Framed in Lace Page 7

  Betsy said, “There’s a police artist in California who can put a face back on a skull. Perhaps you should contact him.”

  Malloy smiled. “Minnesota has an artist who can do that, too. Kerrie is, in fact, working on that task already.”

  Alice said, “What do you mean, put a face back on?”

  Malloy said, “It’s something that’s been around for awhile now. She takes measurements and covers the bones with clay according to the numbers, and there’s the dead person looking back at you. We’ve broken more than one case by showing a photograph of Kerrie’s work around. It’s a science, the way these artists go about this.”

  Kerrie held a skull between her hands and stared at the face. Although it had been cleaned, it was still faintly green. It had belonged to a woman, one who had been badly used. Pieces of bone had been glued back in place, gaps here and there filled with clay.

  Who are you? Kerrie thought, directing it as a gentle question. Sometimes she got a strong feeling about the victim, once even a name, which turned out to be right. But nothing came this time.

  She went to a big wooden cabinet against the wall and got a clear plastic box—the one with the red rubber stubs in it. They looked like pencil erasers cut into various small lengths, which is what they were. She also took out a fresh box of Sculpey modeling clay, and a bottle of glue.

  As Malloy had said, there was a science to this business. Kerrie had gone through two intense courses in New Mexico to learn it. She would glue the markers on mapped areas of the skull to show the varying thickness of flesh at those points, then lay strips of clay between the markers. She would measure eye and ear and nose openings to determine the shape and length of the nose and ears and placement of the eyes, and as she filled in the spaces, a face would grow on the bone.

  But when that was done, there was still the indeterminate to deal with: color of eyes, thickness of eyebrows, hair color and style, whether the face was habitually tense or angry or happy. No science could fill in these variables. Kerrie would keep her work on her desk, waiting to see if she’d get a flash of insight—it amounted sometimes to ESP—before completing the assignment. Sometimes it felt as if her small cubicle were haunted by the spirit of the deceased, so always, always, she handled her charges with respect and humility.

  She paused again after gluing the little rubber markers to the skull, holding it cradled in both hands to ask again, “Who are you?”

  But again, the answer was silence.

  On Tuesday afternoon Betsy had a visitor. Before the electronic bing had faded his rough voice shouted, “What’s this I hear?”

  Betsy was behind a set of shelves that marked off a little area at the back of her shop, rearranging old stitchery magazines in date order—people would replace them any old how, if they replaced them at all. She was alone in the shop; Godwin had gone to pick up a shipment of fabric.

  She recognized the voice; it belonged to Joe Mickels, her landlord.

  “Hey!” he shouted again. “Anyone here?”

  “What is it, Mr. Mickels?” she asked, a trifle impatiently, coming out from behind the shelves.

  Mickels was a broad man, somewhat below middle height, with a mane of white hair and big, old-fashioned sideburns. He also wore an old-fashioned overcoat, dark gray wool with a fur collar that looked like Persian lamb—the real stuff, doubtless. Mickels would never wear fake fur, especially that of some edible animal. He was old-fashioned even beyond his years, a throwback to the unbridled capitalists of his great-grandfather’s day, and as avaricious. And proud of it; that explained the coat, and the sideburns, which for him didn’t date to the 1970s but the 1870s. He’d have worn spats if they were still sold, and happily sneered at frostbitten little girls selling matches, if there were any on the streets of Excelsior.

  That old-fashioned arrogance showed in his voice.

  “You shouldn’t leave the front unattended like this; someone could walk in and steal you blind.”

  “The sort of person who lusts after alpaca yarn and bamboo knitting needles isn’t the sort to steal them,” she said. “Is that why you came in? To warn me not to leave the front unguarded?”

  “It would have been, if I’d known. What I want to know is, what is this I hear about Mrs. Winters?”

  “Martha Winters? What about her?” she asked impatiently. More gossip!

  “Did she murder her husband?”

  Betsy stared at him. “What in the world makes you ask a question like that?”

  “That skeleton they found on that boat.”

  “The skeleton is a female.”

  He gestured impatiently. “I know that! But I heard it might belong to that woman Carl Winters is supposed to have run off with. I suppose it occurred to everyone when they found it that maybe Carl didn’t run off with her, he murdered her. But now I hear they’re looking for Carl’s body, too; they think Mrs. Winters murdered both of them.”

  “Where on earth did you hear that?”

  Mickels looked suddenly less angry, and his voice was less certain when he said, “Irene Potter told me, over at the Waterfront Café, not ten minutes ago.”

  “Irene—? And you believed her?”

  Mickels shrugged even less certainly. “She’s not wrong all the time. And she was a real help solving your sister’s murder.”

  What he meant was that it was Irene Potter who supplied Joe Mickels with a badly needed alibi when he was a suspect.

  Crewel World’s building belonged to Mickels, who had long planned to tear it down and put up something bigger. He had been ruthlessly leaning on Betsy’s sister Margot for months, trying to make her give up her lease and move out. His eagerness to dispossess Betsy after Margot’s death and his fury on learning that even Margot’s death hadn’t broken the lease had soured any early chance of rapprochement between him and Betsy.

  Now he hoped that when Margot’s estate was closed, Betsy would take the money and close the shop. Struggling with the arcana of small business, Betsy often considered doing just that. Among the things stopping her was a disinclination to give Joe Mickels the satisfaction. She was aware that Mickels believed he was being mostly polite and endlessly accommodating. For example, he allowed her to live in Margot’s old apartment over the shop and hadn’t even raised the rent. Which he could still do, if she aggravated him enough.

  So Betsy reined in her impatience and said, “Sit down, Mr. Mickels. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Warily, he took a seat. “No, thanks, I just had one.”

  She sat down across from him. “Why did you think Irene was right when she told you Martha Winters murdered both her husband and that woman—I can’t think of her name—”

  “Trudie Koch. She was a waitress at the Blue Ribbon Café. Well, when I came into the Waterfront, Irene was there talking sixteen to the dozen with Myrtle Jensen, who—I don’t know if you know her, she’s one of the Excelsior Historical Society ladies. Myrtle was telling about how Sergeant Malloy interrogated her over this skeleton business, wanting to know when the Hopkins was sunk. She—Myrtle—sold him a history book that said it was 1949, and he wanted to know what month, and she told him it was the second or third of July.” Suddenly, deftly, he put on the face of a sweet old lady and spoke in a soft, old voice. “ ‘I remember it was July because a neighbor came over and told me he saw it being towed out to be sunk the day before, or maybe the day before that. It was on the Fourth of July he came over, we were boiling corn in our backyard, it was simply blazing hot, my poor husband was just miserable in all that heat taking care of the fire, and we gave our neighbor an ear and he told me he’d seen it being towed out full of rocks.’ ”

  Betsy, smiling at his clever impression, asked, “And what did Irene say?”

  And Mickels became Irene Potter of the shiny eyes and malicious tongue. He said, in a skillful parody of Irene’s rapid speech, “ ‘I’ve been talking to people who remember back then, and what I conclude is that Martha found out her Carl was messing around with
Trudie and she got into a fight with Carl and hit him, and killed him, and buried him in her backyard, and then she went down to meet Trudie when Trudie got off work—in place of Carl, you see—and hit her and hid her body on the boat, which was tied up right there waiting to be towed out and sunk.’ What was interesting is that Myrtle said Martha gave up gardening the year her husband disappeared, her yard went all to weeds, she said. And then she said everyone always liked Carl Winters, he didn’t have an enemy in the world. He liked to flirt with the ladies, but it was all in fun, Myrtle said, and he was a hard worker, always taking on little part-time jobs in addition to his dry cleaners.” Again there was a hint of old lady in Mickels’s repetition of Myrtle’s report.

  Betsy smiled. “Well, I kind of hate to spoil everyone’s fun, but it’s impossible that the skeleton is Trudie’s. You see, Carl and Trudie disappeared in 1948, and the Hopkins wasn’t sunk until 1949. For another thing, I talked with Sergeant Malloy only yesterday and he didn’t say a word about looking for Carl Winters’s body. And, one more thing, if I may be so bold: What’s your interest in this?”

  “Because I used to own the mortgage on Winters’s dry cleaning store. I bought it after Martha took it over, and I’m the one who brought the mortgage to her after the last payment and watched her burn it.”

  He seemed to think that was all the explanation necessary and turned away to look around the needlework shop—though she suspected he was not seeing the shop but its replacement. Doubtless something in steel and granite, with THE MICKELS BUILDING engraved in stone over the entrance.

  At last he became aware of something in the silence and turned back to find Betsy looking at him inquiringly.

  His forehead wrinkled while he did a swift dig into his memory to see where she had stopped following his chain of reason, and said, “Mrs. Winters took over the dry cleaners and ran it by herself after Carl disappeared.”

  But Betsy still looked at him inquiringly.

  He said impatiently, “Don’t you see? If she killed him, she couldn’t inherit that place, not legally! I don’t know who should have inherited it, but she couldn’t, because you can’t profit from a crime! I may have to run this through a court, and going to law always costs a fortune!”

  Betsy sighed. Of course, if it was important to Mr. Mickels, it involved money.

  He continued, “How sure are you about the discrepancy in the year?”

  “Mrs. Winters sat in that very chair a week ago yesterday and told me and three other women that Carl disappeared in 1948. So if the history books say the Hopkins was sunk in 1949, then the skeleton can’t be Trudie Koch’s, unless the murderer saved her up for a year in his basement.”

  Mickels’s enormous sandy eyebrows lifted, then something almost like a smile pulled his wide, thin mouth. He smacked his hand gently on the table and got to his feet. “I guess I should have known better than to believe Irene Potter. Thank you, Ms. Devonshire.”

  After he left, Betsy sat for awhile, thinking. Why had Mickels come to her about this? Did he think she was investigating again? Well, why wouldn’t he? Everyone else did! She grimaced and went back to sorting out magazines. This one looked tattered. Look, someone had torn four pages out of it, stealing a pattern. What nerve!

  But as she continued, she had trouble concentrating. Something was waving its hand from the back of her mind. What? Something about fishing from a boat.

  She tried to dismiss it, but again the thought waved for her attention, and she sat back on her heels. She could picture the Hopkins, stripped of its superstructure, waiting to be towed out—no, pulled up onto the shore and abandoned. Ah, that was it! Martha Winters had said something about the boat sitting on the lakeshore, being used by boys as a fishing pier. How long had it sat there before being towed out and sunk? Two years or more, according to Martha. Betsy considered that. Perhaps it was something she should mention to Malloy. A murderer certainly wouldn’t keep a body in his basement, but he might stuff it into the bottom of an old wreck. And if he had, it might remove that discrepancy of a year between Carl and Trudie disappearing and the boat being sunk behind the Big Island. Malloy should be told so he could look into it.

  She went to the library table and phoned the police department. Sergeant Malloy was out, so she left word for him to call. But, haunted by doubt, she dialed another number.

  This time, she called Mayor Jamison at his day job. “Excuse me for bothering you with a stupid question, but do you remember back when you were a kid and you used to fish off the Hopkins—well, I guess it was the Minnetonka, then—over by the dredging company?”

  Jamison laughed and replied in his flat midwestern twang, “You bet! Why, has someone been telling you about the time I played hookey?”

  “No—”

  “Good, because I didn’t start playing hookey until the third grade, and the boat was gone by then.” Jamison laughed again.

  Betsy, smiling now, said, “No, I wanted to ask you if you remember a terrible smell coming from that boat one summer.”

  “A terrible smell?”

  “You know, like something died on board her.”

  “No, it never smelled like anything but water weed and fuel oil. We used to crawl all over the inside of that thing and come out looking like we was part mermaids and part oil riggers. Well, we did find a drowned rat in there once. And I guess it did stink. What’s this all about, anyhow?”

  “Nothing much, especially since you tell me you climbed all over the inside of the boat. That’s right, isn’t it? There wasn’t a room or something below decks you couldn’t get at, was there?”

  “No. Anyway, there wasn’t a room under the main deck to start with. Why, is it important?”

  “No, no. Not from what you tell me.”

  “Say, listen here, are you—What?” This last query was asked away from the receiver. “Gosh, I forgot, thanks for reminding me. Betsy, I’ve got a meeting to get to. Talk to you later. Good-bye.”

  Betsy hung up, and this time when she went back to work, her mind was clear and at ease. If someone had stuffed a body into that boat while it was pulled up on shore, Jamison and his childhood buddies would have found it. She smiled to think of the sensation that would have caused in this town; no one would ever have forgotten that! She pictured the slightly shy mayor as a boy crawling around on a big old boat, tearing his clothes on rusty nails, coming home smeared with algae and traces of antique fuel oil. Perhaps he’d caught a nice bass to mollify his mother; Lake Minnetonka has long been famous for its bass.

  But she was positive now; the skeleton couldn’t be Trudie Koch.

  The front door sounded, and Godwin came in, a bulky package in his arms, all amused about something. “Guess what I heard?” he asked. “The police are going to arrest Martha Winters for the murder of Trudie Koch and dig up her yard to see if her husband is buried there.”

  “How dare you go carrying outrageous tales like that?” she demanded. “Poor Martha, she’s a very nice woman who probably never killed anything bigger than a fly in her whole life.”

  Godwin, taken aback, said, “Well, she does seem an unlikely candidate for that sort of thing, since I’ve never seen her lose her temper. But I heard from two different people that Malloy is going to arrest her.” His eyes narrowed. “Of course, maybe she’s been afraid to show her real self in case people suspected.”

  “Godwin, listen to me, this vicious rumor-mongering has got to stop! I don’t want to hear one more word from you or anyone else about Martha Winters murdering people. It isn’t true. It can’t possibly be true. That skeleton can’t be Trudie’s.” She explained the discrepancy in years, concluding, “Now you see why it can’t be true, and why I want you to stop spreading that terrible story.”

  Godwin said with admiration, “I might have known you would investigate and come up with the truth. You are so clever! I can’t wait to lay this on Irene next time I see her. I hope she comes in this afternoon.”

  But Irene didn’t, and Godwin had to b
e satisfied with sharing Betsy’s cleverness with other customers, though only when Betsy wasn’t close enough to overhear.

  Godwin had gone home, and Betsy actually had the two-sided needlepoint sign in her hand, ready to turn Closed to face the street, when Jessica Turnquist appeared outside the door, one gloved hand upraised and a pleading look on her face.

  Betsy opened the door.

  “Thank you, Betsy. May I come in? I really have something very important to ask you.”

  Betsy stepped back, but she dropped the Closed sign in place as she closed the door. “What is it?”

  “You’ve probably heard the rumors about them arresting Martha.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard. It’s ridiculous, of course.”

  “I’m glad you agree! Martha wouldn’t murder anyone! That’s why I’m here. I want you to prove it.”

  Betsy nearly laughed out loud. “I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to repeat this. I am not a detective, I am not a police officer, I am not a private investigator. It’s not my job, and I don’t want the job of proving anything about anybody.”

  “But everyone says—”

  “Everyone is wrong. Just because Sergeant Malloy asked me to ask my customers if they could recognize a bit of fabric edged with lace doesn’t mean I have become a peace officer sworn to uphold the law. He put that photocopy in Needle Nest, too; why don’t you go ask Pat Ingle if she’ll investigate for you?”

  Jessica, her eyes worried and sad, put a hand on Betsy’s arm. “Because Pat Ingle wasn’t the one who realized how a missing piece of needlepoint pointed to a murderer. I’m not sure why you don’t want to help Martha. Perhaps it’s because you’re working so hard in the shop. And of course Martha isn’t a relative, so you don’t have the same motive you had when Margot was murdered. But please, think about it. Please. She’s my very best friend and I can’t bear the way the town is talking about her.”