Cutwork (5 page)

Mrs. McFey didn’t straighten, but the weeping began to slow. “Yes, yes,” she muttered. “I understand.” Nelson stood, nodded at Jill, and went back to his place.

“Now, first of all,” said Jill, “are you and Mr. McFey divorced?”

Mrs. McFey straightened with a huge effort. “I’ve filed the papers, but the decree hasn’t gone through yet,” she said tiredly.

“When did you last speak with your husband?”

She sat up, thinking. “I don’t know—wait, he called me last week, something about a court date, a conflict. He was going to another fair, somewhere in Wisconsin.”

“I talked to him yesterday,” said Skye in a low voice.

“What did he say to you?” asked Jill.

“He—he wanted to know if I could come sit with him in his booth on Sunday, today. I said I’d ask, but Mommy said she couldn’t leave the house, she had to be here all day.” Tears were streaming down her face, but she was speaking coherently.

“So you’ve both been here?”

The child wiped her eyes with both hands. “Well, no. I called my friend Jessica and her mother came and got me and picked up Chris and we swam in their pool all morning.”

“What time was that?”

Skye shrugged, but when Jill only waited, she narrowed her mascaraed eyes and thought. “It was early.” She smiled, just a little. “It’s such a drag but I like getting up early and so does Jessica. But we had to get Chris out of bed and then wait for him to eat and get dressed, so I guess around nine, maybe before. I just got back home when you came. We had lunch over there.”

Jill made a note and asked, “Who else needs to be notified of this? Is there some way you can get hold of Coyne?”

Skye stared at Jill. Jill suddenly could see freckles delicately strewn across her nose and cheeks. “I don’t know where he is,” the girl said. “He went out before I did this morning. I don’t think he said when he’d he back.”

Pam McFey blinked slowly at Jill. She looked dreadful. “There isn’t any way to get in touch with him right now,” she said. She thrust her fingers into her hair and clenched them. “I really could use a drink, I’m afraid.”

Skye said in a strange voice, “I’ll get you a tot of brandy.” She rose clumsily and started to turn away, but her ankles twisted together and she fell boneless onto the heavy carpet on the floor.

“No, no!” exclaimed Mrs. McFey, moving in a single, athletic motion to her daughter’s side. “Skye? Skye! What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

Jill stooped beside the unconscious girl, seeking and finding a shallow, rapid pulse in her throat, noting the unlabored breathing. “She’s fainted, that’s all.” When Mrs. McFey started to lift her, Jill said, “No, don’t move her. Hand me a pillow from the couch, please.”

Mrs. McFey obediently reached for a crewel-worked pillow from a corner of the couch and handed it to Jill, who put it under Skye’s feet. She began to pat and rub Skye’s hand. “Wake up, honey,” she said gently. “Everything’s all right, you’re all right.”

“Come back to us, baby,” said her mother, stooping beside her daughter on the other side. “Mommy’s here, everything will be fine.”

“Hum?” murmured Skye and her eyes fluttered open. “Mommy!”

“I’m here.”

“What happened to me?”

“You fainted, that’s all. You’re going to be all right. Isn’t she?” Mrs. McFey asked Jill.

“Of course, she’s just fine. No, no, don’t get up yet,” she added to Skye.

“But . . . Oh! Oh, Daddy’s dead! My daddy’s dead!” Tears welled up and slid down her temples to vanish into the thick, dark hair.

Jill said, “I’m so sorry, Skye. But the police are investigating, and don’t worry, we’ll catch whoever did it.”

Skye stumbled on a sob and exchanged a swift glance with her mother. “Mommy, where’s Coy?” she asked.

Pam said quickly, “Yes, he needs to be told right away.” Her eyes darted to Jill. “I think we should tell him, rather than the police. It’s going to be such a . . . shock.”

“Yes, a terrible shock,” said Skye.

Pam said to Jill, “Thank you for coming in person to tell us, Officer.”

“Sergeant,” corrected Jill, too new to the stripes on her sleeve to allow that to pass. “And you’re welcome. Your son needs to be told soon, before this gets onto the news. Does he carry a cell phone?”

“He has one, but it’s shut off. He was told it’s very bad manners to have a job interview interrupted by a call.”

Jill said, “He’s got job interviews on a Sunday?”

“Why yes. Well, one, anyway. It’s at Prestige Auto, and they work on Sundays just like any other day of the week. He’s going to be a junior this fall, and he doesn’t want to switch schools, so he has to find something, and not just as a bag boy, even at Byerly’s.” Byerly’s was an upscale grocery chain.

“What time was his interview?” asked Jill.

“I don’t know. And it may not be the only one. He did say he’d probably be gone all day. Do you really need to be here when he comes home?”

“No, I have other things that need doing. But here . . .” Jill reached into her pocket for a slim pack of crisp, new business cards. “This has my name and a phone number where I can be reached. I’m sure someone from the department will want to talk with him. And if Coy has any questions, after you talk with him, he can contact me, or the investigator who is in charge of the case. His name is Mike Malloy, Detective Sergeant Mike Malloy. He’ll be the one to get in touch with you.” She scribbled Mike’s name on the card. “The phone number is the same.”

Mrs. McFey nodded, and took the card. “Thank you.”

Skye was sitting up now, her color mostly returned. “Is Daddy—I mean, what will happen now?”

“There will be an autopsy. Then the body will be released to you. But you’ll be hearing from Detective Sergeant Malloy before that happens. He can answer any questions you may have at that time.”

“Is an autopsy . . . icky?” asked Skye, who, like her mother, had a mind that went in an odd direction when under stress.

“No,” lied Jill. “It’s something like an operation. You won’t notice anything at the funeral.”

“Funeral,” repeated Skye, and suddenly she was crying, huge gulping sobs. Her mother gathered her up onto the couch, murmuring gentle words, stroking her hair.

Jill and Officer Nelson left them weeping together.

In the car on their way back to Excelsior, Nelson noted quietly, “Interesting how they’re both scared Coy did it, isn’t it?”

3

It was two o’clock; the Monday Bunch was in session. Mostly women, they gathered in Betsy Devonshire’s store, Crewel World, to work on needlepoint, counted cross-stitch, and knitting projects while chatting. There were nine members present, an unusually large number, brought out by the news of Sunday’s murder at the art fair.

“You were there, weren’t you, Betsy?” asked Martha, a plump, cheerful-faced woman in her seventies. She was doing a counted cross-stitch pattern of fledgling bluebirds sitting on a wire fence. Flick, flick went her needle, and a bluebird’s beady black eye appeared.

For a change, Betsy was sitting at the table herself, working on a needlepoint pattern of wild mustangs charging in a cloud of dust, the dust so thick the horses were mere silhouettes in the midst of it. She was working it in wool with the wasteful but sturdy basketweave stitch because she wanted to use it as a chair seat. She said, “Yes, but I had no idea what had happened until it was all over.”

“You mean, Mike didn’t even come over and talk to you?” asked Alice, a big woman with a man’s broad shoulders and a chin not to trifle with. She sounded indignant on Betsy’s behalf.

“Why should he? I couldn’t have told him anything useful.”

Bershada, a slim black woman with magnifying glasses well down her nose, said, “That’s not what I hear. What I hear is, you can take one look at a crime scene and know who did it.”

“Where did you hear that?” asked Betsy, amazed.

“Shelly told me. She admires your detective work very much.” Shelly Donohue taught in a local elementary school, and worked part time in Betsy’s shop.

“Anyway, it’s not true,” said Godwin, Betsy’s chief clerk and her one employee present. He was a trim young man with fair hair and guileless blue eyes, knitting another in his endless series of white cotton socks, his fingers making swift, economical movements. “It’s not the
scene,
it’s the
people.
She has to talk to people, listen to their stories, sort out the lies.
Then
she knows.”

Betsy nodded. “Sometimes it works like that. But there’s no reason for me to get involved in this one. The police have already arrested the person who did it.”

This created a very satisfying sensation around the table. Virtually everyone in Excelsior loved gossip, none more than the Monday Bunch.

“Who did they arrest?” demanded Alice in her deep voice.

“I don’t want to tell you his name, but it’s a teenager from right here in town.”

“I bet it’s Chris Martinsen,” said Idonis, naming a notorious window breaker.

“I agree,” said Alice.

“No, more likely Billy Swenson,” said Emily. “He’s been hanging out with that tough bunch from Wayzata.”

“How did Mike solve it so quickly?” asked Godwin—slyly, because the group understood that Mike Malloy wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box.

“Mike’s very sharp when it’s a criminal type of crime,” said Betsy, echoing her source. “And that’s what this was. His theory of the crime is that Mr. McFey set up his booth for the day, then left for a few minutes. Along came this young man, who saw the cash box unguarded and decided to help himself. But Mr. McFey came back and caught him in the act, possibly tried to detain him. The young man panicked, grabbed one of Mr. McFey’s whittling knives, and swung it. He probably didn’t mean to kill Mr. McFey, but . . .” She shrugged. “It was one of those stupid, stupid crimes. All he had to do was turn and run, but . . .”

“So how did Mike figure out who did it?” asked Godwin. “Did the kid leave his fingerprints all over the cash box?”

“He left a footprint in Mr. McFey’s blood,” said Betsy.

“Ewwwww!” said several women immediately.

“Go on, go on!” said Alice impatiently, flashing a quelling look around the table.

“Well, the young man apparently saw the blood on his shoes and threw them in one of the Dumpsters behind the food vendors. Several people saw him running up the street in his stocking feet. Two of them recognized him.”

“Stupid is right,” remarked Godwin. “All he had to do was take his socks off, too. Then he’d just be barefoot, and hardly anyone would have noticed him.”

“But you don’t know who he is?” Emily asked Betsy.

“She didn’t tell me his name.” Which was true, but Betsy had guessed, and had been told she was right.

“Who didn’t tell you?” asked Martha.

“Jill, of course,” said Godwin, when Betsy hesitated.

“I didn’t say a name!” said Betsy too quickly. She realized her mistake and her heart sank.

“We won’t tell, will we, girls?” said Godwin, trying to come to Betsy’s rescue.

“No, no, of course not,” several murmured quickly. The rest nodded, their eyes flashing from face to face. They were already calculating how soon they could leave without everyone guessing how urgently they wanted to tell someone else, in strictest confidence, what they’d learned in Betsy’s shop.

Excelsior was noted for its gossipy ways, and the first person to supply a shiny new grape for the vine was honored and envied. It would be on the evening news that Mike had arrested the murderer, but not that Sergeant Jill Cross, a police official of great probity, who never, ever gossiped, especially about police business, had told Betsy something she shouldn’t.
That
was gossip worthy of the name!

And it was symptomatic of how quickly it was spread that by midafternoon several customers alluded to it, hoping for more details. Which Betsy very determinedly didn’t give them.

Around three, the shop door went
Bing!
and Betsy looked around to see Irene Potter standing just inside the door. Her dark eyes were shining, her curls positively vibrating with excitement.

Now that Irene was actually earning good money as an artist, she had quit her old job running the shipping department of a small local manufacturer. And she no longer had to save loose change until she could come in and buy a quarter yard of twenty-six-count linen and a skein of Anchor 1006. Now she could—and did—special-order unusual fabrics and rare silks, writing checks with a wonderful insouciance. So Betsy was pleased on several levels to see her, from the simple pleasure of watching her bloom to the joy of depositing a large check that never bounced.

“What can I do for you today, Irene?” Betsy asked.

Irene bustled up to the big desk that was the shop’s checkout counter. “I’ve come to be interviewed,” Irene announced.

“What, is a reporter meeting you here?” That was great news; he might mention the shop and Betsy loved getting free publicity.

“No, no, I’m here for
you
to interview me.”

“What about?”

Irene stamped an impatient foot. “About the Rob McFey murder, of course! I was the one who found the body, you must have some questions for me!”

“Irene, the police have already arrested the murderer.”

“Oh, that boy didn’t murder Mr. McFey.”

Betsy felt her ears growing big points that swiveled toward Irene. “What? How do you know that? What did you see at The Common?”

Irene writhed in pleasure at Betsy’s keen interest. “Let’s go sit down in back, it’s more private.”

“All right. Godwin?” Betsy called. The young man came out from the back, where he’d been sorting a new order of Anchor floss into the cabinet of little plastic drawers. “Take over out front, I want to talk with Irene.”

Goddy’s eyes sparkled, but he only said, “Of course.” Betsy and Irene took seats on little padded chairs around a very small round table. “Now, what is it you want to tell me?” said Betsy.