Crewel Yule (21 page)

It had been a long interview. Betsy’s notes covered three pages. She noted with a wry smile her first note:
volatile
. Too true. On the other hand, Cherry had seemed convincingly reluctant to put others in a bad light. And her story about Lenore’s model jibed with Lenore’s own account of Belle’s misbehavior. Interesting that both Lenore and Eve ran into the same strange jealousy problem with Belle.

Had Cherry?

Betsy ran her eyes back over the notes. The money to buy the store was Cherry’s. Belle supplied “the expertise,” according to Cherry. Cherry said the shop was owned fifty-fifty, but it if was losing money, it was losing
Cherry’s
money.

Could Cherry afford that?

The light went out. Betsy stood and groped for the dial, found and twisted it, and sat down again to read some more.

Cherry said Belle had explained the reasons for the losses to her: cash flow problems, an increase in inventory, having to split the profits. And if Cherry had asked for an audit, that meant she suspected Belle was lying.

So there was a motive—no. Betsy was starting to get sleepy now, so had to think it out slowly. If Belle was stealing money from Samplers and More, and Cherry was threatening an audit that would reveal it, then the person who should have gone over the railing was Cherry, not Belle. Right?

Betsy sighed, closed the booklet, turned out the light, and went to bed.

Twenty

Betsy was wakened the next morning by the sound of voices whispering. She understood at once the whisperers were benign because she came awake hearing, “. . . going to wear my lavender shirt, but maybe that’s a little frivolous, and anyway I think this tan looks just as good with the black sport coat, don’t you think?”

Godwin. In her bedroom? No, this was not her bed, so not her bedroom. Where—?

Oh, Nashville. Market. Blizzard. Murder—oh, have mercy! Murder! She sighed.

The owner of the other voice spoke aloud, “Betsy, are you awake?”

Jill.

Betsy was sure there was an implied “at last” in there somewhere. “Uh-huh,” she murmured. “Wha’ timesit?”

“Nearly eight.”

“Uff.”

“We’re thinking we need to get down to breakfast pretty soon because who knows what they’ll have to eat, and the best of it will soon be gone.”

Remembering the Fritos scattered on her tomato soup last night, Betsy sighed again and began to struggle out of bed.

But once up, she was washed and dressed in a very efficient hurry. She came out into the sitting room in her brand new cranberry sweater and navy skirt, and Godwin said admiringly, “How do you do that?”

“I pretend I’m back in boot camp,” said Betsy. “It might’ve been a long time ago, but something you learn in an advanced state of terror never quite leaves you.”

“Terror?” Godwin was leading the way to the door. “I thought you were in the Navy, not the Marine Corps.”

“I was in the Navy, but when you’re eighteen years old and people are shouting and blowing whistles at five A.M. and insisting you hit the line, now, at attention, bare feet at a forty-five degree angle, middle finger lined up with the side seams of your nightgown—and you do—you realize that when you’re really scared you can do anything required of you. Even take a shower and get dressed in eight minutes. It was a surreal experience, one I’m glad I signed up for, but never, ever want to try again.”

Jill snickered.

“What?” asked Betsy, falling behind Godwin, who was practically cantering down the gallery toward the elevators. Breakfast smells of meat and biscuits were wafting all the way to them from down on the atrium floor.

“I had a great-aunt who was a Navy WAVE, and you sound just like her. She wouldn’t have missed it for anything, but never wanted to go back.”

The elevator came half full of people from the ninth floor, and stopped to pick up a few more from seven. Most were in that early-morning daze that wants neither to talk nor listen. Someone did murmur something about the hotel extending breakfast hours to ease crowding, but no one replied.

As the car smoothly descended, Betsy turned and looked out at the rising view. “Hey,” she said, “is that Cherry?”

Jill managed to turn around in the small, crowded space and look out in time to see someone moving down the gallery right across from them. She was in a wheelchair, moving swiftly toward the elevators on that side.

“Where?” asked Godwin, wriggling around to peer out.

“Up there,” said Jill, pointing. “But it’s not Cherry, her hair’s the wrong color.” The person she was looking at had very pale, perhaps white, hair.

The balusters of the metal railing, and the ivy dripping from the flower boxes, broke her image up so that for Godwin she was more a flicker than an image going by. Jill and Betsy exchanged significant looks. “What good eyes you two have,” Godwin said. He was a bit nearsighted, but this was as close as he could come to admitting it.

Breakfast wasn’t so awful as Betsy expected. No fresh melon or strawberries, no croissants or sweet rolls, no bread or English muffins to toast—but there were plenty of biscuits and enough butter or jam for them. There were bacon and sausages, and pancakes with syrup. The kitchen was out of eggs, except for the few stirred into a mix of fried potatoes with add-ons of onion and sweet bell peppers. More biscuits waited to have sausage gravy or a ham and cheese sauce spooned over them. There was coffee and tea, but no milk. The little bin that had held tiny half-and-half containers was empty. There was cranberry juice, but no orange or grapefruit juice. Betsy got the last orange. She peeled it and shared the sections with Godwin and Jill. Before long, they were lingering over the last of the coffee—the place wasn’t nearly as jammed as last night, so they were in no hurry to leave the table—and talking about plans for the day.

“I don’t see Eve Suttle or Lenore King here,” said Jill, craning her neck.

“May I join you?” asked a slim woman with white hair combed into a smooth helmet. She was in a wheelchair, and Betsy suddenly recognized her as the INRG Committee member behind the table in the lobby from yesterday. She had a tray in her lap bearing a cup of coffee and a single biscuit.

“Yes, please,” said Betsy, and Godwin hastily pulled an empty chair away to make room for her.

“We’re about finished,” said Jill. “Do you have someone else who will sit with you?”

“No, but I cherish a few minutes alone at breakfast,” said the woman, transferring the tray to the table. “I’m Emily Watson, co-chair of this event.”

Betsy introduced herself, Jill, and Godwin.

“You’re the one who brought her to this event,” said Emily to Betsy, nodding at Jill. “We issued your friend a special name tag so she could buy something to keep her occupied. But you found something else to do,” she said to Jill. “Trying to find out what really happened to Belle Hammermill. I am sure you will find it was sad accident or, at worst, a suicide. And that’s why I came to your table—to beg you not to do anything more to disrupt this event than you absolutely have to. Ms. Harrison, who is normally just the night manager, is de facto day manager as well; and she is, quite naturally, upset about what happened yesterday morning. She is anxious that whatever needs to be done, be done quietly and without disturbing the guests. She spoke rather sharply to me this morning about your, er, methods.”

“Yes, she has spoken to us, as well,” Jill said. “I am going to tell you something in strict confidence.”

Jill paused while Emily studied her face and then nodded. “All right,” she said.

“We are trying to solve what we are now convinced is a murder.”

Emily gasped and stared at the three of them, who returned the look solemnly.

“I see,” she said. “Then why—? I mean, I’m sorry, but it seems from the descriptions I’ve heard of your antics around the upper-floor railings that you are amusing yourselves, rather than conducting a serious investigation.”

“We are taking it very seriously,” said Jill. “Those two experiments at the railings were important, and they served the purpose of convincing us that Ms. Hammermill did not go over by accident or by her own will. And having served that purpose, they won’t be repeated.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Emily said. “But I am terribly shocked to think you actually believe someone might have pushed Ms. Hammermill to her death. I trust the reason was such that we need have no fear of it happening again?”

“I doubt that very much,” said Betsy.

“Good.” Emily looked relieved, broke her biscuit and said, “So this was a terrible thing, but an isolated thing. I don’t want people’s noses ground into it, or they might begin to feel they can’t come to the Market in the future without being sickened or terrified.”

“I understand,” said Betsy quietly.

Emily put a dab of preserves on a fragment of biscuit. “I feel especially sorry for Cherry Pye, Ms. Hammermill’s partner in business.”

Betsy nodded. “Yes, Jill and I spoke with her yesterday afternoon, but she doesn’t seem to be here for breakfast.”

“I understand that she has elected to stay in her room until she can leave the hotel,” Emily said. “So it’s not because she’s in danger?”

“I don’t think so,” said Betsy.

“Then I’m sorry she’s elected to isolate herself. It was good to have another woman on display who is both a paraplegic and a success in business.”

Betsy asked, “Are you and she the only two?”

“In INRG? Oh no, there are others. But not many; it takes a certain degree of courage and effort to succeed in business when you’re confined to a wheelchair.”

“Do you know Cherry?” asked Jill.

“Not well. She only joined INRG a few years ago. She’s especially brave. She jumped right into owning a store; she hadn’t worked in retail at all before.”

“She told us that Belle brought the expertise to the business.”

“Yes, I’d heard that, too.”

“There are probably all kinds of special problems when you’re in a wheelchair if you decide to go into the retail business,” said Betsy.

“Oh, goodness, yes!” Emily seemed amused that Betsy should say something so obvious. “If you work in the store, and of course you have to if you want to make any money, all the aisles must be wide enough for your chair, which cuts into display space. And you have to have someone always in the store with you, because you can’t reach up high, and there’s always that individual who thinks that having a spinal injury means your IQ is about forty points lower than average, which can be enraging when she’s the fourteenth customer that day who speaks very . . . slowly . . . and . . . clearly.”

Betsy chuckled. “At least it’s not like a lot of other retail businesses, where they only want to talk to the man, even if he’s brand new that day.”

“That’s right,” agreed Emily.

“It must be expensive,” noted Jill, “having to rework the aisles—and make the doorways wider and have the sills flattened.”

“Yes. And you have to stick to your diet, because extra-wide chairs call for even wider aisles.” She chuckled. “Not that even the narrow chairs aren’t always nicking the counters and door frames. But the worst is dropping things. I finally had a special attachment put on my chair so I didn’t have to carry my long-reach in one hand all day long.”

“Long-reach?” asked Godwin, pausing in the act of cutting another bite from his pancakes.

“You know, that tool that extends your reach.” She lifted her right hand up near her shoulder and moved the fingers as if pulling a trigger, while at the same time extending her left arm to move the fingers as if pinching something. “So you can pick things up from the floor or from a high shelf.”

“Oh, a grabber.” Godwin nodded. Jill leaned a little sideways to look at Emily’s chair for the attachment.

“It’s on the chair I use in my shop,” she said. “This is my outing chair, with arms and a place to attach a basket for my purchases.” She turned her face to Betsy and said in a tone almost pleading, “I really don’t understand how you can think this was no accident.”

“I’m afraid Jill and I both do,” said Betsy.

“So then, you must suspect . . . someone?”

“Not yet.”

“Which one of you is the policeman?” She was looking at Godwin.

“I am,” said Jill.

“Ha!” she exclaimed. “Making the same mistake I hate for others to make!”

“That’s all right,” said Godwin, very amused. “I didn’t mind.”

Emily said to Jill, “I apologize. Now that I look at you, I believe I remember seeing you go into the hotel office to speak with that police investigator yesterday.”

“Yes, that was me.”

“Did he say you could conduct your own investigation?”

“Yes, provided I passed along anything we found out to him. His name is Lieutenant Paul Birdsong.”

Emily nodded. “An easy name to remember. Do you think you will be able to discover the, er, perpetrator of this unfortunate occurrence?”