Crewel Yule (10 page)

And when she looked in the mirror, she was further discouraged at her awful face. Her eye makeup was smudged and her nose and eyes were red. Her hair was hanging crazily—she had run her fingers through it on the elevator. People must have been staring at her, crying and dripping coffee and wiping her hands in her hair.

This was impossible. She couldn’t go back down to Mr. Moore’s suite. And why should she? He would have thrown the ruined model away by this point, surely. She couldn’t sit there beside a stack of patterns with no model.
And looking like the crack of doom
, she added, again noting the ruins in the mirror.

She couldn’t go home. No one could leave the hotel, the blizzard had all the streets and roads closed. What was she going to do for the rest of the show?

First of all, she closed the plug in the bathtub, put her stained skirt and panty hose in, and covered them with cold water. The stains hadn’t set, maybe they could be rinsed out. Then she washed the smeared makeup off her face, let down the rest of her hair and combed it out, and changed into jeans and a chambray shirt. Now she looked presentable and, except for the glow of fury in her eyes, totally different from the sullen artisan who had sat in Bewitching Stitches.

It was ten after ten when she decided to go look for Belle.

Ten

The police hadn’t come yet, so Belle’s body still lay where it had fallen near the foot of the steps. It was surrounded now by screens made of seven-foot-tall stainless steel frames filled with brown cloth. A gray-haired woman in black sweats and silver lamé walking shoes sat on a folding chair outside one of the screens, eating soup and crackers from a bowl sitting on a plate. Everyone knew what the screens hid and she guarded, but knowing is not the same as experiencing. The atrium was full of only slightly subdued voices talking and even laughing.

The hotel had set up a big, round table at the other end of the atrium, offering a buffet-style lunch of two kinds of soup plus chili, breads and crackers, and a salad bar. The restaurant in the far corner was open, with a full menu, and the bar was serving hamburgers, hot dogs, and cold sandwiches. Most of the glass-topped tables and chairs had been moved toward the center to make room for the buffet table. The ones nearest the buffet were thickly crowded, but diners thinned out the closer they were to the screens—though even the nearest was a dozen yards away.

“Why didn’t they set up in the big ballroom?” asked the person ahead of Betsy in the buffet line, dipping into the chili pot.

“Because there are people camped in the big ballroom,” said the person ahead of her. “And the small one. People who were supposed to check out this morning, but who can’t get away because the airport’s closed. Not that they could get to the airport, even if it was open,” she added, lifting and tipping the metal bin that held the last of the grated cheese over her bowl. Betsy sighed. She would have liked some cheese on her own chili.

Since it was impossible to leave the hotel, everyone was eating in today, and extra chairs were brought from the smaller meeting rooms. And awful as it was to eat in the presence of death, people didn’t want to be alone, so the bar and restaurant were packed and all the tables in the atrium were occupied, even the unpopular ones. Those who managed to get a place at a table near the buffet found they could quite literally rub elbows with their fellow diners.

Betsy stood bemused; she had been among the last to file past the big round table with its picked-over greens and nearly emptied dressing bins. She’d given up her desire for a salad, and now, with a bowl of cheeseless chili and a glass of milk on her tray, she couldn’t see a place to sit down. Well, she could have crowded in with the four oblivious people at the table
over there,
but not if there were any alternative.

Then she saw Godwin stand up and wave at her from a tiny round table meant for two that had Jill, another woman, and two other men sitting at it. Nevertheless, he gestured again for her to come over, pointing at an empty chair set a little to one side. As she approached, slowly and doubtfully, the others moved their chairs back, enlarging their circle to make room for her, though it meant they had to reach well forward to spoon or fork up a bite of their meals.

She smiled her apologies and said, “Thank you for making room.” She sat, put her bowl on the table, and began to crumble her crackers inside the packet before opening it and sprinkling them over her chili.

Godwin said, “I don’t know why people won’t take their food up to their rooms. This place is packed!”

“If you’re feeling crowded, why don’t you go up?” asked Jill, giving him one of her coolest looks.

“I don’t know.” He put his fork down and looked as if he were about to take her suggestion, but changed his mind. “Because I don’t want to. What happened was so horrible, I don’t want to be alone.”

“See?” said Jill.

“Me, too,” said Betsy. “It’s awful to be so near . . . her, but I feel like I need to be around lots of people.”

“Besides,” said Godwin, “there’s people here you want to talk to. When you’re shopping, you’re shopping. When you’re eating lunch, you get to catch up with old friends.” He looked around at the others at his table. “I’m Godwin DuLac, by the way. That’s Betsy Devonshire, my boss, who owns Crewel World in Excelsior, Minnesota.”

A small but very handsome man with dark hair and brown eyes sat across from Godwin. He was holding his turkey club sandwich in his hand to give others room on the table.

“I’m Terrence Nolan, I design for Dimples,” he said. “I’m with you on not wanting to be alone.”

“No, you
are
Dimples,” Godwin said, and smiled to show his own dimple and waved his eyelashes at Terrence.

Terrence waved back, he even added a wink, and Godwin began to glow. With his lover John hundreds of miles away, Godwin was like a horse let loose after a month in the barn. A mere dead body wasn’t going to stop him flirting.

Betsy said to Terrence, “I like your birds, especially Rex and Spike, the kingfishers; and I love the Santa heads. You make him look like a real person, kind of sad but kind. Not that I’ve stitched them,” she added hastily, “but the models hanging on the wall of my shop sell a lot of your patterns.”

“You need the eyes and fingers of a ten-year-old to stitch some of those patterns,” agreed a good-looking man in a black sport coat and open-collar green shirt. He had a strong accent that put him from somewhere near New Jersey. His head was shaved entirely, an attempt to disguise his male pattern baldness, but the bald spot was outlined in a gray shadow. He touched his temple in a kind of salute. “I’m Harry Mason, I own Hal’s Floss and Fabric store in Philadelphia.”

“You and your wife?” asked Godwin, hoping not and prepared to flirt in that direction, too.

“No,” replied Harry, then dashed Godwin’s hopes by continuing, “My wife is an attorney. I was an architect until I broke both legs in a car accident and was laid up for a long time. A nurse brought me a counted cross-stitch kit. I liked it so much that I asked for another, and by the time I was up and around I was hooked.”

He looked to one side and asked in a southern accent, “How bad was you hooked, boy?” and replied in his Philadelphia accent, “So badly that I quit my job with Wolfe, Barnes, and Kirkwood to start Hal’s Floss and Fabric, Inc. That was four years ago; and my goal in life is to show men how needlework can save your life, even your soul. It’s not expensive, it’s not hard to get started, and you never run out of things to learn about it. Plus, you can enter it in competitions.” He looked away and said in that southern voice, “But Ah don’
lahk
competitions!” And went on in his normal voice, “Or not.”

Godwin giggled and said, “Do you often talk to yourself?”

Harry raised his eyebrows and said with earnest curiosity, “Never! Why do you ask?”

Godwin laughed again and said, “Never mind, forget it. How’s your business doing?”

“Last year the store met expenses and this year I was going to show a profit until I had to come here in December and add three thousand dollars to inventory.”

Betsy said, “Don’t open the bags.”

“Huh?”

She explained the ploy of storing the purchases unopened until after the first of the new year.

Harry nodded, smiling. “I guess I’ll be in the black after all. Thank you.”

“I’m Lenore King, and I love those Professor Fizzby patterns of yours, Mr. Nolan,” said a tall, very slender woman of perhaps forty summers. She wore a loose-fitting blue chambray shirt that matched her eyes, and her dark brown hair was pulled back and fastened with a scrunchie at the nape of her neck. Her lips were smiling, but not her eyes.

“Thanks,” said Terrence carelessly.

“Give her praise; it’s due,” said Betsy, “this is the designer of that sampler Christmas tree Bewitching Stitches is selling.”

Terrence looked at her with more respect. “I saw that,” he said. “Someone told me about it and I went for a look. Samplers aren’t my thing, but that is downright ingenious.”

She blushed and crumbled the fragment of dinner roll into crumbs with her long fingers.

“You’re very kind,” she muttered. “Especially since the model is such a mess.”

Godwin said, “What suite is Bewitching Stitches in? I’d like to take a look at it.”

Betsy said, “Suite five eighteen. Go look if you like, but I’ve already bought four copies of the pattern.” She smiled and added, “I made a note to warn my customers that it needs careful, professional finishing.”

Lenore’s blush deepened, and she pinched the last crumbs between her fingers so hard her fingernails turned white. She said, “Don’t bother. The model’s probably been thrown away. I spilled coffee all over it a while ago.”

“Oh, too bad!” said Godwin.

“It’s all right, it wasn’t exactly a showpiece. I didn’t get my good model in time for Nashville. I had to bring the working piece, all crooked and full of loose threads. It’s affecting sales, and I’m afraid Bewitching Stitches isn’t going to buy any more of my work.”

“A lot of people were caught on the hop when the Market got pushed back to December,” Terrence said.

Lenore hesitated, frowning, then made up her mind and said, “The thing is, I had it stitched in plenty of time. This was important—it’s my first pattern for Bewitching Stitches. But the store where I took it for finishing messed me up. They know me there, they knew it was a debut for the Nashville Market, we talked about it. Belle wrote down that I needed it by February 10. When they changed the date to December, I came in and told them, but she didn’t call the finisher to change the due date.”

Betsy said in a low, horrified voice, “How could they do something so irresponsible?” It was bad enough not to get a piece finished in time for a birth or Christmas or a wedding, but you could always give the present after the date. There was no way to retro-present a new model; this offense was magnitudes greater.

“Are you sure they knew about the change in date?” she asked.

“Of course I’m sure!” said Lenore. “The owners were coming to the Market. They knew the piece was supposed to be shown here. How could they not know? I told Cherry and I saw her write the note to Belle.”

“That’s
terrible!
” agreed Godwin.

Lenore nodded. “I was furious, of course. But I didn’t kill her.”

Godwin laughed once, “Ha!” then added uncertainly, “Well, good for you.”

“Who didn’t you kill?” Jill asked. Her voice was very quiet.

“Belle Hammermill, of course.” Lenore’s eyes were firmly fixed on her plate. “She’s the one who’s dead, isn’t she? I think she messed me up on purpose, for some sick reason of her own. I wished she would die.” Her eyes suddenly lifted and went around the table, taking in their amazed stares. “That’s right, I even told people I wished she would take poison and die. And now she’s over there on the floor, dead, and I can’t be pleased. I just feel sick and scared. Is that stupid, or what?”

There was a hasty chorus of disagreement, and Betsy said, “It’s not stupid. You wish her dead, and she dies—that’s scary. But wishing doesn’t make it so. Think how many times you’ve wished for something that doesn’t happen. This was a coincidence. And what happened to Belle was an accident, we all know that.”

Lenore took a breath as if to reply, gave a little hiccup as if changing her mind hastily, and said instead, “You’re right, I guess.”

“Did you ever think Ms. Hammermill was very unhappy or even seriously depressed?” Jill asked.

“What do you mean?” Betsy said. “You think she committed suicide?” The image of Belle going over the railing rose up in Betsy’s mind. “It didn’t look like suicide to me.”

Lenore, looking into her lap again said, “Of course it wasn’t suicide. Belle wouldn’t do something like that. She was enjoying herself, she always enjoyed herself. Whenever any unhappiness came around, she laid it right away on someone else.” She blinked rapidly and her chin began to tremble. “Excuse me,” she said and pushed her chair back so hard its metal legs shrieked on the tile floor.