Crewel Yule (5 page)

“Who did you say this person is?” asked Dave Stott, a round-headed man with a short-cropped beard. He asked the question in a quiet voice, as they were in the Kreinik suite, and there were customers present. But he wanted to know. Dave was the owner of Norden Crafts and didn’t want to get caught by the same trickster.

“Her name’s Belle Hammermill. She’s from Milwaukee, owns a store called Belle’s Samplers. You know her?”

“Never heard of her.” Dave sounded relieved.

“You want an introduction? She came to the Market.”

Stott, a short-legged man on crutches, snorted in disbelief. “You’re kidding. She had to know Kreinik Manufacturing would have a suite here. What are you going to do, Doug?”

“For one thing, I’m telling this story to every supplier I can get to. She’s going to find it damn hard in the future to place an order for other than cash in advance. But what I’d really like to do is confront her, call her a crook to her face. But a woman bold as that, who knows? She might punch me in the nose.”

“Worse, she might—”

A sharp yell interrupted the pair, and Kreinik, facing the door, lifted his eyes in time to see something—someone?—fall past his vision out in the atrium. There was a dreadful sound of impact on the floor six stories below.

“What the devil?” exclaimed Dave, trying to turn too quickly on his crutches and nearly falling.

“Someone’s gone over a railing!” Kreinik said as he pushed his way past Stott and headed for the gallery.

But the shorter man was right behind him, and they arrived at the railing together. “My God!” Stott shouted. “It’s a woman! Oh, my God!”

There were shouts and screams from all over as Kreinik leaned out over the railing. “Holy cow!” He leaned a bit farther out, brushing against Dave, who could feel him trembling. “Who is it? Can you tell?” he asked.

“No.” Dave leaned back awkwardly to look up. “Where was she standing?” The railings upward were dotted with staring faces—not many, because almost all the buyers and sellers were on the sixth floor or lower. The two men were on six. There were none at all on the top floor right above her.

Kreinik grabbed the railing and shook it hard, but it was firmly attached. It was higher than his waist. His face was pale with shock, but his voice was calm as he remarked, “She must’ve been tall.”

Stott wasn’t tall, but he backed away one step before looking down at the people rushing to the railings on the lower floors. They were shouting and pointing, the great hollow space was filled with noise. And far below was a body, now surrounded by spectators. He looked away and said, trying to emulate Kreinik’s apparent calm, “What—was she looking at something?”

Kreinik looked up, then shrugged. “I don’t know. But it must have been an accident.” He looked at Dave. “You going down?”

“Uh, no. In fact, I better get back to my place, make sure they don’t leave it unmanned.” He turned away, limping on one leg. His suite was almost exactly diagonal from Kreinik’s, but didn’t directly overlook the atrium. He was hoping all three employees hadn’t gone running out to gape over the railing, leaving his stock open to temptation.

He wondered who the victim was. It was no one he knew—he couldn’t remember seeing a blonde in a white sweater and red slacks this morning. But he felt sick at heart for her and anyone who knew her.

And while he was about it, for the whole Market. This was a terrible thing to happen! It was an accident, of course . . . or was it? No, of course it was an accident. Had to be. Anything else was unthinkable.

Cherry put a second extra change of underwear in her suitcase—she tended to take more underwear on trips than basic needs would require. She was frightened by how angry and desperate she felt. She needed someone to talk to, and not someone who would sympathize with her plight but someone who knew the law regarding business partnerships and small business operations. She wanted out—no, she
had
to get out. There had to be a way to break this partnership. Her sanity depended on it.

Belle Hammermill was a smooth-tongued liar. And their store, Belle’s Samplers and More, was leaking money, melting money,
hemorrhaging
money. Cherry’s money—and that was the Big Rub, wasn’t it? Belle brought the expertise, Cherry brought the money, a perfect match.

Except it wasn’t.

Cherry wasn’t ordinarily a trusting sort; she’d had that knocked out of her by her first husband and his amazing family. But Belle was a sweet person, charming and funny. And really smart. She’d worked in retail all her life, and for the last four years in a needlework shop. So what wasn’t to like, and trust?

And Cherry wanted to put a chunk of her money to work on an idea of her own—and herself, too. She had gotten a heck of a settlement from the city’s insurance company after her accident. Which wasn’t exactly hard. During rush hour a city bus had caught her in a pedestrian walkway and mashed her into a squad car. Broke her left elbow, left tibia, and the sixth cervical vertebra in her spine. Tore the cord without severing it, so after some therapy she had control of her sphincter and bladder and could tell when something touched her legs—though, oddly, she couldn’t feel pain in them. She could wiggle her toes and move her left foot, but she couldn’t stand, except in chest-deep water. She was far from helpless: she had two lovely wheelchairs to get around in. She could swim, run wheelchair marathons, and drive her nice van anywhere with its hand controls. Above the waist she was perfectly healthy—in fact, her upper body strength was considerable—and her brain worked just fine, thank you. She had developed a particular dislike of people who saw her in a wheelchair and assumed she was a drooling idiot.

But she’d been taken good by Belle Hammermill. And the attorney she’d consulted said that there wasn’t much she could do about it. The partnership contract they’d signed could be broken easily by mutual consent—but Belle liked things as they were, with Cherry continuing to pour money into the shop while Belle wasted it. And once Belle realized Cherry knew what was going on, her wastrel ways had become even more blatant.

So there had to be a way out. There just had to be. Cherry had money in other funds, but this was her first venture into hands-on investing and it was infuriating that she was being taken like this. If it continued, she was going to have to dip into other, secure, resources, and eventually she might find herself without the money to pay for the very expensive continuing therapy, or the new van she’d need in a year or two. Cherry knew a start-up business lost money its first few years and she was prepared for that; but Belle’s Samplers had been bought as a going concern, and was now in its fourth year under her and Belle’s management, and was deeper in the red than it had been its first.

Belle said it was because of the special requirements Cherry brought to the place, which was a steaming heap of bull dung. It was because Belle kept rotten records, took money out of the till, kept messing up special orders, and closed the shop whenever she felt like a day off. And she hinted to people that most of the shop’s problems were Cherry’s fault. But what could you expect when you took a cripple as a partner? When Cherry learned Belle had actually said that to a customer, she’d had to excuse herself to go into the bathroom and throw up. She had thought Belle was a friend!

This couldn’t go on. Cherry had to find a way out.

Five

The operator who answered after about a dozen rings sounded exasperated. “What is your emergency?” she demanded.

Marveen said, “We have a guest who fell into our atrium from one of the upper floors. She’s dead.”

In an oh-that’s-different voice, the operator asked, “Who is this calling, please?”

“I’m Marveen Harrison, night manager at the Consulate at 7311 Harmony Drive.”

“That one at the top of the hill?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“Are you sure the person is dead?”

“Oh, yes, there is absolutely no doubt about that. We’ve got an eyewitness who saw her fall from the ninth floor. It’s really terrible, she’s a terrible mess, and she’s really, obviously past any need for life support.”

“Ohhh-kay. So not a life-and-death emergency. Which is good, all our emergency vehicles are out on calls, with other calls waiting. Your witness is sure it was an accident? She fell?”

Marveen glanced over at the woman, who was looking shaken but not excited or eager to garner the attention of a television reporter. “Yes.”

“So you have no reason to think this is a homicide,” the 911 operator was saying.

“Correct.”

“I’ll send a squad over as soon as one is available, but with the city streets so bad, I don’t know how long it will be. Have you been able to clear the road up to your hotel for vehicle passage?”

“No, just the unloading area in front of the covered porch. We sent two of our maintenance people out this morning to shovel the parking lot, and one fell and sprained his wrist, and the other fell and hurt his back. It’s terribly slippery out there.” Marveen felt she was babbling and closed her mouth firmly while she took a breath. “But you will come, right? I mean, we have a situation here, a really, really horrible situation.”

A tall blond woman wearing a winter coat over a nightgown came into the lobby from outdoors and stopped to stamp snow off her slippers. Tried to use the stairs instead of the elevator, Marveen thought. Didn’t realize you couldn’t get to the lobby via the stairs.

“Have you got a place a helicopter can land?” The emergency operator’s voice brought her attention back.

This question came up two years ago when a guest had had a heart attack. “Not really. I mean the parking lot is big enough, but it’s full of cars; we have a full house. What isn’t parking lot is hotel and trees. And the roof isn’t suitable, most of it is glass.”

“Okay, I’ve put the call out. But we’ve got a huge backlog and the streets everywhere are really slick. I hope you can be patient with us.”

“I can, I guess. But I don’t know about our guests.” Marveen hung up and turned to the heavyset woman in the navy stretch pants.

“I hate to keep you just standing there, but I need to inform my boss.”

“Yes, all right,” said the woman. But her voice was thin with stress, and she was wringing her hands as she looked over her shoulder at the crowd in the lobby. Down the stairs, all Marveen could see were heads, but she didn’t see the blond one; the woman in the winter coat had apparently gone on past the crowd.

Marveen had to look up the emergency contact number for the owners of the hotel—a good sign, really, because it showed how rarely it got called. She had to persuade the answering service that this was a truly genuine emergency that could not be handled by giving a message to be forwarded to the unfortunate individual on duty this weekend. The answering service connected her directly; Marveen did not have to dial a new number.

“Mr. Singh? This is Marveen Harrison, night manager at the Consulate. We have had a serious incident here, and one of our guests is dead.”

She explained the situation, concluding, “No, sir, I understand, I’ll instruct my staff not to talk to reporters. But I can’t restrict the guests, of course. No, sir, I don’t think you need to try to get over here, I understand the city is about closed down and I’ve got things under control here, pretty much.” She extracted a promise from Mr. Singh that he would let the rest of management know what was going on. With a little sigh, Marveen hung up.

The woman in the winter coat had come back and had taken the plump woman over to one of the couches. Marveen sighed again, for a different reason, and came out from behind the counter.

“Thank you for waiting,” she said, to call her attention away from the blonde. She used her kindest voice. “May I ask your name?”

“Sure,” she croaked, and cleared her throat. “I’m Samantha Wills, owner of The Silver Needle in Clarksville. This is Sergeant Jill Larson, a police officer from Minnesota.”

Whoops, that was different. Marveen shifted immediately from thinking her a disorganized, nosy nut, to considering the possibility that she was dressed like this because she responded in a hurry to the emergency.

Sergeant Larson had gotten a thin pad of paper and a pen from somewhere, and she lifted them in a kind of greeting. “I thought I’d start collecting information until the local police arrive.”

“Great,” said Marveen, only a little doubtfully. “But can I speak with Ms. Wills now?”

“Of course,” said Sergeant Larson, stepping back, but not quite out of earshot.

Ms. Wills said, “This is my first Market. You don’t always have this kind of thing happening here, do you? I mean, that railing arrangement made me nervous when I first saw it.”

Marveen recognized the question as a need for reassurance. “No, of course not,” she said lightly. “Never before, so far as I know.”