orvus, rinse copiously, roll in towels, iron dry, don’t hang). Then, satisfied they were back on topic, she said she needed their advice getting started on her counted cross-stitch Christmas ornaments. She got out the kit and complained that the cloth was all one big piece, and they wanted her to leave it that way—“Is that right?”—and to baste all around the edge of it, and then across its length every four inches, and then sort the floss, making sure all the colors were there, and on and on. “When do I get to start stitching?”

  “But you are stitching,” said Kate in some surprise. “I almost like that part best, when you prepare your cloth and sort the colors, and start to see in your head what the project will look like, and even plan little changes you’ll make and so on.” Her voice had gotten dreamy at the prospect, and the women chuckled.

  Betsy said, “Oh, I get it. It’s like baking. You find a new recipe or a new version of an old one, and you get out the pans and line up the ingredients. You heat the milk and pour it and the sugar into the bowl, and the smell of the yeast as it starts to work is wonderful.”

  Jessica said a little dreamily, “Yes, it’s a lot like that,” and this time there was laughter.

  The Monday Bunch began discussing serging around the fabric on a sewing machine or even putting masking tape on it instead of basting, and were just starting on finding the center of a pattern, when the door went bing and Patricia entered, Malloy close behind her. She was wearing a green plaid swing coat and her dark hair was pulled back into a ribboned clip, which made her look prosperous and responsible. Malloy was wearing a raincoat that Columbo might have coveted. “Hi, everyone!” said Patricia, looking around. “Where’s Martha?”

  “Not here today,” said Jessica. “Why?”

  “Oh, no! I told Sergeant Malloy she was our bobbin lace expert. He wants to talk to her about that little piece of fabric they found, because I told him I think it’s part of a handkerchief edged in bobbin lace.”

  Malloy’s face also showed disappointment, but Alice Skoglund said quietly, “I used to do bobbin lace.”

  All heads came around. Since she had joined the Monday Bunch, no one had seen her do anything but crochet endless afghan squares. She set her heavy jaw and looked back calmly.

  “Well, Alice, can you look at this, then?” Patricia gestured at Malloy, who obediently put the square of glass on the table in front of Alice.

  She peered at it closely for a few moments, turning it once, then said, “Have we got a magnifying glass anywhere?”

  “Yes,” said Betsy, and went to the checkout desk. She pawed through two drawers before finding the big rectangular one with its handle on one corner. She brought it to Alice, who bent close and used it to study the glass plates for a longer while.

  “Yes,” she said finally, leaning back. “This is bobbin lace.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Malloy.

  “Yes.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “If you pick a strand and follow it, you can see how the twists were made. And these are twisted and crossed over like bobbin lace.”

  Jessica asked, “How sure can you be? Couldn’t it be something else? Tatting, maybe? Or crochet?”

  Alice looked sharply at Jessica, then said with an air of being patient with her, “No, it’s not the loop, loop, loop of crochet.” She looked at the blank faces of the other women and continued, “If you found the end of this and pulled, it wouldn’t all come undone, would it? So it’s not crochet. And it’s not tatting, I can’t see anything like those circles you get in tatting. But there are twists and weaving in it, and they look like bobbin lace patterns to me.” She bent over the fragment under glass again, this time so closely there was barely room for the magnifying glass. “Here, for example, this must have been ground. And here, what do you think, Patricia, the petal of a flower, maybe?”

  Patricia looked, the small neatness of her a strong contrast to the large woman bent over the glass. “I see what you mean, I think.”

  Alice said, pointing with a thick forefinger, “But all along here, the threads have been broken. And here, see how it’s pulled; this thread is thinned out to nothing here and here it’s thicker and there it’s thin again. Same with these. I never saw thread do that before.”

  She looked accusingly at Malloy, who shrugged. “It’s silk, if that’s any help. A textile expert says if you put animal fibers under pressure under water for a long time, they will stretch. And silk’s from worms, which are animals.”

  Patricia, still looking at the sample, nodded. “You know, I think you’re right, Alice; it’s not just pulled crosswise, the thread itself is stretched, and not evenly.”

  Alice said, “Yes, that alone makes it impossible to see what the pattern was.” She moved the magnifying glass along the fabric. “Though here, I think this was a line of picots. I don’t think this was torchon. Hmmm, binche?”

  “Bench?” echoed Betsy.

  “No, binche, a kind of bobbin lace. Well, maybe not. It’s too damaged to tell for sure.” She put the magnifying glass down and sat back again. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  Malloy said, notebook in hand, “But you’re absolutely sure it’s bobbin lace?” Alice nodded, and he wrote that down. “Is that a common kind of thing? I mean, lots of women knit and crochet. Do lots of women do bobbin lace?”

  “No,” Alice said.

  “The question is,” said Betsy, “did women make bobbin lace back in 1949?”

  “Oh, yes,” nodded Alice. “I was making it back then, and I wasn’t the only one. I learned it as a child; my Grandma brought it from the old country. My mother wasn’t interested, so Grandma taught me. It’s very difficult to learn from a book, you just about have to have someone show you, so I doubt there’s been a time since it was invented hundreds and hundreds of years ago that someone hasn’t been doing it.”

  “So I guess the patterns have all been passed along, too,” said Betsy.

  Alice nodded. “Of course, you can make up your own, too. Some people make lace into pictures, like of flowers or animals or trees. You can take a picture with a nice, easy outline, like from a coloring book, and make it into lace. I once saw a Batman, the lace maker handled the cape real nice, all lines and shading. But mostly you do geometrical patterns, repeats of flowers or leaves.”

  “Were more women or fewer doing it back then?”

  Alice considered for a bit. “Fewer, I think. There’s a trend back to handmade just now, so more women are learning how to do these things. There’s someone teaching it locally. She holds a regular class at Ingebretsen’s in Minneapolis.”

  “Is there something about the way people do this stuff,” began Malloy, thinking his way slowly through the question, “so that you can tel
l who did it? I mean, could you identify a person just by looking at the lace they make?”

  Alice nodded. “Sometimes. There are different skill levels, so if someone showed me a sample and said did this person or that person make this, and one was a beginner and the other one was experienced, that would be easy.”

  Patricia nodded. “Yes, that’s true of all needlework.”

  Malloy said, “What if they were both experienced?”

  “Then it would be impossible,” said Patricia.

  But Alice said, “Maybe not. Some people make up a pattern, or have a signature way of doing it, and if you’ve seen it, you can recognize it if you see it again. And some people just have a way with lace, so if you see something really well done, you might think she did it.”

  Malloy said, “Do you think this is a signature pattern?”

  Alice frowned massively at him and said, “It was all I could do to say it was bobbin lace. I can’t even tell what the pattern is, much less who might have done it.”

  Patricia added, “And even if she could figure out the pattern, what would that do? This skeleton you’re investigating isn’t a local person, so what good would it do to identify the pattern?”

  Malloy said, “Because there may be a husband or a daughter somewhere who still wonders what happened to their wife or mother. We’ve already gotten inquiries from other law enforcement agencies about the find. We’ll pass along any clues we get to the identity.”

  There was a little silence as this sank in, that there were people who had wondered sadly for fifty years what had become of their sister or mother.

  “Hold on a minute,” Alice said in a much kinder voice. “It may be possible to recreate the pattern of this lace. It will take time, but I think I can do it.”

  Patricia said, “Anything I can do to help, Alice, just ask.”

  “Thank you,” said Alice, and Betsy knew suddenly how rarely Alice had felt important in this group.

  Betsy asked, “Are you making any progress in identifying the skeleton?”

  “Not much. The problem is, there weren’t many clues aboard the boat, no shoes or clothing or a purse with a wallet, any of which would have been helpful. All we have are the bones and that piece of fabric—which might not even belong to the bones.”