A Murderous Yarn (4 page)

“See the winker?” he said, pointing to a small red
button light blinking rapidly. “If that stops winking, it means we’re running low on oil.” Betsy watched it for a while, but it never stopped winking.

Cars coming off the highway slowed for a look, causing others to honk impatiently. One, steering where he looked, swayed toward them, and Lars blew his whistle angrily, nearly hiding the Stanley in the steam and setting off a chorus of honks. Betsy stood and waved her fist at the driver, but was laughing too hard to make her threat worth anything.

Then there came a gap and they went on down the road, past the sudden steep hill of the cemetery, around a curve, and past the police station, then Adele’s Ice Cream and the McDonald’s. At the next stop sign they turned right and were back on St. Alban’s. The circuit, about three miles, had taken less than fifteen minutes.

The view along St. Alban’s Bay Road was more open but no less pleasant, with Excelsior Bay on their left and St. Alban’s Bay on their right. They went onto a two-lane bridge over the narrow link between them. Some people had already put their boats in the water, though it was a little early for pleasure sailing. Over the bridge was a yacht and boat sales and repair company, then a row of mixed small cottages and bigger houses, some hidden behind hedges, others open, with grass showing green and tulips budding. The trees on either side had leaves almost big enough to hide their branches. Betsy sniffed, testing the spring air, but the car had a strong aroma of its own, an unpleasant combination of gasoline, kerosene, and hot oil. But now, quite suddenly, the scent of gasoline was overwhelming. She turned to ask Lars about it and saw the look of alarm forming on his face.

He shut the throttle down and began to brake. “I hope this isn’t what I think it is,” he muttered. He reached for a valve knob, pulling onto the narrow, sloping shoulder, fighting the wheel one-handed as the tires gripped hard at the loose gravel.

As they slowed nearly to a stop, he turned to say, “Get—” but was interrupted by an enormous fiery explosion. Betsy flung her arms up and screamed. Smoke, dark flames, and gas fumes filled the air.

The fat oval hood was standing up, and black smoke was pouring out. Betsy was standing in the middle of the road looking at the car, with no memory of climbing down.

And then there were people running toward them.

A car going by swerved sharply to miss Betsy. It pulled onto the shoulder and the man driving it got out and ran toward them, his face alarmed. A passenger got out, cell phone to his ear, gesturing as he spoke.

Betsy suddenly realized she was deaf.

But she felt no pain. She was not scattered in small pieces over the surrounding area. She was not on fire or even burned. Or bleeding.

Lars was standing behind the Stanley cranking down a valve. He was calm, intact, and not on fire.

In fact, the car seemed to be intact, the smoke almost cleared away.

“What the hell happened?” shouted the driver of the stopped car as he came up to them, sounding to Betsy as if he were speaking from under a thick blanket. Lars said something back, which Betsy could not hear at all.

The man repeated his question, and Lars came out from behind the Stanley. “The pilot light went out!” he shouted.

Betsy began to laugh. It was a sick, hysterical laugh, and Lars hurried over to take her by the shoulders and shake her. “Hey!” he said. “Hey! Stop it!”

Betsy managed to stop, and put her hands on Lars’s arms to make him quit shaking her. “I—I’m oh-okay,” Betsy managed between teeth that were suddenly chattering. Her touch on Lars turned to a grasp, as her knees began to give way.

Several people came close, and one said, “Shall I call 911?”

Everyone’s voice was becoming audible, if muffled. Betsy touched one ear with the palm of her hand.

The man with the cell phone said, “I already did!”

“What did you do that for?” demanded Lars angrily.

Betsy heard a sound and turned back toward town. Was that the volunteer fire department siren? By the way the others were looking toward it, it was. She moved her jaw in a kind of yawn, trying to get her hearing the rest of the way back.

Lars said angrily, “Call and cancel! The car’s fine, and we’re fine!”

That was met with disbelieving silence.

“No, really,” said Betsy, “I’m all right. I’m not injured.” She looked at the Stanley, which seemed innocent of all wrongdoing, though the hood still stood upright. “But my God, Lars, if that’s what happens when the pilot light goes out, what happens when you run out of steam?” And she started laughing again.

“Hey,” he began, but she stepped back out of his reach.

“I’m fine,” she repeated, and in fact her knees seemed to have regained their strength. “Better see to your car.”

“Oh, it’s okay, really, it’s in perfect condition. We’ll
let the fumes air out and relight the pilot light, and we’re back on our way.” He walked over to the front of the car and began looking at the squat white round thing where the engine in an ordinary car would be.

“What the hell kind of a car is that?” asked a stocky young man near the front of the small crowd.

A skinny old man said, “I believe it’s a Stanley Steamer.”

Betsy said, surprised, “You’re absolutely right. How did you know that?”

“My grandfather had one. Kept it in an old shed back of the barn. He used to fire it up and let me drive it over the pastures. It could climb out of the deepest ditch on the place. Ran her on diesel fuel and kerosene, if I remember rightly. But I burned the boiler dry a couple of times and it wouldn’t run after that.”

He was speaking to the crowd as well as to Betsy. Lars had walked around to the side of the car to lift the front seat and rummage around among what sounded like heavy metal tools.

“What are you going to do?” the man with the cell phone asked him.

Lars came up with a flashlight and a length of stiff wire. “Gonna clean out the pilot light,” he said. “
If
all of you will give me some room!” He spoke with annoyance weighted by the unmistakable authority of a police officer, and everyone decided to give him all the room he wanted.

“I used to use a coat hanger,” the old man said, and he was immediately surrounded by people who wanted to hear more about coat hangers and Stanley Steamers.

Betsy went to stand behind Lars, trying to see without interfering in what he was doing. She heard a car
horn honking and honking and turned to see a big old Buick roaring up the road. “Here comes Jill,” she said.

Lars groaned. “She’s gonna make me sell it, I just know she is!” And then he groaned louder at the sound of a siren approaching. Several sirens.

The man who had waved the cell phone said, “I called and canceled! Honest!” Then he hurried into the passenger seat of his car and left.

The Buick slid to a stop across the road and Jill emerged, her face white. “What happened?” she demanded.

“The pilot light went out,” said Betsy, shrugging in further ignorance.

“Pilot light—?”

Lars said, slamming down the hood, “When the pilot light goes out, gasoline fumes collect, and if the boiler’s hot enough, it sets them off. You get a little bang, the hood flies up, the fumes escape, and you’re fine.”

Jill said, “I heard that ‘little bang’ three quarters of a mile from here. I imagine all of Excelsior, most of Shorewood, and half of Deephaven heard it. The 911 switchboard must’ve lit up like a Christmas tree.” She gestured back up the road at the approaching emergency vehicles, their sirens drowning out anything further she might have said.

The fire truck crew listened while Lars explained what was going on, the ambulance crew gave Betsy a cursory examination—Lars refused to let them examine him—and at last they departed. Most of the neighbors by then had gone back into their houses, though the old man hung out at a safe distance to watch Lars work.

Lars spent fifteen minutes clearing the pilot light tube, then reopened the valve to let Coleman gas reach
it, lit a long weed stem, and squatted to poke it through one of the holes in the front of the hood. There was a
whump
that shot flame out both holes. Lars fell backward, landing on his hands and bottom, but said, “See? It’s fine, she’s starting up for me!” He kept his head turned awkwardly away from Jill, and Betsy, in a pretense of going to see if her hat was in the car, saw the reason. The latest explosion had left a blister in place of Lars’s right eyebrow. But the burner was hissing happily, and Lars continued the process of rebuilding a head of steam, which took almost no time, as the boiler hadn’t cooled much during the breakdown.

Jill insisted Betsy ride with her, that Lars drive very slowly; and she followed behind him, emergency lights blinking, all the way home.

I
n a Minnesota summer, nights can be gloriously cool. At 4
A
.
M
. Saturday, June 12, in a dead calm, the temperature was sixty-three. By six it had risen to sixty-eight, and as the sun climbed, it continued to rise. A light breeze started flapping the pennants on the sailboats moored at private docks in St. Alban’s and Excelsior Bay.

The breeze caused the sailor heading out on Lake Minnetonka to reach for his jacket, but by the time he passed the Big Island, he had taken it off again. By 8
A
.
M
. , under a spotless sky, it was seventy-one.

Already the air around The Common, Excelsior’s lakeshore park, had begun to smell of grilled pork, hot dogs, cotton candy, smoothies, and deep-fried chicken tenders. Rows of white canvas booths were rising like geometrical mushrooms, filled to bursting with
paintings, jewelry, sculpture, Japanese kites, birdhouses shaped like English cottages, and other exotica, as artists prepared for business. Excelsior’s annual art fair was hoisting canvas as it prepared to get under way.

The weatherman predicted temperatures in the upper eighties by midafternoon, but added that the continued light breeze off the lake would keep everyone at the fair comfortable.

Betsy came out of her shop around nine. The long block of Lake Street that Crewel World faced was empty of cars, but had a white canvas booth of its own set up in the middle of the street. Betsy headed for it. There were three people in the booth, a man and two women. Above the booth was a plastic banner with
ANTIQUE CAR RUN
printed on it in rust-brown letters.

The real Antique Car Run, from New London to New Brighton, was next weekend. Today, Saturday, a group of twenty-five drivers were in the Twin Cities on a publicity tour that included a run from the state capitol building in St. Paul to Excelsior and back.

It was rumored the governor would ride in one of the cars, a rumor the club was careful not to extinguish. Minnesota’s eccentric governor always drew a crowd.

Both women in the booth were on cell phones, and both were gesturing so wildly that Betsy, approaching, felt a pang of alarm. But the man, a nice-looking fellow about Betsy’s age, winked at her and said, “They’re always like this just before things get under way.”

Betsy said, “Things are going according to plan, then.”

“Yes, the first car will leave in about five minutes.”

“Where do you want me?”

“Right here. But we don’t have anything for you to
do until the first ones arrive, which won’t be for about two hours. Your tasks will be to note the time of arrival of each vehicle, and to point them at me in the booth so I can direct them to parking places along the curb.” He glanced up and down the empty street, which had No Parking signs tied to every pole. “I hear we’re not very popular with the committee running the Art Fair.”

Betsy turned to look up toward The Common, two blocks away. Starting before dawn, a slow-moving line of vans, SUVs, trucks, and campers bearing artists and their work had clogged this street, the last draining away into the fair only an hour ago. But now the street belonged to the Antique Car Run, so none of the many hundreds of visitors to the fair could park here today. This distressed those running the art fair, because every extra block visitors had to walk to the lakefront meant their feet would give out that much sooner, giving that much less time for the artists to extract money.

No, Deb Hart had
not
been pleased at a meeting of her art fair committee and the Antique Car Run committee.

In vain the Antique Car Run president had argued that people who came to see the horseless carriages would then wander over to the fair so temptingly nearby.

Deb had argued that people who came to look at old cars were not the same kind of people who visited art fairs. She had suggested a parade of old cars up Excelsior’s main street, all the way up to the far other end, where there was plenty of room and no competition from fair goers. “Besides,” she’d pointed out in a reasonable voice, “there’s the car dealership down there,
which is probably more in tune with the kind of people who turn out for an event like yours.”

But Mayor Jamison had sided with the antique car event planners. “There are all kinds of car people,” he had said, “hot rod people, classic car people, new car people. But horseless carriage people are different. They’re not interested in tires and cubic-inch measurements of engines, but the history and unique beauty of these early machines. Such people see their antiques as works of art rather than mechanical devices, and so might more properly be classed among the art seekers who come to the fair.”

Betsy, who had endured much ear-bending from Lars about main burner jets, valve plungers, and cylinder oil, had not slipped into prevarication by so much as a nod of agreement with the mayor. Instead, she bit her tongue, while Deb Hart, all unknowing, succumbed to the mayor’s argument.

Now, on this beautiful June morning, she looked at the empty street and said, “No, the art fair is not happy with us.” Then she went back to the shop, unlocked the door, and stood a moment, thinking how she was going to accomplish her next task, which was to get the quilt stand just inside her door out onto the sidewalk.

Last night, a little before closing, an elderly woman named Mildred Feeney had come in asking for Betsy. She said she was associated with the Antique Car Run and asked if she might store a quilt that was to be a prize in a raffle in Betsy’s shop “just for tonight,” and Betsy had agreed. She had also agreed to bring it out in the morning. But that was before she’d seen the quilt and the stand on which it was to be displayed. She’d been busy in the back while it was brought in,
apparently by a big crew of husky men, because now, looking at it, she wondered how on earth she was going to bring it out again all by herself.

The quilt, a queen-size model, was draped over a large wooden frame shaped like an upside down V. The frame was large enough to accommodate the quilt unfolded, holding it several inches clear of the floor on both sides.

And the stand wasn’t on wheels. Betsy took one end with both hands, tried to lift it, and decided the wood of the frame was at least oak, if not ironwood. The frame wasn’t exactly top-heavy, but without someone to steady it at the other end, it would easily tip over. Betsy’s shop was cozy, not spacious, and her front door was of an ordinary size. She hadn’t realized there was so sharp a curve from right inside the door to between the white dresser and the counter. How was she to get the long, inflexible frame and its clumsy burden to the door?

By pulling and shifting and, at one point, climbing up onto the counter and down the other side to adjust the angle of the frame.

But the door opened inward, and so the frame had to be moved backward again. And then the door must be propped open—no employee had propitiously turned up, of course—and the struggle begun again.

At last Betsy got the stand most of the way out the door and was beginning to fear there wasn’t enough sidewalk. She was pausing to consider this new complication when the quilt suddenly slid away, like a giant snake heading for the underbrush. Betsy grabbed for it, then saw it was being draped over the arms of Mildred Feeney, who was smiling at her. “If we take the quilt
off,” she said, “the stand folds up and we can carry it to the booth quite easily.”

“Oh? Oh, yes, I should have thought of that,” said Betsy, blushing at herself for also thinking, even for an instant, that the quilt had made an attempt to escape. Even if the frame didn’t fold, which it did (the hinges being clearly visible once the quilt was off), it would have been lighter and easier to manage without all those thick yards of fabric on it.

The naked V, folded, was not hard to manage, especially with Mildred, who was stronger than she looked, helping.

Mildred had already put a cash box and an immense roll of double tickets in the booth. After Betsy helped redrape the quilt, Mildred fixed Betsy with a look. “They’re a dollar apiece,” she said in her sweet but firm old-woman’s voice, “six for five dollars. How many shall I tear off for you?”

Betsy sighed and bought twenty dollars’ worth, asking in her own firmest voice for a receipt so she could record the money as a charitable donation. It never occurred to her that she might win—Betsy never won raffles.

Perhaps, she reflected on her way back into the shop, she had been a little too quick to promise her sponsorship of Lars and his Steamer. Between the parts he had had to order—very expensive and one all the way from England—and the strange, also expensive, requirements in cylinder and gear oil and kerosene for the pilot light, and the lousy mileage it got on gasoline—
plus
the entry fee for the Antique Car Run and raffle tickets, this was turning out to be a very expensive sponsorship. She was also beginning to regret that she’d volunteered to help
out at the Run. It was taking too much time away from the shop. And since her volunteer assignment on the day of the New London–New Brighton run was to record the names of the drivers as they left on the run, and then to help prepare and serve lunch at the halfway stop, she wasn’t even going to get to ride with Lars next Saturday.

She began the opening-up process in her shop. She was going to be in and out today, so Godwin was going to be helped by Shelly Donohue, an elementary school teacher who worked for Betsy during the summer months. Betsy turned on the lights, put the start-up money in the cash register, and tuned the radio to a classical station with the volume barely audible. She was just plugging in the old vacuum cleaner when Shelly came in.

“Did you hear the latest?” asked Shelly breathlessly.

Shelly was an inveterate gossip, and her “latest” was usually exceedingly trivial, but Betsy politely delayed turning on the machine so she could hear whatever the silly tidbit was.

“John threw Godwin out.”

Betsy dropped the wand. “Oh, Shelly, are you sure?”

“How sure do you want? Godwin slept at my house last night.”

“Is he very upset?”

“We sat up till two this morning, and he never stopped crying for more than five minutes at a time. He’s a real mess.”

“I suppose that means he won’t be in today?” Betsy felt for Godwin, but she really needed two people in the shop on weekends. Especially this weekend, with two attractions bringing lots of visitors to town.

“He said he’d be here, but to tell you he’d be late, because he had to go get his clothes. He got a call from a neighbor that they’re in a big pile along the curb outside John’s condo.”

Betsy sat down. Godwin’s clothes were enormously expensive: Armani suits, silk shirts, alpaca sweaters, handmade shoes, all bought by John, of course—Godwin couldn’t have bought the sleeve of one suit on the salary Betsy paid him. John loved to ornament his handsome boy toy and had taught Godwin to treat the clothes with respect. If they had been unceremoniously dumped out in the street, this wasn’t a mere lover’s quarrel; John must be serious about the breakup.

“This is terrible. I feel so sorry for Godwin! And I can’t imagine him coming in after having to pick his beautiful clothes up off the ground. How cruel of John!”

“I agree. Goddy is so upset that even if he does turn up, I don’t think he’ll be much use. So what are we going to do? With you out most of the day, we have to have another person.”

“All right, call Caitlin and see if she’s available. If she isn’t, go down the list. If you get down to Laverne, you’ll want a third person.” Caitlin, a high school senior, had been stitching since she was six; Laverne, a retired brewery worker, barely knew linen from Aida and was afraid of the cash register. “Meanwhile, I hope he comes before I have to get back out to the booth. I really want to talk to him. Has he got someplace to go? I mean, besides your place?”

“I don’t think so. He was crying that John made him give up all his real friends, except me and you. But he can stay with me for as long as he wants. I’ve got a spare bedroom. And Goddy doesn’t mind the dogs.”

“Is that what the fight was about, John’s jealousy?” asked Betsy.

“Something like that. Goddy says John accused him—falsely, Goddy says—of flirting with Donny DePere at a party. But John is very jealous, he won’t let Goddy have any male friends, even straight ones.” A smile flickered across Shelly’s face. “Goddy says he’s so frustrated he caught himself flirting with a girl just to keep his hand in.”

“What do you think, was Godwin flirting with another man?”

Shelly hesitated only briefly. “Yes, I think so. But it’s still John’s fault, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think I have a right to an opinion. I don’t know the rules of that relationship, and I only met John once.”

“Yes, well, that snotty attitude you saw at your Christmas party—” Shelly assumed a lofty attitude and sniffed lightly. “ ‘How terribly tedious your friends are, Goddy,’ ” she murmured, then grimaced. “That’s John all over. What a jerk!”

“Yes, but he’s a wealthy jerk. That enables Godwin to work here for very low wages, for which I am very grateful,” said Betsy heartlessly. “So encourage Goddy to kiss and make up, will you?”

The door went
Bing!
and they turned to see the subject of their conversation come in. Godwin was a handsome young man of barely medium height, slim and blond, wearing tight jeans, a white linen shirt with no collar, and loafers with no socks. Normally ebullient and witty, he was looking very woebegone at the moment.