Cutwork (25 page)

The door to the shop went
Bing!
Betsy stood, but it was only Shelly, back with Betsy’s salad.

She came between the box shelves and was pulled up short by the look on Skye’s face. “What’s the matter here?” she asked.

Skye turned to her and demanded, “Is it true this person helps people the police think killed someone?”

Shelly smiled. “Yes, she does. She’s very good at it.”

“But she’s trying to help Mickey Sinclair.”

“Yes. His family asked me to.”

“But he really did it, you know. It wasn’t Banner, it couldn’t be Banner! He’s too nice!” Skye was near tears.

Shelly said, “Are you sure of that?”

“I’ve known him since I was a little baby! I don’t want him to go to jail!”

“Of course you don’t. But think about it; Mickey’s family doesn’t want him to go to jail either.”

“But he’s such a criminal!”

“Perhaps. But people always stick up for their family.”

Betsy, inspired, said, “Yes, they do, just as you are doing now, trying to help your mother and your brother.”

Skye frowned. “Is it really the same thing? Me trying to help Coy and them trying to help Mickey?”

Shelly said, “Yes, almost exactly the same. And if your brother and your mother—and even Banner Wilcox—didn’t do this terrible thing, Betsy will find that out, too.”

Skye settled back in her chair and thought that over. Shelly and Betsy let her take her time. At last Skye said, “Okay, you can go talk to him.” She gave his phone number as well as an address in Edina.

Betsy said, “Thank you. Have you had lunch, Skye?”

“I was supposed to have it with a friend, but it’s too late now.”

“Would you like my salad? I can go next door for another one. Meanwhile, Shelly can keep you company. Right, Shelly?”

Shelly smiled and said, “Of course.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Betsy smiled, and went next door for another salad, which she ate slowly. When she came back to the shop, she found Shelly and Skye looking at Halloween patterns. She stayed out of their way until Skye left a few minutes later.

“That is one mixed-up kid,” said Shelly. “She’s almost crazy with grief over her father, and her mother is
not
helping. And
you’re
not any better, Miss Snoop.”

Betsy sighed. “I know. That’s why I aimed her at you. She was about to walk out on me because she’s so distressed at having to make me suspect Banner Wilcox of murder. She may become angry at Ian for putting the idea in her head.”

“How do you know he did that?”

“Well, I don’t. But it was her confiding in him that opened this particular can of worms, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I suppose so. But she’s not mad at him now. We mostly talked about Ian Masterson, how nice he is, what a great artist he is. But she’s hurting badly right now, poor kid.”

“Is she going to be all right, Shelly? What do you think of her? I know you specialize in elementary-age kids, but she’s not all that far out of elementary school, is she?”

“Hah, in some respects she’s forty years old!” Shelly added, more seriously, “I’ve hardly ever seen a kid more in need of a sympathetic shoulder. Ian can talk to her better than I can, about art anyway, but I can fill in around the edges. Which I am glad to do.”

“What about her mother? What will she think of you taking on this burden?”

“It’s not a burden, and I don’t think her mother will mind.”

“Shelly . . . thanks.”

They settled into one of those afternoons that makes a shop owner despair. Not even a passerby stopped long enough to look in their window. Betsy got her cutwork pattern out, and the ball of Number Five thread, and continued tracing the lines with buttonhole stitch.

When she’d first learned it, it had been called the blanket stitch. Blanket or buttonhole, it was a series of vertical stitches with a raised edge, like a row of capital T’s whose crossbars overlap:
TTTTTT
. It wasn’t hard to learn, but it took a bit of concentration at first to make every stitch identical, especially when working around curves.

Shelly kept coming by the desk, pausing to look at what Betsy was doing, and when Betsy refused to look up, sighing and going on. She had a project of her own to work on, and even got it out, but kept putting it down to sigh and look significantly at Betsy.

Who finally said, “Is there something you want to talk about, Shelly?”

“Who, me?” said Shelly, laughing.

“Well, all right,” said Betsy, pretending to take her at her word, and returning to work on her project.

“Oh, okay, if you’re going to twist my arm, then sure, I’ll talk about him.” Shelly put her work away and came to the desk.

“Who?” asked Betsy.

“The man I am seriously thinking of falling in love with.”

“I thought you were already in love with Ian.”

Shelly started to say something else, but paused. “Have you ever experienced love at first sight?”

“No.”

“Then it’s hard to explain. It’s not really love, because it’s not based on anything.”

“Sure it is. It’s based on looks, isn’t it?”

“No, not the way you think, because once before when it happened to me, the guy wasn’t good looking at all. It’s more like . . . like recognition. It’s enough to make you believe in reincarnation, truly it is, because you see this person and it’s as if you’ve been waiting for years, maybe all your life, for him to come back. Even though you’ve never seen him before. It’s like, somewhere in your heart you recognize him and you can’t imagine why you didn’t realize he wasn’t around, that you’ve been longing for him without knowing it, and here he is at last.”

“Sounds spooky,” said Betsy.

“It isn’t, it’s like at last the world has come around right, and everything’s okay. You didn’t know before anything was wrong, but now you realize it’s all been wrong until now. The bad part is, any complications, like he’s married or he’s a criminal or he’s a drug addict, don’t really matter. They’re things you’re sure you can fix. It’s only later, when he’s gone, that you look back and seriously wonder if for a little while you were insane.
That
part is scary. I’ve been lucky; this is my third trip on the twinkie-mobile, and none of my fellow passengers have been carrying serious baggage.”

“‘Twinkie-mobile?’”

“Don’t you remember that TV show ‘Barney Miller’?”

“Sure—oh, Ron Harris, who had all those euphemisms for Bellevue and the wagon that took you there!” Betsy laughed. “So when you fell in love, it was a mutual thing?”

“Not always. Well, hardly ever. Once, actually.”

“Is this the one time?”

“No, the one was my first husband. This one’s infatuated.”

“Shelly . . .”

“I know, I know. But infatuation can lead to love. And I’ve intrigued the artist in him. He wants to make a kinetic sculpture of me.”

“What’s a kinetic sculpture?”

“I’m not sure. It moves—he says he loves the way I walk.” Shelly demonstrated her walk, mugging elaborately over her shoulder as she went between the box shelves into the back of the store. She did a model’s turn. “What do you think? Am I poetry in motion?”

“You move smoothly, I can see that.” And she did, she was graceful as a dancer. As Shelly came back, Betsy continued, “What’s he like as an artist? I mean, do you really think he’s an artist, or is he a
poseur
?”

“We had a conversation about that. I like your word,
poseur,
better than mine,
pretender
—but he’s not either; he really is an artist. He’s starting to influence me, the way he looks at everything, really everything, as a possible work of art. He got all interested in the light on the irises in Mrs. Elmo’s backyard, how the eye perceives shape and how distorted from reality perspective can be. So I told him about Marc Saastad’s patterns of roses and irises, and how he indicates shadows with color changes, and I almost had him persuaded to try a counted cross-stitch pattern. I guess you had to be there, but it was really amazing. I love the way his mind works, always aware of the play of light on textured surfaces. It must be like hearing music
all the time.
”

Betsy said, “I had a friend who was a writer, and she said a part of her is always standing off to one side, taking notes.”

“He says to be a successful artist he has to stay in touch with his inner child.”

“I’ve heard that. Ever notice how often their inner child is a brat?”

Shelly winced. “
Touché!
Though his doesn’t seem to be altogether a brat. It’s more like taking a three-year-old for a walk. It’s a way to see with new eyes how wonderful the familiar is.”

“Speaking of new and familiar, this favor Ian did for Rob McFey, giving him money for his insurance policy, is this something he’s done before?”

Shelly turned serious. “I asked him about that. And he says he’s always tried to spread the wealth around when he can, but nowadays he mostly gives money to foundations that aid artists. He says he used to make loans but he hardly ever got it back. And they’d just waste it, anyhow. Artists, he says, are rarely able to manage money. He includes himself in that—he has an attorney handling his money.”

“So why did he give money to Rob McFey?”

“Rob wasn’t stupid about money—and anyway, he didn’t give him money, he bought a viatical. He’s done things like that before. Once, when an artist didn’t have any insurance, he gave him a kind of mortgage. It was another welding artist. He says that’s where he got his oxyacetylene torch. The artist died in a fire in his studio that was attached to his house and all Ian got was the torch and a heap of ashes.”

“When was this?”

“I don’t know. From the way he talked about it, he gave him the money three or four years ago. The artist died in a fire soon after.”

“Was this welding artist on the verge of becoming famous, like Rob McFey?”

Shelly shook her head—then did a perfect double take. “What, you think Ian murders artists he thinks might become rivals?”

Betsy raised both hands in protest. Put baldly like that, it did seem ludicrous. “No, of course not! I’m just trying to collect as much information as I can. Somewhere in all this mess, there’s a clue I’m probably missing.”

“Oh. Okay.” She thought. “I don’t think he was about to become famous—this other welding artist. I’d never heard of him, anyway. He told me the guy’s name. Begins with an O. Benedict O. Gregory O? A Pope’s name,” she said, and thought some more. “His last name was Omar. No, Oscar. Well, something like that.” She shook her head.

“Does Ian ever talk about why he does welded-metal sculpture? I mean, as opposed to clay, or stone.”

“He can do clay, and stone. But he told me he likes the primal appeal of metal, its ability to take on any shape. He says most of the art we’re making today will rot or fade or fall apart, but metal won’t. He says metal is . . . alchemical. He says it’s like wizardry. You take copper and tin and melt them together to get bronze, which isn’t what you’d expect. It’s a whole different metal, not like either of them. And copper and zinc make brass, which is even more different.”

Betsy said, “Wait a minute, I want to hear about Ian, not get a lecture on metal alloys.”

“Well, it’s kind of to the point,” said Shelly. “Ian says people used to think metal workers were in league with the devil, you know, because they could handle white-hot iron and not get burned to death. And I think he kind of likes that idea, that his work is dangerous, both really and spiritually. He quotes this poem by Kipling: ‘Iron, cold iron, is master of them all.’ Meaning master of metals.”

Betsy recited, “‘Gold is for the mistress, Silver for the maid, Copper for the craftsman, cunning at his trade.’”

“Yes,” nodded Shelly, “that’s the poem, about the baron sitting in his hall. He gets all moved and excited about steel. He does this thing with the surface, gives it a patina, so it turns colors.”

Betsy said, “I thought those big steel beams were painted.”

“They were. But he hasn’t done the big steel beams in years. He does these smaller things—well, comparatively smaller. I saw a model of the tree piece, it was kind of like an Ent from
Lord of the Rings,
old and noble and sad. He said inspiration smote him hard and he did about six of these figures all in a rush. His gallery got all excited so he did two more not quite so fast—and he’s not satisfied with the later ones. He says that well was shallow and went dry, and now he wants to move on. But his gallery wants more of them. He’s working on one, it looks like an old man with a lantern, and he doesn’t like it very much, either. The Ent one turned up at a major auction and sold for over three times what the gallery price was, which was sixty-five thousand dollars. He’s getting reviewed by important critics and museums are interested.” Shelly’s voice had softened with awe. “His gallery keeps raising its prices, now they’re into the higher six figures, and they’ve still sold all but one. But he insists this lantern man will be the last. I told him he can work on whatever he wants to part of the time but he should definitely go with the flow and make more of the ones that really sell. Do you think I was wrong? I mean, there’s this artist thing about inspiration, but how can he just shrug off eight hundred thousand dollars?”

Betsy lifted her hands. “You know him better than I do. Is he more after money than he is being true to his art?”

Shelly thought that over. “You know, I can’t tell. Sometimes I think it’s being rich and famous he likes, and other times, I think he’d live in an unheated basement rather than give up his welder.”

“So long as he has a welder, he won’t freeze,” said Betsy with a wink.

But Shelly was too involved in talking about Ian to get the joke. “I told him, if he’s out of inspirations he could maybe go back to the first ones and just do variations on them. There’s a screaming little girl that’s very powerful, I saw a picture of it on his website. He could do that child as a boy, for example.”